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Popular Taiwanese Cactus Toy Raps In Polish About Cocaine

Popular Taiwanese Cactus Toy Raps In Polish About Cocaine
Genevieve Mansfield

If not for a Polish shopper, it might have remained lost in translation for all the Taiwanese parents who've bought their kids the popular toy cactus that raps in some exotic language.

But a Polish mother living in the city of Taichung was doing some grocery shopping with her baby at the local Carrefour when she heard something that made her ears perk up: a foul-mouthed Polish rap song referencing cocaine and suicide. It turned out that the source of the obscene music was the singing cactus.

It was just "cocaine and suicide attempt, repeated over and over again. It is really shocking," the Polish woman recounted. She contacted another Polish friend of hers in Taiwan, Ela Sobczak who took the matter of the rude cactus very seriously and notified Taiwan News.

"The song itself is definitely inappropriate to play in front of children," said Sobczak.

The 32-centimeter-high cactus, which moves and grooves along to the tune, is programmed to sing a number by the Polish rapper, Cypis. The video of the cactus doing its thing, along with a cat that apparently has heard it all before, is quite something ...

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Society

Mapping The Patriarchy: Where Nine Out Of 10 Streets Are Named After Men

The Mapping Diversity platform examined maps of 30 cities across 17 European countries, finding that women are severely underrepresented in the group of those who name streets and squares. The one (unsurprising) exception: The Virgin Mary.

Photo of Via della Madonna dei Monti in Rome, Italy.

Via della Madonna dei Monti in Rome, Italy.

Eugenia Nicolosi

ROME — The culture at the root of violence and discrimination against women is not taught in school, but is perpetuated day after day in the world around us: from commercial to cultural products, from advertising to toys. Even the public spaces we pass through every day, for example, are almost exclusively dedicated to men: war heroes, composers, scientists and poets are everywhere, a constant reminder of the value society gives them.

For the past few years, the study of urban planning has been intertwined with that of feminist toponymy — the study of the importance of names, and how and why we name things.

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