News Weird News Compilation

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The discussion revolves around sharing unusual and funny news stories. One highlighted case involves artist Peter Doig, who is being sued for $5 million by a man claiming a painting is his, despite Doig's insistence that he did not create it. Another story features inmates in Texas who broke out of their cell to save an unconscious guard, raising questions about their behavior. Additionally, a couple of dogs in the UK were caught damaging cars, leading to their eventual capture and a search for adoptive homes. The thread showcases a variety of bizarre incidents, emphasizing the oddities found in everyday news.
  • #991
I guess she'll be taking a limo to jail. :rolleyes:
 
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  • #992
Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense
The publisher Springer Nature was forced to retract over 40 papers from its Arabian Journal of Geosciences after realizing they were nothing more than garbled jargon. This is just the latest in a series of shoddy research papers getting past the publisher.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...44-papers-for-being-utter-nonsense/ar-AAQmJbm

The journal is intended for geoscience research; discussion of volcanoes, soils, and rocks are par for the course. But these questionable papers’ topics were further afield, with many discussing sports, air pollution, child medicine, and combinations of the aforesaid.

They read a bit like a college student throwing around big words to cover up a lack of understanding. Though purportedly written by humans, the content of each paper definitely reads as if it were put together by a computer that doesn’t quite grasp speech patterns or grammar. The papers are filled with redundancies and generally lack logic.
 
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  • #993
An Ecuadorian Navy three masted sailing ship (for training) caught a narco sub (actually a low profile surface boat) powered by three outboard motors, off the coast of Ecuador and Columbia.
The 257-foot-long (78 meter) sailing ship, powered by more than 15,000 square feet (1,393 square meter) of sails hung from three towering masks, was on a training cruise when it spotted the drug-running vessel and made the stop, the Ecuadorian military said.

Screen Shot 2021-11-05 at 4.44.23 PM.png
 
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  • #994
Astronuc said:
Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...44-papers-for-being-utter-nonsense/ar-AAQmJbm
Here is a publisher that came my way today:
https://www.hrpub.org/index.php

They claim
Horizon Research Publishing(HRPUB) is a worldwide open access publisher serving the academic research and scientific communities by launching peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines.
... but I had an article that definitely wasn't reviewed. Or if it was, then the reviewers couldn't even use WolframAlpha.
 
  • #995
2011, Marshall Islands - Two men from the Pacific nation of Kiribati who were lost at sea for a month have managed not only to survive, but to unravel a 50-year-old family mystery.

Uein Buranibwe, 53, and Temaei Tontaake, 26, made headlines late last month when they washed ashore in the Marshall Islands after 33 days lost at sea.

They were more than 600 kilometres from home. Their global satellite positioning system had run out of batteries after they left their island on what should have been an 80km trip to get gas.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-12/fishermen-unravel-family-mystery-after-month-at-sea/3727492

one of the men discovered that his uncle, feared drowned at sea 50 years earlier, had also wound up on the same atoll and married into the community.

"[The uncle had] set out, got lost and drifted ashore on Namdrik, there were no communications so [it is] easy to see how he would have merged into the community, settled down and had kids."

The uncle has since died, but his story raises hope about others who have disappeared off the horizon.

Taking a long trip on the ocean? Take extra batteries in a water tight container, or know the sun, moon and stars. And probably take extra water or have a water purifier. And consider a solar power system.
 
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  • #997
In the category «We love smart people»:

https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/tv-bike-box said:
Tougher boxes? Better packaging? Different shipping partners? Nothing worked. Bikes obviously didn’t have the kind of priority flat-screen TVs have for example...

And that was it. The lightbulb moment. Our co-founder Ties Carlier’s simple idea. Our boxes are about the same size as a really big, expensive, flat-screen television. So we put an image of one on every box. We assumed handlers would care a little more about that. And we were right.

That small tweak had an outsized impact. Overnight our shipping damages dropped by 70-80%.

