Weird News of the World Thread

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I know many of the older generation (people in their 50's and up mainly) who would agree with sabetoonth's parents. It's their up-bringing that these words don't have the meaning they do now.

I can understand their point of view in that it used to be acceptable to use those words and others without it being considered offensive. It doesn't mean they can't see how it is no longer acceptable anymore but for some people they never make the connection that this word means something different than it used to.

The word ***** for instance used to mean something different just 50-60 years ago (a stupid or foolish mistake) than it does now (I don't think I need to explain what).
 
Science of persuasion
How have the media or advertisers persuaded you? Large corporations and often governmental parties spend incredible sums of money on firms who study how to make you say yes, or even better, distract you from the truth entirely.
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[YT]cFdCzN7RYbw[/YT]
 
Iran Is Building a Copy of a U.S. Aircraft Carrier Just to Blow it Up

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Last month, U.S. military planners were scratching their heads over why the Iranians were building a painstaking replica of a Nimitz-class American aircraft carrier, all the way down to the deck numbers. Well, it turns out Iran just really wants to make it go boom.

The replica, which appears to be 2/3 scale and made of steel—just like the real thing—was first spotted under construction last summer "at a shipyard on the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz," according to Stars and Stripes, but it wasn't until this spring that U.S. officials "saw the number 68 painted on it—the same number of the USS Nimitz, which was deployed in the region last summer."

Iranian state TV had initially said the large, costly mock-up was for a movie. But now a newspaper in Iran reports that it's for blowin' up in a war game:

The Sunday report by independent Haft-e Sobh daily quotes Adm. Ali Fadavi, navy chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guards as saying Iranian forces should "target the carrier in the trainings, after it is completed."

Adm. Fadavi said: "We should learn about weaknesses and strengths of our enemy."
What they'll actually learn from blasting a dolled-up hunk of metal, who knows. But one thing's certain: If we've taught the Iranians how to piss billions of dollars away building useless military hardware to prove a point about the size of their nation's dong, then in some sense, America has already won.
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http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-...rrier-in-drills-1.280310#.U11zUdVK2_s.twitter

This serves absolutely no point, also it makes me laugh
 
Woman Mistakes Richard Gere for Homeless Man, Tries to Give Him Pizza

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Richard Gere played such a convincing homeless man in New York last week that a kind-hearted French tourist took pity on him and tried to give him her leftover pizza.

Gere has been tramping about town shooting scenes for a new film, pawing through movie-set garbage and drinking beers on city benches. Apparently unaware of the cameras, a French tourist felt bad when she saw Gere pretending to scavenge for food and offered him her leftovers.

According to the New York Post:

"What's in the bag?" Gere, 64, asked.

"I tried to tell him in English, but it came out half in French," she said.

"I said, 'Je suis désolée [I am sorry], but the pizza is cold.' "

Apparently, millionaire beggars can't be choosers.

"He said, 'Thank you so much. God bless you,' " Gombeau recalled.
The tourist only found out who he really was later when the a friend saw a photo of her in a newspaper.

"I think he's very handsome, even at his age," she told the Post. "Pretty Woman was not my favorite movie, but I *really loved Chicago."
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http://nypost.com/2014/04/27/french-do-gooder-stunned-gere-was-homeless-man-she-helped/

Of all the homeless people in NY she chooses the fake millionaire one haha
 
There Are At Least Three Osama bin Laden-Themed Bars In Brazil

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This summer's World Cup in Brazil should be a hoot for American soccer fans: according to The Guardian, there is apparently not one, not two, but three Osama bin Laden-themed bars in the country, all neighboring the World Cup epicenter in Rio.

The first pioneering bar came from Ceará Francisco Helder Braga Fernandes, a Bin Laden lookalike (pictured above) who decided to capitalize on his resemblance.

The Sao Paulo bar is called Bar do Bin Laden and features Fernandes sporting lookalike garb and selling beers, with images of himself all over the walls. As Andrew Creelman put in his blog, it is very popular with "fans of rock music." Fans of rock music, always on the bleeding edge.

