Weekly Weird News for 29 April 2022

Crazy crashes and viral news

Here we are with another edition of WWN. In my regular trawling of news sites, I noticed a lot of the same types of stories that are regularly repeated as “weird” - animal rescues, lottery wins, stupid criminals. I’m going to avoid those stories unless they are really unusual because they don’t really qualify as news. Many of those stories are derived from Facebook posts or local “human interest” pieces. While they may be interesting to some, they aren’t really news and don’t have impact individually. So, I’m seeking out stuff you may not have heard before. After a time collecting and reading these types of stories, you begin to see patterns. These patterns, I think, are primarily the result of the news media catering to an ad-based economy, where clicks drive revenue. That’s not a great situation. But occasionally, it does result in some interesting anomalies that wouldn’t otherwise make the news.

To start, there is news coverage of a book that has little basis in fact. And, once again, we see the hype in headlines. If it’s pure speculation, it’s not actually news.

Does Flores man still live on?

An anthropologist has produced a new book that claims that the small human Homo floresiensis, whose 50,000-year-old remains were found on Flores island in Indonesia, could still be living. There is no evidence for this, though. It’s not reasonable to assume that the species survived after modern humans entered the scene. And it’s certainly not reasonable to think that it has survived without detection for these millennia. But the book will sell and people will believe because they want to and they can’t apply critical thinking very well. The author is pushing a cryptozoological basis for his ideas - stories about small people in the forest. As we know from every other “cryptid” species claimed today, stories are the most flimsy form of evidence. Such an extraordinary claim requires far more substance than stories.  https://www.livescience.com/homo-floresiensis-hobbit-survives

Lake shark

For two weeks, residents in Darwin, Australia wondered if the local lake contained a shark. Sighting of a shark in Lake Alexander was followed by officials closing access to the park. Fisheries staff spent long hours fishing the lake to catch whatever large animal with a vertical fin was living in the lake. They caught a large milkfish (over a meter long) and two barramundi. How the fish got there is a mystery, there was no obvious way they could have entered through the pumping system and so must have been placed there. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-21/lake-alexander-shark-actually-a-milkfish/101005400

Squirrel attack

An elderly man in Louisiana was seriously injured when a squirrel was biting his hand. The unprovoked attack resulted in the death of the squirrel and the man hospitalized. It’s possible that the squirrel was food-habituated. Never underestimate wild animals of any size or cuteness. https://www.wdsu.com/article/slidell-squirrel-attack/39837205#

Turkey menace

On the riverwalk trail in Washington, DC, wild turkeys are taking over. An expanding population of birds is evident in many places where they weren’t typically seen before. I’ll attest that they are very common even in semi-urban areas. At least one of the male turkeys in the parklands along the Anacostia River has been attacking pedestrians and bicyclers. Turkeys can cause puncture wounds from their beaks and talons. https://news.yahoo.com/wild-turkey-attack-d-c-132154060.html

Duck chase leads to grisly find

Beware of misleading headlines. A runaway duck was being chased by its owners when they discovered a container under their rented trailer. The remains of a missing murder victim were inside. A misleading headline suggests that a pet duck “found” the remains of a missing person but the duck didn’t have anything to do with it other than leading them to look in this location and notice the object. The finding of the body led to the charges against a couple (who I think is the owner of the rented trailer) for murdering the woman’s grandmother and collecting her social security checks. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/28/duck-finds-missing-remains-north-carolina-murder and https://wlos.com/news/local/couple-charged-with-1st-degree-murder-after-human-remains-found-in-candler-buncombe-county-mark-alan-barnes-angela-lucille-wamsley-nellie-sullivan

TikTok fakes

Also, beware of fake videos. TikTok can’t keep up with the thousands of videos posted to social media at any time. Many (maybe most) of those videos are faked in some way. When those videos depict misleading situations in Ukraine as war rages in the country, misinformation has dire consequences for public opinion. An investigation by a news monitoring website notes that false content about Ukraine could appear in your feed within 40 minutes of joining the network. Social media companies do not do enough to stop dangerous and misleading content, including fake live streams. Millions of people have viewed fake content and some certainly believe it’s real — just look at US society today and see how much BS has been accepted as truth. This is serious, socially disastrous stuff. https://www.bbc.com/news/60867414

Crash of tourist drones

Famous locations in Italy are deluged with tourists and some of them bring drones to get a better view. No-fly zones are established in these areas but tourists are oblivious to those rules. Several incidents have occurred where drones have crashed into historic buildings or structures such as the Palazzo Venezia, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Roman Colosseum. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/25/tourist-crashes-drone-into-rome-monument-piazza-venezia

