Author Topic: Dumb News Stories: aka it's not really that funny but it's kinda amusing and  (Read 19246 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

shosta

  • Y = λ𝑓. (λ𝑥. 𝑓 (𝑥 𝑥)) (λ𝑥. 𝑓 (𝑥 𝑥))
  • Senior Member
每天生气


Skullfuckers Anonymous

  • Will hunt bullies for fruit baskets. PM for details.
  • Senior Member

chronovore

  • relapsed dev
  • Senior Member
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b9q1zj/what_sounds_like_fiction_but_is_actually_a_real/ek6ptgf/

Quote
The Marathon at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.

The first place finisher did most of the race in a car. He had intended to drop out, and got a car back to the stadium to get his change of clothes, and just kind of started jogging when he heard the fanfare.

The second place finisher was carried across the finish line, legs technically twitching, by his trainers. They had been refusing him water, and giving him a mixture of Brandy and Rat Poison for the entire race. Doping wasn't illegal yet (and this was a terrible attempt at it), so he got the gold when the First guy was revealed.

Third finisher was unremarkable, somehow.

Fourth finisher was a Cuban Mailman, who had raised the funds to attend the olympics by running non-stop around his entire country. He landed in New Orleans, and promptly lost all of the travelling money on a riverboat casino. He ran the race in dress shoes and long trousers (cut off at the knee by a fellow competitor with a knife). He probably would have come in first (well, second, behind the car) had it not been for the hour nap he took on the side of the track after eating rotten apples he found on the side of the race.

9th and 12th finishers were from South Africa, and ran barefoot. South Africa didn't actually send a delegation - these were students who just happened to be in town and thought it sounded fun. 9th was chased a mile off course by angry dogs. Note: These are the first Africans to compete in any modern Olympic event.

Half the participants had never raced competatively before. Some died.

St. Louis only had one water stop on the entire run. This, coupled with the dusty road, and exacerbated by the cars kicking up dust, lead to the above fatalities. And yet, somehow, Rat Poison guy survived to get the Gold.

The Russian delegation arrived a week late, because they were still using the Julian calendar. In 1904.

Seriously. This needs to be a movie.


Skullfuckers Anonymous

  • Will hunt bullies for fruit baskets. PM for details.
  • Senior Member

Tripon

  • Teach by day, Sleep by night
  • Senior Member
Quote
But as the state reopens its economy, infection counts are surging—and experts warn of a potential flood in the months ahead.

On March 4, the state health department reported Texas’ first positive case of COVID-19. One month later, on April 4, there were 6,110 cases. As of Monday—May 4—approximately 32,332 Texans had tested positive for the coronavirus, with an overnight uptick of 784. About 7,035 of those cases were confirmed in just one week, according to data analyzed by The Texas Tribune. And that’s despite having one of the lowest testing rates in the nation.

Two counties lead the state’s cases. Harris, which includes the city of Houston and is the third largest county in the United States, had 6,967 confirmed cases on Monday and more than 130 deaths, according to Dr. Umair A. Shah, executive director for the county’s public health department. There were 129 new cases overnight, Shah told The Daily Beast.

On Sunday, Dallas County reported its highest new COVID-19 case total to date, with 234 additional positive results—just two days after Gov. Greg Abbott’s statewide shelter-in-place order expired. As of 10 a.m. Monday, the county had reported 237 additional positive cases overnight—another record—bringing the total case count there to 4,370, including 114 deaths.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins has repeatedly cautioned residents to continue social distancing despite Abbott’s decision to reopen businesses on Friday. Abbott was just one in a laundry list of mostly Republican governors who recently launched aggressive efforts to reignite pandemic-ravaged economies—even as epidemiologists warn of possibly grave consequences.

But amid evidence of nationwide quarantine fatigue and revised models showing a surge in deaths expected in connection with COVID-19, public health experts in the state were keeping their eyes trained squarely on long-term care facilities and prisons. That’s where they expected one of the most populous states in America to see its coronavirus future come into sharper, and more disturbing, focus.

