NZ town tormented by Celine Dion 'music battles'
​ She's topped the charts around the world, has a legion of fans and has won countless awards for hits like Think Twice and My Heart Will Go On.
But one New Zealand town says it has had enough of Celine Dion, after car drivers joined a craze of blasting out her ballads at 2am.
Residents of Porirua have launched a petition to bring an end to the noise.
But participants of the so-called siren battles say they are a way to express themselves.
The battles involve groups of people gathering in an area with their cars, blasting music from sirens more typically used for emergency warnings.
The idea is to play music from the sirens the loudest - and the clearest.
French-Canadian diva Dion has become the artist of choice not only because of her popular emotional ballads, but because much of her music - including Oscar-winning My Heart Will Go On, from 1997 film Titanic - has high treble, NZ website The SpinOff reports.
"Celine Dion is popular because it's such a clear song - so we try to use music that has high treble, is clear and not much bass," Paul Lesoa, one of founders of a group that runs siren battles in Auckland, told the site.
The cars can have anywhere between seven to 10 sirens, with competitions usually held throughout the night. They take weeks to prepare for, as participants source sirens online and solder speakers and amplifiers to frames that sit on cars.
Mr Lesoa told The SpinOff he felt the stigma around the battles was unfair.
"We just love music, we love dancing, and doing this is better than night clubbing or drinking in a bar in the city, where there's fights etc," he said.
He said he had applied to Auckland Council for a permit but was yet to hear back.
"Basically everyone has a hobby and while our hobby can be quite disturbing and we understand how disturbing it can be, we just want our own proper, safe space away from people to do it."
Wes Gaarkeuken - the author of a petition hoping to stop the siren battles in Porirua, on the North Island - said taxpayers are "tired of the inaction and dismissive attitude shown by the council and the mayor concerning this issue".
The petition has amassed hundreds of signatures and calls on the Porirua City Council to stop people blasting the music all night.
One man, Stephen Lewis, wrote next to his signature that "sleep is a basic human right".
Another woman, Diana Paris, conceded that while she enjoyed listening to Dion "in the comfort of my lounge and at my volume, I do not enjoy hearing fragments of it stopping and starting at any time between 7pm and 2am".
Porirua City Council had previously reached an agreement with those participating in the siren battles, which involved groups going to industrial areas and finishing by 10pm. But the battles have returned to the town.
Mayor Anne Barker told Radio New Zealand she was "sick to death" of the battles and wanted participants to return to areas where not everyone would have to listen to them.
"We haven't got anywhere in our city where there's not houses that would hear anything."
RNZ recently revealed that police had received up to 40 reports of incidents between early February and early October this year.
Earlier this year, Dion cancelled all the shows she had scheduled for 2023 and 2024, telling fans she was not strong enough to tour after being diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder.
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Bit old
The preliminary investigation materials of the Helsinki police paint a confusing picture of the course of events in the murder of the mythologist Ior Bock last October.
The events began on the morning of October 23, when Bock's Indian assistants were in the apartment's kitchen. Both assistants lived in Bock's home. The assistant accused of Bock's murder had a day off and the assistant who was at work had just returned from the grocery store.
Another assistant said that during the interrogation, the suspect asked if he thought Bock was a god. After the question, the prosecuting attorney had gone into the living room to talk with Bock.
"I have killed the devil"
The assistant at work said during the interrogation that he was cooking rice when the accused had come to get a knife from the kitchen.
After a while, he had heard Bock call out from the living room, "hey, hey." The assistant went into the living room and saw Bock lying on his right side. There was a knife in Bock's chest.
The assistant who was at work said that he retreated to the hall, repeating the nickname he used for Bock, "pumpelee". The accused stated to the assistant that "pumpelee was dead" and added that "I have killed the devil".
The assistant took Bock's earring
After this, the accused asked the assistant who was at work to call the police.
Meanwhile, the accused had gone to the bathroom with the knife and apparently washed the knife. After that, he wiped the blood stains from the floor. Finally, the accused drew something on the carpet with his own blood. The accused also took a gold earring from Bock's left ear, saying in front of the mirror "this is not yours (referring to Bock) but mine".
When the police arrived, the accused said that an assistant at work had killed Bock. However, the assistant in charge has since confessed in a police interrogation that he killed Bock himself.
The accused remembers hitting Bock with a knife According to the interrogation protocols of the police's preliminary investigation material, the accused's account follows the account of the events of the assistant who was at work. The accused says that he was in a confused state of mind when he talked with Bock.
The confusion is illustrated by the fact that he said he saw a crow in the apartment.
After that, he remembers getting a knife and hitting Bock. He also remembers washing the knife and saying that he had killed the devil. When the police came to the apartment, she had Bock's earring in her possession.
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Possessing laughing gas will be made illegal in three weeks, with those who repeatedly misuse the drug facing up to two years in prison.​
With so many tragic or even shocking news these days I'd say delay that....
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And now to something completey different:
Beethov-hen’s first symphony: New Zealand orchestra puts on poultry show for chickens
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https://physicsworld.com/a/no-heat-q...kes-its-debut/Most regular engines convert thermal energy into mechanical work, but an international team of researchers has now designed and implemented an entirely different, quantum engine. Instead of heat, this proof-of-principle microscopic engine runs on the energy difference associated with the statistical properties of quantum matter. And rather than powering the next generation of cars, this type of engine may one day be used to charge quantum batteries or power quantum computers and sensors.Leave a comment:
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what are they adding it to?
I assume they're adding it onto some other concoction that improves itLeave a comment:
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Cannabidiol (CBD) is one of the main extracts of cannabis plants. It's not generally considered to be psychoactive like THC, the other main extract.Originally posted by Berzerker View PostLeave a comment:
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