[Misstee]

Motorized trash can reaches 55 mph in England
By Ben Hooper





June 1 (UPI) -- A British engineer unofficially broke a world record when he took his motorized trash can up to speeds of 55 mph.

Michael Wallhead, 31, said he bought the wheeled trash can from Facebook marketplace for about $25, and then proceeded to make nearly $900 worth of modifications, including a Suzuki GP125 two-stroke engine, magnesium go-kart wheels, a rear axle, a five gear box, a chassis, a steering damper and an extra wheel at the front.

Wallhead took his wheelie bin to Elvington airfield in North Yorkshire, England, where he was clocked at an average speed of 54.9 mph.

The current Guinness World Record for fastest wheelie bin stands at 45 mph and was set by Andy Jennings in May 2021.

Wallhead said evidence from his attempt has been submitted to Guinness World Records and he expects to hear back in a few weeks.

[lush]

The Man Who Bore a Hole in His Skull to Get Permanently High
05052023*

Joseph Mellen is a British-Born author famous for ‘Bore Hole’, a controversial book about his three attempts at drilling a hole in his own skull so he could be permanently high.

Mellen, an active member of the Swinging Sixties acid revolution, wrote his famous book in 1970, but his story has been going viral online regularly for decades, for understandable reasons. It’s not every day that you learn of a man who tried to drill a hole in his own skull, not once, not twice, but three times, for the sole purpose of being permanently high. The archaic process of drilling holes in one’s skull is called trepanation and is considered by many the oldest operation in the world. Trepanned skulls have been found on all continents, and some African tribes even perform them today, but Joe Mellen is one of the few people in history to perform trepanation on himself to produce a permanent acid trip.


Photo: Ta Z/Unsplash

The English author first learned about trepanation in 1965, from a fellow acid enthusiast named Bart Huges, who had apparently also attempted it on himself. At first, the idea sounded preposterous, but as he told VICE back in 2016, one gets used to ideas over time, especially when they promise to make acid trips even trippier.

“The big idea is that humans have a problem,” Mellen said. “The problem is the sealing of the skull, which happens when we are fully grown [between 18 and 21]. Before that, the skull is in separate plates and there is some give. Think of the brain as a pudding: It can expand and pulsate, but once the skull has completely sealed ’round it, it can no longer do that. The pulsation is suppressed and the blood passes through without pulsating. And this is why all of us want to get high. We want to get back to that youthful state of being where we have more spontaneity and more creativity and more life.”

Joey Mellen first tried his hand at self-trepanation in 1967. He was broke at the time, and couldn’t afford an electric drill, so he used a hand trepan bought from a surgical instrument shop. He described it as ‘a bit like a corkscrew but with a ring of teeth at the bottom,’ and it made the procedure feel like ‘trying to uncork a bottle of wine from the inside’.

The first attempt ended in painful failure, but convinced that ‘the human being needs more blood in its brain,’ Mellen took another shot at trepanation about a year later, and even though it went better than the first time, he wasn’t completely satisfied with the procedure.

“There was kind of a ‘schlurping’ sound as I took the trepan out and what sounded like bubbles,” the book writer recalled, adding that he didn’t remove enough skull to be satisfied.

It took a while for Joe Mellen to attempt trepanation again, but in 1970, on his third and final attempt, he finally achieved what he had set out to 15 years prior, and it only took him ‘half an hour all in all, including clearing up afterward’.



“I was feeling great because I’d done it, but then I noticed after about an hour I started to feel a lightness, like a weight had been lifted off me,” Mellen recalled. “I did it in the evening and went to bed at 11pm feeling good, and I could still feel it when I woke up the next morning. And then I realized, ‘This is it. It’s done’.”

Joseph Mellen legendary book, Bore Hole, goes into great detail about how he got the idea of drilling a hole in his skull and how he went about doing it on all three attempts. The book actually starts with the phrase ‘This is the story of how I came to drill a hole in my head to get permanently high’.

Brain shape may strongly influence thoughts and behavior, study finds



Your brain is more superficial than we thought.

Scientists from the University of Monash in Melbourne, Australia, have found that the shape of your brain could strongly influence how you think, feel and behave.