VanMoof-Bike-Box-Header.jpg
 
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  • #998
But what about theft rates?
 
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  • #999
Vicious rain, dust storms, and snow in the southern city of Aswan last week drove out scorpions as well as snakes, Al-Ahram, a government-run Egyptian newspaper, reports. Three people have died from scorpion stings and 450 people have been injured by the stings thus far, BBC News reports, citing an unnamed health official.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/14/1055...injured-after-storms-rouse-scorpions-in-egypt
Scorpion stings can be lethal. The Egyptian fat-tailed scorpion, a species found throughout Northern Africa, in particular has been described by one of the most deadly in the world, according to the Saint Louis Zoo.
 
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  • #1,000
A city overrun by angry scorpions.
 
  • #1,002
speaking of tapeworms ^^^ is the following story urban legend or possibly true?:

As a kid, I was told by an older kid that he had heard of a story of a guy who got a tapeworm. This man went through a period of not eating much (possibly a diet or fasting). One day, as the man took a piece of bread out to eat and opened his mouth, others at the table saw the tapeworm rise out of his throat to snatch the bread and take a bite out of it (before retracting down his throat).

This is quite possibly the most disgusting story I've ever heard. Seems biologically/medically possible, but has a ring of urban legend to it too. I could never verify the story, but wonder if it's possible and/or a popular urban tale/myth of sorts?
 
  • #1,003
kyphysics said:
speaking of tapeworms ^^^ is the following story urban legend or possibly true?:

As a kid, I was told by an older kid that he had heard of a story of a guy who got a tapeworm. This man went through a period of not eating much (possibly a diet or fasting). One day, as the man took a piece of bread out to eat and opened his mouth, others at the table saw the tapeworm rise out of his throat to snatch the bread and take a bite out of it (before retracting down his throat).

This is quite possibly the most disgusting story I've ever heard. Seems biologically/medically possible, but has a ring of urban legend to it too. I could never verify the story, but wonder if it's possible and/or a popular urban tale/myth of sorts?
No that doesn't happen. I'm not sure if tapeworms even have mouths. They may just absorb nutrients form the digestive juices inside of intestine through their skin.

On the other hand, there is a fish parasite (an isopod (a crustacean)) that eats a fish's tongue and replaces the function the fish lost when its tongue got eaten and eats some of the food that goes by on the way to the fish's stomach.

Screen Shot 2021-11-16 at 12.11.12 PM.png
 
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  • #1,004
When I was a boy, my friend's father told us that when he was a boy, growing up in the Carpathian mountains in the Ukraine, a kid in his village had a tapeworm. So the village wise men held him by his heels, upside down over a bowl of warm milk until the worm came out and dropped into the bowl.

I thought that was the most disgusting story until I saw the photo ^^^ in @BillTre 's post.
 
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  • #1,005
BillTre said:
No that doesn't happen. I'm not sure if tapeworms even have mouths. They may just absorb nutrients form the igestive juices inside of intestine through their skin.

On the other hand, there is a fish parasite (an isopod (a crustacean)) that eats a fish's tongue and replaces the function the fish lost when it tongue got eaten and eats some of the food that goes by on the way to the fish's stomach.

View attachment 292448
Proof if proof were needed that there is no God!
 
  • #1,006
Today is one of those days where I would like to have a time machine to unsee something. :oldruck:
 
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  • #1,007
I should have known not to return to this thread today...my mind is grossed out!
 
  • #1,008
gmax137 said:
When I was a boy, my friend's father told us that when he was a boy, growing up in the Carpathian mountains in the Ukraine, a kid in his village had a tapeworm. So the village wise men held him by his heels, upside down over a bowl of warm milk until the worm came out and dropped into the bowl.

I thought that was the most disgusting story until I saw the photo ^^^ in @BillTre 's post.
Okay, suppose my story was urban legend.

Was YOUR story true? If so, that is soooooooooooooooooooooooooo disgusting!
 
