Malaysian authorities mocked for attempting to extradite its transgender national from Thailand - "the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) is applying for an extradition order of cosmetics entrepreneur Muhammad Sajjad Kamarul Zaman, a transgender who is now known as Nur Sajat from Malaysia from the authorities in Thailand. Federal Police (Bukit Aman) Criminal Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Abd Jalil Hassan said the (extradition application) also involved various other agencies in Malaysia, including the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC)... two local broadcasters were recently instructed by the Film Censorship Board (LPF) to stop displaying male and female underwear in their respective home shopping segments. LPF claimed that displaying the garment, even when a model was never involved is allegedly indecent and offensive, and therefore goes against its guidelines and code of conduct... a sanitary pad maker Libresse published an advertisement using the theme “V-Kebaya”, where it launched a limited-edition line of sanitary pads using packaging that was decorated with floral pictures, inspired by the Malay Nyonya kebaya and vulva.The new theme was aimed at breaking encouraging women to feel confident about their bodies, including their private parts.Despite being forced to remove its advertisement due to uproar from a religious group, female hygiene product maker Libresse Malaysia received support on social media for its courage in starting a conversation over menstruation and vaginal health."
Pending court case will proceed if Nur Sajat extradited - "Nur Sajat is also being investigated under Section 10 of the Syariah Criminal Offences (Selangor) Enactment 1995, after several complaints were made against the entrepreneur in 2018 and 2020. Section 10 refers to the Syariah offence of insulting Islam or causing Islam to be insulted either by mocking or blaspheming the faith and its associated practices and rituals either in a written, pictorial or photographic form. It carries the penalty of fine not more than RM5,000, no more than three years' imprisonment, or both. Nur Sajat is sought by the authorities after the Shah Alam Syariah High Court issued an arrest warrant on Feb 23 for failing to attend proceedings over a charge of dressing as a woman. The entrepreneur is also required by the police to attend proceedings at the Ampang Jaya Court over a fraud case involving MyKad details"
Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why? - "Bill Gates has never been a farmer. So why did the Land Report dub him “Farmer Bill” this year? The third richest man on the planet doesn’t have a green thumb. Nor does he put in the back-breaking labor humble people do to grow our food and who get far less praise for it. That kind of hard work isn’t what made him rich. Gates’ achievement, according to the report, is that he’s largest private owner of farmland in the US. A 2018 purchase of 14,500 acres of prime eastern Washington farmland – which is traditional Yakama territory – for $171m helped him get that title. In total, Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of farmland with assets totaling more than $690m. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly the size of Hong Kong and twice the acreage of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, where I’m an enrolled member. A white man owns more farmland than my entire Native nation!... Like wealth, land ownership is becoming concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, resulting in a greater push for monocultures and more intensive industrial farming techniques to generate greater returns. One per cent of the world’s farms control 70% of the world’s farmlands, one report found. The biggest shift in recent years from small to big farms was in the US."
Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health - "As the second-richest person on Earth, Bill Gates has no reason to crave money. This is a common response to claims that Gates’ philanthropy isn’t motivated solely by the kindness of his heart. But despite these frequent characterizations of Gates “giving away” his fortune, his net worth has actually doubled in the last two decades. At the same time, strong evidence suggests that the Gates Foundation functions as a trojan horse for Western corporations, which of course have no goal greater than an increased bottom line. Consider the revolving door between the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma... the foundation has owned stakes in several drug companies. A recent investigation by The Nation revealed that the Gates Foundation currently holds corporate stocks and bonds in drug companies like Merck, GSK, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, and Sanofi... the WHO took in over $70 million from the pharmaceutical industry in 2018 (the last year for which complete data is available). Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation has provided Big Pharma with the perfect vehicle for influencing the WHO. In 2018 alone, the foundation gave $237.8 million to the WHO, making it the second-largest contributor after the U.S... When Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus became WHO Director General in 2017, Gates’ influence came under fire again. Tedros was previously on the board of two organizations Gates founded, provided seed money for, and continues to fund to this day: GAVI and the Global Fund, where Tedros was chair of the board. Today, Tedros, the first WHO director general who is not a medical doctor, can be found tweeting praise for Bill Gates’ op-eds... As the UK-based NGO Global Justice Now noted, “the Foundation’s influence is so pervasive that many actors in international development which would otherwise critique the policy and practice of the Foundation are unable to speak out independently as a