Previously, scientists thought neuron connectivity in the brain is what drives its function. However, recent research has found it could actually be affected by the brain’s grooves, contours and folds — rather than complex interconnections.

The study was published in Nature on Wednesday. Scientists examined the MRI scans of 255 individual’s brains, which took place as participants performed tasks like tapping their fingers or recalling a sequence of images.

The team then looked at 10,000 different maps of human brain activity taken from over 1,000 experiments conducted across the world, comparing how the shape of the brain was affected in different roles.

The study used a physics term, eigenmode, that describes the natural patterns of vibration in a system, applying this to brain activity.

“The best way to understand what eigenmodes are is to think of a violin,” co-lead author James Pang explained in a university press release.

“Every time you pluck its string, it vibrates with some pattern, and this pattern corresponds to the notes that you hear,” he said. “The preferred patterns of vibration are the eigenmodes of the string.”

Pang compared the brain’s geometry and the role it plays in brain function to how a ripple in a pond caused by a thrown rock is affected by the rock’s shape and size.

“The geometry is pretty important because it guides how the wave would look, which in turn relates to the activity patterns that you see when people perform different tasks,” Pang explained to NBC.

Pang also noted the theory could help scientists understand the effects of the brain activity associated with diseases like dementia, schizophrenia or depression — by considering models of brain shape.

“[They] are far easier to deal with than models of the brain’s full array of connections,” he added.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3791606&p=10354131#p10354131

[Fatima99]

First Recorded Stand-Up Comedy Sketch from 500 Years Ago Discovered in 15th Century Manuscript



While this old parchment page may look like one out of a wizard’s spellbook, it’s actually what scholars believe to be the world’s oldest recorded stand-up comedy routine.

In the year 1,480, a household cleric and tutor to a noble family named Richard Heege went to a feast where there was a minstrel performing a three-part act. Heege recorded as much as he could remember, opening with “By me, Richard Heege, because I was at that feast and did not have a drink.”

That is illustrative of where the story goes from there—a performance relevant to the humor enjoyed in Britain today, and one which colors the high Middle Ages as a time of artistic liberty, social mobility, and vigorous nightlife.

Heege’s booklet contains three texts gleaned from the jester’s material: a Hunting of the Hare story featuring a killer rabbit, a mock sermon in prose in which three kings eat so much that 24 bulls explode out of their stomachs and begin sword fighting, and an alliteration nonsense verse entitled The Battle of Brackonwet.

Reminiscent of Geoffrey Chaucer’s writings, or Monty Python’s killer rabbit of Caerbannog sketch in their film Monty Python and The Holy Grail, The Hunting of the Hare is a rhyming burlesque romance, meaning the frivolous is important and the serious is treated lightly.

In it, two fictional peasants get involved with a series of hijinks that includes a cany coney who kicks one of them in the head.

In The Battle of Brackonwet, Robin Hood, killer bumblebees, and jousting bears color a tale full of nonsense within what would have been Mr. Heege and the minstrel’s local neighborhood on the border of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire where Mr. Heege lived.

The texts were found in the National Library of Scotland by Dr. James Wade, of Cambridge’s English Faculty, who recently wrote a paper on them explaining that such material is extremely rare, but offers a wondrous glimpse into life not only among England’s medieval middle-class, but the skill and appreciation for minstrels.

“Here we have a self-made entertainer with very little education creating really original, ironic material. To get an insight into someone like that from this period is incredibly rare and exciting,” Dr. Wade said.

“You can find echoes of this minstrel’s humor in [today’s] shows like Mock the Week, situational comedies, and slapstick. The self-irony and making audiences the butt of the joke are still very characteristic of British stand-up comedy.”

During the Middle Ages minstrels roamed between fairs, taverns, and baronial halls to entertain with songs and stories either across the country or along a local circuit. Many had day jobs, such as a plowman or peddler, but gigged through the nights and weekends.

“These texts remind us that festive entertainment was flourishing at a time of growing social mobility,” said Dr. Wade. “[They] give us a snapshot of medieval life being lived well.”

“People back then partied a lot more than we do today, so minstrels had plenty of opportunities to perform. They were really important figures in people’s lives right across the social hierarchy.”

It also shows that what we sometimes think of as a society of science-denying religious tyranny created not only these talented comics but people who enjoyed their work enough to copy it down.

