Weird News of the World Thread - Part 2

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

$92,000 Worth of Bees, Bees, Bees All Over This Highway, So Many Bees

A semitruck full of boxes of honeybees rolled over on a highway in Lynnwood, Washington early Friday morning. Can you imagine? A semitruck full of boxes of honeybees, rolling over on a highway, of all places? Well, be(e)lieve it!

The Seattle Times reports the driver—who is fine, don’t bee worried —lost control of the truck around 3:30 a.m., sending it careening into a guardrail. Four hundred and fifty-eight hives holding 14 million bees, reportedly worth $92,000, spilled onto Interstate 5.

According to the AP, Belleville Honey and Beekeeping Supply of Burlington, the company that owned all the bees, sent beekeepers to the scene shortly after the crash, where they rounded up 128 hives—all of the honeybees they could before the weather got too warm and the bees became agitated. What about the bees they couldn’t round up? Well, I won’t lie to you, pal—those bees were killed by the fire department.

And what about the people around all those bees? Sgt. Ben Lewis of the State Patrol told the Seattle Times, “Everybody’s been stung.” Damn.

The Washington State Department of Transportation told the Seattle Times, “Lots of stinging going on.” Damn!

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...oad-of-bees-at-the-i-5-and-i-405-interchange/

That would have been a horrible place for your car to breakdown

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Escaped Zebras Sprint on Chase Through Brussels (But in a Chill Manner)

Three zebras with a cool Friday feeling escaped from a ranch and nonchalantly hit the streets of Brussels today.

“It is thought that they used the Van Praet tunnel to walk to the centre of Brussels, where they enjoyed a casual stroll along the canal,” the Guardian reports.

The trio was eventually apprehended in a leisurely chase involving five police cars, and everyone was pretty cool about the whole thing and really feeling some posi vibes about the weekend.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/17/zebras-escaped-brussels-police-belgium

I bet they had a blast

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

The Terrorists Win: "Isis" Nixed From 2016's List of Hurricane Names

News came down from a mountaintop high in the Alps today that the overlords who control the weather have preemptively retired a potential hurricane name in the eastern Pacific to prevent panic attacks and immature snickering around the world. That name, of course, is “Isis.”

Isis was slated to be assigned to the ninth tropical storm or hurricane to form in the eastern Pacific during the 2016 hurricane season, its origin coming from the famed Egyptian goddess, and not the brutal terrorist group whose name CNN has since copyrighted for exclusive use every 42 seconds. The coincidence was too great, however, and they replaced the name with “Ivette.”

The agency also removed “Odile” from the same basin’s rotation, replacing it with “Odalys.” Hurricane Odile killed nearly a dozen people when it crashed ashore on the Baja California peninsula last summer.

Unlike the cartoonish names some people slap randomly slap on blizzards, assigning names to tropical systems around the world is a highly coordinated and regulated task. The U.N. agency responsible for overseeing standards and practices in the science—the World Meteorological Organization—is also responsible for retiring these names as needed. The name of a tropical storm or hurricane usually isn’t retired unless it causes an abnormally large amount of death and destruction, such as Ivan or Andrew

Every once and a while, though, they’ll take the unusual step of preemptively retiring a name out of respect for one’s sensibilities. After all, the whole exercise of removing a name from the rotation is to keep people from dealing with undue amounts of stress and panic. Could you imagine how taxing it would be for residents of New Orleans to flip on the news and hear that another Hurricane Katrina was swirling in the Gulf?

The eastern Pacific has a weird history with vaguely offensive names. Take for instance the basin’s list back in 2001, which contained the names “Adolph” and “Israel.” After some understandable pushback against both that juxtaposition and not wanting to see headlines like “Israel Kills 4,500 in Mexico,” activists successfully lobbied to have the latter name replaced. The replacement name was indeed used, and Tropical Storm Ivo stayed relatively weak and never made landfall.

The whole “offended sensibilities” thing isn’t unfounded, either—as someone who went to college on the Gulf Coast a couple of years after Hurricane Dennis, I had some awkward interactions with people who lost their homes in that first of many tragic storms that made landfall in 2005. On the first day of my first class, someone approached me and said “It’s nothing personal, but I don’t like you because your name is Dennis and I lost my home in Hurricane Dennis.” We never spoke again.