“It’s going to be scary going into the fall,” said Diana Cervantes, director of the epidemiology program at the University of North Texas Health Science Center School of Public Health. “We’re going to see a huge explosion of cases.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/texans-brace-for-a-covid-19-explosion-just-days-after-reopening

Tripon

  • Teach by day, Sleep by night
  • Senior Member

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
https://wset.com/news/local/va-family-found-1-million-in-cash-laying-in-the-road-they-called-police
Quote
Emily Schantz told WTVR she was driving with her family in Caroline County when the car in front of her swerved around something in the road. Schantz said she ended up hitting it, which turned out to be a bag.

Thinking it was trash, Schantz said she picked the bag up, and then another bag spotted about 15 feet away, and put it in her truck.

Turns out, that bag was full of money, close to about a million dollars in cash.

"Inside of the bag, there were plastic baggies and they were addressed with something that said ‘cash vault,'" Schantz told WTVR.

The family called the Caroline County Sheriff's Office.

Maj. Scott Moser said his office is investigating, but told WTVR that they believe the mail bags were meant for a bank and possibly belongs to USPS.
:money

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/23/business/omegaverse-erotica-copyright.html
Quote
A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises a Deep Legal Question

What do copyright and authorship mean in the crowdsourced realm known as the Omegaverse?

Omegaverse stories typically feature characters arranged into a wolfpack-like hierarchy of dominant Alphas, neutral Betas and submissive Omegas — plus lots of lupine sex.
Quote
Addison Cain was living in Kyoto, volunteering at a shrine and studying indigenous Japanese religion. She was supposed to be working on a scholarly book about her research, but started writing intensely erotic Batman fan fiction instead.

It happened almost by accident. It was 2012, and Ms. Cain — who grew up in Orange County, Calif., under a different name — was three years out of college, alone abroad with a lot of time on her hands. Her command of Japanese was halting, and English titles in bookstores were wildly expensive. So Ms. Cain started reading things she could find for free online, and soon discovered fanfic — stories by amateurs that borrow characters and plots from established pop-cultural franchises.

Ms. Cain began devouring works set in the world of Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy. She decided to write some of her own, featuring Batman’s nemesis Bane as a sexy antihero, and posted them for free online. She quickly developed a fan base, becoming something of a star in her sub-subgenre.

A few years later, she was living in Arlington, Va., and working as a bartender when she began to wonder if she could turn her hobby into a business.
Quote
In the spring of 2016, she published “Born to Be Bound,” an adaptation of her fanfic. The story takes place on a future earth where most of humanity has died from a plague and survivors live under a dome, divided into a wolfpack-like hierarchy of dominant Alphas, neutral Betas and submissive Omegas. A powerful, brutish Alpha named Shepherd takes an Omega woman named Claire captive, and they engage in rough, wolfish sex.

Ms. Cain’s fans posted nearly 100 positive reviews on Amazon, enough to get her some visibility. “Unapologetically raw and deliciously filthy,” read one glowing blurb. The debut was a hit. She rushed out several more titles, and the series grossed some $370,000, according to her publisher.

For the next two years, Ms. Cain published at breakneck speed, producing a novel every few months by repurposing her older fan fiction, keeping her books in the algorithmic sweet spot of Amazon’s new releases and turning herself into a recognizable brand. “Dip your toes into the erotica pool,” she said on a 2016 sci-fi and fantasy podcast. “There’s nothing to do here but make money.”

Then, in 2018, Ms. Cain heard about an up-and-coming fantasy writer with the pen name Zoey Ellis, who had published an erotic fantasy series with a premise that sounded awfully familiar. It featured an Alpha and Omega couple, and lots of lupine sex. The more Ms. Cain learned about “Myth of Omega” and its first installment, “Crave to Conquer,” the more outraged she became. In both books, Alpha men are overpowered by the scent of Omega heroines and take them hostage. In both books, the women try and fail to suppress their pheromones and give in to the urge to mate. In both books, the couples sniff, purr and growl; nest in den-like enclosures; neck-bite to leave “claim” marks; and experience something called “knotting,” involving a peculiar feature of the wolf phallus.