Mr. Heege worked for a noble family and would have been considered right and proper, yet he appears to have had a sense of humor and to have enjoyed literature that others may have dismissed as too lowbrow to preserve.

What else can we conclude when the man committed the minstrel’s rhymes of “Drink you to me and I to you and hold your cup up high — God loves neither horse nor mare, but merry men that in the cup can stare” to memory well enough to write it down?

[ozswede]

Escaped red panda seen 'ambling' down street

Police said the animal had escaped from Newquay Zoo, in Cornwall, on Friday, and was spotted by staff from Freshpoint greengrocers, about half-a-mile away.

Staff from the warehouse and officers from Devon and Cornwall Police contained the animal in a courtyard until it was collected by zoo staff, police said.

Newquay Zoo said the animal was "swiftly recaptured and returned to her home”.


Devon and Cornwall Police said they were called on Friday at 07:10 BST

Gareth, from Freshpoint Newquay, said: "One of my staff in the loading bay shouted out that they could see a red panda coming down the road.

"I thought 'are you sure it isn't just a big funny coloured cat?' but no, it was a red panda."

He said it was "ambling down the road without a care in the world".


Staff from the greengrocers rolled an apple to Sundara to keep her occupied

"It went into a courtyard opposite and we blocked it off until someone could come and take care of it.

"At first the police thought I was pulling their leg but then came along and dealt with it from there."

Newquay Zoo has two resident red pandas, Seren and Sundara.

Dave Folland, Head of Newquay Zoo said: “On Friday morning, a red panda called Sundara, who had arrived at Newquay Zoo earlier this month, escaped from her enclosure.

"Our team responded in accordance with well-practised procedures and she was swiftly recaptured and returned to her home.”


Police said the animal was contained and handed to zoo staff

Devon and Cornwall Police said they were called on Friday at 07:10 BST "following reports that a red panda had been found on Springfield Road, Newquay".

"Officers attended and kept the animal contained until zoo staff arrived a short time later to return it safely."

(If this was my street then you'd definitely find her in my house )

[prokroustis]

STATUE DEPICTING PAN FOUND IN ISTANBUL



Excavations by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) in Saraçhane Archaeology Park has led to the discovery of a statue depicting Pan, a god from Greek mythology.
Pan is often shown with hindquarters and horns reminiscent of a goat, much like the mythical fauns and satyrs. Hailing from the realm of Arcadia, he is also revered as the deity presiding over meadows, forests, and enchanting valleys.

Furthermore, Pan’s association with carnal desires often associates him with sexuality, establishing his connection to fertility and the rejuvenating season of spring. In Roman religion and myth, Pan’s counterpart was Faunus, a nature god who was the father of Bona Dea, sometimes identified as Fauna.

Archaeologists excavating in Saraçhane Archaeology Park, located in Istanbul, Turkey, have found a statue depicting Pan at the Church of St. Polyeuktos, one of the largest churches constructed in Constantinople.

The statue dates from around AD 323, around the same time when the ancient city of Byzantium was selected to serve as the new capital of the Roman Empire, and the city was renamed Nova Roma, or “New Rome”, by Emperor Constantine the Great.

The statue measures 20 cm’s in height by 18 cm’s in width, with the left arm and lower body parts found broken in situ. The depiction shows the god holding his pan flute, a musical instrument based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting of multiple pipes of gradually increasing length (and occasionally girth).

According to İBB Deputy Secretary General Mahir Polat, the excavations have reached part of a Palace complex, where archaeologists also recently found a stone torso from the Late Roman period around the 3rd to 4th century AD.

Time capsule from 1905 discovered in fire station: ‘So much history’




What a hot find!

A 118-year-old time capsule was discovered last week in an Ohio fire station marked for demolition.

The Marion Fire Department wanted to remove the cornerstone of the building for preservation, so a small group of off-duty firefighters began hammering and chiseling — until they stumbled upon a copper box inside the cornerstone.

Using tin snips at a public unveiling this week, officials found nine turn-of-the-century firefighter badges, a fire department roster from 1905, and four local newspapers from 118 years ago.

