Weird News of the World Thread - Part 2

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Ice Cream Maker Blue Bell Pulls All Products After 3 Die, 5 Fall Ill

According to the L.A. Times, Blue Bell Creameries has issued a worldwide recall of its products over concerns that they may be contaminated with a dangerous strain of Listeria bacteria.

In March, Blue Bell announced a recall of several products after one them was linked to three listeriosis deaths in Witchita, Kansas. As a result of further testing and the discovery of additional listeriosis cases in Texas, the company now believes all Blue Bell products have the possibility of being contaminated.

“At this point, we cannot say with certainty how Listeria was introduced to our facilities and so we have taken this unprecedented step,” Blue Bell CEO Paul Kruse said in a statement on Monday. “We continue to work with our team of experts to eliminate this problem.”

Listeriosis typically afflicts those with weak immune systems (such as young children, immunocompromised persons and the elderly), but once infected, 21 percent of patients die.

According to the company, Blue Bell products are sold in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming as well as several international locations.

http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-blue-bell-recall-20150420-story.html

Man you never hear about a company pulling all of their product so good on them for doing that. The idea of killer ice cream is kind of crazy though

 

[KevanG]

Cool, Chimps Are People Now Too

Good for the chimps

Could be an interesting development although I could see PETA trying to abuse this and try to free every animal in every zoo, circus and aquarium on the planet because ''it's not natural''.

 

[Slushy]

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

[YT]-1GadTfGFvU[/YT]

 

[Evelisse]

When you get your next headache, remember this.

Woman’s brain tumor turns out to be ‘evil twin’ complete with bone, hair and teeth...

Evil Twin

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Haha I was just gonna post that. It's freaking creepy

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Body Found in Burning Car Outside Nat'l Weather Center in Norman, Okla.

A car crashed through a set of gates and caught fire outside of the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma, late Thursday afternoon, as part of what police are calling a “suspected suicide.” The building is a major nerve center for weather forecasting and research in the United States.

Details about the incident are scarce, but late this afternoon, a vehicle crashed through the gates of a sealed loading dock/parking lot on the east side of the National Weather Center, coming to a stop halfway between the gates and the building before catching fire. KFOR reports that authorities have found a body in the car, and they’re ensuring there are no lingering hot spots before continuing with their investigation.

The area where the vehicle came to a rest appears to contain numerous agency vehicles, including two critically important Dopplers-on-Wheels, which are flatbed trucks with Doppler weather radars attached to them—when deployed, these devices provide critical research and insight into severe weather.

The university’s student newspaper OU Daily quoted a university spokesman as saying that police were investigating the incident as a “suspected suicide,” though it’s unclear if the individual intended to harm just themselves or others in the process.

http://kfor.com/2015/04/23/breaking-crews-respond-to-car-fire-south-of-ou-campus/

Crazy stuff, horrible way to go

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

A GPS-Equipped Falcon Could Keep Birds From Flying Into Wind Turbines

Birds have a bad habit of flying directly into big machines, like planes or wind turbines. This phenomenon, dubbed “birdstrike,” usually ends, well... badly for our feathered friends. But the key to saving these doomed birds could be another bird.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has recruited a 15-year-old peregrine falcon named Houdini to fly near the Colorado Rockies while clutching a flash drive-sized GPS. Why?

Although his usual gig is halftime entertainment at Air Force football games, Houdini’s exploits for NREL could lead to serious advancements in radar technology—advancements could help researchers at the National Wind Technology Center keep better track of any wildlife flirting with death-by-wind turbine.

Avian scouts like Houdini could be more useful than drones to accomplish this goal, as a bird is the best thing we can use to predict other birds’ movement. (The drones don’t move about in the air the same way real birds do, which is why Houdini has the edge.)

NREL hopes to build a database with this flight pattern information that allows the folks at the wind plant to be alerted to nearby birds, and can stop the blades before the birds get too close.

The current alternative, which NREL says is mandated in many places? Plop somebody at the plant to be the 24/7 bird lookout.

http://www.nrel.gov/news/features/feature_detail.cfm/feature_id=16495

You had me at falcon

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Here’s Why Fish Scales Get Put In Lipstick

If you are a lady, you have probably at one point slathered your lips in fish scales. (If you are a gentlemen, you have probably pressed your lips against those scales.) Why? Because it looks pretty. And because of physics.

To understand why fish scales were first used in makeup, we have to understand why they were used outside of makeup. In past centuries, respectable ladies may not have worn makeup, but they did wear jewelry. How frustrating then, that they often found that they could not afford jewelry. Help was on the way: Clever proto-materials scientists found that they could use fish scales to simulate pearls.

