Four Thumbs Up for What a Weird Week! Friday, May 31st, 2024 #Podcast #Shownotes

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What a Weird Week gets you caught up on the weird news of the week.  https://www. 
shownotes.page or search "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts.

See www.shownotes.page for all the podcast stuff. These are the shownotes for Season 5, Ep 22 first published on Friday May 31st, 2024.
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We've got a follow up to a story we had earlier on this show where the town in Japan installed a giant black screen to stop people from taking pictures of Mount Fuji. It just got to be too much. And these pictures, some of them got famous on social media. So everybody wanted to get this certain angle of a picture of Mount Fuji where it looks like Mount Fuji is on top of a gas station or something like that. So they installed this giant black screen, eight feet tall, 66 feet long. The next day holes were in the black screen, holes the size of camera lenses. People were, you know, poking holes and still getting the special shot. But the town is still pleased. It's cut down and over tourism quite a bit. The giant black screen with the holes in it. That's your update.


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This one got picked up by a lot of national news orgs. I mean, you got a built in soundbite, you got video role that you can play. The Michigan man who went to Zoom court. So he had a Zoom call court and he was driving while appearing in Zoom court. And it was about his suspended license case. The fellow named Corey, the judge, Judge Simpson, was astonished. According to headlines. Let's put in a soundbite right here. "Mr. Harris, are you driving? Just give me one second. I'm parking right now. OK. So maybe I don't understand something. This is a driver license suspended. That is correct, your honor. And he was just driving. I don't even know why he would do that. So defendant's bond is revoked in this matter."
So, of course, you're not supposed to be on Zoom while driving. That's dangerous. But I could understand in a way, in a sense, I mean, if you want to prove to the judge that you shouldn't have a suspended license and you can Zoom call while driving, the defense rests, your honor. Anyway, the judge didn't think of it that way and ordered the fellow quarry to return to jail, revoked his bond and he was ordered to return to jail.

Catching you up on the weird news of the week, this is What a Weird Week...

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Just about every headline took advantage of the fact this truck was in the news, the truck carrying strawberries overturned and caused a traffic jam. Strawberry jam. A strawberry traffic jam. Most every headline had some kind of variation on that. This is about the big rig carrying 40,000 pounds of strawberries which overturned on a freeway in San Jose. And traffic was backed up for some hours as the strawberry spill was cleaned up. A couple of other notes about this, no major injuries reported and strawberry jam is delicious.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/truck-carrying-40k-pounds-strawberries-overturns-creating-sticky-traffic-jam

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A fellow in India has made headlines for breaking his own Guinness World Record by typing the alphabet very quickly with his nose. He's owned this record before and he keeps besting his own record. The current record, if you would like to beat this, 25 seconds and change To type out the alphabet, you have to do a letter, a space, and the next letter and move on down the line in 25.66 seconds. It would appear as though we posted a link, some photos and stuff. I don't think, I think you just need tenacity, practice. I don't think you need any sort of special nose training or a particular type of nose structure. I think you mostly just need practice and tenacity and this record could be yours. But 25.66 seconds is going to be hard to beat. Standard QWERTY keyboard, by the way. Next, we have some wild chickens causing chaos. They made headlines and also the dog airline.

Thank you for listening to this show. It's what a weird week where we count down the weird news of the week. 

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A flock of feral chickens caused chaos and made headlines this past week. The village of SnedishHam, United Kingdom. I probably got all of that wrong. United Kingdom. That didn't sound right. There are like a hundred feral chickens, wild chickens, and the people, the good folks of SnedishHam are complaining how the birds are destroying their gardens and keeping them awake with all of the noise, noise, noise. And I assume dancing also, don't they? The chicken dance, right? Chicken dance! No? Everybody! Sadly, this is pitting neighbor against neighbor because some people are smitten and really enjoy the hundred or so wild chickens, the feral chickens, and these folks are leaving out food for the wild chickens, which is also attracting rats. I hate to think of neighbor versus neighbor over these wild chickens. Also, I didn't know there were wild chickens. I am such a city slicker, I don't know nothing about nothing and I didn't know that wild chickens, feral chickens were a thing.
https://www.wufe967.com/2024/05/29/sleepy-town-thrust-into-chaos-as-out-of-control-chickens-ruin-families-everyday-lives/

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A new dog-friendly airline made headlines this past week, Bark Air, offering stress-free flights for pets. They describe themselves as a dog first airline. They want to reduce stress for your pooch, but also for pooch owners. They offer noise canceling earmuffs and calming jackets, things like that. Oh, and choice of beverage. No, no, not for you, sir. For your pooch choice of pooch beverage. Dogs are allowed to either socialize, you know, with other pooches or stay near your human. Right now it costs a lot. There's no two ways about it. A flight from New York to LA is around $6,000. That's for dog and human together. Oh, and also every pilot is a dog. Hey, like, I'm pretty sure we've had dog airlines, pet friendly airlines on this podcast before. And I think we use the same joke. That part was not true, but I believe I made the argument before that would be. Pretty hilarious if you had dog pilots also, just saying bark air. Hang on, next we have an unusual snake rescue. In the news, that's next.
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/26/nx-s1-4975744/bark-air-dog-airline-first-flight

new episodes every week catching you up on the weird stuff from the news. This is what a weird week.
 