result of its funding and patronage.” “The World Bank and the IMF look like midgets in front of the Gates Foundation, in terms of power and influence,” Dr. Vandana Shiva remarked... The Gates Foundation has also directed its wealth toward influencing news coverage of global health policy – and to perhaps suppress criticism of its more unsavory activities. The foundation has donated millions to major media outlets, including NPR, PBS, ABC, BBC, Al Jazeera, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, Univision, and The Guardian... The Gates Foundation has helped engineer global health policy for poor countries for over 20 years, working mainly in Africa and South Asia. Its close relationship with the drug industry seems to have colored that work... The foundation appears to see the Global South as both a dumping ground for drugs deemed too unsafe for the developed world and a testing ground for drugs not yet determined to be safe enough for the developed world. The so-called “flagship of Bill Gates’ / WHO African vaccine program” is the diphtheria tetanus pertussis (DTP) vaccine. It is a bundle of three immunization shots given to virtually every child on the African continent, but not currently administered in the U.S. or in most other developed nations. As far back as 1977, a study published by British medical professionals in The Lancet established that the risks of the whole-cell pertussis jab (used in the DTP vaccine) are greater than the risks associated with contracting wild pertussis. After mounting evidence linking the drug to brain damage, seizures, and even death, the U.S. and other Western countries phased it out in the 1990s and replaced it with a safer version (called DTaP) that did not contain the whole pertussis cell. However, African nations are still being financially incentivized to continue... There is perhaps no more famous element of the Gates Foundation’s work than its polio eradication effort. Yet once again, the polio drugs the Western world uses and the drugs given to the Global South are dramatically different. The foundation has spent more than $1 billion distributing an oral polio vaccine (OPV) that contains a live polio virus to African and Asian countries. This live virus can replicate inside a child’s intestine and spread in places with poor sanitation and plumbing. That means people can contract the virus from the vaccine... professor of microbiology Raul Andino said, “It’s actually an interesting conundrum. The very tool you are using for polio eradication is causing the problem.”... Oxford’s Clinical Infectious Diseases Periodical contended that polio outbreaks in China, Egypt, Haiti, and Madagascar were also caused by the OPV, declaring that “the time is coming when the only cause of polio is likely to be the vaccine used to prevent it.”... the OPV is not only giving kids polio, but also “seems to be ineffective in stopping polio transmission” to begin with. As the British Medical Journal reported in 2012, “the most recent mass polio vaccination programs [in India], fueled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, resulted in increased cases [of polio].”... 70 Indian feminist groups and scholars signed a statement protesting the regulatory approval of Depo-Provera, citing side effects like excessive bone density loss, weight gain, excessive bleeding, and depression... “there are risks that the women are not given enough information to make an informed choice of contraceptive method.” Despite widespread domestic opposition and the mounting evidence of negative side effects, the Gates Foundation continues working with USAID to distribute drugs like Depo-Provera... a South African newspaper once declared, “We are the guinea pigs for the drug makers.”... According to Global Justice Now, the foundation’s “heavy focus on developing new vaccines… detracts from other, more vital health priorities such as building resilient health systems.” As Dr. David Legge explains, Gates “has got a mechanistic view of global health, in terms of looking for silver bullets. All of the things he supports are largely framed as silver bullets … That means that major issues that have been identified in the World Health Assembly are not being addressed, including in particular the social determinants of health, and the development of health systems.”... the Gates Foundation actually influences African governments to change laws to accommodate the agriculture industry"
Bill Gates held wild naked pool parties with strippers: Biography | Toronto Sun - "That was even after he married wife Melinda, according to a biography of the Microsoft founder.James Wallace wrote in his 1997 biography on the tech mogul, Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace, that his hormone-charged hijinks were hidden by newspapers like The New York Times. [“The Times] didn’t report on the wild bachelor parties that Microsoft’s boyish chairman would throw in his Seattle home, for which Gates would visit one of Seattle’s all-nude nightclubs and hire dancers to come to his home and swim naked with his friends in his indoor pool,” Wallace wrote. During his time at Harvard, Gates was also allegedly a frequent flier in Boston’s once notorious red-light district, the Combat Zone. As Gates and his wife head to divorce court after 27 years of marriage, more alleged details are emerging about the squeaky clean Gates. Among those details are his alleged friendship with disgraced sex trafficker billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his arrangement with his wife for one weekend per year with former girlfriend Ann Winblad. “He continued to play the field for a while, especially when he was out of town on business, when he would frequently hit on female journalists who covered Microsoft and the company industry"... “His womanizing was well known, although not well reported” and his wife “was well aware of Gates’s womanizing.”And Gates was reluctant to commit causing the pair to break up for a year.“When they got back together again in 1992, however, the relationship grew closer and stronger”"