Pearls have a kind of scattered radiance to them, as if they are being lit from within. That’s because they are – especially when fake ones are made by coating ordinary beads with fish scales. The scales are made from purines, which are the things that also make up nucleic acids. The purines are arranged in a crystal that’s both flat and irregular, like the shards of a window pane. When groups of them are arranged over each other, as light hits the plane of each crystal, some light is reflected back, and some keeps going down until it hits another crystal. As light gets thrown up, in a diffuse way, from many different levels, the scales seem to emanate light from within. Slather enough layers on a bead, and it has a glowing, pearlescent quality.

If it works on a bead, it must do the same for lipstick. Pastel, pearlescent lipsticks have gone in and out over the years. The ingredient used to make them hasn’t. These crystals do the same thing they do one fake pearls (and real fish): They reflect light from many different angles and levels, making lips seem to shimmer with an inner light. Fish scales may not be a romantic ingredient, but they are available and nontoxic. Considering it wasn’t that long ago that some lipstick brands were found to be contaminated with lead, a little fish doesn’t sound that bad.

http://io9.com/here-s-why-fish-scales-get-put-in-lipstick-1699582340/+chris-mills

Ladies, you're welcome for that new found knowledge

 

[KevanG]

And men, you are now going to get in loads of trouble if you ever say anything about fish after you kiss her.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

FBI and TSA Warn Airlines to Watch Out For Wi-Fi Hacks

Following concerns about the plausibility and dangers of passengers hacking airplane Wi-Fi networks, the FBI and TSA have issued a joint alert warning airlines to be increasingly vigilant about monitoring for such attacks.
The warning, issued as a private industry notification and first reported by Wired, is a response to last week’s news about Chris Roberts being stopped and questioned after he tweeted about hacking the Wi-Fi network aboard a United Airlines flight. “Although the media claims remain theoretical and unproven,” the authorities warn, “the media publicity associated with these statements may encourage actors to use the described intrusion methods.”

The FBI and TSA do point out that they have no evidence of hackers being able to successfully gain access to an airplane’s vital systems via Wi-Fi or In Flight Entertainment networks. But that doesn’t stop them suggesting how flight crews should respond to suspicious activities:

Report any suspicious activity involving travelers connecting unknown cables or wires to the IFE system or unusual parts of the airplane seat.
Report any evidence of suspicious behavior following a flight, such as
IFE systems that show evidence of tampering or the forced removal of
covers to network connection ports.
Report any evidence of suspicious behavior concerning aviation wireless signals, including social media messages with threatening references to Onboard Network Systems, ADS-B, ACARS, and Air Traffic Control networks.
Review network logs from aircraft to ensure any suspicious activity, such as network scanning or intrusion attempts, is captured for further analysis.​

The issue is clearly a big concern that the authorities have yet to respond to with absolute clarity. Stopping and questioning security researchers is perhaps less useful than working out how to prevent real hacks from taking place, after all. But we know one thing: we hope all this fuss doesn’t affect the ongoing relaxation of electronic device use one planes.

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/fbi-tsa-warn-airlines-tampering-onboard-wifi/

If it's an open network it can and will get hacked

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

All the pepperoni that the US eats a year can circle the earth 50 times

Here’s a shocking number that speaks to the USA’s love for meat (and pizza): we eat so much pepperoni per year that if you put the slices side-by-side, they could circle the Earth 50 times over. The fact bit comes from Bill Gates look at Vaclav Smil’s interesting book Should We Eat Meat?. That’s, uh, a lot.

Some more interesting points that Gates raises from Smil’s book:

As usual, Smil offers up some intriguing statistics along the way. A quarter of all ice-free land in the world is used for grazing livestock. Every year, the average meat-eating American ingests more than enough blood to fill a soda can​

.

There’s also a look at how much water is needed to make a kilogram of boneless beef (it measures in the several thousands of liters) and how much meat an average US citizen eats a year (over 250 pounds in carcass weight).

http://www.amazon.com/Should-Evolut...699262486[a|1118278720[au|5722017394683918667

That's a whole lotta cured meat

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

One of Indiegogo's Biggest Successes Is Getting Sued for Fraud

The supposedly innovative, affordable Sondors e-bike slayed its crowdfunding goal earlier this month, raising over $5 million to become the second-most successful Indiegogo campaign of all time. Now its creator is getting sued for fraud by the company that ran his crowdfunding gambit.

