Weekly Weird News for 13 October 2023

We all float on

My goodness, have I got a lot of amazing stuff for you in this newsletter. But before we begin, viewership has stalled in the past few weeks. It takes many hours to put these weekly collections together, so if you like it, please share. If you are a Substack author, please recommend the site so I can get some additional audience.

Thanks. Now, on to the show.

Bigfoot hoax in Colorado

Every week there are dozens of really stupid stories that reveal that the media is entirely out for clickbait or they really are that dumb. Fact: It sometimes takes only 5 or 10 minutes to follow through and find the probable cause that was not mentioned in the piece.

This week, some folks on a tourist train from Durango to Silverton, Colorado spotted a light colored, hairy, bipedal creature walking through the low brush on a hillside at some distance from the tracks as the train passed. The creature then sat down. People on the train took a video and photos and concluded it was Bigfoot. But even from the raw video, it’s clear this is a person in a suit - either a camouflage ghillie suit or a Bigfoot costume. The legs are thick and baggy. All signs scream that this was a stunt set up for the train passengers.

A Bigfoot research group concluded that a local “Sasquatch” camping business was behind it. The Pacific Northwest Bigfoot search was sent the video and noted it went right through the area covered by the camping service, whose owner sometimes dons the Bigfoot suit. You can view the matching suit from their website.

Photo from the Sasquatch Expedition Campers. It’s a match.

So, publicity did work. I’m not sure how many people actually thought this was real (other than Bigfoot believers untethered to reality), but you can believe that many people desperately wanted it to be true. The media widely covered this story and didn’t supply any skepticism to speak of. This is not the first or last time that such shenanigans will happen. https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/colorado-bigfoot-train-video/ and https://denvergazette.com/outtherecolorado/news/bigfoot-reportedly-spotted-from-train-in-remote-part-of-colorado/article_029dbe02-6789-11ee-9e74-87f48588e08b.html

Mysterious tentacled thing identified

Back in 2018, a photo from an underwater photographer circulated around the Internet because no one could identify the many-tentacled tiny blob shown in it. If you look closely in the pic below, the “tenticles” look like they have little eyes. Now, biologists have identified it as an amalgamation of some 1000 parasitic worms (flukes) moving together in a colony. The organism had been sampled from the ocean off Okinawa, Japan. The DNA showed it was an unknown species of trematode worm. There were two forms of the worm in the mass so the mystery of its life cycle still remains. https://defector.com/mysterious-jellyfish-actually-1020-worms-who-want-to-be-poop and https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01170-3

Windows rammed

A hazard in Wenatchee, Washington is that a bighorn sheep might see its reflection in the window. And hate it. A ram attacked four windows of a local municipal office. https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/local/bighorn-ram-slams-windows-at-chelan-county-building/article_b59864c0-678f-11ee-acc5-db3fe1d47500.html

Puppy is a bit extra

An animal shelter in Pembrokeshire, Wales took in an adorable spaniel puppy that was found abandoned at a vet’s office parking lot. The owner likely could not cope with the animal have an extra two legs protruding from its side. It appears the extra legs could be removed by the pelvis may be damaged. It’s hopeful that she can live a fairly normal life. https://uk.style.yahoo.com/dog-born-six-legs-stuns-001903956.html

Purple deer suffering from rare infection

A few weeks ago, I saw a story about a deer in Maine that had purple discoloration on its face and neck. Originally, wildlife officials noted that the characteristics could be caused by several things but the deer looked otherwise fine, until recently. Swelling of the face and lymph nodes indicated a serious infection that they guessed was Bullwinkle’s disease caused by an infection of Mannheimia granulomatis. Yes, the common name is from the cartoon purple moose. In this case the swelling was affecting the animal to the point where it struggled to eat and was susceptible to other ailments. The animal was euthanized. The local news suggests that tissue samples will be tested. https://www.bangordailynews.com/2023/10/11/outdoors/purple-deer-cape-elizabeth-euthanized/ and https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/purple-bullwinkle-deer-maine/

Black panther reports from Louisiana

What’s a Friday the 13th without a themed story? Well, I’d prefer the date was not mentioned at all but here is a black cat tale (tail?). People in the Rapides Parish in Louisiana say that for the past few weeks they have heard strange animal noises and have seen a dark-colored large cat. Additional evidence included a photo of what appears to be a singular paw print that could be from a puma. Louisiana has several confirmed sightings of mountain lions but there does not appear to be a population of them. Cougars/pumas/mountain lions do not have a black variant, regardless of what many people suggest. I can’t count how many “large cat” sightings turned out to be chunky black domestic cats. The paw print looks more like a large dog’s track. https://www.cenlanow.com/local-news/mysterious-black-panther-sightings-puzzle-rapides-parish-residents/

