Oddities spotted in the news

[Norgarth]

When a Mantis Shrimp Fights a Disco Clam, it meets it's match

[Bob Schroeck]

U.S. Army Worries Humanity is Biased Against Deadly Cyborg Soldiers Because of Movies Like Terminator

[DHBirr]

U.S. Army Worries Humanity is Biased Against Deadly Cyborg Soldiers Because of Movies Like Terminator

Anti-silicon bigot!

More seriously, I noticed that the cyborg designs the article described would involve some serious surgery — replacing one or both eyes? ... and when the soldier finishes his/her enlistment, more surgery to take the stuff out.  (Can they give a guy back his/her old eyes?)  Oh, who am I kidding?  If you're assigned to be a cyborg, it'll be a "for the rest of your life" thing, and as with Soviet intelligence, "the only way out is through the chimney of the crematorium."

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I'm a very forgiving person ... on Lord Vader's terms.  "Apology accepted, Captain."

[classicdrogn]

I think we've got quite a bit more development to do before cybereyes that are even as good as the mk.1 standard are a matter to be concerned with. Just reliably powering them is apt to be a pain - I mean, it would suck if the batteries in your eyes stopped holding a charge, or burst and leaked caustic chemicals from using a cheap third-party adapter.

[Bob Schroeck]

Whether or not it's happening soon really isn't the issue -- the point is that the American military is so intently planning on doing this to soldiers when it is possible that they are also working on how to undermine or avert now the potential backlash they anticipate from religious and pop culture sources so as not to have to be forced to stop doing so.

[DHBirr]

OK, what follows isn't exactly news in the usual sense, but....
I receive an emailed newsletter from the Tricare Health System for retired servicemembers.
The one for 18 December 2019 read:

Here's the latest health news:
Summer Safety Rx Tips.
Summer is here. Use these tips to keep you and your medication safe during the hot summer months.

Ummmm, is Tricare now publishing its newsletter from the Southern Hemisphere?

[Bob Schroeck]

Wakanda removed from official US "Free Trade" list

[robkelk]

We've all heard "beer is liquid bread". One brewery decided to give that a try.

Gatineau brewer turning loaves into lager to help food banks

The beer uses bread that's so stale that even the local food bank can't give it away, but hasn't gone bad. $1 per bottle is donated to that local food bank.

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Banksy does a Nativity scene

If you don't know what to expect from hearing the name "Banksy", let's just mention the name of the artwork: Scar of Bethlehem

[robkelk]

A couple of weeks old: M.I.T. demonstrates electroaerodynamic propulsion - no propeller, turbine, or other moving parts

How long did it take Doug Sangnoir to figure out how to do the same thing, again?

[Bob Schroeck]

He hasn't, yet... he's still using a turbine...

[Star Ranger4]

We've all heard "beer is liquid bread". One brewery decided to give that a try.

Gatineau brewer turning loaves into lager to help food banks

The beer uses bread that's so stale that even the local food bank can't give it away, but hasn't gone bad. $1 per bottle is donated to that local food bank.

If anything, they are reviving lost techniques here.  That was what Egyptians did waaaaaaaay back when.

[robkelk]

Come From Away, the Christmas re-run

(The title "All This, and Rabbit Stew" was already taken.)

[DHBirr]

Unidentified objects flying "search patterns" at night over the Southwest....  Well, they are identified.  As drones.  Big drones.  In "swarms" of approximately seventeen to thirty.  But if anybody in the local, state, or federal government knows who sent them, or precisely why, they're not saying.

In the meantime, [a commercial photographer, himself a drone pilot, named] Moss urges residents not to shoot down the drones, as they are highly flammable.
"It becomes a self-generating fire that burns until it burns itself out," he told The [Denver] Post. "If you shoot a drone down over your house and it lands on your house, you might not have a house in 45 minutes."

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Considering that one dictionary definition of "carry on" is to "behave or speak in a foolish, excited, or improper manner," the designers of that famous poster, "Keep Calm and Carry On," need to make up their flippin' minds!

[robkelk]

This Toronto landlord has only raised rent by $100 — since the 1980s

He's charging $1,700/month for the same amount of space that other landlords in the same neighbourhood are charging - and getting - $4,800/month in one of the most expensive rental markets in Canada. EDIT: And he just got a heritage designation applied to his buildings - at his own request.

"Grecia and I believe in what [former U.S. president Barack] Obama called tethered capitalism — you have to make enough to live, and make something, but you don't have to go for maximum; don't go for the jugular."