Hurricane season in the eastern Pacific runs from May 15 through November 30, while it doesn’t begin in the Atlantic until June 1 (running through the same date). However, it’s possible but rare to see storms form outside of this window. The eastern Pacific is generally more active than its neighbor, and this should hold especially true this year, as El Niño years act like a wet blanket on hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

The first five names in the Atlantic this year are Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, and Erika, while the first five in the eastern Pacific are Andres, Blanca, Carlos, Dolores, and Enrique. Names are used on a rotating six-year cycle, so these names were last used in 2009.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/17/us-weather-isis-idUSKBN0N81QS20150417

I guess that's a good thing

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Italian Man's Quest to Fix Toilet Led to Amazing Archaeology Discoveries

Fifteen years ago, Luciano Faggiano of Lecce, Italy sent his sons out digging for a broken sewer line. They didn’t find the pipe, but they did find “a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar,” writes Jim Yardley in a story for the New York Times.

Faggiano was trying to open a trattoria—hence the toilet fixing—but he ended up creating an underground museum. Descending into the Museo Fagganio today is like descending through the city’s history, with stops in the Roman, medieval, and Byzantine eras.

In ancient cities, where the new has continually been built upon the old, archeological discoveries by way of construction projects is not unusual . But the story of one family’s quest to uncover the forgotten history of their building has a particular charm. When Faggiano first asked his eldest sons to dig to a sewer pipe, they had no idea what they were getting into:

But one week quickly passed, as father and sons discovered a false floor that led down to another floor of medieval stone, which led to a tomb of the Messapians, who lived in the region centuries before the birth of Jesus. Soon, the family discovered a chamber used to store grain by the ancient Romans, and the basement of a Franciscan convent where nuns had once prepared the bodies of the dead.

If this history only later became clear, what was immediately obvious was that finding the pipe would be a much bigger project than Mr. Faggiano had anticipated. He did not initially tell his wife about the extent of the work, possibly because he was tying a rope around the chest of his youngest son, Davide, then 12, and lowering him to dig in small, darkened openings.​

Don’t worry, no Faggiano sons were hurt in the pursuit of archaeology, and they did eventually find the broken sewer pipe after several years of digging. Of course, they also found so much more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/w...quest-to-fix-toilet.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

I can dig it

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Astronomers Are Furious About the Roomba Lawnmower

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=31150869&postcount=315

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A Dude Will Live In This Giant Ball for One Year to Study Icebergs

It sounds like a great idea: Grab a cleaving iceberg from the Greenland coast and live on it until it melts into the sea, getting a first-hand glimpse at the effects of climate change. But how exactly would one live on an iceberg? Inside this giant ball, of course.

Outside has the story of Alex Bellini, an Italian explorer who plans to make a year-long trip inside this floating survival capsule. It was originally designed by engineer Julian Sharpe as a rescue pod for two to ten people in tsunamis. Bellini is tearing out the extra seats and making a one-bedroom apartment out of the aircraft-grade aluminum orb, which has an inner lining that rotates so the floor inside will always remain level.

Why a ball? The shape makes it the best way to weather an ice-strewn Arctic sea:

“It’s strong enough to survive a storm at sea or getting crushed between two icebergs. It will rest on top of the ice using either its own weight or a specially designed stand that will detach if the berg rolls. The circular shape is crucial for avoiding a crushing blow. The capsule will just roll off any incoming mass, and the water will provide an equal and opposite reaction to any force exerted on the capsule. “A multicurved surface is almost uncrushable,” Sharpe said. “If you imagine shooting an arrow at a wooden ball, unless you hit dead center, it’ll ricochet.”​

Of greater concern are the physical and psychological tolls of ball-living. Solar panels and a turbine will power the craft (and provide him with wifi, thank goodness), but Bellini will not be able to venture outside the womb-like apartment very often. He plans to use a stationary bike and install an illumination system that simulates natural light.