Suspended car

A car is suspended at a weird angle after a crash in Pennsylvania. I can’t really figure out how this happened but the car landed on a “guy wire” - the stabilizing cable for a utility pole. The driver was not injured. https://www.wtae.com/article/car-hits-pole-in-duquesne-lands-on-45-degree-angle/39806360

This reminded me of a famous video of vehicles “levitating” after encountering “invisible” wires but some people assumed it was supernatural energy. https://www.cnn.com/2015/11/30/asia/china-levitating-car-accident/index.html

Whale of an accident

A Mexican tourist boat going too fast off the coast of Baja, California, hit a whale that was surfacing, sending one passenger flying and injuring others. The whale was tentatively identified as a humpback and it’s unclear if the whale suffered injuries. This type of collision is not uncommon and they are increasing. Most boats are required to stay a certain distance away from the animals but this isn’t always feasible. However, the incident is under investigation due to a video showing the boat was operating at speed in an area known for whale activity. https://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/50528/20220425/tour-boat-hits-whale-shark-coast-mexico-six-people-injured.htm

New island claimed in Ohio River

A new island has formed as a result of high water in February and March at the confluence of the Ohio and Little Miami rivers. It’s called the People’s Republic of Chicken Island by the “pirates” who have claimed it. They claim they own it, but they do not and it’s all in good fun. https://www.citybeat.com/arts/new-pirate-island-appears-in-cincinnati-at-confluence-of-ohio-and-little-miami-rivers-13004466

This is why environmental laws matter

A river in Bogota, Columba is so polluted that its surface is covered with thick toxic foam. Wind sends the foul-smelling foam wafting through the city. The pollution is a result of dumping chemicals and detergents into the river. Heavy rains caused high flows that worsened the problem. Federal laws in the US prohibit such pollution discharges. Hurray for environmental regulation - you WOULD miss it if it wasn’t there. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/28/colombia-toxic-foam-clouds-polluted-river-bogota

Cat parasite controversy

23 years ago, when pregnant, I would not change the cat litter box because of my fear of contracting Toxoplasmosis - a cat parasite brain disease. Since then, the evidence for cats transmitting the infection has been disputed. In another in a series of studies about the questionable risk, researchers think that it’s possibly related to rodents that the cats consume. However, the data is just not that good because the study was poorly controlled and many other factors can overwhelm this single environmental exposure in accounting for a psychotic episode. I wouldn’t worry about this one. https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-cat-parasite-again-linked-to-psychotic-episodes-but-it-s-complicated

COVID and deer 

The latest research suggests that the COVID virus has spread from humans to white-tailed deer on six separate occasions. Then the deer rapidly spread the virus among their populations. The variants were similar to those found in people. This was surprising since this same issue was not found in European deer and not an issue for cows, sheep, or goats. It could be that the wild deer population in N. America is dense and the interaction with people is close and frequent.  But how deer are getting infected is still a bit of a mystery. Researchers are looking to confirm if deer can transmit the virus back to humans. If so, they would be a “reservoir” for the infection. However, with the high rate of deer infection, it doesn’t seem to be much of a threat. The deer aren’t dying from it and people are passing it readily to each other, not getting it from deer. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01112-4

More viral news

The worse viral news is that climate change will make things worse for all mammals. Global warming will shift habitats and cause new interactions that can allow the evolution of new viral strains and more chance they could jump between species. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01198-w

Sand shortage

Here’s a weird thing you probably didn’t realize we are running out of — sand. Sand is necessary for construction products of many types, erosion control, glass making and more. While it’s a replenishable resource, we are using it far faster than nature can create it. Over mining of sand has serious consequences. Products are manufactured from raw materials that are either grown or mined. Time to consider recycling materials instead. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/sand-crisis-looms-world-population-surges-un-warns-2022-04-26/

Horrific find from ancient times

Mexican police discovered 150 skulls in a cave near the Guatemalan border in 2012. They suspected it was a crime scene related to violent crimes in the area. But archaeologists have concluded that the skulls were possibly 1100 years old, a result of ritual decapitation. Ritual killing was part of the political and cultural life in ancient Mesoamerica. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-skulls-not-crime-scene-human-sacrifice-ad-900 

Legal easter eggs

An administrative issue resulted in many cases in the Iowa court system being assigned to “Easter Santa Bunny” as the prosecuting attorney. The name was used as a placeholder until the cases could be reassigned. The clerk’s office thought that the information would not appear on the public websites with this name, but it did, causing some consternation. It’s not the first time that fictitious names have appeared online - sometimes the data from training exercises gets pushed to databases available to the public. https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2022/04/21/easter-bunny-listed-as-prosecutor-in-hundreds-of-iowa-court-cases/

Thanks for reading! See you next week.