Wierd News IV - The Twilight Zone

[Ferocitus]

Published July last year, 750 Old-Fashioned Housework Secrets and Tricks, provides advice for cleaning, beauty, cooking and health.
According to the book, using freshly washed cabbage on a child’s head helps relieve a fever.
Another tidbit suggests sticking a green onion up your nose if you’re congested.

https://blog.gaijinpot.com/tweet-of-the-week-114-old-fashioned-japanese-remedies-cracks-twitter-up/

 

[Samson]

Dozens of smuggled chameleons found in suitcase in Austria

Dozens of protected chameleons are being nursed back to health at an Austrian zoo after they were discovered in a suitcase at Vienna airport.
The animals were spotted by security after an X-Ray of the suitcase appeared suspicious. Some 74 chameleons were found hidden in socks and boxes.
They would sell for about 37,000 euros (£32,850; $44,970) on the black market, officials said.
A 56-year-old man who had travelled from Tanzania was later arrested.
Three of the chameleons did not survive the journey. They range in age from one week old, to adult specimens.
The surviving chameleons are now being cared for at Schoenbrunn Zoo.
​

 

[Lexicus]

poor little fellas glad they were found and most are okay

 

[Ferocitus]

Glad some made it through alive.
(IMO, they aren't very good chameleons though.)

 

[Takhisis]

Do you actually see all 74 chameleons in the picture?

 

[GinandTonic]

Sorry if we've had this

“this is the most Australian thing I’ve watched”

Man doing man work plays with 4m crocodile, swears at it affectionately.

 

[Samson]

Woman performs sex act on thief during petrol station raid in Slovakia

The man, a 24-year-old Serb, had been attempting to rob a petrol station on the outskirts of Bratislava overnight on Tuesday in a report by The Daily Mail.
While trying to get money from the safe, a 36-year-old Czech woman began to perform a sex act on him, before officers found the pair half-naked on the floor.
The bizarre incident began when the man ran into the petrol station and demanded that staff hand over money in the register. The robber punched a staff member multiple times, before taking money from the cash register.
He then went to the back office, where a second member of staff was sitting, where he demanded that they open the safe.
While the safe was being opened, the first member of staff ran outside and called the police, who raced to the scene.
Meanwhile, the ‘mystery’ woman appeared and began oral sex on the man, delaying his escape.
In the meantime, the police turned up and were able to arrest the suspect. Officers said the man ‘put up stiff resistance’ and that ‘coercive measures were used against him’.
Noviny said it is not clear how the robber and the woman ended up in an intimate situation, and that investigation is ongoing.​

 

[Arakhor]

That really is weird news!

 

[Birdjaguar]

We will let it stand as a testament to the weirdness of the English language.
i before e except after c, except when it isn't.

This is the rule: i before e except after c or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh. The exceptions to that rule are: neither leisure foreigner seized the weird height. Memorize that you you will never go wrong!

 

[The_J]

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/how-do-wombats-poop-cubes-scientists-get-bottom-mystery

How do wombats poop cubes? Scientists get to the bottom of the mystery
[...]
In the new study, the researchers dissected two further wombats and tested the guts’ layers of muscle and tissue, finding regions of varied thickness and stiffness. They then created a 2D mathematical model to simulate how the regions expand and contract with the rhythms of digestion. The intestinal sections contract over several days, squeezing the poop as the gut pulls nutrients and water out of the feces, the team reports today in the aptly titled journal Soft Matter.

The stiffer portions are “like a stiff rubber band—[they’re] going to contract faster than the soft regions,” says David Hu, a biomechanics researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author on the study. Softer intestinal regions squeeze slowly and mold the final corners of the cube, the team found. In other mammals, the wavelike peristalsis of the intestinal muscles are consistent in all directions. But in the wombat, the grooved tissue and the irregular contractions over many cycles shape firm, flat-sided cubes.

That just leaves one mystery: why wombats evolved cubic poop in the first place. Hu speculates that because the animals climb up on rocks and logs to mark their territory, the flat-sided feces aren’t as likely to roll off from these high perches.
[...]

 

[The_J]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/bit...lon-musk-adds-bitcoin-to-his-twitter-bio.html

Bitcoin spikes 20% after Elon Musk adds #bitcoin to his Twitter bio
Published Fri, Jan 29 20215:20 AM ESTUpdated Fri, Jan 29 20218:03 AM EST
Ryan Browne@Ryan_Browne_
Share
Key Points

• The virtual currency climbed suddenly at around 3:30 a.m. ET, adding $5,000 in the space of an hour to trade at a price of $37,299.
• Musk added #bitcoin to his Twitter bio earlier Friday morning and sent out a cryptic tweet, saying: "In retrospect, it was inevitable."
• It adds to the wild volatility in markets this week, as the stock prices of heavily-shorted companies like GameStop surged dramatically.

Well... not sure if that still counts as overall weird (@AmazonQueen fix the thread title ), especially after that GameStop short squeeze, but at least for me it is.

 

[AmazonQueen]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/bit...lon-musk-adds-bitcoin-to-his-twitter-bio.html


Well... not sure if that still counts as overall weird (@AmazonQueen fix the thread title ), especially after that GameStop short squeeze, but at least for me it is.

Hardly seems worthwhile. Only another 968 posts to go in this one

 

[r16]

so , he is supposedly fixing stockmarkets and stuff . Not that he can be banned in CFC , but aren't there laws against ?

 

[The_J]

https://galusaustralis.com/2021/02/...t-not-call-a-new-chocolate-chocolate-economy/

Because there is no sugar: Ritter Sport must not call a new chocolate chocolate

Chocolate manufacturer Ritter Sport is launching a new chocolate – and strictly speaking, it must not call it that in Germany. What sounds strange at first has a food law background: According to the German Ordinance on Cocoa and Chocolate Products of 2003, chocolate consists not only of ingredients such as cocoa mass, cocoa powder and cocoa butter, but also sugar.

However, this sugar is missing in the new Ritter Sport product called Cacao y Nada. For sweetening, the Waldenbuch company near Stuttgart instead uses natural cocoa juice, which it extracts from cocoa beans on a plantation in Nicaragua.
[...]

I support that many things are very regulated in Germany, but sometimes they're just a bit inflexible .

 

[Kyriakos]

Better than having chocolate which has next to no cocoa.

 

[The_J]

That is indeed true.

But even German regulators know words like "optional", which they could have put in the original regulation.

 

[Takhisis]

But what if the sweetener is honey or (shudders) stevia?

 

[Samson]

Texas officials apologise after 'Chucky' missing child alert

Officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have apologised after sending out an emergency message featuring the horror character Chucky.
An Amber Alert message, used to warn of missing children, was sent out featuring the Child's Play villain along with his fictional child, Glen.
The alert was sent out during a test malfunction, DPS officials said.
"We apologise for the confusion this may have caused and are diligently working to ensure this does not happen again," they said in a statement to local news outlets.​

Is it asking people to report it to Saturday Night Live?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Is it asking people to report it to Saturday Night Live?

Yes, it was a joke abbreviation, as other (real) amber reports write out the full department name (for example: 'Houston Police Department', not just HPD). The phone number is obviously fake as well being in reverse numerical order.

 

[Kyriakos]

Man in Pennsylvania guns down a couple of his neighbors after heated argument about snow. Apparently they were all too lazy to clear the snow without throwing it to the other person's property. Well, they won't be doing any more clearing now, both the couple and the man (suicide) are dead.
That's when good neighbors, become good friends