This bar, however, has been followed by a number of copycat bars.

Mac Margolis, of online news site Vocativ, searched online and found "nearly a dozen Brazilian establishments" named after the former Al-Qaida leader, "including bars, luncheonettes and one sit-down restaurant called Bin Laden and Family".
Creelman, a blogger living in Sao Paulo, isn't so sure this bar is a good idea.

I'm not gonna lie; the pride this guy has about being a Bin Laden look-a-like is pretty unsettling.
Americans attending the World Cup this summer, please report back on all Osama bin Laden-related activities you participate in.
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http://www.theguardian.com/travel/shortcuts/2014/apr/27/brazilian-bar-sao-paolo-osama-bin-laden

Do we have any bars in America celebrating villains from Brazil? Would be weird if we did
 
Pasta-Making Machine Severs Teen's Arm From Elbow Down

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Never clean a pasta-making machine again: a teenager in Massena, NY just had his arm severed at the elbow when it was caught in a pasta-making machine while he was cleaning it. He is in serious condition at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Brett Bouchard, 17, was working at Violi's, an Italian restaurant on the Canadian border when the incident happened. The restaurant's manager, Mia Violi, told The Watertown Daily Times that "employees are trying to figure out how the machine got activated while he was cleaning it."

Pasta isn't your friend after all.
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http://bigstory.ap.org/article/teens-arm-severed-ny-eaterys-pasta-machine

That really sucks, I had no idea a pasta machine could rip your arm off
 
Chernobyl's Steel Radiation Shield Is the Biggest Moving Structure Ever

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In the normal world, it's what you'd call a bad investment: Spending $2 billion to build the largest moveable structure ever—and knowing that it won't work for longer than 100 years. But in Chernobyl, it's the best available option for protecting a whole continent from the worst nuclear disaster in history.

Today is the 28th anniversary of the disaster, which killed 31 and subjects hundreds of others to extreme suffering, and left 200 tons of radioactive corium and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium exposed inside the smoking remains of Reactor 4. At the time, heroic workers quickly constructed an ad hoc shelter over the reactor to stop the spew of radioactive material across Ukraine and Western Europe, using 7,000 metric tons of metal and many more tons of concrete. But that shelter—known as the Sarcophagus—was never meant to last. And now, it's in danger of collapsing.

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Enter New Safe Confinement, a project that's nearly as old as the meltdown it's designed to contain. It's a two-pronged plan: First, thousands of workers are constructing a 300-foot-tall steel arch that weighs more than 32,000-tons. Though it's being built a few hundred meters away from Reactor 4, it's eventually going to cover it, creating a thick steel cage around the reactor in case it collapses. But because the area near it is too radioactive for workers to stay there for longer than a few minutes, this huge structure is being built next door—then, very very slowly, it will be slid on teflon-coated tracks to cover the reactor.

We last checked in with its progress almost six months ago, the 300-foot arch was well underway. But today, on the anniversary of the disaster that necessitated it, we spent some time on the NSC's official website to cull the most incredible photographs of its construction in the months since our last look. As impressive as it is, it probably won't compare to watching it slide into place.
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http://www.chnpp.gov.ua/index.php?lang=en

That thing is a beast
 
Guy films himself having an LSD trip in the middle of the desert

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According to the YouTube description, this guy went by himself to the Thar Desert, India, to have an LSD trip that lasted for 24 hours. It's beautiful there, but having LSD on your own—let alone in the desert—is a huge risk.

"It was the most beautiful and yet frightening experience," he said. Watching his reactions you can almost see the thoughts crossing his mind. It's a shame that the video just covers the beginning of the trip.

[YT]y5C6WMLxvdw[/YT]

After the experience he wrote down a list of the things he learnt, here is my favorite: "I achieved not some Ego Death, but Ego Softening."
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Good old Uncle Cid helping expand minds all over the globe
 
Thousands of Tons of Nazi Chemical Weapons Are Hiding in the Baltic Sea

When the Nazis surrendered their weapons at the end of World War II, the Allies got rid of them in a way that made sense in the 1940s: they dumped it all into the water. Mustard gas and other chemical weapons—estimates ranging from 13,000 to 300,000 tons—are now slowly leaking into the Baltic Sea.

