Sideswipe: February 5: Remembering Dirty Dennis

This T-shirt rules

Vicky Williamson of Buckland Beach was lucky enough to be on the water in San Diego to watch Black Magic win the America's Cup. "When I stepped off the charter boat after the final race there was someone selling this T-shirt and I couldn't resist buying one."

Can you decapitate a snowman?

The refuse collection worker who kicked the head off a snowman in Hereford, UK, has been sacked. The Sun reports: "Joseph Taylor, 3, was let in "floods of tears" after watching the man decapitate the snowman outside his home in Tupsley, then repeatedly kicked the snowman's torso until it to crashed to the ground." The action was recorded on the Taylor family's CCTV camera. "Yes the people who made it (kids) have young feelings," says the assailant, Callum Woodhouse, on social media. "Let's look at the bigger problem in this world. Covid-19 people have feelings about this. People are dropping dead by a virus. Think of it like this, that snowman wouldn't be there tomorrow, any feelings then? No. I understand people made this snowman but it's gonna melt anyhow. I don't understand why this has come to this."

Seeing is repairing

A reader writes: "Step 1 - Report dangerous fault in bike path in Te Atatu South. Step 2 - Council fixes fault with cones and paint and emails me to say the job is complete."

Old-age ancient extinct turtles

An ancient turtle that lived 8 million years ago, with a shell that spanned nearly 2.5m in diameter, may have been the largest to ever exist. The ancient creature belonged to a now-extinct species called the Stupendemys geographicus that lived in northern South America during the Miocene epoch, which lasted from 12 million to five million years ago. The beast weighed around 1145 kilograms, which is almost 100 times as heavy as its closest living relative, the Amazon river turtle, and twice the size of the largest living turtle, the marine leatherback.