Bill Gates 'disappeared from work in a Porsche to meet women, and forced staff to sign NDAs' - "Bill Gates would drive to work at Microsoft in his Mercedes before driving off in a golden brown Porsche that an assistant brought for him, in what staff believed was his system for meeting women, it has been claimed... 'I knew there were many offsite meetings that were not on his calendar.'... Two sources told the magazine that someone in Melinda's circle worked with a private investigator leading up to divorce filing, and the PI's findings will form part of the case... Gates, a father of three, pursued women who worked for him a few times when he was the chairman of Microsoft.He once emailed an employee to ask her out to dinner, and another time told a woman who worked for the Gates Foundation that he wanted to take her out to dinner while they were on a business trip to New York. In 2019, Microsoft's board of directors opened an investigation into his behavior after it was notified about his advances on an employee in 2000, and Gates stepped down from the board the following year, after the company hired a law firm to look into the allegation... French Gates hired divorce lawyers in 2019 after meetings that Gates had with Jeffrey Epstein became public... French Gates was also said to be unhappy with an investigation into Bill Gates' money manager Michael Larson, in 2018, which ended with the woman involved receiving a payoff."
"Bill Gates's longtime money manager 'rated the looks of female colleagues, showed nude photos of women in the office, bullied staff and made a racist remark to one employee'"
'WELL HE'S DEAD': Bill Gates pooh poohs questions about Epstein | Toronto Sun
Sabrina Maddeaux: How billionaires like Bill Gates use taxpayer-subsidized charity to influence politics - "Prior to two weeks ago, had aliens landed on Earth, they may have assumed Bill Gates was not just our Supreme Leader, but also a modern-day saint. Not only do major newspapers speak his name in the same breath as Mother Teresa, touting him as one of the most generous people on the planet, he controls large portions of the world’s essential energy, education, and healthcare sectors. Had the U.S. withdrawn from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Gateses would’ve become the agency’s top funders... today’s Big Billionaires are the new Big Government, threatening democracy and individual liberty with their overreach... . Studies show most charitable giving doesn’t target the neediest; less than one-third of donations are given to help the disadvantaged. Actually, the wealthier a donor is, the less likely they are to donate to those in need. Most funding goes to education, health, and religion... large donors may worsen social inequities by giving to areas where wealth is already concentrated, whether that be to prestigious schools or medical research that targets ailments suffered by the upper classes. So they’re not perfect, but surely private foundations are more efficient than the government? Increasingly, the answer is no. There’s growing concern about private foundations that hoard wealth and keeping massive reserves rather than spending it. In an exceptional case, WE Charity made headlines for sitting on $40 million worth of real estate. While billionaires’ public promises to give away all their money may seem wonderful, this often actually means creating private foundations — or even limited liability companies (LLC) — in which to store said wealth. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to donate 99 per cent of their Facebook fortune, currently valued at around $45 billion. However, their money will actually go to the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, which isn’t a charity. It’s a LLC, which can invest in for-profit companies, make political donations, and isn’t subject to the rules and oversight of a charitable foundation. There are zero transparency requirements. The foundation, and its power, can be passed on to their children. As for supporting a wider variety of worldviews, mega donors may be handing over more money, but they’re giving it to a smaller cohort of causes. Since Canada changed its tax laws in 1996 to incentivize high-worth donations over ordinary donations (generally considered to be $250 or less), small and rural nonprofits felt the squeeze. Urban, institutional entities see the bulk of funds. The reality is fewer people are engaging in philanthropy, resulting in a lack of diversity. Stats Can reports a small group of donors is responsible for an increasing overall amount of donations, a trend that began after the Great Recession in 2010 as billionaires’ fortunes soared. More worryingly, donor-advised funds, which shield the names of donors from the public and have been used to “donate” to hate orgs in the U.S. and Canada, are the fastest growing method of charitable donations eligible for tax benefits... So if mega donors don’t effectively combat inequality, aren’t more efficient than the government, and don’t support a wider spectrum of worldviews, why should taxpayers pay (via tax incentives) for billionaires to accumulate power? The bill isn’t cheap. Canadian taxpayers will subsidize charitable donations at an estimated rate of $4.2 billion this year. For American taxpayers the bill is $50 billion... If we don’t want to simply replace Big Government with Big Billionaires, we must rethink our system of tax incentives, demand more transparency from donors and institutions alike, and erect reasonable barriers to the amount of influence funders can have over essential infrastructure. Philanthropy should not be used by billionaires as a pathway to super citizenship."