  • #1,009
kyphysics said:
Was YOUR story true?
I don't know for sure, my friend's dad was kind of an exotic guy and he may have been pulling our legs. Or not. But that's the story he told.
 
  • #1,010
gmax137 said:
I don't know for sure, my friend's dad was kind of an exotic guy and he may have been pulling our legs. Or not. But that's the story he told.
Its not true.

Adult tapeworms don't move much. They don't have much in the line of muscles. They won't be climbing up through the stomach and esophagus, which would require getting through some sphincters and going against the flow of food down the gut. Most of their muscles are in the small head end (scolex) for digging into the gut way to latch onto it as a holdfast. Most of the long body of a tapeworm is a series of body segments that are mostly a bag of eggs with very little musculature. The segments fall off the end of the body or the eggs are released in the gut. They exit the body with feces and infect a secondary host before getting back to some vertebrate host, like a human.
In addition, tapeworms don't have a mouth, so coming out to bite food would not work for them. Such an action would be dependent on having a mouth as well as its associated digestive system.

In much smaller stages of tapeworm (younger individuals, infecting secondary hosts and traveling between hosts before getting to their final vertebrate host) will be much more active. Some burrow through bodies to get to the right place when it comes to locomotion.
I would expect round worms (like ringworm) would be much more active, but they should not be coming out your mouth either.

Wikipedia on tapeworms:
humorous Wikipedia PSA-like information:
There are unproven claims that, around 1900, tapeworm eggs were marketed to the public as slimming tablets.[42] A full-page coloured advertisement, purportedly from a women's magazine of that period, reads "Fat: the enemy ... that is banished! How? With sanitized tape worms. Jar packed. No ill effects!"[34] When television presenter Michael Mosley deliberately infected himself with tapeworms he gained weight due to increased appetite.[43] Dieters still sometimes risk intentional infection, evidenced by a 2013 warning on American television.[44]
 
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  • #1,011
BillTre said:
Its not true.
well I'm glad that's cleared up. I heard the story in the late 1960s and never forgot it, I guess now I can let it go.
 
  • #1,012
kyphysics said:
I should have known not to return to this thread today...my mind is grossed out!
You could try Unwatching the thread. Is that like "unseeing" ?
 
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  • #1,013
For some reason, this topic has me thinking of the movie Alien.
 
  • #1,014
Borg said:
For some reason, this topic has me thinking of the movie Alien.
the mouth within a mouth thing as depicted in that movie

XV9jc.jpg
 
  • #1,015
Here's nature's real version:

Screen Shot 2021-11-17 at 4.19.59 PM.png


Screen Shot 2021-11-17 at 4.19.22 PM.png


The normal jaw is presumed to have evolved from the equivalent of gill arches in a primitive prevertebrate. I got teeth for biting etc.
The pharyngeal jaw is thought to have evolved from the first of four gill arches.
Other contemporaneous fish can have teeth on their gill arches so they can crush up things in their mouths without having to open their mouths ("chew with your mouth closed!").
In the morey eel the pharyngeal jaws can move forward, grab something, and pull it further into the mouth. Potentially ratcheting things down the throat.
 
  • #1,016
sysprog said:
the mouth within a mouth thing as depicted in that movie

View attachment 292533
I was thinking about what burst out of his chest but that works too.
:smile:
 
  • #1,017
Nature is cruel. Even animals we commonly think are cute are all but cute for some: young male dolphins are rapists, otters torture for fun, and rabbits, well, have a look:

xF1cdr.gif
 
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  • #1,018
BillTre said:
I would expect round worms (like ringworm) would be much more active, but they should not be coming out your mouth either.
Ringworm is a fungus. It just looks like a worm under your skin.
 
  • #1,019
Hornbein said:
Ringworm is a fungus. It just looks like a worm under your skin.
Opps. Guess I meant hookworm.
 
  • #1,020
giphy.webp
 
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