And it’s not the only sketchy thing about this campaign.

Storm Sondors, the man peddling the e-bike, has already faced criticism for changing the specs on what he calls “the Tesla of e-bikes” during the campaign. Critics say he’s exaggerated claims of what the budget e-bike can do to the point of fraud.

Now he’s getting sued by Agency 2.0, the PR firm that pushed his campaign, for “contractual fraud.” Aka: never paying them.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Sondors is guilty, of course, or that his bike is bunk—Agency 2.0 is the very same PR firm that got behind the notorious crowdfunding disaster, the Kreyos smartwatch, which crapped the bed with the force of a diarrhea-prone ogre, so it’s not like it has a flawless record.

This does mean that the e-bike’s future is in flux. And Sondors’ history of not pulling through on projects is worrisome considering he just promised over 12,000 people a remarkably ambitious design. He was accused of a similar “don’t pay people” a few years ago, when he was working as a toymaker:

In 2008, Sondors was sued for fraud by ToyJobs, a recruiter in the toy industry, according to the ToyJobs Web site. The company accused Sondors of hiring employees found by ToyJobs without paying the company a commission. According to ToyJobs, the Superior Court in New Jersey awarded a default judgment of nearly $40,000 against Sondors in 2011.​

I’ve asked Sondors’ team for comment, but funders are already spinning their (potentially forever nonexistent) e-wheels on Indiegogo, and what I’ve said before about dubious crowdfunding projects bears repeating: You’re taking a risk and the crowdfunding platform isn’t going to come to your rescue if these projects turn out to be dismal failures or blatant scams.

These platforms exist to help people raise money, and let’s not forget the company can take a cut. They are businesses built on a reputation of idealism that is often at odds with the way they treat the idealists who fuel their success.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/storm-ebike-creator-sued-for-fraud-by-his-own-pr-116935222729.html

Bound to happen every now and then. Hopefully he can still deliver the product he has promised

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Now You Can Download Your Google History—Or Better Yet, Delete It

You can now download your entire Google search history to your computer. Sound neat? That’s what I thought at first. And then I realized there were dangerous things in my search history—things way worse than my taste in porn.

I’m not talking about the embarrassing fact that I always start Pandora Radio by typing “Pandora” into Google—I guess I don’t use bookmarks—or the names of all the people I’ve stalked through the web. I’m talking about the subject lines of my private emails. Hints about the stories I’m secretly working on. My tastes in all kinds of things other than porn. My own exact street address, culled from all the times I’ve searched for directions on Google Maps.

Now just think about all the things you might have searched for over the years.

Do you want a copy of that sitting on your computer? What use might you ever have for that information? Are you really planning to reminisce someday by digging through an avalanche of queries? Or do you think you’ll need an alibi for a crime? I suppose there are worse things sitting on my computer, but they’re not quite the same clearly marked treasure trove of insight into my entire life.

Clearly, someone at Google knows how dangerous this information can be, which is why they created the message you can read above. “It’s not the usual yada yada,” indeed. If you’re going to download it, keep it safe. If you’re willing to trust Google with this information, you should at least do as the company advises and set up two-factor authentication for some beefed up security.

Or, you could just delete the data. To their credit, Google makes it pretty damn easy. Just know that you’ll miss out on some enhanced search results—and you might cripple your Google Now virtual assistant in the process.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6068625?p=ws_history_download&rd=1

Would be cool to go back and see my first searches

 

[Marvolo]

And men, you are now going to get in loads of trouble if you ever say anything about fish after you kiss her.

"Babe, have I ever yold you that you taste like perch?"

*smack*

"I mean strawberries! You taste like strawberries!"

 

[KevanG]

"Mmmm tastes fishy"
"WHAT?!?!?"

 

[Teelie]

FBI and TSA Warn Airlines to Watch Out For Wi-Fi Hacks

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/fbi-tsa-warn-airlines-tampering-onboard-wifi/

If it's an open network it can and will get hacked

The two should not even be connected let alone open like this.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

15 Buffalo Escape Into American Wild; Are Quickly Shot and Killed

This morning, 15 buffalo escaped their their upstate New York farm and roamed the countryside, eventually stopping in the town of Bethlehem. Like some other famous visitors to Bethlehem, there was no room for them there; unlike the Holy family, the buffalo were quickly gunned down.

Realizing there was a “zero percent” chance that the animals could be herded back to his farm, owner George Mesick authorized their killing. “I just want to get this done with as fast as possible so that no one gets hurt,” he told the Times Union before the massacre.