Of course, to many Americans, it is an article of faith that the private sector is always better than the public
Food Deserts and the Causes of Nutritional Inequality - "We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy eat more healthfully than the poor in the United States. Exploiting supermarket entry and household moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments contribute meaningfully to nutritional inequality. We then estimate a structural model of grocery demand, using a new instrument exploiting the combination of grocery retail chains’ differing presence across geographic markets with their differing comparative advantages across product groups. Counterfactual simulations show that exposing low-income households to the same products and prices available to high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only about 10%, while the remaining 90% is driven by differences in demand. These findings counter the argument that policies to increase the supply of healthy groceries could play an important role in reducing nutritional inequality."
Victim blaming! Time to cancel them
On the myth of food deserts being due to evil companies not giving poor people nutritious and fresh food
Thousands of Brazilian Prisoners Escape After Xmas Leave - "Over 2,400 Brazilian prisoners escaped after being given leave to return home over the Christmas and New Year's Eve period, in another indictment of Brazil’s malfunctioning penal system.In total, 47,531 prisoners were granted a temporary release over the holidays, 5.1 percent of whom -- 2,416 -- did not return. In 2011, almost exactly the same proportionabsconded... The temporary releases are granted as a reward for good behavior for prisoners housed in semi-open prisons who have served at least one sixth of their sentence, for first-time offenders, or a quarter, for repeat offenders.Prisoners are able to claim up to five releases a year to spend time with their family, usually for Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Children Day, Christmas and one other day of their choice... This could be curbed by the increased use of electronic tagging devices -- a nascent technology in the Brazilian penal system."
This girl escaped a kidnapping attempt and helped catch the suspect by using a trick she saw on "Law and Order: SVU" - "Alyssa struggled, but managed to kick at his legs which caused him to fall to the ground... "I was able to get the slime onto his upper arm and a little bit on his lower arm, I knew that might be better evidence if the cops do find him.""
Microsoft is making it easier for employers across the world to spy on staff - "Two quietly announced Microsoft 365 updates have huge implications for employees of many organizations – and will go a long way to preventing leaks of damaging material, even in cases of serious criminal conduct.Microsoft 365 – formerly Microsoft Office – is depended upon by private and public sector organizations of every ilk and size. In the US alone, upwards of 730,000 businesses utilize Excel, Outlook, Teams, Word, and the like on a daily basis. Now new “insider risk management” tools are set to radically overhaul how these resources work, although the average employee may be none the wiser. Take for instance “increased visibility on browsers,” set to come into force in February next year. This will grant organizations intimate insight into precisely what staffers are up to on the Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome web browsers, enhancing their ability “to detect and act on browser exfiltration signals,” including “files copied to personal cloud storage, files printed to local or network devices, files transferred or copied to a network share [and] files copied to USB devices.” Further enhancing these intrusive spying capabilities, as of April 2022, Microsoft will also deploy machine-learning robots into all of its devices to monitor and report “risky” actions taken by employees, with dedicated alerts for each one detected, and daily analytics reports, with “insights and recommendations for potentially risky activities by your users.” However, this update goes even further than surveilling potentially damaging activities by staff."
