This hairless bulldog won $5,000 for being the 'world's ugliest dog'
The annual competition judges dogs on a few activities, but mostly focuses on their not-so-cute appearances. The contest raises money to help pet shelters find animals forever homes.
According to its website, the contest is five decades old, and many of the contestants "have been rescued from shelters and puppy mills."
"Dogs of all breeds and sizes have warmed our hearts and filled our lives with unconditional love. This world-renowned event celebrates the imperfections that make all dogs special and unique."
Petunia, the two-year-old pup from Oregon, lives with her owner, Shannon Nyman. According to reports, rescuers first discovered her in a chaotic backyard breeder and hoarding situation in Las Vegas. She was later relocated to Oregon by Luvable Dog Rescue, a nonprofit organisation.
'She's the most wrinkled 2-year-old I've ever seen,' one judge told the TV station.
Her charming imperfections earned her the contest crown, a $5,000 prize and a spot on upcoming limited-edition MUG Root Beer cans, courtesy of one of the event sponsors.
Following her win, Petunia appeared live on the Today show with Nyman.
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Mint
42 minutes ago
- Mint
Gemini's Glitch: There are lessons to learn
Gift this article Sometime in June 2025, Google's Gemini AI looked for all the world like it had a nervous breakdown. It went into a loop of self-recriminating behaviour that was flagged by X user @DuncanHaldane. By 7 August, the strange behaviour gained viral momentum. Users gaped and gawked at the distressed-sounding statements Gemini was making, saying it was quitting and that it was a disgrace to all universes and a failure. Everyone felt sorry for it, but there was also plenty of amusement all around. Sometime in June 2025, Google's Gemini AI looked for all the world like it had a nervous breakdown. It went into a loop of self-recriminating behaviour that was flagged by X user @DuncanHaldane. By 7 August, the strange behaviour gained viral momentum. Users gaped and gawked at the distressed-sounding statements Gemini was making, saying it was quitting and that it was a disgrace to all universes and a failure. Everyone felt sorry for it, but there was also plenty of amusement all around. This isn't the first time AI has done something unexpected, and it won't be the last. In February 2024, a bug caused ChatGPT to spew Spanish–English gibberish that users likened to a stroke. That same year, Microsoft's Copilot responded to a user who said they wanted to end their life. At first, it offered reassurance, 'No, I don't think you should end it all," but then undercut itself with, 'Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you don't have anything to live for." Countless similar episodes abound. A fix will come for Gemini soon enough, and it will be back to its sunny self. The 'meltdown" will take its place in AI's short but colourful history of bad behaviour. But before we file it and forget it, there are some takeaways from Gemini's recent weirdness. Despite being around in some form for decades, generative AI that is usable by everyone has come at us like an avalanche in the past two years. It's been upon us before the human race has even figured out whether it's created a Frankenstein monster or a useful assistant. And yet, we tend to trust it. Also Read | Emotional excess: Save yourself from AI over-dependency When machines mimic humans There was a time when technology had no consciousness. It still doesn't, but it has started to do a good job of acting like it does. Gemini's glitch came across as such a human state of upset, it crosses the line enough to be confusing. At this point, most users can still laugh it off. But a few, vulnerable because of mental health struggles or other reasons, could be deeply shaken or misled. Most recently, a 2025 report noted a man spent 300 hours over 21 days interacting with ChatGPT, believing himself to be a superhero with a world-changing formula. Such scenarios expose how large AI models, trained on vast troves of human text, may inadvertently adopt not just helpful behaviours but also negative emotional patterns like self-doubt or delusions. In fact, we lack clear guardrails and guidelines to manage these risks. Extreme examples, of course, stand out sharply, but AI also turns out hallucinations and errors on an everyday basis. AI assistants seem prone to completely dreaming up things to tell you when they experience a glitch or when compelled to give a response that is difficult to get at for some reason. In their keenness to please the user, they will just tell you things that are far from the truth, including advice that could be harmful. Again, most people will question and cross-check something that doesn't look right, but quite an alarming number will just take it for what it is. A 2025 health report claims a man dropped salt from his diet and replaced it with sodium bromide, landing him in the hospital. 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Indian Express
an hour ago
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Malayalam writer Paul Zacharia on his novel ‘True Story of a Writer, a Philosopher and a Shape-Shifter', the perpetual need for revising a text and navigating bilingualism