It wouldn’t be that simple, for Mesick, the local sheriff, or the buffalo.

“Hired guns” were brought on for the execution, which was to take place at a nearby creek. As the shooting started, one of the mercenaries was seen arguing with Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, apparently over the safety of the crowd that’d gathered to watch the slaughter. Sheriff Apple took the man into custody. He later compared the scene to the “Wild West.”

Meanwhile, the buffalo took off running after the first shot, to no avail; all 15 were killed. America is once again the land where no buffalo roam.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/15-loose-buffaloes-that-crossed-new-york-highway-are-killed/

That sucks, hopefully they at least used the meat and hides so they don't go to waste

 

[Marvolo]

As per usual, Muricans solving problems the only way they know how:

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Vaping Now Has a Competitive Sport Called "Cloud Chasing"

[YT]NfqSh03FEys[/YT]

With vaping’s great popularity comes a growing competitive offshoot, complete with contests, judges, sponsors, and spectators turning out to see who can produce the most impressive plumes.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on competitive vaping, which it calls an “extreme sport.” The sport is dubbed “cloud chasing.” Those who compete in cloud chasing utilize their e-cigs and lungs to produce truly mind-boggling vapor puffs. The fans who like to watch are called “cloud gazers.” As the Journal explains:

Competitions are straightforward. Cloud chasers inhale on the devices, which convert e-cigarette “juice” into vapor. They then toast the competition by blowing the biggest, densest vapor cloud possible. In less than two years, the sport has adopted all the trappings of professional athletics. It not only has fans but teams, sponsors and cash prizes.​

Not everyone is down for vape fun and games. The article quotes a secretary for the National Vapers Club, who worries that the clouds “can be offensive” and may give the already-tenuous reputation of vaporizing an even worse name. As more and more people — including kids — turn to vaporizing instead of smoking, states are moving to regulate the products and where you can use them a lot more. The last place I worked, we had the issue raised at a company-wide meeting, because some were bothered by others’ incessant cloud-making. Vapers were then restricted to the outdoors.

As Gizmodo’s vaporizer correspondent, you won’t find me lecturing about the possible hazards of vapes, though a lot of scientific juries are still out on the longterm effects. But as a smoker I can confirm first-hand that inhaling on a vape isn’t exactly gentle on the lungs. I can’t imagine that the insanely long, concerted pulls “cloud chasers” are drawing in can be great for them.

This is especially relevant due the fact that a lot of now-fanatic vape enthusiasts took them up in order to quit smoking regular cigarettes:

Chasers blow off critics. Mr. Maynard said he was a nearly two pack-a-day smoker until he began competing. Then his hands became so busy modifying his device that they stopped reaching for Marlboro Lights. He called the group at Metro Vapors a “brotherhood” of cigarette quitters.

“It’s basically an antismoking rally,” said Erik Hutchinson, founder of AmeraVape Technologies, a device manufacturer.​

I do applaud anyone who has managed to successfully shake themselves from the demon grip of Big Tobacco. But I would caution us from taking it too far in the opposite direction, and calling “extreme sport” vaporizing competitions an “antismoking rally.”

As someone who has spent many hours perfecting an ideal smoke ring to blow across the room, however, I have to admit I can see the appeal of both cloud chasing and gazing as an activity.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/take-a-deep-breath-if-you-want-to-try-competitive-vaping-1429646394

I predict Senty will win the gold in Vaping at the Olympics in 2020

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Pepsi Ditching Aspartame Is Not a Good Thing

You might not know it from certain conspiracy-minded corners of the Internet or 1990s-era chain emails, but aspartame is one of the most well-studied food additives ever. And yes, it is safe. Pepsi’s decision today to replace aspartame with, oh, another chemical sweetener may be a canny PR move—but it’s really a win for widespread misinformation, and that’s the bad thing.

So here’s the deal: Pepsi is swapping out aspartame for sucralose, which is better known as the stuff behind Splenda. Diet Pepsi is still going to have a second sweetener, acesulfame potassium or ace K, which it quietly slipped into its sodas back in 2012. That move the company was less eager to publicize because, you know, it wouldn’t score them good publicity points.

All three artificial sweeteners have been deemed safe by the FDA and its stricter European counterparts. Of course, it is possible to cherrypick studies that say, for example, ace K causes chromosome abnormalities in the bone marrow of mice. But that’s why scientists examine whole bodies of evidence and disregard the studies that are poorly designed, like that bone marrow one.