Prince George's County reveals new plan to catch loose zebras - "Prince George's County officials have revealed a new plan that they hope will lead to capturing two zebras that have been on the loose since the beginning of September.Three zebras escaped from a farm in Upper Marlboro and the group has been roaming around the area ever since... According to a press release from Maryland's Department of the Environment, the new plan involves using more zebras... Officials say the owner and caretaker have taken two zebras from the herd and are keeping them in an enclosure in the center of a corral. The hope is that by utilizing food and the other zebras, the loose zebras will return to the corral and the herd."
Beverly Hills City Council Unanimously Backs Recall of Soros-backed DA George Gascón - "The Beverly Hills City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to support recall efforts aimed at Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, whose “criminal justice reform” efforts coincide with a violent crime wave... Several high-end Beverly Hills retailers were targeted late last year in “mass looting” events, similar to those in San Francisco and Chicago.Others who have backed the recall include Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who has often clashed with left-wing Democrats in the area over their lenient policies toward crime, drugs, and homelessness. Last month, Gascón held a celebratory press conference to tout his achievements as district attorney, including reducing prison sentences for accused murderers and other violent criminals — and was met with a barrage of questions from reporters about the ongoing violent crime wave. Gascón blamed the recent murder of Jaqueline Avant, a prominent philanthropist in the African-American community and the wife of music legend Clarence Avant, on the “system” that had allowed the alleged murderer “to be cycled in and out of prison with little or no meaning intervention to be able to gain access to an AR-15 military-style weapon.”"
Relationships between intuitive eating and health indicators: literature review - "From the clinical studies, we conclude that the implementation of intuitive eating results in weight maintenance but perhaps not weight loss, improved psychological health, possibly improved physical health indicators other than BMI (e.g. blood pressure; cholesterol levels) and dietary intake and/or eating behaviours, but probably not higher levels of physical activity... Extant research demonstrates substantial and consistent associations between intuitive eating and both lower BMI and better psychological health.""
This suggests that calorie counting etc leads to worse outcomes. There were 8 RCTs so causation is unlikely to run the other way
Calorie Postings Don’t Change Habits, Study Finds - The New York Times - "people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008."
Why Aussies Can't Pay At The Pump For Petrol - "for the most part, Aussies are still expected to fill up their tanks and then mosey on in-store to pay with a real, breathing, living clerk. And Australians have just about had enough of it...
"It's the 'We want people in store to buy shit' bit which applies. The profit margin on fuel is minimal. They bargain on people making impulse buys while they go to pay for fuel. That $7 coke-and-chocolate combo or the sneaky sausage roll, or the packet of smokes — they all add to the bottom line. It's not people planning to buy stuff. It's impulse buying, which is a proven technique.""
Andy MacKenzie 💙 on Twitter - "Confusing trip to the petrol station: @BP_plc pleads “download our app!” while stating “no mobile phones”. Come on, make up your mind."
BP and Shell stations sue rival for selling petrol too cheaply - "the companies that own the Wisconsin-based petrol stations - one a BP and the other a Shell - want NZ$116,420 in damages from a nearby Woodman's outlet, local news station WISN reported. Woodman's is a regional supermarket franchise that also sells petrol. The documents allege Woodman's is underpricing its petrol and "illegally" outpricing the BP and Shell stations. The three outlets are all based in the city of Waukesha."
