Weekly Weird News for 3 June 2022

Oh, lots of great stuff this week. I did have to sort through some less great stuff in order to keep this to a comfortable reading length. I hope you enjoy my strange dozen choices. If you like this post and haven’t subscribed, please click the button. There’s no spam, no fee, no address selling, and you won’t miss an issue. It’s all good. Thanks for reading.

Death by alligator

A man retrieving “disc golf” frisbees from a Florida lake was killed in an alligator attack. The typical response to this story was that it was dumb of the man to go into the water, in early morning, during alligator mating season. Signage announces alligators are present in the water. There were many jokes in the comments to this story about stupid “Florida man” and the hideous “Darwin Awards”. But the story isn’t laughable. The man was homeless and made a living selling the pricey discs (which are not just $1 frisbees). He had been warned not to do this but it may have been his main means of getting by. Alligators are typically afraid of people. Associating people with food has proved to be disastrous for a number of species. The man was found on the bank missing an arm. An alligator that may have been responsible for the death was euthanized by officials. As this NYT article notes, maybe the disc golf hole should be relocated. Alligator-related injuries in humans in Florida are fairly common. But deaths are not very common, perhaps one every two years on average. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/us/alligator-kills-florida-man-retrieving-frisbees-in-lake-officials-say.html

Lock your doggie doors

A California coyote was spotted via security cam, climbing over a very high wall and casually entering a home through the dog door. Shortly after, it left the same way, likely after noting that indoors was a bad idea; there were other dogs in the house. It exited the door and popped back up over the wall. Wiley, indeed. https://abc7.com/woodland-hills-prowling-coyote-inside-home-caught-on-video/11907815/

The walls are falling

A large rockfall occurred on Lake Powell (Utah) on Memorial Day weekend. The event was captured by boaters who fled the wave it triggered. No one was hurt. Rock falls are natural erosional events that aren’t uncommon. This one was particularly large. A state geologist noted that the change in lake levels could contribute to accelerating the frequency of rock falls. Gravity always wins. https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/massive-lake-powell-rock-slide-caught-on-camera and https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/expert-explains-lake-powell-cliff-crumbling-into-water

Rain gages sabotaged

A disgruntled farmer and other conspiracists attempted to tamper with federal rain gauges in order to fool insurance programs that compensate farmers for drought. They covered the devices or otherwise disabled at least 8 devices in Colorado and Kansas for several years. That’s a felony. The incidents caused gaps in data for those places marring a consistent official record. https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/colorado-farmer-pie-tins-rain-gauges-federal-felony/73-1638f8a4-967a-4f12-af11-d6903e8b5d0d

Starbuck Island

This story combines the hazardous habit of looking for anomalies on Google earth with the pointless past time of trying to prove UFOs have landed. Someone claims to have discovered a UFO on a Pacific Island. As these things always turn out, it’s not a UFO and it’s not mysterious. The real story is more interesting, though, as the structure is the remains of guano (bird* excrement) mining. https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/google-earth-user-claims-to-discover-crashed-ufo-on-uninhabited-island-in-the-middle-of-the-pacific-ocean/ar-AAXPYLa
*Edit: I originally put “bat” but that was an incorrect assumption on my part. The Guano Act was related to collected excrement from sea birds and bats but, for this island, only birds would be applicable.

Serious gamers

Online gamers have released classified information online, for the THIRD time in the same game’s forums. Players of the tank video game War Thunder have repeatedly leaked classified military documents. Previously, details of British and French machines were leaked. Now, China’s schematics were posted online as part of the game content. The content gets removed and the users banned but the material still circulates. https://kotaku.com/war-thunder-tank-classified-military-document-leak-chin-1849005359

MerMay

May was Mermaid months or MerMay. It began as a challenge to draw a mermaid every day in May. It became very popular. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/30/1100885488/mermay-drawing-mermaids-challenge 

In a related story, the 2022 Mermaid Challenge at Tinside Lido in Plymouth, U.K. resulted in 388 people dressing up as mermaids, a new world record. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-61673092

Toes for sale

A viral fake story about people in Zimbabwe selling their toes for money is causing a panic among people who think it’s true. There are several real incidents of body parts being sold (or “stolen”) to be used in magic-based medicine (“witchcraft”) or luck charms. Even though the prices for toes were exaggerated, the prank succumbed to Poe’s law - where satire or parody is portrayed in an unclear way that is close to reality, that some people accept it as true. Unfortunately, people are even staging an appearance of missing toes to get social media hits. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61650455

If you can’t beat em, accuse them of child abuse

If you thought the days of the Satanic Panic were behind us, how very very mistaken you are. Allegations of ritualistic child sexual abuse and cannibalism have surfaced in a Utah county political race. The persons involved in the accusations against the current Attorney are not credible and neither are the ludicrous claims, yet they are amplified by the internet and a local sheriff who says he has confirmed the decades-old abuse. Sure he has. https://www.abc4.com/news/utah-county-attorney-calls-for-utah-county-sheriff-to-resign-amid-fund-misuse/

Related note: Exorcism requests are way up again. Because of course they are. https://www.insider.com/catholic-exorcists-complain-too-many-possessed-people-to-handle-2022-5 

Bumblebee fish

There are very good reasons why legal arguments should never be compared to scientific arguments. To illustrate - it’s not a scientific argument to say that hundreds of witnesses who claimed to see Bigfoot means that Bigfoot actually exists and should be protected. The process of establishing evidence in science and in a court of law is entirely different. Therefore, each process applied to the other field results in nonsensical outcomes. An extreme example appeared this week. In California, a very liberal interpretation of the state’s Endangered Species Act has resulted in bumblebees grouped into the category of fish. The precedent of unfishlike animals in this category was previously set by a land snail. The problem was the poor writing of the original law that limited protection to “birds, mammals, fish, amphibia or reptiles". The dire situation for farmers facing pollination issues due to lack of bees prompted the strange decision. So, under the law, you can creatively manage to squeeze a fish label onto bees. https://lawandcrime.com/animals/unanimous-three-judge-panel-rules-bees-are-fish-we-are-tasked-with-liberally-construing-the-california-endangered-species-act/

Researchers trained dogs to detect Covid-positive people

In a study released this week, researchers trained 5 dogs to detect Covid in human samples in a blinded study. The result seems to suggest that dogs can sniff out the infection sooner and just as well, if not better, than PCR tests. Dogs have a sensitive scent organ that only requires a few molecules of volatile organic compounds for detection. Humans would not be able to notice the particular odor of Covid. It’s not yet clear, though, what scent they are picking up. Dogs have also had documented success in detecting cancer and oncoming seizures. But don’t look for dogs to be the next best Covid test. Training dogs to do this is difficult. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/dogs-detect-covid-accuracy-rcna31438

Suspended car

This is the second time I’ve seen this happen this year. A car is suspended by the guy wires after an accident. The first time was in Pennsylvania in April. This current incident is in Rochester, NY. Is this a common thing? https://www.whec.com/rochester-new-york-news/emerson-street-car-suspended-in-air-power-lines/6486612/