Ms. Cain urged Blushing Books to do something. The publisher sent copyright violation notices to more than half a dozen online retailers, alleging that Ms. Ellis’s story was “a copy” with scenes that were “almost identical to Addison Cain’s book.” Most of the outlets, including Barnes & Noble, iTunes, and Apple, removed Ms. Ellis’s work immediately. Ms. Cain’s readers flocked to her defense. “This is a rip off of Addison Cain,” one irate reader wrote on Goodreads. “So disappointed in this author and I hope Mrs. Cain seeks legal charges against you for stealing her work! Shame on you!”

It’s hard to imagine that two writers could independently create such bizarrely specific fantasy scenarios. As it turns out, neither of them did. Both writers built their plots with common elements from a booming, fan-generated body of literature called the Omegaverse.

Tripon

  • Teach by day, Sleep by night
  • Senior Member
Quote
Matthew Hubbard, a mathematics instructor at Laney College in Oakland, told the student, Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen, that her name "in English sounds like F-ck boy" and that she needs to "understand" that her name is "an offensive sound in my language," according to the screenshots.

"If I lived in Vietnam and my name in your language sounded like Eat a D---, I would change it to avoid embarrassment both on my part and on the part of the people who had to say it," Hubbard wrote. "I understand you are offended, but you need to understand your name is an offensive sound in my language."



Quote
Nguyen told Hubbard that his request for her to change her name felt "discriminatory" and that she planned to file a complaint with the Title IX Office if he did not "refer to her" by her "given birth name," according to the screenshots. Title IX protects people from discrimination on the basis of sex in education and other federally funded activities.

The emails were not dated and neither the student's sister, who also posted a video of Hubbard addressing Nguyen as P. Nguyen" on a Zoom call, nor Nguyen, responded to NBC News' messages requesting comment.

:dead

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/professor-who-told-student-anglicize-her-name-placed-leave-n1231595?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
don't appropriate fuccboi culture
©@©™


benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ssqu.12824
Quote
Abstract
Objectives
The objective of this study was to empirically test the wide belief that Reviewer #2 is a uniquely poor reviewer.

Methods
The test involved analyzing the reviewer database from Political Behavior . There are two main tests. First, the reviewer's categorical evaluation of the manuscript was compared by reviewer number. Second, the data were analyzed to test if Reviewer #2 was disproportionately likely to be more than one category below the mean of the other reviewers of the manuscript.

Results
There is no evidence that Reviewer #2 is either more negative about the manuscript or out of line with the other reviewers. There is, however, evidence that Reviewer #3 is more likely to be more than one category below the other reviewers.

Conclusions
Reviewer #2 is not the problem. Reviewer #3 is. In fact, he is such a bad actor that he even gets the unwitting Reviewer #2 blamed for his bad behavior.

Anyone who has ever submitted a paper to a peer‐reviewed outlet knows the reviewers can, occasionally, be unpleasant. While rejection always stings, the belief that a reviewer has either completely missed the point of the manuscript, been overtly hostile in his or her review, or simply held the author to an impossible standard is vexing. The source of this frustration has seemingly become personified in the identity of a single person—Reviewer 2. He (and it is always assumed to be a he) is embodiment of all that we hate about other scholars. Reviewer 2 is dismissive of other people's work, lazy, belligerent, and smug.

The purpose of this article is to test a very specific claim about Reviewer 2: he is the reviewer who holds us back. Using the database of reviewer responses from four years of Political Behavior , I empirically test if reviewers who are assigned number 2 are systematically more negative and more likely to be out of line from the other reviews a manuscript received. I assess this hypothesis in two ways. First, I compare the ordinal score each reviewer gives the manuscript. Second, I develop an original measure of “being Reviewer 2 .” In this specific case, being Reviewer 2 is defined as giving a score to the manuscript that is more than one category below the mean ranking of the other two reviewers. The results suggest that Reviewer 2 is no more likely to give a negative review of a manuscript or to be uniquely critical.