The ball should be ready to start rolling in about a year, and Bellini plans to turn his adventure into a book. In the meantime, the project also acts as excellent marketing for Sharpe, who envisions that his capsule will come in handy due to rising sea levels. Will we soon all have our own balls at home, waiting for the storms to come?

http://www.outsideonline.com/1965166/how-giant-ball-will-help-man-survive-year-iceberg

As long as I had wifi I could do it

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A Strange Whale Sound Recorded in Antarctica Could Be From a New Species

Whales are elusive creatures who roam the vast, open ocean. Because sightings of many species are so rare, we have to track these giant mammals by eavesdropping on their songs. And marine scientists recently picked a baffling new signal, which could be from a new species of beaked whale.

The Antarctic’s frigid waters are home to at least five species of beaked whales, an especially poorly studied group because they rarely spend much time at the surface. But these beaked whales do echolocate with a very distinctive “frequency modulated (FM) upsweep pulse,” which you might think of as a chirp. Each species also has its own unique FM pulse.

Last February, a research vessel towing four hydrophones sailed through Antarctic waters to listen for whale signals. Researchers found one particular signal, known prosaically as Antarctic BW29, as quite strange. They picked it up on 14 separate occasions, but Antarctic BW29 did not perfectly match any known species.

For example, the peak frequency was too high for Arnoux’s beaked whales. And strap-toothed whales aren’t usually this far south. The three other known beaked whale species also imperfectly matched the criteria. The author’s conclude, “the source of these Antarctic signals might be a species that has yet to be identified.”

Of course, it’s also possible the known ranges of other beaked whales are wrong or that there is more variation between whales of the same species than previously thought. But it is sobering to realize that even in 2015, our knowledge of some whales is so patchy that we have to stare at the spectrograms of a few recordings to divine something new.

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150413-new-whale-species-identified?ocid=twert

The oceans still hold so many mysteries

 

[KevanG]

Astronomers Are Furious About the Roomba Lawnmower

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=31150869&postcount=315

Methinks science is more important than lazy people.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

I concur Kev

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Agoraphobic Grandma Finally Leaves Home, Immediately Falls Down Manhole

After nearly a decade indoors, agoraphobic grandmother Janet Faal had finally worked up the courage to leave her home and brave the world outside. Her reward? Two black eyes, a broken leg, and a fall down an open manhole.

Apparently, Janet’s debilitating fear of open spaces had kept her from leaving her home all but twice in a span of 10 years, but she was finally beginning to conquer her fears. Then, on a recent excursion with a friend as part of her rehabilitation, Janet went to move a wooden pallet blocking the car’s path. Unfortunately, Janet never looked to see what the pallet was covering, and accidentally stepped straight into the now-open manhole. As Janet told The Daily Mail:

I took a step over - never in my life did I think there was a hole underneath, I thought it had just fallen over. The next thing I remember is the pain. It was awful.

I fell and smashed my face on the pallet, and I was in the hole with blood all over me and I couldn’t move.’​

Janet believes the incident has set her agoraphobia recovery process back years—and even fears she may never leave her home again. Which is understandable considering she had to “wait in agony” for almost an hour before the paramedics arrived.

On the one hand, Janet’s at least lucky to be alive, considering that people have died in similar incidents before. On the other—damn, Janet.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-manhole.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK

Poor Granny

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Clowns Battle Protesters in Big Top Brawl

A California circus became the site of a chaotic melee on Friday when clowns clashed with animal rights activists in front of hundreds of onlookers, KNBC reports.

The fight allegedly broke out when protesters forced their way under the big top and workers tried to stop them. Combatants, however, disagree on who initiated the violence.

“Employees locked us on the property and wouldn’t let us leave,” one demonstrator told the station. “They assaulted... multiple protestors, some with weapons.”

The circus’ ringmaster, Oliver Ramos, offered a different account:

“All of a sudden when I turned around one of them jumped on top of my uncle - he’s over 68-years-old - and they started beating on him and I reacted,” Ramos said. “When I pulled them off they hit me with a megaphone in the face and all these ladies started scratching me on the face.”​

A police spokesperson said two protesters were arrested following the brawl. According to the activist group’s Facebook page, one man remains in jail on a $50,000 bond.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/l...-Circus-Big-Top-San-Bernardino-300490891.html

I believe and side with the clowns over the stupid hippies

 

[KevanG]

Clowns vs Hippies sounds like a bad videogame.

