Hundreds of people who identify as dogs have met up in Berlin city centre but not all is as it seems. The group communicated by barking and howling at each other. Around 1,000 trans-species activists met up at the Berlin Potsdamer Platz railway station in the German capital. The group said they do not identify as human beings and instead wish to be recognised as pooches. One local said: “Just abandon them in the Siberian tundra and let them survive with their canine instincts.” Wilson commented: “I don't see anyone smelling the tail of others.” Jose wrote: “Can you imagine when they all have to defecate?” Eduardo remarked: “Call animal control and give them their rabies doses.” Ivan said: “But if they identify as dogs, why do they put on masks?” However, a community note on the now viral post suggested that it was something altogether different. The note wrote: "This gathering occurred during Folsom Europe, which is a gathering of gay men who are into various fetishes. This particular fetish is called pup play, and these individuals, mostly young, are cosplaying. Most do not believe they are dogs but are wearing a fetish costume." The note also provides a link to SDLGBTN which offers an explainer on pup play. In 2019, British man Tom Peters hit the headlines when he identified as a Dalmatian. Trans-species people do not feel or identify as human beings, but instead as specific animals or mythological beings. The most common creatures are dogs, cats, horses, birds, unicorns, dragons, elves, and even angels. Sign up for 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.

Healthy companies led by competent, commercially successful and globally beloved founders generally don’t tend to fire them. And,

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Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were seen Saturday morning taking a ride through the Plains Peanut Festival in Plains, Georgia, the Carter Center said in a social media post.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

The Mona Lisa has been the subject of awe and fascination for centuries, with experts from around the world desperate to solve the mystery behind her iconic, enigmatic smile. Now, thanks to X-ray technology, scientists have begun to uncover the secrets of Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary portrait, and explain how he was able to create something so mind-bending with just a few strokes of a brush. The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Wednesday, suggests that the Italian Renaissance master may have been in a particularly inventive mood when set about crafting the piece in the early 16th century. "He was someone who loved to experiment, and each of his paintings is completely different technically," Victor Gonzalez, the study's lead author, told the Associated Press.. Gonzalez, who has studied the chemical compositions of dozens of works by Leonardo and other artists, discovered that there was something special about the paint used for the Mona Lisa. Specifically, the researchers found a rare compound, called plumbonacrite, in Leonardo's first layer of paint. The discovery confirmed that Leonardo most likely used lead oxide powder to thicken and help dry his paint as he began working on the portrait. He is thought to have dried the powder, which has an orange colour, in linseed or walnut oil by heating the mixture to make a thicker, faster-drying paste. "What you will obtain is an oil that has a very nice golden colour," Gonzalez said. "It flows more like honey." Carmen Bambach, a specialist in Italian art and curator at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, who was not involved in the study, called the research "very exciting". She emphasised that any scientifically proven new insights into Leonardo's painting techniques are "extremely important news for the art world and our larger global society." Finding plumbonacrite in the Mona Lisa attests "to Leonardo's spirit of passionate and constant experimentation as a painter—it is what renders him timeless and modern," Bambach said. The paint fragment Gonzalez and his team analysed for their study was taken from the base layer of the painting and was barely visible to the naked eye. It was no larger than the diameter of a human hair, and came from the top right-hand edge of the picture that now takes pride of place in Paris’s Louvre Museum. The scientists peered into the sample’s atomic structure using X-rays in a synchrotron – a large machine that accelerates particles to almost the speed of light. This allowed them to unravel the speck's chemical makeup and detect the plumbonacrite. The compound is a byproduct of lead oxide, allowing the researchers to say with more certainty that Leonardo likely used the powder in his paint recipe. "Plumbonacrite is really a fingerprint of his recipe," Gonzalez said. "It's the first time we can actually chemically confirm it." After Leonardo, Dutch master Rembrandt may have used a similar recipe when he was painting in the 17th century; Gonzalez and other researchers have previously found plumbonacrite in his work, too. "It tells us also that those recipes were passed on for centuries," Gonzalez said. "It was a very good recipe." Still, the ‘Mona Lisa’—said by the Louvre to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant—and other works by Leonardo still have other secrets to tell. "There are plenty, plenty more things to discover, for sure,” Gonzalez said. “We are barely scratching the surface.” Sign up for 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.

The Hudson River is 315 miles from its source in the Adirondack Mountains to New York City

Manchester United host Luton Town at Old Trafford in what could be seen as a must-win match for the Red Devils to stop their slide into full-blown crisis. Almost everything that can gone wrong has gone wrong for United this season and manager Erik ten Hag is finding his job under increasing scrutiny as the bad results pile up – the latest of which saw them lose 4-3 to FC Copenhagen in the Champions League in midweek. Luton have battled hard in their maiden Premier League season, and currently sit outside the relegation zone on goal difference, but United will expect to beat the Hatters at home and any other result will only increase the heat heading into the international break. Follow the latest action from Old Trafford below:

Nearly a year after Manchester United opened the doors to outside investment, British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe looks set to buy a 25 percent stake in...