Weird News ε' - The fifth column

[Kyriakos]

Stop assuming that we're all sheeple and that we're going to fall for another of your cleverly constructed philosophical traps, K.!

Space is not empty.
Vacuum energy is an underlying background energy that exists in space throughout the entire Universe.
Vacuum energy is a special case of zero-point energy that relates to the quantum vacuum.
Lamb shift is caused by interactions between the virtual photons created through vacuum energy fluctuations.

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. - Dan Quayle.

Exactly:

 

[Narz]

Is Italy ready for cricket-powder pizza?​

Cricket farmers tout environmental benefits, chefs praise 'elasticity' and nutty taste​

At the seafront pizzeria La Rambla in Maccarese, Italy, a short drive from Rome, chef Carlo Del Buono stood at the kitchen counter, throwing a few fistfuls of cricket powder into a bowl of pizza dough made with wheat flour.

"It adds elasticity," he said, as he mixed the dough. "Makes it easier to work with."

Del Buono is one of a number of chefs throughout Italy keen to introduce insect products — high in protein and sustainably farmed — into their restaurant menu.

"Crickets fall completely within the range of Italian tastes," he said, biting into a slice of his cricket powder pizza fresh from the oven. "It's a nutty taste, with a hint of anchovies. Perfect for a vegetable-covered pizza."

• Q&A
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While chefs like Del Buono look forward to putting the cricket pizza on their menu — he'll market it, he says, as "a protein pizza" — not all Italians are as enthusiastic, at least for now.

The European Union authorized the adoption of powdered domestic crickets for human consumption in early 2023, but Italy's right-wing government dragged its heels in approving its sale, doing so only in late December.

Agricultural Minister Francesco Lollobrigida and others argued insect flour would contaminate Italian culinary traditions, with fake news circulating that bakeries would be mandated to bake with cricket flour.

The right-wing League party tried to pass a measure that would ban cricket flour from school cafeterias. And protesting farmers on tractors last month including insect products on their list of complaints against the EU.

Benefits of (cricket) farm to table​

Jose Cianni and Fabrizio Lunazzi say they are unfazed by the resistance.

"I think of it like sushi a decade or so ago," said Lunazzi.

Cianni and Lunazzi, co-founders of Nutrinsect, a cricket-farming startup in the Italian region of Marche, have ambitious plans to introduce insects into the culinary offerings of a country known for its adherence to tradition.

They, along with other investors, are the first in Italy to venture into cricket production for human consumption, launching their startup 2020, spending the last four years fine-tuning production.

Their cricket farm, a low warehouse off a rural road, houses small hot and humid rooms smelling slightly briny and that are lined with plastic bins teeming with crickets. Ringing out all around is the thick trill of 45-day-old males at their sexual peak.

"This is their mating cry," said Cianni.

Crickets contain 70 per cent protein compared to meat, which has at most 23 per cent. Farming crickets uses a fraction of the land and just 15 litres of water for one kilogram of flour compared to meat, which requires 15,000 litres, according to Cianni.

• Cricket plant in London, Ont., expands production to serve up food for Asian company
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"Emissions in insect farming are negligible," said Cianni, who grew up on an animal farm in southern Italy. "For If you think that traditional farming makes up 14 per cent of global greenhouse emissions, we need solutions like this."

Lobsters of the insect world​

But breeding crickets is no simple endeavour, requiring precisely calibrated conditions and a cap on density. Over-exposure to humans who tend them (more than 1.5 hours a week) raises their stress levels, putting them at risk of outbreaks of viruses, similar to stress-induced herpes in humans, say the producers.

With no chemicals or antibiotics involved, disease almost inevitably leads to death. Cianni says, through experimentation and careful study, the company has managed to reduce mortality to 0.1 per cent.

"Crickets are called the lobsters of the insect world because they taste so good," said Cianni, listing off its hazelnut and pistachio notes, as well as a shrimp-like taste they have. "But they are extremely fragile creatures, which is why so few companies have launched so far."

Challenges of scaling up​

Most of the orders for the cricket powder have come so far from chefs. For now, price remains the major barrier to wider use.

A kilogram of cricket powder costs 40-70 euros, compared to a kilogram of chicken (with the same amount of protein), costing just 50 euro cents per kilogram.

To bring price down by half through economies of scale, Nutrinsect plans to up its production tenfold by the end of the year.

The company has been in touch with the Aspire Food Group, the world's biggest cricket producer in London, Ont., and says future collaboration isn't out of the question.

