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WorldWeird: NEWSTRANGE -- the Informus Thread (Closes 26th Feb)

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    • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2012 edited
     (10470.1)
    Purple Wyrm,

    The middle one reminds me of john Astin's Gomez Addams:

    •  
      CommentAuthorSlick
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2012
     (10470.2)
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      CommentAuthorsneak046
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2012
     (10470.3)
    The Detroit Warehouse complex that holds a quarter of the world's available Aluminium supply, and why it is owned by Goldman Sachs:

    “In a rundown patch of Detroit, enclosed by a cyclone fence and barbed wire, stands an unremarkable warehouse that investment bank Goldman Sachs has transformed into a money-making machine.

    The derelict neighborhood off Michigan Avenue is a sharp contrast to Goldman’s bustling skyscraper headquarters near Wall Street, but the two operations share one important element: management by the bank’s savvy financial professionals.

    A string of warehouses in Detroit, most of them operated by Goldman, has stockpiled more than a million tonnes of the industrial metal aluminum, about a quarter of global reported inventories.

    Simply storing all that metal generates tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues for Goldman every year.”
    • CommentAuthorOxbrow
    • CommentTimeFeb 10th 2012 edited
     (10470.4)
    And now I'm imagining a massively-scaled-up version of stealing the copper from buildings.

    Admittedly Aluminiumfinger isn't as catchy a villain name.
    •  
      CommentAuthorFoamhead
    • CommentTimeFeb 11th 2012
     (10470.5)
    Lightning kills an entire football team
    Football fans in the central African state of Congo were hurling accusations of witchcraft at each other yesterday after a freak blast of lightning struck dead an entire team on the playing field while their opponents were left completely untouched.
  6.  (10470.6)
    Brit bloke goes crazy with chainsaw

    • CommentAuthorWood
    • CommentTimeFeb 12th 2012
     (10470.7)
    It doesn't look like this guy was out for blood, though (thanks the gods). He doesn't really try to maim or kill the first persons he meets or else he would have gotten at least some of them, before the people in the pub started throwing things at him.

    Just a dick trying to frighten people.
  8.  (10470.8)
    He slashed a bloke's arm, but he could possibly have done that accidentally. It was pretty epic the way the customers took him down by throwing beer kegs.
    • CommentAuthorWood
    • CommentTimeFeb 12th 2012
     (10470.9)
    Oh right, I hadn't read about it. It looks like he was looking for the one guy who had thrown him out of the pub for lighting a cigarette.

    The court heard Dinnen was drunk and on drugs and had come to seek revenge on a man who had thrown him out for lighting a cigarette about 50 minutes earlier.

    The court heard the man Dinnen had been looking for had actually left the pub before he returned.
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      CommentAuthorsneak046
    • CommentTimeFeb 13th 2012
     (10470.10)
    And that is why, Whitechapel, it is best to avoid Hull on a Saturday night.

    @Foamhead. That story is from 1998, I imagine it's resurfacing/being revivified in google news scrapes because of the African Cup Of Nations football tournement that was just held in Equitorial Guinea (who's football team is nicknamed "The National Lightning"), where they have been defying the odds and getting victories over stronger teams.
  11.  (10470.11)
    For the record, I consider freediving to be crazy stuff, but then again, people have the right to be as crazy as they want as long as they endanger only voluntary participants.

    "Behind him another diver resurfaces. “Breathe! Breathe!” a safety diver yells. The man’s face is blue, and he isn’t breathing. “Breathe!” another yells. Finally he coughs, jiggles his head, and makes a tiny squeaking sound like a dolphin.

    For the next half-hour, as divers come and go, these scenes repeat. I stand in the sailboat with my stomach tightening, wondering if this is the norm—and if it is, how the hell any of it could be allowed. All the competitors sign waivers acknowledging that heart attacks, blackouts, oxygen toxicity, and drowning may be part of the price. But I have a feeling that competitive freediving’s continued existence has more to do with the fact that the local authorities don’t know what really goes on out here."

    OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND YOU'RE DEAD
    • CommentAuthorPooka
    • CommentTimeFeb 14th 2012
     (10470.12)
    @vornaskotti that was a harrowing read. very fascinating sport. it sounds amazing and horrifying altogether...
  13.  (10470.13)
    Pooka:

    It's sort of crazy, but so are most extreme sports. I remember how I got a huge shitfit when I saw my first free diver practicing. In this outdoor pool complex thing a couple of evenings are reserved for divers, and we were practicing something, when I suddenly noticed a guy lying totally limp in the bottom of the pool, wearing only swimming trunks and goggles. He looked totally dead and I didn't realize what was going on. It took me some time to get near him, certainly far longer than I could've held my breath, and just when I was about to go under and "rescue" him, he suddenly sprang into life and swam to the surface :P

    One free diver died in a public swimming pool some time ago and apparently now most of the pools in Helsinki area forbid practicing it in their facilities.
  14.  (10470.14)
    Erm... I wonder if this really works.

  15.  (10470.15)
    @ Vornaskotti - If someone buys me the rabbit, I'm willing to try!
    •  
      CommentAuthoroddbill
    • CommentTimeFeb 14th 2012
     (10470.16)
    That's not the way you dress a store bought rabbit! If you're going to squeeze a rabbit out of its skin, I expect you to be able to just go grab a wild one out of a field with your hands.
  17.  (10470.17)
    Well that's a challenge then, shall I get back to you in a week and tell you how it goes?

    (Reading We3 recently however, makes me worry that trying to do that to a rabbit is liable to lead to an explosive loss of blood, the robot suits and fictional nature don't encourage me)
  18.  (10470.18)
    This shit makes me so mad:

    “This is Why I Pirate”: How A Groundless Copyright Threat Destroyed A Young Film Student’s Dreams and Career

    "Instead of the letter recognizing our valiant efforts as students that I expected, I found myself on the tail end of a phone call that changed my life. I was contacted directly by the lead of Fox’s legal team, who explained my situation to me very clearly. He told me that I was technically in my legal right to use Isaac Asimov’s material. However, if I chose to proceed, they would file multiple lawsuits totaling over 2 million dollars against me. In the end, I might win, but it would take hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just to fight it, but it would cost Fox nothing. It would be 10 years before any type of verdict could be levied, and by then it wouldn’t even matter."
    •  
      CommentAuthoroddbill
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2012
     (10470.19)
    Although, you know, he sort of just gave up. I don't mean to the threat of legal trouble, either - he just gave up film, it seems, when it got hard.

    I did a lot of live theater throughout college. In college, though I thought I was doing hard work, in reality it was very easy to push from one project to the next, surrounded by people self-selected for interest in that kind of thing, and in an environment constructed to assist me to succeed. When I got out of college, it was immediately very hard to keep that up. I pushed on 3 or 4 years before turning to other things.

    This guy ran into his very first real world film industry problem and he just stopped. Worse, he blames it on everything else. Fox's threat made him not complete his thesis project. Without a thesis project, he couldn't get into a Grad School. And because of that, his film career was aborted.

    Really?

    He couldn't have taken some time off and gone back and done a new thesis project, then applied to grad schools? Somehow he was going to find the money to pay for a graduate film degree, but he couldn't work out paying off the 10K he sunk into his film? He'd have maybe had to work a year and go back to school later, but so many people do just that. Also, as far as that goes, did he really need to go to grad school?

    You and I are both familiar with the fact that you do not need to go to a graduate program in film school in order to make movies.

    I don't really have a lot of sympathy for his story. He would never have had a career in the real world in film. He just didn't have the perseverance in the face of real world obstacles, as opposed to a comparatively nurturing environment in school, that getting anything done in big art requires.

    And he pretends that Fox ruined his career so he can feel self-righteous about pirating movies.

    That's the impression that story gives me, at any rate.
  20.  (10470.20)
    Through the joys of Google and Reddit, I have discovered that it is possible gut a rabbit like that: (Not much swinging required either!)



    For those of you who are simply appalled at the though (and images of) a dead rabbit forcibly pooping its guts out, here's an alternative method of dressing a rabbit:

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