[Misstee]

Disney guests allegedly poop while waiting in line for rides

by: Iman Palm

Posted: Nov 7, 2023 / 01:08 PM PST

Updated: Nov 7, 2023 / 02:25 PM PST

Some Disney Parks fans have seemingly taken the saying “When you gotta go, you gotta go” to the extreme.

A Disney Parks urban legend, claiming that parks guests poop while standing in line for rides, is apparently true, SF Gate reported.

Two former Disneyland custodial team workers, known as cast members, wrote about the unsavory topic in their 2015 book “Cleaning the Kingdom: Insider Tales of Keeping Walt’s Dream Spotless.”

In the chapter “Disgusting Things,” authors Ken Pellman and Lynn Barron share details about such instances.

They describe how these incidents have occurred all over the theme park, most notably in the stand-by queue for the “Indiana Jones Adventure” ride at Disneyland. While standing in this particular queue, many guests think the restrooms are far away, but that isn’t the case.

“There’s a pair of individual-use restrooms just backstage from the north unload. It was mainly for cast members, but guests could and did use it,” the book said.

“A woman who did not know this burst into the control room for the attraction and deposited her gift right there. I (Ken) did not have the clean up on that one, though I was working in there that day.”

When these incidents occurred across the park, it was known as “Human Code H,” according to the book’s glossary section.

Social media users on Reddit took to the site to vent about their experience with such incidents.

“I am in the queue for Rise of Resistance – someone let their kid take a dump on the floor and then they just walked out and left. WTF?” one user shared in the Walt Disney World Reddit forum,

“Bodily fluids no longer bother me after working at Disney. Let’s just say that the attraction I work at has what the cast ended up dubbing ‘the poop hall’ because of the amount of times guests have gone in there and pooped. We even put up a camera and it didn’t stop it,” another user shared.

It’s recommended for guests to use the bathroom before they enter a long standby line for an attraction.

[goldie0608]

Over 30,000 Ancient Roman Coins Found in ‘Rare State of Preservation’ Near Sardinia

Italy's Ministry of Culture told CNN that the treasure "represents one of the most important discoveries of numismatic finds in recent years”



A diver off the coast of Sardinia, Italy made quite the unexpected discovery when he spotted something metallic in the sea: a trove of ancient coins.

After being alerted by the diver, Italy’s Ministry of Culture sent additional divers from an art protection squad and the undersea archaeology department down to verify the items, which turned out to be Roman bronze coins, according to the Associated Press.

Also known as follis, the ministry determined that these Roman coins possibly date back to the first half of the fourth century (between 324 to 340 CE), per the AP. The coins were introduced around 294 AD during the rise of Roman emperor Diocletian, according to The Guardian.

While the ministry said they did not know the exact amount of how many were found, they suspect that there were between 30,000 and 50,000 coins due to its weight, the AP and CNN report.

“All the coins were in an excellent and rare state of preservation,” the ministry said, per AP. Four of the coins were damaged but were still able to be read.



A majority of the coins were found scattered among seagrass near the shore of Sardinia by the town of Arzachena. Because of the location, the ministry suspects that they may have come from a shipwreck, per CNN.

The coins were also found alongside the remains of amphorae, which are Greek jugs with an oval body, narrow neck and two handles, the outlet reported.

Italy’s Ministry of Culture did not immediately reply to PEOPLE's request for comment.

Luigi La Rocca, the ministry's director general of archaeology, fine arts and landscape for the region, said in a statement to CNN that the treasure "represents one of the most important discoveries of numismatic finds in recent years."

“[The discovery] highlights the richness and importance of the archaeological heritage that our seabed, traversed by men and goods since the earliest times, still guards and preserves,” La Rocca said.

This wasn’t the first time that Roman coins of this type were found in waters off the coast of Europe. In 2013, diver Laurence Egerton found 22,888 coins under the sea near the site of a Roman villa and a military building in Seaton, United Kingdom, according to The Guardian.

[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
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 8
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)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them short, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
All payments will be made at THE END of the weekly news cycle.
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS

[Alessa9]

Painting Stolen in a Heist 30 Years Ago Returned to its Native Scotland



A painting stolen from a Scottish castle museum over 30 years ago has finally been returned after it emerged at a Yorkshire auctioneer, and an art database was able to inform them of its status as hot property.

It was back in 1989 that the Haggs Castle Museum of Childhood lost some dozen or so artworks and other artifacts to thieves. Investigations revealed nothing and the loss had to be endured—until last year when the stolen painting Children Wading, painted by Scottish artist Robert Gemmell Hutchison, appeared at Tennants Auctioneers.