The toxic consequences seem obvious in hindsight, but it was a different time back then—a time when the seas seemed big enough that our trash could lie in it forever undisturbed. "The Baltic Sea is known as the chamber pot of Europe," as Yevgeny Usov of Russia's Green Party put it in more colorful terms for the LA Times back in 1992.

After the war, British and American soldiers dumped much of Germany's stockpiles of bombs and chemicals into the English Channel and near Denmark and Sweden. Meanwhile, the Soviets took to the Baltic Sea, which is especially problematic because of its shallow waters and densely populated coast.

Having never left tons of mustard gas in the sea for decades before, we're not really sure what will happen. The cold temperatures of the water turns the mustard gas into a sticky solid, but it remains toxic. It goes without saying that there's pretty much no way it is a good idea.

What makes it worse is that no one knows exactly where the weapons were thrown overboard. It seems that the Soviets did not always follow designated dumping grounds and so fisherman have caught mustard-gas shells far from the designated zones. Researchers at Poland's Military University of Technology has also found traces of mustard gas off the Polish coast, again nowhere near the dumping grounds. Meanwhile, in areas where the chemicals were supposed to be stashed, scientists claim to have found more fish with diseases and genetic defects.

More than 3,000 pounds of mustard gas have been snagged up in fishing nets, and fishermen have had to be hospitalized for exposure. The "iron harvest" refers to the remnants of World War I—shells, barbed wire, bullets, shrapnel—that farmers in Belgium and France dig up every year on the old Western Front. To that we can add the toxic catch from the Baltic Sea.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...t-from-Second-World-War-chemical-weapons.html

Who would have ever guessed dumping tons of toxic chemicals in the ocean would have been a bad idea?
 
Rare Indian Burial Ground Quietly Destroyed for Million Dollar Houses

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A 4,500-year-old American Indian burial ground—one of the richest and best preserved found in California in the past century—has been paved over for a multimillion dollar housing development in the Bay Area. And archeologists are pissed.

One angry archeologist had this amazing quip in the San Francisco Chronicle, which broke the story.

"The developer was reluctant to have any publicity because, well - let's face it - because of 'Poltergeist,' " said [archeologist Dwight] Simons, referring to the 1982 movie about a family tormented by ghosts and demons because their house was built on top of a burial ground.
So yeah, sorry developers.

For thousands of years, this soon-to-be housing development in Larkspur, California had been a burial site containing some 600 sets of human bones as well as instruments, tools, weapons, bear bones, and an extremely rare ceremonial California condor burial. "In my 40 years as a professional archaeologist, I've never heard of an archaeological site quite like this one," E. Breck Parkman, the senior archaeologist for the California State Parks, told the Chronicle.

In keeping with the California Environmental Quality Act, developers did bring on consulting archeologists to inspect the burial ground, though they all had to sign non-disclosure agreements. It was all kept hushhush until chatter at a recent archeology conference blew the lid off.

But the whole situation is more complicated than archeologists versus developers. The remains have since been reburied according to the wishes of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the most likely descendants of the area's indigenous people. The tribe was not keen on turning the burial ground into an archeological site. "How would Jewish or Christian people feel if we wanted to dig up skeletal remains in a cemetery and study them? Nobody has that right," a chairman for the tribe said to the Chronicle.

Ultimately, development in Larkspur sits at the uncomfortable intersection of competing interests among developers, archeologists, and American Indians. It's too late to undo the decisions in Larkspur—the 22-acre expanse is well on its way to becoming townhouses, senior housing, and multimillion dollar homes—but is there a solution that could have satisfied everyone?
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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Indian-artifact-treasure-trove-paved-over-for-5422603.php

Man what a mess.
 
DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs said:
Rare Indian Burial Ground Quietly Destroyed for Million Dollar Houses

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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Indian-artifact-treasure-trove-paved-over-for-5422603.php

Ultimately, development in Larkspur sits at the uncomfortable intersection of competing interests among developers, archeologists, and American Indians. It's too late to undo the decisions in Larkspur—the 22-acre expanse is well on its way to becoming townhouses, senior housing, and multimillion dollar homes—but is there a solution that could have satisfied everyone?
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Man what a mess.
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Hmm... not building multimillion dollar homes on ancient burial grounds? :whatever:
 
Woman Has to Pay For Apartment Damage From Neighbor's Exploding Corpse

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Why yes, it happened in Florida. Why do you ask?

Apparently, if a person's corpse goes undiscovered too long, its decomposition gases can build up and cause organs to erupt violently. And then congealing body fluids can leak out everywhere.

If this person lived in the apartment above you, her corpse's fluids could run down into your abode. If these bodily juices spoil your apartment, it's very likely your insurance wouldn't cover it, because it all depends on what their definition of "explosion" is.

That's the situation Palm Beach County resident Judy Rodrigo finds herself in, six years after the little old lady upstairs combusted and left Rodrigo in a morass of bile and legal filings. Via the Broward/Palm Beach New Times:

The deceased elderly woman, who apparently passed away from natural causes, lived alone with her dogs. After she died, her body went undiscovered for two weeks before a noxious odor began to fill the adjacent units.

After complaints from neighbors, maintenance workers entered the apartment and found that the dogs had eaten her remains, according to Courthouse News.

The undiscovered body went through its normal decaying process and eventually bloated to the point that the gasses inside the corpse built enough pressure that it caused its abdomen to burst. This released gases and fluids, which is what leaked down into Rodrigo's apartment.
Rodrigo sued State Farm, her insurer, looking for a reimbursement for repairs to clean the corpse's goop out of her unit. She gutted the apartment but "[e]ven then, she claimed, the odor lingered."

But this week, a county court agreed with State Farm that it wasn't on the hook. The company would have had to cover damages from an explosion, but that's not what happened:

"The plain meaning of the term 'explosion' does not include a decomposing body's cells explosively expanding, causing leakage of bodily fluids," they court stated, per the New York Post.

The court went on to say that Rodrigo failed to establish that the woman's corpse was "tantamount to an explosion."
Mental note: Spring for the top-floor unit.
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http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2014/04/florida_woman_must_pay_for_dam.php

It amazes me that you can pay for insurance and then they will do anything they can to not help you and do the thing you've paid them to do for years
 
Insurance companies are like that. If they can screw you over they'll do it in a heartbeat.
 
Resilient Birds In Chernobyl Are Actually Adapting to Radiation

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Chernobyl is a scary, seemingly sinister place, where trees don't decay and plants glow. A newly published study, however, shows that not all living things are necessarily doomed in this radioactive wasteland. Some birds in the exclusion zone are actually adapting to the harsh environment.

The birds aren't just adapting, though. Based on years of data collection, there's evidence that some of the birds are actually benefiting from prolonged exposure to radiation. "Previous studies of wildlife at Chernobyl showed that chronic radiation exposure depleted antioxidants and increased oxidative damage," said lead lead author Dr. Ismael Galván. "We found the opposite—that antioxidant levels increased and oxidative stress decreased with increasing background radiation." In other words, radiation exposure is helping the birds adapt.

Using blood samples dating back to the 1990s, the researchers found that the birds' physical condition improved and DNA damaged reduced with increased amounts of radiation. These animals were then better able to withstand even higher levels of radiation. It's not like any of them turned into the Incredible Hulk, but this is the first evidence that animals can adapt to radiation.

Don't go drinking radioactive waste, though. It's seriously deadly stuff, and the effect observed at Chernobyl is isolated to just 16 species, including the blackbird, the robin, and the hawfinch (above). However, the research does teach us more about how radioactive environments like Chernobyl or even Fukushima affect wildlife over time. It's not all bad. But it's certainly not good, either.
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http://phys.org/news/2014-04-chernobyl-birds-ionising.html

That is unexpected
 
It isn't just the birds either. Several other animals like deer have moved into the place and thrived. Without humans there the population of some animals has exploded.
 