Or a very weird movie.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Newly discovered frog species looks a lot like Kermit the Frog

We’ve found Kermit the Frog in real life and it’s a species of glassfrog just recently discovered called Hyalinobatrachium dianae in Costa Rica. It’s bright green just like Kermit, has big white adorable eyeballs just like Kermit and the males have a very unique mating call... just like Kermit, I guess? Anyway, the resemblance is uncanny.

Recently discovered by Brian Kubicki of Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center, he writes what makes this real life Kermit the Frog, H. dianae, so unique in his abstract, which you can find here in a PDF (Link at bottom).

And here’s a perfect side by side photo of Kermit the Frog and H. dianae:

http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2015/f/z03920p084f.pdf

Crazy we are still still discovering new species of things

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Humans Threw Out 92 Billion Pounds of Electronics Last Year

The amount of old electronics we throw in the trash is gross, and now a new report from the United Nations University quantifies the extent to which we’re discarding iPods and rusty washing machines.

In the US alone, we tossed out 7.1 million metric tons of e-waste, or nearly 16 billion pounds. That means we created a digital-goods graveyard in a single year larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is around 13 billion pounds.

Globally, people produced 41.8 million metric tons of e-waste in 2014, or over 92 billion pounds. That’s more than seven Great Pyramids’ worth of crapped-out Blackberry phones, forsaken Toshiba TVs, and human misery.

Considering that the amount of gold found in e-waste is equivalent to 11% of the amount of gold produced in mines each year, we’re missing out on recovering a host of valuable materials. Worse yet, the hellish underground economy that has sprung up around international e-waste dumping grounds in China and Ghana is leading to “environmental catastrophes.” Since only 15% of the e-waste produced is properly recycled through take-back programs, most of the electronic detritus gets dumped without meeting pollution and waste standards.

The dumbing ground of Agbogbloshie, Ghana, is so polluted people refer to it as “Sodom and Gomorrah.” It’s one of the most striking places to see what happens when we don’t regulate waste—a wetland-turned-garbagehell where people wade through the toxic smog of broken laptops and busted washing machines to salvage valuable materials like gold.

The amount of e-waste consumers produce is expected to continue increasing. The report points urges leaders to develop more robust take-back and recycling programs so we don’t end up creating more Agbogbloshies each time a new iPhone comes out. Like the e-waste recycling plant Gizmodo visited earlier this year in the video below:

[YT]EDVCldfYJ8k[/YT]

http://gizmodo.com/humans-threw-out-92-billion-pounds-of-electronics-last-1698953600

That is insane

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Norway Will Be the First Country to Turn Off FM Radio in 2017

Norway’s Minister of Culture announced this week that a national FM-radio switch off will commence in 2017, allowing the country to complete its transition over to digital radio. It’s the end of an era.

As Radio.no notes, Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) will provide Norwegian listeners more diverse radio channel content than ever before. Indeed, DAB already hosts 22 national channels in Norway, as opposed to FM radio’s five, and a TNS Gallup survey shows that 56% of Norwegian listeners use digital radio every day. While Norway is the first country in the world to set a date for an FM switch-off, other countries in Europe and Southeast Asia are also in the process of transitioning to DAB.

According to Thor Gjermund Eriksen, head of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation:

“This is an important day for everyone who loves radio. The minister’s decision allows us to concentrate our resources even more upon what is most important, namely to create high quality and diverse radio-content to our listeners.”​

Frequency modulation, or FM, radio was patented in 1933 and has been recording and sharing the human story for nearly a century. But its days are clearly waning. According to a 2012 Pew Study, while over 90% of Americans still listen to AM/FM radio at least weekly, more people are choosing to forgo analog radio for Internet-only services each year. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before many countries follow Norway’s example, although I’m not so sure I’m ready to part with my 80’s-era Grundig. Thing still sounds like a dream.

http://radio.no/2015/04/norway-to-switch-off-fm-in-2017/

I almost always stream Soundcloud or other services when I'm out and about

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Color—Not Just Light—May Affect Our Body Clock

It’s well-known that our body responds to light and dark to help set its circadian rhythms. But new research suggests that our bodies may also respond to color in order to keep internal time.