EchoRin

  • Hey, it's that dog.
  • Senior Member
This one is more in the bad vibes category  :-\

Utterly insane in some parts of the world to even have to worry about this. Which, you know, it should be. But yankee doodle my fucking ass or something.

Were those pops fireworks or gunshots? Here’s how to tell the difference
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/6/30/21303442/fireworks-gunshots-difference-chicago


EchoRin

  • Hey, it's that dog.
  • Senior Member
https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/08/13/israeli-hockey-player-in-hot-water-for-signing-with-team-auschwitz/

Uh, hmmm...

The logic on the haterz side doesn't really make sense. Like should no athlete go play for a German sports club because Nazis? ???

Tripon

  • Teach by day, Sleep by night
  • Senior Member

team filler

  • filler
  • filler
https://www.foxnews.com/us/alaska-man-wilderness-rescue-cabin-burn-down-sos-snow

Quote
"Steele’s shoulder-length hair, chestnut brown near the roots fading to golden blond near its frayed tips, hung matted and dreadlocks-like over his neck. His auburn beard flowed untrimmed to his chest," Alaska State Trooper Ken Marsh wrote in a recap of the rescue.

 :uguu
*****

team filler

  • filler
  • filler
*****

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
https://www.masslive.com/worcester/2020/08/fitchburg-mother-and-son-both-charged-with-incest-could-face-up-to-20-years-in-prison.html
Quote
Tony L. Lavoie’s wife caught her husband and his 63-year-old mother, Cheryl Lavoie having sex at their home on Clarendon Street, Fitchburg on May 20, according to the Sentinel and Enterprise.

Lavoie’s wife called 911 and when police arrived they were told by both mother and son that the sexual relations were consensual. The Lavoie’s also added that it was the first time it had happened.

Fitchburg police charged the mother and son with incest and issued them a summons to appear at Fitchburg District Court on Aug. 20. The charge is a felony.
:doge

spoiler (click to show/hide)
Quote
Meaww reports that when pressed for further details about committing incest with his mom in their Massachusetts home, the son told the officer who arrived on the scene of the tawdry crime, “I don’t want to talk about it, I made a mistake and I am embarrassed enough as it is.”

Ultimately, the son divulged to the Massachusetts officer that he’d been playing a video game in the living room when his mom approached and the two “just started to kiss and have sex” — incestuously, that is.
[close]

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
— incestuously, that is.
©@©™

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
Good thing I wasn’t playing a video game.
©@©™


benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
https://www.dickinsoncountynews.com/story/2839758.html
Quote
Cameras at Jennings Tow & Repair in Spirit Lake recorded a man visiting the local Shell station at midday. Co-owner Sylvia Jennings said she recognized him as a somewhat regular customer, and she recalled him asking if she carried $100 gift cards.

"I said, 'No, I don't, but I've got $50. Let me get some more out here,'" Jennings said. "I turned around to get them out of the cabinet, and he grabbed my papers, folded them over, stuck them down by his leg and walked out the door."
Quote
But on Sept. 3, he stole about 35 copies of the newspaper from the store.

"He put his Wall Street Journal down on top of the Dickinson County News and looked over to see if anyone was watching him, grabbed all the papers and walked out the door," Theye said.

The general manager decided to confront De Yager about the theft on his next visit, rather than going immediately to the police.

"I said, 'You need to bring those papers back,'" the Kum & Go manager recalled saying. "That's a loss of money for me."