L.A'.s Most Arrested Person Is a Homeless Grandmother

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The person who has been arrested more than anyone else in Los Angeles in the past six years is not a drug dealer or a gang member. It is Annie Moody, a 59 year-old homeless grandmother who lives on skid row.

She's been arrested nearly ten times a year for the past six years, according to a fascinating profile today by Gale Holland in the LA Times. But Moody is not some straightforward hard luck victim of the system; she says she prefers living on skid row, and staunchly resists attempts to move her into shelters, always returning to her tent on the streets. As a result, she racks up arrests, spending short stints in jail before going right back to homelessness.

That sitting and waiting has cost her: Moody has been arrested by Los Angeles police 59 times in roughly six years, according to LAPD arrest data — more than anyone else in the city. Since 2002, she has been tried 18 times, convicted 14 times and jailed for 15 months, costing taxpayers at least a quarter of a million dollars, according to court and law enforcement records.
Moody says she wants no services or housing. She wants to be where she is. So what should we do about people like Ann Moody? Put them in jail? That would seem to be a needlessly vindictive waste of time and effort, not to mention money. Leave them alone? Fine, but the ongoing economic resurgence of downtown LA will inevitably make blatant street homelessness less tolerated by the community. So... what? I do not know.

Fortunately for all of us, the vast majority of homeless people on the streets would welcome some help, if we would bother to give it to them.
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http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-...0140429-dto,0,5804064.htmlstory#axzz30HV9taO5

Kind of weird that she wants to be on skid row, I'm sure she could find a better place to pitch her tent that would be less visable so she wouldn't get arrested as much
 
Weird Canadian Family Gives Up On Pretending Like It's 1986

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Do you ever fantasize about living in the 1980s? No phantom smartphone vibrations, no iPads, no Spotify — just VHS tapes, old-fashioned radio, and mullets. Well, a family in Ontario tried to do just that, living as best they could like it was 1986. But now they're giving it up.

Blair McMillan and his partner Morgan Patey are both in their late 20s. A year ago they decided that modern living was for the birds, so they traded in their Facebooks for a landline and their pants for cut-off jorts. They wanted to live with the same technology that was available in 1986, the year both of them were born.

They committed themselves and their two young boys (ages 5 and 3) to trying this strange lifestyle for a year, under the assumption that if they loved it they could continue. But it really seems like the whole thing was more trouble than it was worth. The biggest problem? They were alienating themselves from the rest of the world.

"The most challenging part [if we continued with the experiment] would have been that we are out of the loop with everybody else," Blair McMillan told the CBC. "And we did live in our own little box in our house because we kind of cut ourselves off from the rest of the world because the only way we could talk to people was to call, and nobody does that as much anymore."

Of course, living like it's 1986 only really works when the rest of the world is stuck in the 1980s along with you. For this family, stepping outside was like traveling through time, only you're the weirdo from the past, not the cool guy from the future coming to warn humanity about the robot uprising.

But you kind of have to respect the extreme lengths this family was willing to go to in order to live the life they romanticized. They wanted to feel more connected as a family and enjoy life in this very specific way. And in some ways, they think they succeeded.

"It was a real positive experience," McMillan explained to the CBC. "It's actually kind of bittersweet, knowing it's ending. We had a lot more fun than we expected."

Unfortunately for them, it's not 1986 anymore. And trying to live like Ronald Reagan is still in office (or Brian Mulroney, I guess, since they're Canadian) does little more than shut you off from everyone who isn't your immediate family.

Do you think technology is harming the way your family interacts with each other? As with everything else in life — from junk food to Facebook — the answer is moderation. No human on Earth enjoys hearing this, but it's really not much more complicated than striving for some happy medium.

It's easier said than done, but there is indeed a middle ground between going full Amish and getting a faceputer permanently soldered to your eyebrows. If I'm wrong, and there isn't, then may Jobs have mercy on our souls.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitch...ily-ends-year-of-living-in-the-past-1.2623766

I can understand their reasoning but they had to know it was going to end up this way
 
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