Currently listing more than 700,000 items, 65,000 of which are missing presumed stolen, Art Loss Register is a non-profit databasing company that lists detailed information on artworks and antiquities on behalf of the victims of looting or theft, insurers, police forces, and others.

Art Loss is then utilized to offer a due diligence service to clients in the art market who wish to ensure that they are working with items to which no claim will arise—which is exactly what happened with Children Wading.

“We’re delighted to have a work returned, even though the theft was a very long time ago,” says Duncan Dornan, head of Glasgow Life Museums, to BBC News’ Carolyn Atkinson. “The pain of it still persists—and there’s a loss to the public in Glasgow. We were sorry to lose it and delighted to be able to recover the work subsequently, using the Art Loss system.”

Indeed, the Museum of Childhood closed many years ago, but the painting will be put back into the Glasgow Museums Resource Center where it can be viewed online or added to new exhibits in the future.

The painting depicts Mary Watt and Lorna Galloway frolicking in the surf in the Scottish town of Carnoustie during the summer of 1918.

The family that owned the painting bought it in good faith without knowledge of its theft. Under British law, after six years the family has no obligation to return it, but when the selling family was informed of the situation, they decided to give it over to the museum collection for moral reasons.

[ozswede]

‘Holy Grail of shipwrecks’ to be exhumed off Colombia with $AU31b sunken treasure

A huge blue (that's an argument to all you non Australians) has erupted over a sunken 16th century galleon that could be worth billions, which one nation wants to raise from the depths.

The Latin American nation of Colombia is hoping to expedite its mission to recover a three-century-old sunken treasure worth as much as $AU31 billion ($US20 billion) as the ownership of the fortune lies in legal limbo amid an ongoing court battle.



President Gustavo Petro ordered his administration to exhume the so-called “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” — the Spanish galleon San José — from the floor of the Caribbean Sea as soon as possible, the country’s minister of culture told Bloomberg last week.


British ship the Expedition fires on Spanish flagship, the San José, in a painting by English painter Samuel Scott

Mr Petro wants to bring the 62-gun, three-masted ship to the surface before his term is up in 2026 and has requested a public-private partnership be formed to see it through, Minister of Culture Juan David Correa reported the New York Post.

“This is one of the priorities for the Petro administration,” he said. “The president has told us to pick up the pace.”

But mystery surrounds the ownership of the massive trove of gold, silver and emeralds estimated to be worth anywhere between $AU6.15 billion and $AU30.75 billion, according to a lawsuit.


The wreck was found and photographed some 2000 feet underwater in 2015.

The crux of the issue appears to revolve around who is believed to have found it.

The San José galleon — with 600 crew members on-board — sank some 2000 feet (about 600m) on June 8, 1708, during a battle against the British in the War of the Spanish Succession.

It remained a thing of legend for years as its exact location was unknown.

Then in 1981, the US company Glocca Morra claimed it discovered the lost treasure and turned over its coordinates to Colombia with the promise it would receive half the fortune when recovered.

Years later, in 2015, Colombia’s then-President Juan Manuel Santos said the country’s navy found the San José wreck at a different location on the sea floor.


Jack Harbeston from Sea Search Armada showing the location on map of the San Jose on 24 May 2007.

Colombia has never released the coordinates of the ship’s final resting place, but Glocca Morra — now called Sea Search Armada — believes the country found part of the same debris field in 2015 that it first discovered 34 years earlier.

The company is suing the Colombian government for half the treasure, or $AU15.38 billion, according to its estimate, under the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, according to Bloomberg.

Mr Correa, meanwhile, told the outlet that the government’s researchers visited the coordinates shared by Sea Search Armada and “concluded that there is no shipwreck there”.

Orcas sink yacht after relentless 45 minute attack



A boat has been sunk after being attacked by a pod of orcas that roam the Strait of Gibraltar.

No-one was killed during this incident and everyone managed to get away just fine, but it must have been pretty terrifying for those on board the yacht at the time.

After all, these creatures can take down great white sharks, if they want.

This is far from an isolated incident, as a number of vessels have found themselves the subject of attacks from orcas - believed to be the same pod - in that part of the Mediterranean recently.

It’s not immediately clear why the orcas choose to attack the boats, but their methods have remained broadly the same.

In this incident, much like in many of the others, the orcas - who are actually large dolphins, not whales - battered the rudder of the boat, rendering it unable to move.

The Polish company that was operating the yacht then later said that they failed in all of their attempts to rescue it, and eventually it sank near to a port in Morocco.



Luckily, the same operator said that the crew of the yacht were ‘safe, unharmed, and sound’ following the latest in a strange spate of orca attacks.