A new study by researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz,demonstrates that mice, at least, use the color of light to set their body clock. The researchers investigated whether color signals from the eyes wound up in the suprachiasmatic nucleus—the part of the brain in vertebrates that keeps time using electrical and chemical signals.

The team measured nerve signals in the suprachiasmatic as they exposed mice to different colors and intensities of light. They did that using a artificial sky that could create day or night by turning on or off—but could also be set up to change color, in the way we see during sunrise and sunset. It turned out that when the artificial sky provided color—with the oranges and blues associated with sunset—the mice behaved perfectly normally; without the color, their bodies became slightly confused and physiology, such as body temperature, lagged behind the usual way of things by around 30 minutes.

Interestingly, even in excised brain tissue the neurons in this part of the brain continue to fire. Subsequent analysis of the brain tissue in these mice confirmed that the neurons in the suprachiasmatic region of the brain were firing with a time lag, too. The results are published in PLOS Biology.

While the finding doesn’t translate directly to humans, the commonality between the suprachiasmatic region is strong between mammals. The researchers reckon that the knowledge that color influences the body clock could help make indoor lighting that better helps us transition between wake and sleep, say, or overcome jet-lag and seasonal affective disorder.

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/04/colors-help-set-body-s-internal-clock

Makes sense when you think about it

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ring-Tab Beer Cans Now Count as Historic Artifacts

Today’s junk can be tomorrow’s history. Now, fifty years after it was first introduced, the ring-tab beer can can already considered an historic artifact.

Archaeology site Western Digs explains that the humble ring-tab design has passed the 50-year threshold after which it is eligible to be recorded as an archaeological find. “This means that even beverage-can pull tabs are eligible for protection under state and federal laws,” explained William Schroeder, an archaeologist at firm Reiss-Landreau Research, to Western Digs.

Schroeder came to the realisation when he was involved in a dig that unearthed some refuse—much of which appeared to be “vintage,” in his words. While he identified some of the packaging, dating the objects to 1968—a little shy of the 50-year cut-off—he realized that provision must be made so archaeologists could actually use pull-tabs to date sites more accurately over the coming decades.

Indeed, there’s a surprisingly rich history of mapping out the changing style of can ring-tabs, so Schroeder has assembled existing evidence into a “key card” that archaeologists can use when they’re out in the field. The earliest style described on the card was manufactured in 1965—making it old enough to be considered an archaeological artifact.

Those first tabs were in fact discontinued in 1975 because their design—a solid aluminum tab with no ring—saw many people accidentally swallow them. Fortunately, history has changed the pull-tab for the better.

http://westerndigs.org/ring-tab-beer-cans-are-now-officially-historic-artifacts/

That's kind of funky and cool

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A 250-Year-Old Clock Claimed A World Record (And Vindicated Its Maker)

Shortly before his death in 1776, eccentric British clock-maker John Harrison claimed to have designed the ‘perfect’ clock, one that would keep time flawlessly. His rivals and peers wrote it off as the boastings of a bitter, 80-year-old failure — but in modern-day light, Harrison has finally been proved right.

Back in the 18th century, Britain, at the height of its naval power, was looking for a better way to keep track of its ships at sea. In the days before GPS, celestial navigation was the only good way to get a positional fix, and celestial navigation relies heavily on time — making an accurate clock vital.

For most of his professional life, Harrison sought to build a watch that would meet the standards of the Royal Navy, winning a prize pot worth about $6 million in today’s money. Despite building a watch that (seemingly) met the standards, Harrison was never accepted by his peers, and never quite got the full payout.

But towards the end of his life, he designed a clock he claimed would be more accurate than anything else on the land, losing less than a second per 100 days. The designs were written off and forgotten until the 1970s, when clockmaker Martin Burgess found Harrison’s designs, and built clocks from Harrison’s blueprints.