[robkelk]

Thinking outside the box(ers)

[robkelk]

Live in Canada? Like puzzles? Want a government job? Get out of this escape room.

So far, one person's done it... and has been approached by recruiters.

[DHBirr]

Those drones in Colorado are still unidentified.  The FBI and Air Force are getting antsy about it, because part of the area where the drones maneuver seems suspiciously close to a high-security restricted zone.

“The group is not going to discuss the details of its inner workings, and is not planning to provide incremental updates on its activities,” Ian Gregor, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson based in Los Angeles, told The Daily Beast. “But we will inform the public about any important developments.”
The FAA has reached out to UAS test sites, drone companies, and companies that have authorization to operate drones in the area, “but we have not been able to determine that any of these operators were the source of the reported drone flights,” an FAA statement read.
...Some of the counties where drones have been spotted do butt up against F.E. Warren Air Force Base in neighboring Wyoming. There, airmen at the base man and protect around 200 underground silos housing Minuteman nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), each packing enough firepower to wipe out several cities.
It’s disturbing enough to see formations of glowing drones maneuvering in a grid pattern over sparsely populated expanses of land. It’s more disturbing still to see them lingering near nuclear-missile silos.

[robkelk]

Got some old undeveloped film? (Not the new stuff that you use, Dartz; older rolls that have been sitting on a shelf for a few decades.) These folks might be able to develop it.

The stories customers tell him tend to be similar: a family member died, then they go through their belongings and old rolls of undeveloped film are discovered.

Sometimes, the photos are "a bit naughty" or sexually explicit, but Miller said, for the most part, family members are excited to see them and rarely ask for those to be withheld in their final package of images. He noted the company is intensely private the images they process, so they can't accidentally be leaked.

Because regular film processing labs, which are increasingly rare, don't always have the right chemicals or materials to process those rolls of undeveloped film, this business 70 kilometres east of Regina, fills that niche.

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Mathematician crunches the numbers to find most efficient way to board a plane

[Star Ranger4]

Those drones in Colorado are still unidentified.  The FBI and Air Force are getting antsy about it, because part of the area where the drones maneuver seems suspiciously close to a high-security restricted zone.

...

...


Which in its own way ties back into a really weird experience I had last (01/19/20) night, where there was a very bright light, that seemed to have a visible shape but ALSO seemed to be above local traffic patterns to the point it should have been in orbit...  But was far to bright to be anything I remember being launched into Geosynchronous orbit and anything less than Geo-SyncH I was thinking SHOULD have shown visible movement over the period of time I observed it.

Regardless of if what is causing that versus the observed phenomena in Colorado... um, yeah.  Regardless of if we confirm or deny (and none of us do) the status of any warhead being ready to be delivered...  any potential storage or launch location is watched closely.  So, if one is to believe this is not disinformation from the various military security bureaus...  yeah.  whatever those are, it is scaring the vital bodily fluids out of the national security agencies because whatever the source of those lights are are, they are too close to what might or might not be a national security resource.

[robkelk]

British Columbia finally notices that one of their cities has had a population of 0 for decades.

While they wait for the unique denouement of its official dissolution, the first and only mayor of a B.C. municipality with no people wonders what might have been.

It looks like the land will be merged with a conservation area directly to the south once the municipality is dissolved.

[Star Ranger4]

I am not sure what scares me worse here, Rob. That the canadian government is so willing to form new municipalites in advance of need, or that they are so slow to disolve them. I say this because of the scandal here in the greater los angeles area about the city council for the city of Industry, all of whom appeared to be on said council strictly because of the amount of under the table monies they would get for it?

[robkelk]

The creation of municipalities is a provincial matter, not a federal matter. So it's the B.C. government that formed the municipality... apparently as a way to increase tourism in the area. Obviously, it didn't work.

[Star Ranger4]

*nods* Which, if congruent, makes the Los Aneles county board of supervisors complicit in the city of Industry scandal I referred to?

[Bob Schroeck]

The creation of municipalities is a provincial matter, not a federal matter. 

The creation of municipalities is a provincial matter
It isn't just one of your federal games
You might think that I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you a town must have three different names

First of all, there's the name that the residents use daily,
Such as "Lakeville" or "Doyleston" or "Wembley-on-Thames"
Such as "Rossland" or "Glacier" or "Borough of Bailey" --
All of them sensible, everyday names.

Yeah, I saw the film version of Cats recently, how could you tell?

[classicdrogn]

Well, another critical space technology has seen its first tests completed - the first cookies baked in space have been returned to earth and await sampling.