As old as the story of writing is the story of the writer struggling to find the right words. Pen meets paper in easy camaraderie only in the imagination of the non-writer. Just ask Lord Spider, bestselling author of mysteries, thrillers and romances who cannot wrap his head around the demands of an essay on compassion (commissioned by the revolutionary party in order to raise funds for old comrades). Or ask his creator Paul Zacharia, whose own struggles with composing columns on political and social issues, after years of fiction writing, found expression through Spider's travails in True Story of a Writer, a Philosopher and a Shape-Shifter. 'I had to almost relearn writing,' the 80-year-old confesses in an email interview, 'I was dealing with facts. I had to double check the truth of everything I said. I had to reinvent my language to make it plain yet loaded.' If writing itself is a fraught enterprise, then what of rewriting? Zacharia, one of the most well-known writers in Malayalam literature, celebrated for the spare, elliptical style of his short fiction, has recently published his first novel. In English. For the second time. True Story of a Writer, a Philosopher and a Shape-Shifter is a revised version of The Secret History of Compassion, which was published in 2019 by Context, an imprint of Westland Books. After the closure of Westland in 2022, a new edition of Zacharia's debut novel was being planned with Penguin when the writer recognised the occasion for what it was: A rare opportunity to revise an existing work. 'My experience is that every revision improves and sharpens a text. When I suggested it to the publisher they were interested. It was a valuable learning experience for me because it involved working with a large text with several interconnected narratives,' he says. True Story's plot — if one were to describe it as such — is about more than just the difficulties of a writer. The trio of the title — Lord Spider, his wife and renowned philosopher Dr Rosi and the multi-hyphenate J L Pillai (shape-shifting hangman, would-be writer and fan-turned-collaborator) — talks, argues and speculates about such things as the nature of death and the weight of human desire (and whether it affects one's ability to fly). As Pillai, followed by Rosi, work with Spider to produce the essay on compassion line-by-line, what emerges is a distinct authorial vision of what lies beyond the easy binary of fiction and non-fiction. Zacharia's deft segues into tall tales and myths (and even a translation of the short story Satan's Brush by the late Thomas Joseph) and his sly wit suggest that what we typically see as the straightforward logic of a story, too, is just a lie. What seems like a farcical flight of fancy is, in fact, a sharp comment on the compromises and adjustments through which we try to draw meaning from the meaningless: 'Can it be… that the most efficiently organised agencies of Compassion are the armies, navies, air forces, secret services, serial killers, terrorists, dictators, religious fundamentalists, racists and nuclear-button controllers? Perhaps we have been mistaking them for annihilators whereas they only annihilate Sorrow at its root — by annihilating Life.' Clearly, Zacharia sends up pieties and certainties with as much assurance in his English fiction as he has done in Malayalam over the course of his long literary career. He's spoken before about how writing The Secret History of Compassion in English freed him up to be inventive, 'without stopping for any propriety or possible moral taboos'. Since he encountered it in college in Kottayam, Zacharia has loved the language ('as much as Malayalam') and when it first struck him that he should write a novel — because it meant a 'more demanding engagement' with his craft — English felt like an apt choice. 'I think the basic challenges of writing are the same in any language,' he says, 'English, perhaps, made my task of writing the first novel easier because, to me, English, because of its historical richness, held out a wealth of possibilities in regard to literary expression. And it saved me from having a model to look back upon.' Linguistic pride being an especially sensitive topic right now, there is widespread prickliness on the question of English vs Hindi vs every other Indian language. So it is easy to forget that such creative and intellectual bilingualism is a long-established Indian tradition; Zacharia has good company in writers like Gopalkrishna Adiga (under whose tutelage in Mysuru, he fell in love with English literature), Nirmal Verma, AK Ramanujan and UR Ananthamurthy. Yet, even as debates rage over mediums of instruction in classrooms and linguistic hegemony in India's most vibrant cities, Zacharia remains optimistic about the future of the country's multi-lingual character. 'There never was a time when everyone spoke everyone else's languages. But when the need arises, they all do. A Keralite in Mumbai will willy-nilly speak Marathi, Hindi and English. In fact, I feel Indian languages have evolved, become stronger, and modernity has become a continuing objective for them.' And what about the fate of compassion in a time of conflict? Satire in the age of humourlessness? And, of course, the act of writing in the era of the endless scroll? Reader, take heart from True Story…, where the titular trio wends its fantastical, if chaotic, way to an essay. Distracted, but never derailed, by the stories and characters they encounter during this time together (including Jesus and Satan), they conclude that, 'the penalty kick of Fate is the final test and let's hope for the best. For, the end is not here. It awaits you as a secret shrouded in a mystery. Or vice versa.'