"The market has so much potential that companies will need to cooperate in creating networks," said Lunazzi. "It's not competition we're worried about, but meeting demand."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cricket-powder-food-italy-1.7136422

I tried cricket flour, it's vile

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Exactly:

View attachment 686971

Just havin' a laugh?
He'll probably change his name to Tuzi Banski.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Ready, steady, eau! Paris waiters race returns to French capital​

Trays of coffee and croissants were held aloft around Paris today in a revival of one of the city's traditional spectacles - a race involving waiters and waitresses from its famous cafes.
Judges at the end check the amount of liquid that has spilled during the contest, which allows only brisk walking.
The event began in 1914, but has not been held since 2011 due to lack of sponsors. It has been brought back in the run-up to the Paris 2024 summer Olympics.

Ready, steady, eau! Paris waiters race returns to French capital

The competition for waiters and waitresses began in 1914, but has not been held since 2011 due to lack of sponsors.

www.bbc.com

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

The Daily Star is urging people not to panic despite what it describes as "vampires and zombies" walking among us. Psychological disorder expert Dr Brian Sharpless has told the paper there are people who have a desire to drink blood for sexual pleasure, as well as people who believe their organs are rotting from the inside.

Newspaper headlines: MPs say China is a 'threat' and the 'Kate effect'

Tuesday's papers react to the threat the government says China is posing to national security.

www.bbc.com

I know it's The Daly Star so it has to be bullcrap, but I just don't have the energy to panic today.

 

[Narz]

as well as people who believe their organs are rotting from the inside.

It's true right, it's called aging but we do what we can.

Maybe these vampire people are just iron deficient?

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

The Daily Star front cover always read like a hysterical parody of British tabloids

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/north-texas-man-changes-name-to-literally-anybody-else-now-running-for-president/287-b6e35d3a-6f6e-48b3-89bb-f4e70c53a984

In an ABC/Ipsos survey earlier this month, Americans were asked if they'd trust Trump, Biden, or neither to better lead the country as president. 36% of Americans said they trust Trump to do a better job, while 33% trust Biden more—and 30% trust neither.

That 'neither' group is the one Trump and Biden will be chasing after hard. People like Else.

Else, whose name was Dustin Ebey before the name change, feels like his candidacy isn't about winning but sending a message.

To him, he wants voters who feel as he does to write 'Literally Anybody Else' as a statement of dissatisfaction.

"People are voting for the lesser of two evils, not someone they actually believe in or support," Else said. "People should have the option to vote for someone who resembles and represents them, not the lesser of two evils. I reject that."

 

[Broken_Erika]

Harvard University removes human skin binding from book​

Harvard University has removed the binding of human skin from a 19th Century book kept in its library.

Des Destinées de l'Ame (Destinies of the Soul) has been housed at Houghton Library since the 1930s.

In 2014, scientists determined that the material it was bound with was in fact human skin.

But the university has now announced it has removed the binding "due to the ethically fraught nature of the book's origins and subsequent history".

Des Destinées de l'Ame is a meditation on the soul and life after death, written by Arsène Houssaye in the mid-1880s.

He is said to have given it to his friend, Dr Ludovic Bouland, a doctor, who then reportedly bound the book with skin from the body of an unclaimed female patient who had died of natural causes.

Harvard University explained its decision to remove the binding, saying: "After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book's binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book's origins and subsequent history."

It added it was looking at ways to ensure "the human remains will be given a respectful disposition that seeks to restore dignity to the woman whose skin was used".

The library is also "conducting additional biographical and provenance research into the anonymous female patient", the university said.

Des Destinées de l'Ame arrived at Harvard in 1934. Located within the book is a note written by Dr Bouland, stating no ornament had been stamped on the cover to "preserve its elegance".

"I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman," he wrote. "A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering."

A decade ago, Bill Lane, the director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, told the Houghton Library Blog that it was "very unlikely that the source could be other than human".

'An occasional practice'​

In its statement, Harvard said its handling of the book had not lived up to the "ethical standards" of care and that in publicising it, it had on occasion used a "sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone" which was not appropriate.

It apologised and said it had "further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding".

The practice of binding books in human skin - termed anthropodermic bibliopegy - has been reported since as early as the 16th Century.

Numerous 19th Century accounts exist of the bodies of executed criminals being donated to science, with their skins later given to bookbinders.

Simon Chaplin, who was head of the Wellcome Library in 2014, which holds books on medical history, told the BBC at the time: "There are not a huge number of these books out there, it has been an occasional practice mainly done for generating a sense of vicarious excitement than for a practical motive.

"It generally seems to have been done in the 19th Century by doctors who had access to human bodies for dissection."
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68683304

 

[Kyriakos]

I think you can bind books with human (or dwarf, of elven etc) skin in Dwarf Fortress.
You certainly can create ornaments out of their bones.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Tanker Crash Accidentally Releases 70,000 Salmon Into Wrong Oregon River

A tanker carrying 102,000 young Chinook salmon crashed, killing thousands of fish and accidentally releasing the survivors into the wrong river.

jalopnik.com

A fish tanker filled with more than 100,000 young chinook salmon crashed in Oregon last week, reports local news outlet the Baker City Herald. In the crash, the 53-foot truck rolled onto the passenger side, skidded across the pavement and flipped onto its roof after hitting a rocky embankment.