And it’s aspartame that has the greatest body of evidence supporting its safety. The FDA called aspartame, “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved.” Over 100 toxicology and clinical studies were reviewed to come to the conclusion that aspartame is safe. The European Food Safety Authority agrees.

But the “aspartame causes cancer or another big scary disease” trope somehow persists in our culture. There are true fearmongering sites out there, operated by quacks like Joseph Mercola. And there is a very persistent hoax email from the 90s that refuses to die. But there are also the otherwise reasonable Diet Coke addicts I know who casually joke about how their habit will one day kill them.

In Pepsi’s announcement today, an executive pretty much admitted there was no scientific basis for the move. “While decades of studies show aspartame is safe,” he said, “we recognize that consumer demand is evolving.” There is a huge gap between perception and scientific reality when it comes to aspartame, and Pepsi’s move only reinforces it.

It’s good business to listen to your consumers, of course, but when their beliefs are fueled by scaremonger campaigns against “yoga mat chemicals” or aspartame, it is loss for, well, truth.

https://fortune.com/2015/04/24/diet-pepsi-aspartame-sales-fizzle/

Yet another instance of idiots effecting reality

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Virtual Reality Can Fool People Into Feeling Invisible

Virtual reality messes with your brain—and it gets especially weird when neuroscientists use it to scramble your illusion of self. A new VR study uses a few simple tricks, like a paintbrush, to fool the brain into thinking the body has disappeared.

The study published in Scientific Reports riffs on an old trick in neuroscience: the rubber hand illusion. If you see a rubber hand being stroked and feel your hand being stroked in the same way, your brain unconsciously begins to take ownership of that hand. You might, for example, wince to see the rubber hand whacked with hammer.

In virtual reality, the rubber illusion can a little more sophisticated. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden put 125 volunteers inside virtual reality, where if they looked down at their bodies, they saw nothing. Then they poked their chests with a paintbrush while the blank space of their “invisible body” in VR was also poked with a paintbrush. The combination of feeling and seeing was enough to get most participants to accept the illusion.

How? Well, if the researchers changed the virtual paintbrush into a virtual knife, the volunteers unconsciously reacted in fear. Their bodies were invisible, but the threat was still “real.”Their hearts raced and their skin got sweaty. In a follow-up experiment, the participants saw a large crowd of people staring back at them—a normally stressful situation. But those who believed their bodies were invisible felt less social anxiety.

As VR has improved, psychologists have been using it to probe how our brains perceive of reality. Our unconscious brains are actually pretty easily fooled, but that also means VR could be used fool it in productive ways. For example, as this study demonstrates, maybe virtual invisibility can help people deal with social anxiety. Future therapy might just comes with a dose of the virtual.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ts-into-feeling-invisible/?wprss=rss_homepage

Pretty cool

 

[Teelie]

Pepsi Ditching Aspartame Is Not a Good Thing

https://fortune.com/2015/04/24/diet-pepsi-aspartame-sales-fizzle/

Yet another instance of idiots effecting reality

Everyone can be fooled by fearmongering but we have to realize it when that happens and stop perpetuating it. The longer the lies are allowed to persist and the more people give into them and the harder they are to fight back.

Aspertame is right there next to MSG in the "it's dangerous!" only not really crowd of food additives.

That does not mean I think it is good for you but then drinking a soda isn't either and I do not think aspertame makes it any worse off, unless you have a genuine allergy to it. Allergies do exist to almost anything but that does not justify banning it any more than it would banning peanuts or shellfish from being consumed by those who are not affected.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Venezuelan Mango-Thrower Gets Apartment After Hitting President in Head

On Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro promised to fulfill the housing request of a woman who beaned him with a yellow mango, The Guardian reports. The woman had written her phone number on the fruit, which she then threw into Maduro’s passing bus, striking him on the head.

[YT]uJPd0Kf0Hro[/YT]

“It says: ‘If you can, call me,’” Maduro said while holding up the mango during a live television broadcast. “Marleny Olivo had a problem with her house. [Officials] called her. She was scared. She couldn’t believe it was true… I’ve approved an apartment for you, Marleny, as part of the Grand Venezuelan Housing Mission.”

CNN reports that Olivo’s unusual choice of stationery* was necessitated by circumstance.

“I didn’t have paper available at that moment,” she told El Pitazo TV. “What I had was a mango that I was about to eat because I was hungry.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/25/venezuela-woman-president-mango-house

Could you imagine what would happen to someone who beaned Obama in the head with fruit?

 

[KevanG]

About fifty sniper bullets?

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Sounds about right Kev