And, according to the Guiness World Records people, Harrison’s claims were exactly right — in a test conducted at the beginning of this year, the clock was shown to lose just 5/8ths of a second in 100 days, making it the world’s “most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air”. It’s a few years late, but Harrison certainly got the last laugh.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...n-harrison-vindicated-250-years-absurd-claims

That's pretty damn accurate

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A Remote Amazonian Tribe Harbors Unprecedented Microbial Diversity

The trillions of bacteria that live on us and in us—otherwise known as our microbiomes—are vital to our health in ways we’re just beginning to understand. Now scientists have discovered the most diverse collection of bodily bacteria ever, in a remote Amazonian tribe of southern Venezuela.

The study, which appeared yesterday in the journal Science Advances, finds that the Yanomami tribespeople harbor an unprecedented level of microbial diversity in their digestive tracts and on their skin—roughly 40 percent more types of bacteria than humans living in industrialized countries. The findings offer yet more evidence that modern lifestyles reduce the diversity of our microbial ecosystems, with potentially far-reaching consequences for our health.

The Yanomami villagers are a small collection of hunters and gatherers who are thought to have lived in total seclusion until they were contacted by a medical expedition in 2009. Unexposed to modern antibiotics and Western diets, they offer a unique window into the bacterial ecosystems of humans past.

In the study, researchers analyzed 28 skin and oral swab samples and 11 fecal samples from 34 Yanomami villages. They compared the bacterial DNA in these samples to populations in the United States, the Amazonian Guahibo Amerindians in Venezuela, and residents of rural Malawian communities in southeast Africa. (The latter communities represent tribal populations with more exposure to Western culture than the Yanomami.)

In fecal and skin samples alike, the researchers discovered a gradient of microbial diversity that’s inversely proportional to the level of exposure to antibiotics and processed foods. According to lead study author Maria Dominguez-Bello of NYU’s Langone Medical Center:

“Our results bolster a growing body of data suggesting a link between, on the one hand, decreased bacterial diversity, industrialized diets, and modern antibiotics, and on the other, immunological and metabolic diseases—such as obesity, asthma, allergies, and diabetes, which have dramatically increased since the 1970s,” she said. “We believe there is something environmental occurring in the past 30 years that is driving these diseases. We think the microbiome could be involved.”​

Another interesting find was that the Yanomami still harbored some antibiotic resistant bacteria, despite having never been exposed to commercial antibiotics. These drug-resistant bugs were likely picked up from the natural environment: Soil, for one, harbors a wealth of antibiotic-producing organisms, and natural antibiotic resistance crop up all the time.

To date, the vast majority of microbiome studies have focused on Western populations. Studies like this one, which shed light on how microbiomes have shifted in the modern era, may be a vital step toward developing therapeutics that can rebalance wayward bacterial communities.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/3/e1500183

Now that seems like it could have some really good uses in the future

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Netflix Sets Its Prices According to Local Piracy Rates

If you live in a country with a lot of piracy, you probably enjoy lower monthly Netflix subscription fees. That’s according to Netflix CFO David Wells, who says that a country’s piracy rate is the primary factor determining the service’s local price.

Netflix, with over 60 million subscribers globally, is a giant in the world of online video entertainment. Its biggest competitor is, in fact, piracy. But as TorrentFreak reports, Netflix treats online piracy like any other source of competition, using statistics on illegal downloads to determine not only what types of content it should offer, but also, local rates.

“Piracy is a governor in terms of our price in high piracy markets outside the US,” Wells explained. “We wouldn’t want to come out with a high price because there’s a lot of piracy, so we have to compete with that.”

It’s an interesting strategy that may speak to why the on-demand streaming service has seen so much success in recent years. Piracy isn’t going away, and if you can’t stamp out your competition, better to make it as unattractive as possible.

https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-sets-pricing-based-on-local-piracy-rates-150416/

That is def damn smart of them

 

[KevanG]

Yeah, a really neat idea. Cable/Sat companies could really learn a few things but they won't.