After colliding with the side of the road, the tanker split open, leaking its contents onto a riverbank next to the road. This spilled an estimated 77,000 salmon smolts, the technical term for a fish that’s around two-years-old, into the Lookingglass Creek, which runs alongside the road.

The fish were being transported from the Lookingglass Hatchery in northeast Oregon to the Imnaha River, where they were set to be released to try and bolster fish stocks in the area. The salmon population in the Imnaha is listed as “threatened” by ODFW.

However, the fish instead found a home in the Lookingglass Creek, where expects predict they will return to breed each year, improving fish population in that river instead.

 

[Comrade Ceasefire]

Fuzzy Dunlop and his mate have been found in Australia!

A wild scrub python has survived ingesting two tennis balls it mistook for food in a Far North Queensland
backyard. The snake was driven more than 300km from Cooktown to Cairns for the tennis balls to be surgically removed.

Two tennis balls surgically removed from scrub python

A Far North Queensland wildlife carer says he has seen just about everything in his 20 years on the job until he was called about a surprise find in a Cooktown backyard.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

Germany wants tougher limits on hunting the animals, but Botswana says it has too many of them.

www.bbc.com

Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to", Mr Masisi told German newspaper Bild. "This is no joke."

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

Germany wants tougher limits on hunting the animals, but Botswana says it has too many of them.

www.bbc.com

https://twitter.com/x/status/1775687715352359192

 

[Narz]

Aw I want 20,000 elephants

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Aw I want 20,000 elephants

Maybe that's what the English need to be cheered up

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

They were on to something

Looks like the Muslamists are already putting into motion their plans to cheer up the English

https://twitter.com/x/status/1770541786106036513

 

[r16]

that's a lie . The place is where the King of "Islamists" live .

 

[Broken_Erika]

Woman arrested for wheeling corpse into bank to co-sign a loan​

The woman appeared to be propping up the dead man’s head in a video of the incident​

A Brazilian woman has been arrested after she strolled into a bank pushing a corpse she hoped would co-sign a loan for her.

Disturbing video, captured by bank employees in the Bangu neighbourhood of Rio De Janeiro, shows Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes bringing the body of Paulo Roberto Braga into the bank branch, The Daily Beast reported.

Braga had died at the age of 68 just a few hours earlier.

In the video, Ms Nunes is reportedly heard calling Braga her uncle as she spoke to the body and propped up his head.

She also asked him to co-sign on a loan for approximately $3,400, The New York Post reported.

“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign [the contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you,” Ms Nunes says in the footage.

She then grabs a pen and forces it into the dead man’s hands, telling the corpse to hold the pen “hard”.

“Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore,” she says.

At one point in the video a worker points out that the man looks ill and that his colour is unusual, but Ms Nunes waves off his concerns.

“He is like that. He doesn’t say anything,” Ms Nunes replies. “Uncle, do you want to go to the [hospital] again?”

The bank staffers ultimately called law enforcement.

Police and paramedics responded to the scene and found that Ms Nunes had been pushing a dead man around in a wheelchair during her visit.

Ms Nunes – who told police that she was the man’s niece – was arrested on the scene. She may now face charges including fraud, embezzlement, and abuse of a corpse.

“She tried to pretend to get him to sign the loan. He already entered the bank dead,” Police Chief Fábio Luiz told TV Globo, a major Brazilian broadcaster.

“The main thing is to continue the investigation to identify other family members, and find out more about this loan.”

An investigation continues into the nature of Braga’s death, whether or not Ms Nunes is actually his niece, and whether anyone else related to either of them could be trying to commit bank fraud, police said.

The Civil Police in Bangu told The Independent that Ms Nunes was arrested and charged with fraud and desicrating a corpse.

“The elderly man’s body will be examined at the Legal Medical Institute (IML), in order to determine the circumstances of his death. Agents [will] carry out investigations to clarify the facts and witnesses will be heard,” a police spokesperson said.

An attorney representing Ms Nunes has said that Braga was alive when he entered the bank.

“The facts did not occur as has been narrated. Paul was alive when he arrived at the bank,” Ana Carla de Souza Correa, Ms Nunes’ lawyer told reporters.

“All of this will be cleared up. We believe in Érika’s innocence.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/woman-arrested-brazil-corpse-bank-b2530344.html

 

[thetrooper]

Necrofinancer

D’oh @Broken_Erika beat me to it