According to Theye, De Yager initially denied stealing the papers but soon changed his story, saying he mistook them for the free Northwest Iowa Shopper publication and that he wanted to cut out all the coupons to a particular quick-service restaurant. Theye said De Yager paid for the newspapers a few days later, telling the cashier he felt guilty and planned to pay each location back for the papers he stole.
Quote
De Yager's name happened to appear on page 3 of the Sept. 2 edition — in the police reports. The Hull businessman had been charged with fifth-degree theft and trespassing — both misdemeanors — after stealing a political yard sign from a residence in the Monarch Cove area the night of July 26. Dickinson County Sheriff's Deputy Brandon Vodraska helped file those charges and confirmed the stolen sign was in support of former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

Skullfuckers Anonymous

  • Will hunt bullies for fruit baskets. PM for details.
  • Senior Member




chronovore

  • relapsed dev
  • Senior Member


EchoRin

  • Hey, it's that dog.
  • Senior Member


The New York Post is having a field day with Alec Baldwin's non-entity of a wife.

Hilaria Baldwin speaks with a fake Spanish accent and is really Hillary!

https://pagesix.com/2020/12/29/8-times-hilaria-baldwins-fake-spanish-accent-has-gone-wrong/

Do a search for Hilaria and you can see the Post has done more than 10 stories on this woman.




EchoRin

  • Hey, it's that dog.
  • Senior Member


Slammin Sammy

Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
🤴

Tasty

  • Senior Member

chronovore

  • relapsed dev
  • Senior Member
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/business/oil-industry-careers.html?

oops

“Even after the pandemic ends, some of them fear that growing concerns about climate change will lead to the inevitable decline of oil and gas.”

Yeah, too bad there was no public discussion about a need to switch to greener energy, the unsustainability of petroleum, and passing peak oil, or anything like that prior to 2020.

Next thing, we’ll hear how people are surprised that we want to move away from coal.

team filler

  • filler
  • filler
*****

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
©@©™


Tasty

  • Senior Member
Re: Dumb News Stories: aka it's not really that funny but it's kinda amusing and
« Reply #103 on: February 03, 2021, 11:11:09 PM »


Skullfuckers Anonymous

  • Will hunt bullies for fruit baskets. PM for details.
  • Senior Member

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
An Interview With the Man Who Keeps Uploading My Feet to WikiFeet

Back in the fall, I received an unexpected text from a man I had just started seeing. “Are u on wikifeet?”

Assuming he was joking, I laughed and said no. Then he sent me a link to my wikiFeet page. I had never actually heard of the website — basically an encyclopedia of celebrity foot photos for fetishists and foot enthusiasts — until that moment.

To be clear, I am not a celebrity. I have decent Twitter following from having reported on politics for over a decade, from tweeting jokes about politics and appearing on cable news sometimes. But I was pretty shocked to be looking at my own wikiFeet profile, which included my full name, birthday, and photos of me and my exposed feet, dating back to a family vacation in 2013. The images seemed to have been lifted from my Instagram page, which I keep public because I share my work and media appearances there sometimes. My feet had a very sad 3.5 out of 5 stars rating, which categorized them as “okay.”
Quote
Robert! Is it just Robert, or do you go by something else? You sound young.
Yeah, just Robert. And I’m almost 60 years old, young lady.

Do you consider yourself a foot fetishist? 
Yes.

Since when?
Age 6.


Nintex

  • Finish the Fight
  • Senior Member
That last one is like a skit from the Chapelle show  :lol
🤴


Tasty

  • Senior Member
Arriving off the bus, two months later :dead Amazing GIF use

Joe Molotov

  • I'm much more humble than you would understand.
  • Administrator
An Interview With the Man Who Keeps Uploading My Feet to WikiFeet

Back in the fall, I received an unexpected text from a man I had just started seeing. “Are u on wikifeet?”

Assuming he was joking, I laughed and said no. Then he sent me a link to my wikiFeet page. I had never actually heard of the website — basically an encyclopedia of celebrity foot photos for fetishists and foot enthusiasts — until that moment.

To be clear, I am not a celebrity. I have decent Twitter following from having reported on politics for over a decade, from tweeting jokes about politics and appearing on cable news sometimes. But I was pretty shocked to be looking at my own wikiFeet profile, which included my full name, birthday, and photos of me and my exposed feet, dating back to a family vacation in 2013. The images seemed to have been lifted from my Instagram page, which I keep public because I share my work and media appearances there sometimes. My feet had a very sad 3.5 out of 5 stars rating, which categorized them as “okay.”
Quote
Robert! Is it just Robert, or do you go by something else? You sound young.
Yeah, just Robert. And I’m almost 60 years old, young lady.