The box also held the original lease for the property from Marion Power Shovel to the City of Marion, an 1878 invitation from the Delphos Fire Department for the Northwestern Ohio Volunteer Fireman’s Association Fireman’s Games, and a letter from the fire chief at the time stating that the cornerstone was set on July 20, 1905, among other items.

Officials found nine turn-of-the-century firefighter badges, a fire department roster from 1905, and four local newspapers from 118 years ago.

The copper box was discovered inside the cornerstone, which the fire department was trying to preserve.

The box also held the original lease for the property from Marion Power Shovel to the City of Marion, an 1878 invitation from the Delphos Fire Department for the Northwestern Ohio Volunteer Fireman’s Association Fireman’s Games, and a letter from the fire chief at the time stating that the cornerstone was set on July 20, 1905, among other items.


“What an amazing find! These items will be kept at the Marion County Historical Society while our new Station 1 is constructed and then eventually placed there in a display case,” department officials wrote Wednesday on Facebook.

“That is so awesome,” one local resident commented.

“Y’all should make a time capsule with similar contents. That would be cool,” another recommended.

“Thank you for allowing us to watch! I was surprised there was so much history in that little box,” a third exclaimed.

“Call me a dork. I love this kind of stuff. I’m so glad you were able to share this find with your folks,” someone else gushed.

“It was great being able to watch the opening and reveal of all this outstanding history!” another shared.

“How exciting. Are there plans to put another box in the new facility?” one wondered.

The fire department replied: “There sure is!”

Other century-old time capsules have been unearthed in recent years under a Robert E. Lee statue in Virginia and a former middle school in Massachusetts.

https://nypost.com/2023/06/02/time-capsule-from-1905-discovered-in-fire-station/

[PennySerenade]

Detroit High School Senior Voted 'Most Positive' Gets More Than $1.7M in Scholarship Offers



A graduating Detroit senior known for her sunny outlook and positive vibes received a whopping $1.7 million in college scholarship offers.
Tatyana Alves, 17, a graduating senior at The School at Marygrove — a K-12 entrance-examination school that focuses on social justice and engineering — was voted "Most Positive" in her class, known for saying she's doing "amazing" whenever asked, according to the Detroit Free Press.

“It feels really good," Alves, who plans on attending Eastern Michigan University for business administration, said during an interview with NBC affiliate WDIV-TV



The student told The Detroit Free Press having to do virtual learning for a year during the pandemic was “one of the roughest transitions that I’ve ever been through."

She got through it by purposefully setting and then meeting a series of goals for herself, like getting a 4.0 GPA, obtaining her driver’s license, and getting a job at a local drugstore, which helped boost her self-confidence, per the outlet.

Regarding her abundance of scholarship offers, Alves told the Free Press she started actively seeking out scholarships when she was a junior, and chalked up some of her success to Raise.Me, a micro-scholarship site she discovered on TikTok through a friend.

As it turns out though, Alves saif she "opted out of using" her scholarship money, but still gets to "go to school for three" through Detroit Promise, according to WDIV-TV.



Mom Acquanetta Windham, told the Free Press that Alves is her "first baby going to college."

"I’m so proud of her," she said of her daughter. "She exceeded all expectations.”

Wolverine spotted in California for only the second time in a century

By Cheri Mossburg, CNN


Rare wolverine sightings in California have been verified by scientists, marking just the second time in century the animal has been spotted in the Golden State.

A trio of rare wolverine sightings in California has been verified by scientists, marking just the second time in a century the animal has been spotted in the Golden State.

All three sightings were reported by different people last month in various parts of the Eastern Sierra Mountains.

One was seen in Yosemite National Park and two in the Inyo National Forest, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday.

Wolverines are members of the weasel family which resemble small bears and are typically found in Alaska and Canada, with some smaller populations in the Rocky and Cascade mountain ranges.

“Wolverines can travel great distances, making it likely that the recent sightings are all of the same animal,” said Daniel Gammons, senior environmental scientist for the fish and wildlife department. “Because only two wolverines have been confirmed in California during the last 100 years, these latest detections are exciting.”

Using photos and videos taken witnesses, scientists were able to identify the animal as a wolverine “by its size, body proportion, coloration and movement patterns,” the department said in a news release. They used coordinates embedded in the media to geolocate where the photos and video were taken, the department explained.