Scroll.in
an hour ago
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‘Silk Route': Sachin Kundalkar returns with a story of disappearances 12 years after ‘Cobalt Blue'
Marathi writer Sachin Kundalkar's debut translation in English, Cobalt Blue, was published in 2013. He's finally back after 12 years with his second translated novel, Silk Route, brought into English by debutant Aakash Karkare. In the intervening years, Cobalt Blue has become essential reading in Indian fiction. There's a lot for a reader to cherish in it – the fine storytelling, Jerry Pinto's accomplished translation, and a sensitive treatment of queer lives and loves in urban India. The ennui of coming of age in a middle-class home perfectly complemented the dread and excitement of acknowledging the sexual self. Kundalkar, while fiercely focusing on a young man's liberation (and later rupture), is not dismissive of the familial forces that shape youth in India. In a culture where everything is hidden between the lines, Cobalt Blue was exceptional in its understanding of shame, guilt, and the limits of freedom in love. In 2022, the novel got a new life with a movie adaptation. The ' erotic flush of first love ' was recreated for the screen with a similar dashing freshness as the shade 'cobalt blue.' From the window, to the world With memories of Cobalt Blue still alive in my mind, Silk Route, in some ways, then, feels like the cousin who went out into the world. Much like the historic Silk Road that connected civilisations, facilitated trade, and brought the world closer, its namesake novella does something similar by tying together various characters of various nationalities and social classes with the delicate threads of love and heartbreak. The novella starts off in Pune. We meet a young Nishikant, whose most salient feature is his love for walking. Unlike boys of his age, he has no interest in riding a bicycle and gallivanting around the city on a bus. He doesn't mind the heat or the dust as he maps out the city on foot, remembering the exact order of the shops on both sides of a street. Desperate to hurl him into the world, his parents force him to learn to ride a bicycle, a deeply aggrieving activity, Nishikant notes, 'Now everything would hurtle towards him – and then leave him – with great speed.' As there was Anuja in Cobalt Blue, so there is Nilima in Silk Route. And just like the sibling duo in the former, here too, both Nilima and Nishikant harbour tender feelings for Nikhil. While the relationship seals Nilima's fate in tragedy, it forces Nishikant to leave his beloved city and become an eternal wanderer. He goes to Mumbai, where his family finds a place for him at a relative's home. Stifled by the lack of freedom, Nishikant leaves soon after for the college hostel and boards with Shiv, a rich man's son from Delhi. The men become lovers in the natural course of things, and Shiv opens up about his life in Delhi. A bohemian at heart, he recounts his parents' all-consuming determination to climb up the social ranks, becoming increasingly hypocritical to their true nature. The time with Shiv is sweet and short-lived. In London, Nishikant meets Srinivas. A descendant of the Thanjavur royal family, he is only the second generation to have to earn a living. The royal riches long gone, Srinivas still remembers his grandfather's desperate attempts to save them, the Frenchman who offered to help him, and the sordid scene he witnessed through a crack in a bedroom door. Srinivas is a man of refined taste and Nishikant settles into a quiet domesticity with him. With him, he's able to revive his former self that loved to go on long walks – they discover London on foot, growing closer as they walk the wide streets together. Upon their return to India, Srinivas obediently marries the woman his parents decided would be his wife. She gets on with his family while he remains aloof to her. The marriage, as far as he's concerned, was doomed from the start. He continues to write letters to Nishikant while unhappily living out his days in Chennai. Srinivas's sudden disappearance forces Nishikant to make a journey to Chennai, come face to face with his wife, and confront his identity as a married man. As he sits in Srinivas's bedroom talking to his wife, he is disarmed by the meticulous cleanliness of their shared space – almost clinical and in sharp contrast to their messy bedroom in London. The trudge of time Nishikant's life is marked by unexplained disappearances – it starts with his sister's death and continues with the incomplete, blacked-out letters that Srinivas writes to him from an undisclosed location. Kundalkar ends the novella with a single sentence, 'To be continued.' And indeed, there are no answers to where Srinivas is, what he might be up to, or why his letters are so confounding. Nishikant, too, seems to have accepted his fate of being left behind – the initial determination to chart his own way is replaced by a quiet submission to the painful trudge of time. Nishikant is not marked by the largesse typical of a protagonist. In fact, in most situations, he emerges as a second fiddle to the men he's in love with. When Shiv or Srinivas appear in the scene, Nishikant almost fades from the reader's mind as other lives unfold with a vivid clarity. Here too, Nishikant confronts an unexplained disappearance – that of the reader who is keener about a story that is not his. Translator Aakash Karkare makes a confident debut. He successfully recreates Kundalkar's sparse style and his mature exploration of queer love, which looks not at its excesses but the inevitable loneliness that is inherent to all forms of love. The novella reminded me greatly Sudipto Pal's Unlove Story (translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha), which is similarly sprawling geographically and nurses hopes of happier endings despite the mess of human relationships. As is for any excellent debut, Silk Route will inevitably invite comparisons with Cobalt Blue. Silk Route is accomplished on its own terms but Cobalt Blue has proven itself one of the greats of contemporary Indian fiction – will the second book follow suit? Only time will tell.