Man who used commemorative coin to pay for petrol wins payout - "A commemorative coin collector who was arrested after attempting to pay for his fuel at a petrol station with a £100 coin, insisting it was legal tender, has been awarded a £5,000 compensation payout. Brett Chamberlain, 54, a carpenter and father-of-four, had attempted to pay for £60 of diesel at a Tesco Extra filling station in Exeter in July 2020 using a silver coin commemorating London’s Trafalgar Square, only 45,000 of which were issued by the Royal Mint when it was released in 2016. His offer was rejected by staff, leading to a row in which Mr Chamberlain, from Tiverton in Devon, argued that the special edition memento was valid under the 1971 Coinage Act. The police were called and the tradesman was arrested on suspicion of “making off without payment” and interviewed by officers at Exeter Police Station for four hours before being released, subsequently receiving a letter saying he would not be charged. Not satisfied, Mr Chamberlain commenced legal action, complaining that he had not received “an adequate apology or an assurance the incident would be removed from the police national computer”... “They wanted to prosecute me for using Royal Mint coins... “Morrisons, Asda and Sainsbury’s have taken them but Tesco are always difficult,” he added. Tesco has said it will not accept commemorative coins as it is not considered to be circulating legal tender... Under UK law, a person cannot be sued over a debt if they have attempted to complete the transaction in question using legal tender. All Royal Mint coins would be considered as such in the eyes of a court. However, a shop or bank is not obliged to accept cash payments in any currency larger than a £50 note.Equally, they do not have to accept payments in 1p and 2p coins for anything that costs more than 20p, although they might choose to do so at their own discretion - and had infinite reserves of patience"
Mobile phones and petrol stations - "Every month or so, I get an earnest email warning me of the hazards of using my mobile phone on the forecourt of a petrol station. Usually, the email mentions the Shell Oil Company as its source, and quotes the same three incidents of petrol fires while refuelling. The first one has the mobile phone sitting on the boot - the phone rings, generating an instant ball of fire. The second episode has a person speaking on the phone, leading to nasty facial burns. The third occurrence has the phone in the pocket suddenly ring, causing unfortunateß burns to the groin and thigh. This email has been traced back to a hoax email that landed in the inbox of a Shell employee in Jamaica . He rebroadcast it, but with the Shell Company signature now on the email - and this accidental non-approved signature gave the hoax more credibility. So, has a mobile phone ever set off a petrol station fire? No, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, who looked at 243 petrol station fires worldwide, happening in the 11 years between 1993 and 2004. And no, according to the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, and no, according the Robert Renkes, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, who said, “We have not found a cell phone responsible for any fire since the beginning of mankind” . And finally no, according to the popular Mythbusters TV show, which tried mightily to make a mobile phone explode a chamber full of petrol vapour, and failed. It is theoretically possible to set off a petrol fire with a phone. The amount of energy needed for a spark to ignite petrol vapour is 0.2 mJ, which is roughly one five-millionth of the energy stored in a fully-charged phone battery. The difficulty is that the phone is not designed to make sparks. The lithium battery could explode while charging if its internal regulator circuit was very faulty. But you don't normally simultaneously charge and talk on your mobile phone while refuelling your car. The internal electronics of the phone could fail and make a spark - but the spark would be too small. And why worry about the phone battery when you have batteries in your iPod, CD player, mini-torch, and yes, don't forget the big 15 kg car battery that powers the electrics of your car? Well, what about the electric field put out by your phone? Yes, the electric field has been measured at 2-5 volts/meter, and has been known to interfere with heart monitors and infant incubators in hospitals, and various electronic equipment in planes. But the electric field from a mobile phone has never been known to set off a fire in a petrol station. And consider that in the UK , some 200 Shell petrol stations have mobile phone towers in the tall petrol price indicators, which stand right there on the forecourt, a few metres from the petrol pumps. The towers put out a lot more grunt than your small mobile phone. So what did set off those 243 petrol station fires? Most of the time, static electricity was the culprit... The phone companies post warnings about using phones in petrol stations for two reasons. First, mobile phones are not designed with “Intrinsic Safety” to make them able to operate safely in truly hazardous inflammable vapour situations, and second, fear of legal liability, despite all the evidence showing that mobile phones don't cause fires in petrol stations."
Ryan Reynolds Brings Rick Moranis Out of Retirement for Mint Mobile Commercial - "Once Reynolds welcomes Moranis into the frame for the Mint commercial, he reveals that he really doesn't have anything for him to say. Moranis simply shrugs and gives the camera one of his patented bewildered looks and walks away."
Tombstone goes viral after LOL written on Lawrence Wainwright headstone - "Lawrence Wainwright died over ten years earlier, but his gravestone has gone viral this week for all the wrong reasons after Cain Unable noticed “LOL” had been written on there too. Although LOL used to mean ‘lots of love’, it has a very different meaning today."