Wolverines are listed as a threatened species under California’s Endangered Species Act. They are being considered for addition to the US list of endangered and threatened species, as there are thought to be only about 300 wolverines in the country. A final determination is expected in November.

The last time a wolverine was spotted in California was documented by scientists between 2008 and 2018 in the Tahoe National Forest. Before then, the last sightings were in the 1920s.

“The recent detections were likely of a different wolverine given that the species’ lifespan is typically 12 to 13 years,” said the wildlife department.

Scientists are hoping to further study the animals by collecting genetic samples through hair, scat or saliva found at feeding sites.

[HogwartsExpress]

A woman strolling on a California beach found a massive mastodon tooth — and then lost it




A woman taking a Memorial Day weekend stroll on a California beach found something unusual sticking out of the sand: a tooth from an ancient mastodon.

But then the fossil vanished, and it took a media blitz and a kind-hearted jogger to find it again.

Jennifer Schuh found the foot-long (.30-meter) tooth sticking out of the sand on Friday at the mouth of Aptos Creek on Rio Del Mar State Beach, located off Monterey Bay in Santa Cruz County on California's central coast.

"I was on one side of the creek and this lady was talking to me on the other side and she said what's that at your feet," Schuh recounted. "It looked kind of weird, like burnt almost."

Schuh wasn't sure what she had found. So she snapped some photos and posted them on Facebook, asking for help. The answer came from Wayne Thompson, paleontology collections advisor for the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History.

Thompson determined that the object was a worn molar from an adult Pacific mastodon, an extinct elephant-like species.

"This is an extremely important find," Thompson wrote, and he urged Schuh to call him.

But when they went back to the beach, the tooth was gone.

A weekend search failed to find it. Thompson then sent out a social media request for help in finding the artifact. The plea made international headlines.

On Tuesday, Jim Smith of nearby Aptos called the museum.

"I was so excited to get that call," said Liz Broughton, the museum's visitor experience manager. "Jim told us that he had stumbled upon it during one of his regular jogs along the beach, but wasn't sure of what he had found until he saw a picture of the tooth on the news."

Smith donated the tooth to the museum, where it will be on display Friday through Sunday.

In April, an Oregon boy also used social media to help identify an ancient fossil found in his grandmother's backyard. Nine-year-old Jeremiah Longbrake told Insider he was digging around for rocks by a creek when he found an unusual object.

"When he first brought it to me, I initially thought it was some sort of petrified wood with like quartz running through it," his mom, Megan Johnson, told Insider. "And then, I got to look at it, and I'm like, well, I've never seen anything like this before, so this is really different... There's some bendy areas and it kind of weaves through almost like a ribbon candy."

Johnson posted the picture to Facebook, where friends commented that it looked more like a tooth. They urged her to share her son's findings with paleontologists and archeologists. They confirmed that the item was in fact a 10,000 mammoth tooth.

"I couldn't keep that thing out of his hands, save for the time he was down in the creek looking for more stuff," Johnson said.

The California tooth's possible origins


The age of the tooth isn't clear. A museum blog says mastodons generally roamed California from about 5 million to 10,000 years ago.

"We can safely say this specimen would be less than 1 million years old, which is relatively 'new' by fossil standards," Broughton said in an email.

Broughton said it is common for winter storms to uncover fossils in the region and it may have washed down to the ocean from higher up.

Schuh said she is thrilled that her find could help unlock ancient secrets about the peaceful beach area. She didn't keep the tooth, but she did hop on Amazon and order herself a replica mastodon tooth necklace.

"You don't often get to touch something from history," she said.

It's only the third find of a locally recorded mastodon fossil. The museum also has another tooth along with a skull that was found by a teenager in 1980. It was found in the same Aptos Creek that empties into the ocean.

"We are thrilled about this exciting discovery and the implications it holds for our understanding of ancient life in our region," museum Executive Director Felicia B. Van Stolk said in a statement.

source: https://www.insider.com/woman-found-the ... ach-2023-6

[goldie0608]

U.S. Is Giving Away Lighthouses for Free to Preserve Them As Historic Landmarks



A unique opportunity for a fixer-upper is coming by way of the US General Services Administration (GSA)—6 historic American lighthouses.