Do you consider yourself a foot fetishist? 
Yes.

Since when?
Age 6.

Her feet are only a 3.5, come on Robert, you can do better. Don't settle, King.
©@©™

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
A Japanese man has been arrested after reportedly dating more than 35 women at the same time.

Takashi Miyagawa, a part-time worker, is being investigated for allegedly defrauding dozens of women by pretending he was serious about each of their relationships and receiving hundreds of pounds worth of gifts from them.

He was apparently caught out when the women joined forces to create a victims’ association after discovering his extensive infidelity and reported him to the police, according to local media.

Among the claims is that he gave each woman a different date for his birthday, ensuring a constant stream of gifts throughout the year.

One 47-year-old woman reportedly thought his birthday was on February 22, another aged 40 was told it was July, while another 35-year-old believed his birthday was in April.

In total, he allegedly received around 100,000 yen (£668) worth of gifts from the women, including a £200 suit.
This is illegal? :mindblown

Tasty

  • Senior Member
Quote
Among the claims is that he gave each woman a different date for his birthday, ensuring a constant stream of gifts throughout the year.

That's actually genius.

Madrun Badrun

  • twin-anused mascot
  • Senior Member
Just in case anyone on the Bore was curious, I was born on the 21-26th of every month.

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
They’re reasonable topics you might expect to discuss if you worked the phones at Roller World in Saugus, the beloved rink that’s been serving up disco-ball lit fun for the whole family since 1981. Except this barrage of calls is not going to Roller World. For more than 13 years, they’ve been going to Zolan Kanno-Youngs, White House correspondent for the New York Times.

The problem dates back to his middle school years in Cambridge, Kanno-Youngs tells me, when it became clear to him that his first-ever cell phone number was precariously similar to the one for the North Shore’s most popular indoor roller blading arena. It’s an exact match with the last seven digits, with one crucial exception: Roller World’s starts with the area code 781; his starts with 617.

It’s a fairly common mix-up around here. While 781 is the area code given to numbers just outside city limits, 617 is the three-digit sequence most commonly associated with Boston. So a lot—a lot—of callers have been making this exact mistake on a regular basis for roughly half of Kanno-Youngs’ life. He estimates he’s gotten hundreds of calls like this, about one every other week for the past 13 years.
Quote
He has also never reached out to Roller World about the situation. Still, he’s always wondered, has Roller World experienced something similar, but reversed? Have White House officials ever accidentally sought him out, only to reach the concessions stand at a roller rink in Saugus by mistake?

Unfortunately, no.

“Nope,” says Jerry Breen, who’s owned Roller World for all of its 40 years, and talked to me by phone this week. “I haven’t heard anything like that.”

Skullfuckers Anonymous

  • Will hunt bullies for fruit baskets. PM for details.
  • Senior Member

chronovore

  • relapsed dev
  • Senior Member
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57226774

First IRL human ever to be eaten by a dinosaur.

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member
https://globalnews.ca/news/7853542/fence-post-beaver-dam-saskatchewan/
Quote
A detachment of the Saskatchewan RCMP says it closed an “extremely Canadian case” last week.

A theft was reported after an individual had left a pile of posts on a rural property with which they planned to install a fence, but later discovered they’d gone missing, according to a press release on Tuesday.

Porcupine Plain RCMP were called to the complaint on May 7 and quickly solved the mystery when the fence posts were spotted in a nearby waterway.

“The stolen posts were located in a beaver dam,” Const. Conrad Rickards said in a statement.

“A beaver – or beavers – helped themselves to the stash of posts and used them to help build a dam. I tried locating said beavers but they were (gone on arrival).”

Rickards said, jokingly, no charges will be laid.
:cancry

benjipwns

  • your bright ideas always burn me
  • Senior Member