Kiski township is northern Gator Land

Outside of Florida, and neighboring southern states, it seems the best place to spot an alligator is Kiski township, in western Pennsylvania. Sound familiar? That’s because I’ve posted stories about alligators in the river there this summer and efforts of the township to crack down on the keeping of these animals. Here is more evidence of the weird local problem. A man returns home to find a 5-ft long alligator on his front porch. Police removed 9 additional animals from a neighboring house after they were left outside in the ever-dropping fall temps. The owner faces charges of illegal transport of animals. It’s not clear if that person owned all the reportedly roaming gators. https://triblive.com/local/valley-news-dispatch/kiski-township-man-shocked-to-find-wayward-alligator-on-his-porch-9-taken-from-neighbors-property/

The gold story that won’t die

The tale of Civil War gold hidden (and secretly retrieved) near Dents Run, PA is a long story promoted by a small handful of really committed people. Now, someone else has come forward to say that they witnessed the FBI removing something from the area after a secret dig in 2018. The FBI asserts and has revealed some records showing there was a dig but no gold was found. The “evidence” put forward by the new witness is that an armored truck exited the site riding low, as if it was carrying a full load. I’m convinced! This long drama is a mess. https://www.wtaj.com/news/local-news/ap-witnesses-to-fbi-hunt-for-civil-war-gold-describe-heavily-loaded-armored-truck-signs-of-a-night-dig/ and for a fuller history, see https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/07/pennsylvania-civil-war-treasure-gold-hunt-fbi/638445/

Extreme solar storms aren’t that rare

As if we didn’t have enough of nature trying to kill us, new research on tree rings from 14,000 years ago in the French Alps suggests that a giant solar storm was recorded as a radiocarbon spike in the life record. The signal was matched with a spike in beryllium in ice cores. This indicates that potentially devastating solar storms can reach earth with a higher frequency than previously expected. https://www.sciencealert.com/giant-solar-storm-14000-years-ago-leaves-the-carrington-event-in-the-dust

Lung Float test

A deeply flawed test to determine if a baby was born alive or dead is like witchcraft: if lungs float, the infant was deemed alive at birth, and if they sink, the baby was stillborn. The lung float test has been used to charge women with murder of their infants who were delivered far from a hospital setting and died. Judges have allowed the results of the test to be used in court in yet another means to punish and prosecute pregnant women. The test was known to be flawed from the 18th century. This is a long read investigation from ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/is-lung-float-test-reliable-stillbirth-medical-examiners-murder

A coin flip is not actually random

New research confirmed what had been previously asserted - coin tosses will not result in a random landing. In a paper titled, “Fair coins tend to land on the same side they started: Evidence from 350,757 flips” noted that there is a 51% chance that the coin will land on the same side from which it was flipped. Astounding, I know. This doesn’t mean anything to your average football game start but over time, betting on a coin toss or using it for randomness will skew the results. The cause is that the movement in the flipping means the initial side spends more time facing upward and thus increasing the odds of landing that way as well. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-flipped-coins-fair-thought.html and https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04153

Misinformation age

Finally, a serious word on misinformation spreading. It’s bad, it’s REALLY bad. News organizations do a pretty poor job getting out the facts without skewing the news. Too many skew it deliberately for nefarious purposes. TikTok is huge among an under 30 audience and the platform is lousy with nonsense claims and lies. But Twitter, now “X” (so I called it Xitter [shi-ter]) is still supplying a hundred million people with “news”. Except it’s not. Xitter has been accused of promoting accounts that post biased and fake news while suppressing more legitimate news sources. Extreme misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is ubitiqutous and has resulted in the European Commission to investigate the platform as being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation. The same accusation was leveled at TikTok. Social media that uses manipulating algorithms favor controversial and unreliable claims. The audience helps by also promoting that kind of news. Consider quitting the Xitter today if you haven’t already, it’s a cesspool. Use all social media with this caveat in mind - it’s a business meant to make money, not a public service. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2023/10/12/xtwitter-hides-legitimate-news-while-misinformation-flourishes/ and https://www.axios.com/2023/10/12/israel-hamas-disinformation-x-eu-investigation

The Washington Post hasn’t been a reliable source in years since they also skew their news, often through headlines that misrepresent the story. While the editors at WaPo promote that “Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks”, the researchers referenced in that story say it’s not true; they have no intension of backing down due to political attacks. The Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington asserts in a recent op-ed that they have worked dilligently to respond to false information spread about events for over a decade and, while the harassment has been rough, they will continue to attend to their task and call out lazy or deliberatly misleading media information. More of this, please. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/uw-misinformation-researchers-will-not-buckle-under-political-attacks/

Pumpkin boat

I couldn’t end on that so here is a guy who rowed down the Missouri River in a 1,208-pound pumpkin boat breaking the record for the longest journey in a squash. Happy Fall. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/10/09/man-with-pumpkin-vessel-breaks-guinness-world-record/71125133007/

Thanks for reading.