Going up this year via public auction, the federal government has a unique way of ensuring lighthouses retain their historic status which can even involve auctioning them off to private citizens with an affection for the now-obsolete structures.

Lighthouses are beautiful, attractive pieces of seaside scenery, although perhaps it’s a tad difficult to explain exactly why it’s almost impossible to find someone not moved by the sight of one.

The US has hundreds of lighthouses that once ensured sailors could safely come into harbor but are now derelict since the invention of GPS technology. The GSA routinely sells off lighthouses to nonprofits interested in conservation, state and local governments, educational agencies, and even federal ones.

However if no buyers come up, the GSA will auction them off to the public at prices ranging from $10,000 to nearly $1 million, reports NPR.

Since the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act was passed in 2000 more than 150 lighthouses have been sold or handed over to various organizations. This includes 81 that are now owned by government agencies and nonprofits and another 70 that have been sold to the public.

“Costs for upkeep of lighthouses are relative to what the new owner plans to do,” the GSA states in a notice of the May 2023 “Lighthouse season”

“A total restoration could be thousands of dollars while a simple cleaning is much less. New owners should expect to have to paint, clean, and possibly restore broken or missing items. Most lighthouses do not have any utilities, so there would be a cost associated with making the lighthouse livable.”

This year, 6 lighthouses are being placed on Notice of Availability, and 4 are going direct to public auction. Should any of the 6 not find owners, they too will be sold to the citizenry.

These include the Lynde Point Lighthouse, Old Saybrook, Connecticut; Nobska Lighthouse, Falmouth (Woods Hole), Massachusetts; Plymouth/Gurnet Lighthouse, Plymouth, Massachusetts; Warwick Neck Light, Warwick, Rhode Island; Little Mark Island and Monument, Harpswell, Maine; and Erie Harbor North Pier Lighthouse, Erie, Pennsylvania.

Sales to the public will feature the Penfield Reef Lighthouse, Fairfield, Connecticut; Stratford Shoal Light, East Setauket, New York; Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Light, Cleveland, Ohio; and the Keweenaw Waterway Lower Entrance Light, Chassell, Michigan.

“People really appreciate the heroic role of the solitary lighthouse keeper,” John Kelly of the GSA’s office of real property disposition told AP. “They were really the instruments to provide safe passage into some of these perilous harbors which afforded communities great opportunities for commerce, and they’re often located in prominent locations that offer breathtaking views.”

[Misstee]

The Tractor Beam Is No Longer A Sci-Fi Fantasy

Researchers have found a way to build a system for real-life tractor beams to haul objects in space.

By Douglas Helm | Published 12 hours ago



Rebel ships better watch out because, apparently, we’re closer to making tractor beams a reality than ever. Once relegated to the realm of fantasy in Star Wars and Star Trek, Phys.org is reporting that a team of aerospace engineers led by Professor Hanspeter Schaub is working on electron beams that use attractive or repulsive electrostatic force to remove space debris from orbit. Presumably, if the team finds success in creating these beams, we could prevent Kessler Syndrome from becoming a reality.

Kessler Syndrome is a phenomenon, laid out by NASA scientist Donald Kessler, where the space debris in Earth’s orbit becomes so significant that it hinders our ability to launch satellites, spacecraft, orbital stations, and anything else into orbit. It’s a major problem that could easily become the state of our orbit if measures aren’t taken to prevent it. Using so-called “space dump trucks” with tractor beams could be one way to lessen our debris problem.

The main problem with space debris is that it’s not so easy to clear out, as objects in space move rapidly and unpredictably, so you can’t just grab it like you would grab trash out of the ocean. Tractor beams would allow us to move debris and other objects out of the way without having to touch them directly. Another example of the usefulness of these beams would be moving old satellites out of the way to make room for new satellites.



Of course, there is still a lot of work today before these tractor beams can be applied in real-world scenarios. To test the technology, the team uses a vacuum chamber called the Electrostatic Charging Laboratory for Interactions between Plasma and Spacecraft. The vacuum chamber can simulate a space environment, and the team can place simulated debris made out of metal to experiment with the electrostatic tractors.

The way that the tractor beam would work, if the technology is successful, is that a service ship would fly up to the debris or derelict satellite, blast it with electrons to give the debris a negative charge, and the servicing ship would have a positive charge. This would create an attractive force, allowing the service ship to slowly move the debris. So far, the experiments have shown that the beams could potentially pull an object weighing several tons about 200 miles in two to three months.