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First responders rescue snake stuck in tea cup handle. So first of all, imagine a teacup and how you would pick up that teacup if you're civilized, you know, the handle. Um, this is a mini teacup for a tea party a girl was having with her pet snake and the snake became trapped inside that teacup handle. And this is in Michigan, United States of America. They called firefighters and the pet snake was rescued and the young girl was able to continue her tea party with her snake. If you still have trouble picturing that, we'll put a link in the show notes. Show notes dot page. I have had it With these mother loving snakes In these mother loving teacups...
https://www.wlns.com/news/tea-party-saved-after-pet-snake-was-stuck-in-teacup/
 
❸We have a new world record from David Rush. He is up to 171 world records. He wants to get to 181 concurrent world records. So he's a fellow we talk about a lot. He's always in the news. First of all, he uses his world record attempts to shine a light on STEM education. So that's good. Some of his world records take a lot of practice and great skill. Some are just doggone fun. So how you go about this one is you put a whole bunch of shaving cream on your head and then you bounce ping pong balls off a wall and you catch them. They have to stick to the shaving cream on your head. 14 is the record. David Rush caught 14 ping pong balls in the shaving cream on his head. 

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Honorable mention... Sleep apnea in the news. This is from study finds and the study that made headlines this week is about how it is so important to get sleep apnea and sleep disorders looked at. The headline is sleep apnea treatment can save marriages, according to a study. That's, I guess, it in a nutshell. We could do a deep dive on it, but it's, you know, cause a strain on a relationship when you have sleep apnea and some other sleep issues. Basically getting sleep issues treated is linked to higher relationship satisfaction.
https://studyfinds.org/sleep-apnea-treatment-marriages/

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Honorable mention again... another one worth mentioning here, maybe not quite in the top 10 of weird news, but interesting study from the university of Pennsylvania. They're doing research into omega-3, which you know, that's a supplement. You can find a lot of places. Oh, I should first say, uh, please consult your physician before trying any supplements. And I am not a doctor. According to the university of Pennsylvania study, Taking omega-3 is linked to reduced aggression. Regardless of age or gender, the data seems to indicate that aggression can be reduced when people take omega-3. More research is needed, but the article kind of gets into how this could make the world a better place. Who could be helped by taking omega-3 and having aggression reduced? The article mentions that more research is needed, but researchers also say omega-3 is safe and inexpensive as a dietary supplement. widely available. Follow-up studies are being planned, I think, to look into how effective is it in the long term. Just kind of interesting. One of those science-y interesting things. And again, it's something that we've had for a very long time, omega-3 supplements, and now they're discovering other benefits. Okay, hang on. Our number one story is next. It's about a robot appendage. One that they say we all could get.
https://neurosciencenews.com/omega-3-aggression-26182/

Thanks for checking out the program. This is What a Weird Week, where we catch you up on the weird news of the week.

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a study that made headlines this week about robot thumbs and how quickly they've been testing robot thumbs, how quickly we can all adapt to having another thumb. This study was about how you've got five fingers, let's give you an extra thumb. This is not about replay, you know, somebody who lost a thumb or something like that. This research was about five finger people getting an extra thumb. How quickly can you adapt to using that extra thumb? And apparently it's been a small study so far, but apparently we are excellent at adapting to the extra robot thumb and putting that to great use hitchhiking or indicating that we like something. Four thumbs up. Wow. You must really like that movie. Those are some real life uses that I imagine. One of the takeaways from this study, it was about 600 people from all different backgrounds who were studied in this, but one of the surprising things was we are good. We catch on quickly. Give us a robot appendage. We're going to figure that out. It's kind of me paraphrasing. Again, you can do a deep dive on the whole thing if you click the show notes. And that is that. Thank you for listening to What a Weird Week. If you want a transcript of today's show, if you want to subscribe to the podcast, other links It's all available at show notes dot page. Our website is show notes dot page and a shout out to you folks tuned in on the live stream every weekend. We're part of fun house radios programming. So thanks to fun house radio for having us on. Ask your smart speaker to play fun house radio. We'll catch you next week for more weird stuff.

 
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