Scientists Find Sharks Living Inside Active Underwater Volcano - "When scientists started studying the murky orange waters around the Solomon Islands’ submerged Kavachi volcano, the last thing they expected to see was schooling sharks... Kavachi is active, and eruptions are common. But the sharks are not scared off by the underwater explosions or submarine boiling lava. It is theorized this may be due to special pores near their snouts, called ampullae of Lorenzini, which scientists believe allow them to sense changes in Earth’s magnetic field. Sharks use the information for homing and migration, and may also use them to avoid dangerous situations."
The Predator That Makes Great White Sharks Flee in Fear - "The great white shark—a fast, powerful, 16-foot-long torpedo that’s armed to the teeth with teeth—has little to fear except fear itself. But also: killer whales... Killer whales have a friendlier image than great white sharks. (Perhaps because of their respective portrayals in movies: Jaws 2 even begins with the beached carcass of a half-eaten orca.) But orcas are “potentially the more dangerous predator,” says Toby Daly-Engel, a shark expert at the Florida Institute of Technology. “They have a lot of social behaviors that sharks do not, which allows them to hunt effectively in groups, communicate among themselves, and teach their young.” Combining both brains and brawn, orcas have been known to kill sharks in surprisingly complicated ways. Some will drive their prey to the surface and then karate chop them with overhead tail swipes. Others seem to have worked out that they can hold sharks upside-down to induce a paralytic state called tonic immobility. Orcas can kill the fastest species (makos) and the largest (whale sharks). And when they encounter great whites, a few recorded cases suggest that these encounters end very badly for the sharks. In October 1997, fishing vessels near Southeast Farallon Island observed a young white shark interrupting a pair of orcas that were eating a sea lion. One of the whales rammed and killed the shark, and the duo proceeded to eat its liver. More recently, after orcas passed by a South African beach, five great-white carcasses washed ashore. All were, suspiciously, missing their liver. A great white’s liver can account for a quarter of its body weight, and is even richer in fats and oils than whale blubber. It’s “one of the densest sources of calories you can find in the ocean,” Jorgensen says. “The orcas know their business, and they know where that organ lies.” Rather than ripping their prey apart, it seems that orcas can extract livers with surprising finesse, despite lacking arms and hands. No one has observed their technique, but the wounds on otherwise intact carcasses suggest that they bite their victims near their pectoral fins and then squeeze the liver out through the wounds. “It’s like squeezing toothpaste”... killer whales don’t have to kill many white sharks to radically change their whereabouts. In 2009, for example, orcas passed by Southeast Farallon for less than three hours, but the great whites stayed away for the rest of the year. For the elephant seals, the island became a predator-free zone. “The two predators faced off, and the winners were the seals”"
Man who lost leg in great white shark attack wins 'stupid' six-year legal battle to keep its tooth - "A surfer who had his leg bitten off by a monster six-metre shark has finally won a 'stupid' six year legal battle allowing him to keep the man-eater's tooth. Chris Blowes, now 32, was viciously attacked by the 'massive' great white at Port Lincoln's Fishery Bay in South Australia on Anzac Day, 2015... Mr Blowes asked to keep the shark's tooth as a souvenir in the wake of the near-fatal incident, but was not allowed due to the strict laws around protected species... 'I'm just happy to have it back – a tooth for a leg, surely that's a fair swap.'... Despite the horrifying experience, Mr Blowes is still able to surf with a prosthetic leg"
VIDEO: Lawsuit Filed After Alleged 'Baby Shark Torture' in Oklahoma Jail - "“In October of 2020, two former Oklahoma County detention officers and their supervisor were charged with four counts of cruelty to prisoners, corporal punishment to an inmate, and conspiracy”... former detention officers Christian Miles and Gregory Butler were accused of taking approximately five inmates from their cells, handcuffing them with their arms behind their backs inside an attorney booth, and forcing them to stand. “In some cases, the inmates were forced to listen to ‘Baby Shark’ for up to four hours at a time”"
Woman is shocked to see photo of her and her boyfriend on Chinese TV show but with her head edited out - "A Dutch influencer was left speechless when she discovered that a Chinese drama used a picture of her and her boyfriend that had her face replaced with the show’s lead actress’ face. Rianne Meijer, a social media influencer with over 102,000 followers on TikTok and more than 1.5 million followers on Instagram, shared the hilarious discovery in a viral TikTok"