As for the wild and unpredictable movements of space debris, the team has been tinkering with that too. Schaub and his team have shown that zapping the debris with a rhythmic pulse can slow down the rotation, making it safe to move it with the tractor beams. However, there is still one other big obstacle to overcome.

The team also has the issue of the difference in plasma environments in different areas of space, with ion wakes potentially affecting the performance of the tractor beams. However, Schaub and his team are confident that we may not have to wait too terribly long for this technology to get up to snuff. According to Schaub, they could be ready to send out the first electrostatic tractor in as little as five to ten years with the right funding.


The date has not changed, but this is cool so I will post it anyway.

[lush]

Useless Thieves Steal 220 Sneakers from Store, All for the Right Foot
05082023 *

A trio of Peruvian thieves managed to make international news headlines after pulling off one of the dumbest heists in history – 220 sneakers from various brands, all for the right foot.

The hilarious crime occurred on April 30th, at a sports goods store in Huancayo, central Peru. At around 03:30 am, three men managed to cut the padlocks at the back of the store and steal three large crates filled with sneaker boxes from various brands. What the thieves didn’t realize was that all the shoeboxes they stole only contained sneakers for the right foot, as the owner had prepared the three crates to have the footwear displayed at a local sports goods fair. Authorities suspect that the thieves have hidden their haul, as there is no way that they can sell the sneakers on the black market without their pairs.


Photo: Alex Haney/Unsplash

“We have carried out the inspection at the scene, the particular thing about this theft is that only right-foot sneakers have been stolen,” Eduan Díaz, head of the Junín police region, told América Noticias, adding that it’s just a matter of time before the thieves are identified, as they were caught on surveillance cameras in the area, and have left their prints at the crime scene.

Even with the left sneakers still in their possession, the owner of the store estimates losses of around $13,000, unless the 220 stolen sneakers are recovered, because, just like the thieves, he can’t sell the sneakers individually.



The sneaker store had only been open for a few months but is one of several to be burglarized recently. In mid-April, the National Police of Peru captured a thief who had made off with six sacks full of sneakers from a shoe store in Ica, a city in southern Peru.

“Surely they wanted to sell it at half price,” one Twitter user joked.

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
SUNDAY JUNE 4
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You can post as many stories as you like, but you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only earn WRZ$ once a day.
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -6)
3:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
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IN OTHER NEWS

[ozswede]

Doncaster boy, 1, meets bin crew heroes in surprise visit

A one-year-old boy who is a super-fan of the crew who collect bins down his street every fortnight has been given a surprise tour of their wagon.

Harry spends every other Wednesday morning standing at his Doncaster living room window waiting for the truck to arrive to wave at the crew.

After a year of watching them through the window, Harry was finally invited into the lorry's cab.

Mum Hannah said he was "really brave" and was given presents by the crew.


Harry would spend his mornings staring out of the window waiting for the bin crew to arrive

Hannah had contacted Doncaster Council to tell them about how her son looked forward to the fortnightly visits from the high-vis clad team who emptied the family's blue recycling bin.

"We often hear the lorry reversing up the lane and all the lights and things and we stand in the window and wave," she said.

"All the crew, they stop and tell each other that Harry is in the window and they all wave back to him, and it's just gone from there."


A special visit was organised by the Suez crew so Harry could meet his heroes

After months of visits to their street and countless waves, the Suez bin crew decided to buy Harry his own hard hat, high-vis jacket and gloves.

As part of their most recent visit, Harry was also able to have a tour of the cab and try out some of the lights.

Hannah said while Harry was a little scared of truck's noise, he enjoyed the surprise.

"He sat on the chair, driving the wheel and looking at the lights," she said.


Harry had been given toys by the crew at a previous visit, complete with toy lorry and blue bin

Wayne Smales, from Suez, said the crew had seen Harry on so many occasions waving at them that they wanted to do something for him.

The crew showed him around the truck's cab and also gave him a dustbin wagon toy complete with its own miniature blue bin as a memento of the special day.

"Every time we collect here, he's always at the window waving. We always have a chat with him," he added.