Weekly Weird News for 14 July 2023

My goodness, it was a busy week in weird! Just the world weather wackiness alone left me flabbergasted. But the silly season is most certainly upon us. This is an extra jam-packed edition today.

Climate catastrophes

In the US, there was severe flooding in the Northeast where rainfall levels reached levels that (previously) were calculated as “1000-year events”. That is, according to data records, such an event occurs on average of every 1000 years. Vermont was hard hit. https://www.wcvb.com/article/vermont-flood-damage-video-compilation-july-2023/44510694 and https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/10/us-weather-floods-heatwave-climate-crisis-alerts

Monsoon flooding is hitting India, Japan, China, and Turkey causing destruction and loss of lives. https://apnews.com/article/flooding-rainfall-climate-change-warming-atmosphere-d207e68ba3374bdc2df3d36e97a84a1b

In India, people have died due to the flooding but a lightning strike killed 85 sheep in one stroke. Farmers are compensated for the loss of the animals. https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/lucknow-news/85-sheep-killed-by-lightning-in-tragic-incident-in-lucknow-financial-assistance-to-affected-farmers-101689176271396.html

Record heat is bearing down on Europe. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/europe/italy-heat-wave-record-temperatures-climate-intl/index.html

Triple-digit temperatures are killing people in the southwest. The head shows no sign of abating. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/triple-digits-temperatures-expected-us-southwest-global-heat-shows-no-rcna93490

The ocean temperature in Florida is so warm, it’s not very enjoyable for beachgoers. Overall, the ocean is warming fast. https://apnews.com/article/florida-ocean-heat-climate-coral-record-bfc3010460eb077fc14d53a6f768931d and https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/07/climate-change-heat-waves-ocean-sea-level-rise/674676/

In one little bit of good news. The anticipated waves of stinky seaweed crashing to shore have not occurred thanks to winds that broke it up. Sargassum scourge averted. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-sargassum-season-florida-mysterious-seaweed.html

Johannesburg, South Africa had snow for the first time in 11 years. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/johannesburg-residents-stunned-by-once-in-a-decade-snowfall-2023-07-10/

It’s not just the oceans, ice caps and ground surfaces that are feeling the heat, the subsurface is affected by climate change as well. There is such a thing as underground climate change. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994767

Records are being broken, for sure. The usual metrics are changing as climate change increases the severity of weather events. The current summer situation, with global warming supercharging weather events and the presence of El Nino, it’s a crazy time. According to climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann:

“The steady warming combined with an El Niño; extreme weather events related to those changing jet stream conditions – it all comes together, if you will, in a perfect storm of consequences, which translates to truly devastating and deadly weather extremes that we’re dealing with here right now.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/11/weather/flooding-heat-perfect-storm-climate-ingredients/index.html

In more climate-related news, some bears are no longer hibernating. And they are moving more and more into urban areas. https://lithub.com/year-long-insomnia-why-black-bears-have-stopped-hibernating/

The climate emergency is no hoax. But there are plenty of people who create and/or promote hoax stories. I have a slew to tell you about this week.

Fake Boat Jumping news story

You may have seen on the news a story about people dying by doing the "latest TikTok trend” of jumping off a boat. I know I saw the latest claim out of Alabama this week. Turns out that was bogus information. Once NBC covered the story of the “boat jumping challenge”, other outlets picked it up. But it was fake. No one has died from this “challenge” and it’s not even a thing on the platform. (Until now, maybe, when it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.) The list of overblown TikTok challenges is miles long now. Any yahoo that posts a warning claiming something dangerous is going on gets attention and no one checks out the facts. If you go away with anything from reading this newsletter, it’s that the media ALMOST ALWAYS gets a story at least a bit wrong in ways that actually matter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/13/tiktok-boat-challenge-fake-misinformation/

Twitter blue misinformation on Ukraine

Social media is the origin, incubator, and highway to distribute misinformation worldwide in minutes. The BBC Verify fact-checking group has noticed that many accounts with a subscription “blue check” on Twitter have been circulating fake stories about the Ukraine. This is not a surprise being that the platform is now a darling of racists and Nazis, and a favorite of the Taliban. If you are still participating on Twitter, what the actual hell?!? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66113460

Meta Threads logo hoax

Shortly after Meta’s Threads app went live, people chewed on the goofy logo (that looks like a backward ‘6’ inside a bigger ‘6’) and decided they either saw “666” in it or that it was stolen from Homer Simpson. I’m not so sure about the former, though I doubt it. But the latter was a manipulated hoax. Note that in the June 30 edition, I linked to the story that The Simpsons TV show had seemingly predicted the submersible accident. Maybe that’s why this story got to people’s… ears. But the image was doctored. The logo was an all original dumb idea. https://hoaxeye.com/2023/07/09/homer-simpson-and-the-threads-logo/

Fake Bigfoot photo

Circulating mainly on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram was a curious photo of a huge hominid next to a barefoot man. The description said it was a photo of a Bigfoot from “Okey Mountain”, Cleburne County, Alabama USA, taken in 1883 that was found buried in a glass jar on the family estate. Nah. This is an AI hoax. Such images are abundant online these days. It’s very easy to create these kinds of images. I didn’t look too hard to see how many people thought this photo and its implausible and kooky backstory (it is ‘Oakey’ Mountain) was real because I’m already pretty depressed about human society these days. https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-bigfoot-sasquatch-ai-image-idUSL1N38T0FV