 

[Victarion]

Clowns Battle Protesters in Big Top Brawl

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/l...-Circus-Big-Top-San-Bernardino-300490891.html

I believe and side with the clowns over the stupid hippies

Do these people not know that humans are animals? I'd sue the protestors for animal cruelty.

 

[Teelie]

Newly discovered frog species looks a lot like Kermit the Frog

http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2015/f/z03920p084f.pdf

Crazy we are still still discovering new species of things

I just posted about that in the Science thread. Crazy how similar the two are.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Softball Enthusiasts Accused of Daring Pappy van Winkle Bourbon Heist

The greatest whiskey heist of the past 25 years—or at least the greatest whiskey heist of the past 25 years I am thinking of right now—may have been solved: On Tuesday, a Franklin County, Kentucky, grand jury indicted nine people in connection with the theft of at least $100,000 worth of bourbon, including 65 cases of the rare and highly valued Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve.

The criminal syndicate was allegedly lead by Gilbert Thomas Curtsinger. The 45-year-old Curtsinger, along with his father, mother-in-law, and seven others, reportedly nabbed at least 15 barrels of whiskey—including Wild Turkey, Eagle Rare, and Buffalo Trace—in addition to the missing cases of Pappy Van Winkle, which, on their own, are valued at more than $30,000; all together, authorities said the stolen whiskey was worth more than $100,000.

Sheriff Pat Melton told reporters at a press conference today that three of the defendants—two of whom, including Curtsinger, worked at the Buffalo Trace distillery and one of whom worked at Wild Turkey—stole the barrels and cases of Pappy over a period of about seven years.

“To say that 195 bottles walked out the door...that didn’t happen,” Melton said, according to WKYT.

The case, Melton said, began as an investigation into an illegal steroid ring until evidence from the Attorney General’s cyber-crime unit and tips from the community linked the suspects to bourbon theft.

“How many people do you know that have a barrel of bourbon at their house?” he asked at the conference.

The alleged thieves—identified as Julie Curtsinger, Mark Searcy, Ronnie Lee Hubbard, Dusty Adkins, Christopher Preston, Joshua Preston, Robert McKinney, and Shawn Ballard—met while playing sports, according to Melton.

“This all came together through softball,” he said.

As for the whiskey, the 25 bottles of Pappy Van Winkle that were recovered—the rest was sold—will likely be returned to the Van Winkle family; the barrels of whiskey, sadly, will be destroyed for sanitation reasons.

But was the Pappy Van Winkle recovered the same that went missing during the mysterious bourbon heist—known as Pappygate—of fall 2013? Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Zachary Becker said it’s possible, though he told the Courier-Journal that’s “more for Buffalo Trace to figure out and their inventory issues.”

http://www.courier-journal.com/stor...en-bourbon-barrels-lead-indictments/26123133/

I was always partial to good scotch myself

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Cool, Chimps Are People Now Too

Bet you woke up this morning feeling all smug about being a “person,”with “rights” just like any other Tom, Dick or duly incorporated S Corp. Well too bad, sucker, because chimps have rights now too.

A Manhattan Supreme Court judge made the ruling—the first of its kind in America—on Monday, holding that two chimpanzees living at a university medical lab qualify as “legal persons” for the purpose of a habeas corpus writ.

Habeas corpus petitions—essentially hearings to determine whether or not an imprisonment is lawful—can only be brought on behalf of persons and not—a critical distinction—on behalf of things. By issuing the order to show cause, the judge essentially reclassified chimps as persons within the legal definition.

Is it the worst idea, though? Eh. The line of cases so far aren’t trying to set the wild animals free (an issue already plaguing the New York metropolitan area)—just to regulate the care of arguably self-aware species. It’s a moral argument, and not an unpopular one.

Although similar petitions were overturned last year, the new ruling would also potentially open the door to legal protection for other smart-ass animals like elephants, dolphins, and whales.

Now the school—Stony Brook University in Long Island—will have to file papers with the court arguing that keeping the chimps in their medical lab is lawful.

Attorneys from the Non Human Rights Project representing the chimps say they’d like to see them moved to a sanctuary in Florida. Arguments in the case are expected to continue in May.

http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.or...al-persons-grants-them-writ-of-habeas-corpus/

Good for the chimps