Civil War treasure trove uncovered

In a genuine find, a Kentucky resident found a stash of Civil War gold coins on his property. Hundreds of gold and silver pieces were found, and sold, by an unnamed finder who also kept the location secret. The coins have been verified as authentic and likely hidden in order to keep them out of the hands of the Confederacy. https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/kentucky-man-finds-over-700-civil-war-era-coins-buried-in-his-cornfield

Airplane passenger freakout

A big and very weird story last week was the viral video of a woman having a meltdown on an American Airlines flight ready to take off from Dallas-Fort Worth to Orlando. The woman took her bag and declared she needed to exit the flight yelling and gesturing to everyone that another passenger she encountered was “not real”. 14 million people viewed the video on TikTok and then many more million on Twitter. Then it got even weirder when all sorts of speculation and crazy ideas circulated about what happen. This was followed by many people making fake claims about what happened. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/07/08/viral-video-about-reptilian-airline-passenger-winking-actually-a-hoax/ and https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/that-person-is-not-real-plane-woman

What did she even mean and who was the unreal passenger? It’s not clear. Some people claim she was drunk, others say she had an altercation with a black man next to her over lost Airpods. Some dude made a subsequent video saying she noticed his face tattoos and Free Mason symbol on his hoodie and started asking him questions. He said he then egged her on. It’s pretty clear that if this guy was actually on the plane, we would not be still wondering what happened. Ultimately, lots of people decided the woman was in some kind of mental distress. Many suspected she saw a reptilian shapeshifter (or thought she did) and freaked out because that kind of crazy shit is going around in extremist communities. The woman was met by security when she exited and has not said anything since. Some people assume that she went missing. But, frankly, you would want to disappear after such an outburst. I don’t see anything weird about that. https://www.spieltimes.com/news/american-airlines-passenger-in-viral-video-goes-missing-is-it-true/

The plane reached its Final Destination without further incidents according to Carrot Top, just 3 hours late. https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/airline-plane-passenger-video-that-is-not-real-update/287-aeff1d62-dbb8-455e-9c5a-ee609c04756b and https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/everything-we-know-woman-on-plane-who-passenger-was-not-real-see

World record python caught in Florida

A world-record-long Burmese python was captured this week in Florida’s Big Cypress Preserve. Officials at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida measured the snake at 19 feet and 125 pounds. This sets a new world record for length. It was caught on Monday by 22-year-old Jake Waleri, who caught the animal by hand with some help from a few friends, one of whom taped the mouth shut and another uncoiled the body from Waleria as it attempted to defend itself. See the video here https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-longest-burmese-python-ever-measured-was-caught-in-florida-this-week-it-was-insane/ar-AA1dMKO0

They might be giants

Archaeologists announced the finding of giant stone hand axes in Kent, England. It was impossible to not move to the next strange square on the path and suggest that people of old had giant hands. Was this proof that giants walked the earth? Nah. The two axes are about 300,000 years old which was an interglacial period. While the purpose of the axes is not known, they were likely symbolic because they were too large (about a foot long) to be used in the customary way. While it’s easy to jump to wild conclusions, just consider all the things that we oversize today that are strictly for visual or symbolic effect. It doesn’t mean people were actually giants. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/giant-hand-axes-discovered-in-england-point-to-prehistoric-humans-strength-and-skill-180982516/

Giant humans? Check!

On the face of it, this was always a dumb idea

This is a follow-up to a story I covered on Doubtful News many many moons ago. It seemed like a disgusting, vain, intensely stupid idea to have your own blood mixed into a treatment called “vampire facials”. It was promoted by intensely ridiculous women like Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow. Turns out the practice can spread serious infections and does not do anything for your skin to boot. No surprise here. https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/07/vampire-facials-promoted-by-celebs-are-linked-to-new-hiv-cases/

Deer Covid: Thanks for sharing

Another blast from the past is the idea of deer and humans getting sick from each other. We’ve reached the point where the suspected transmission appears to have been confirmed. Americans spread COVID-19 to wild deer hundreds of times and people and spread mutated variants from deer at least three times, according to DNA sequencing of 8,830 samples collected from wild white-tailed deer across 26 states and Washington, D.C., from November 2021 to April 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-spread-from-deer/

Bird take our hostile architecture and make homes from it

Birds are so creative. They have taken freely-provided material from people, in this case, anti-nesting bird spikes in The Netherlands, Belgium and Scotland, and made functional nests from them. This was observed in European magpies and crows. It’s not the first time birds use spikey things as nesting material but the use of human materials is increasing. Observations concluded that the magpies use the anti-bird spikes for their specific purpose, to keep other birds away. Magpie’s domed nests also included barbed wire and knitting needles. https://www.naturalis.nl/en/about-us/media/press-releases/rebellious-birds-make-nests-out-of-anti-bird-pins and here is the original publication - https://www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/fileadmin/user_upload/documents-nmr/Publicaties/Deinsea/Deinsea_21/Deinsea_21_17_25_2023_Hiemstra_et_al.pdf

Surfing otter

A sea otter in Santa Cruz, California is hijacking surfer’s boards. The aggressive behavior is unusual and dangerous for surfers even though it looks really adorable. Southern sea otters are a protected species. This particular otter is tagged and identified. Her mother was noted to be too friendly with humans. The aim is to trap her to stop this interaction. She would not be re-released into the wild. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/13/1187295769/otter-santa-cruz-surfboard-surfers-california

Whew! That’s all I have room for this week. Hope you enjoyed this. If you did, please share.