In their statement - as reported by The Sun - the Polish operator said: "Despite attempts to bring the yacht to the port by the captain, crew and rescuers from the SAR (Search and Rescue), port tugs and the Moroccan Navy, the unit sunk near the entrance to the port of Tanger Med."

The attacks in the Strait of Gibraltar have been taking place since 2020, and usually involve the pod of orcas swimming right up to boats and then interfering with them, ramming the rudder, often disabling the boat entirely.

Recent incidents have seen a 50 foot yacht attacked, as well as a tourist boat.

Orcas aren’t exactly the type of creature you’d want to mess around with.



They’re the largest type of dolphin, and one of the largest known predators in the sea.

Despite that, human attacks outside of captivity are almost non-existent.

In fact, there are no recorded reports of wild orcas intentionally attacking humans.

So, what’s the problem with the boats, then?

Some have suggested it is a game, others have suggested they are being led by a matriarch whale - nicknamed ‘White Gladis’ - that suffered trauma at the hands of a boat once.

Others have suggested that it could be because they enjoyed the relative calm and peace they had during the pandemic, and now resent the return of the noisy boats to their space.



According to Dr Renaud de Stephanis, a biologist looking into it all, the orcas are having a bit of a laugh.

Speaking to the BBC, he said: “I’ve seen them attacking sperm whales - that’s aggressive.

“But these guys, they are playing.

“They can weigh four to five tonnes and when they play they really play.”

Of course, he admits it is ‘really scary’ for those on the boats, but he rejects the term ‘attack’ and prefers ‘interaction’.

He’s still concerned though, and added: “They just play, play and play. And the game is getting worse and worse.”

It definitely is for anyone who owns a boat around those parts, that’s for sure.

Pre-holiday feng shui purge: 5 items you need to throw away today


As winter looms, days darken and temperatures lower, we retreat inside our homes and deeper into ourselves.

Now, more than ever, our homes become our sanctuaries, and we have a few key ways to encourage positive chi, interior flow and abundant good energy.

Feng shui away my babies.

What is feng shui?

Feng shui is the practice of arranging objects and elements within an environment to vitalize and harmonize the flow of energy within it.

An ancient Chinese art, Feng shui translates to “the way of wind and water,” and is rooted in the Taoist belief in chi, the essential life force that inhabits all matter.

Chi is made of the opposing, inseparable forces of yin and yang, and balancing these elements through the practice of feng shui is thought to imbue a space/person with a positive energetic flow that invites and encourages peace and prosperity.

Feng shui classifies all material as belonging to one of the five elements; water, wood, fire, earth and metal. Operational feng shui becomes something of an equation, adding, subtracting or combining these materials in service of energetic flow.

Feng shui practitioners and principles aim to encourage the flow of positive chi while keeping the negative at bay and far away from the living space. While there are a wealth of ways to beautify, purify, and optimize a space, there are a few key hindrances and habits that you can do away with today.

Keep in mind that these are only suggestions. If, to paraphrase Marie Kondo, an item or arrangement sparks joy, proceed. If it delights you to decorate your space with big screen televisions, broken dishes, love letters from your ex, black ceilings, bonsai trees and animal remains, you do you, baby.

TV in the bedroom

While teeth are technically the province of Capricorn, loss, growth and endings are the domain of Scorpio who teaches us, as this dream does, that with every death we are given new breath, every lost tooth a new opportunity to evolve. 5

A TV in the bedroom compromises the two primary functions of the space, to heal the body through rest and connect with others through intimacy — essentially, lying down and getting laid.

Add to the mix that a turned-off television operates as a mirror, a no-go near the bed.

“According to feng shui, placing a mirror directly opposite your bed can trigger nightmares, insomnia and other sleep-related problems. The belief is that, during sleep, the soul leaves the body, and waking to see its reflection can be unsettling, leading to night terrors,” notes Martin Seeley, sleep expert and CEO of MattressNextDay.

If you are dead set on having less sex and sleep in your life, you can still do yourself a solid and cover the televisions in your household (especially your bedroom) when not in use.

Cacti + bonsai

Cactus or succulent in red gift box on table. Environment friendly mock up. Florist shop sale or shopping.

According to the principles of feng shui, plants with thorns, spikes and other such prickly presentations attract negative energy.

In a similar vein, or root as it were, bonsai trees are not encouraged for use in home decor as they represent stunted growth and unrealized potential.

Keep it lush, keep it green, and keep it lucky with positive, non-poke plants like a money tree, pothos or a peace lily.

Taxidermy

Ditch the death and the rummy-playing rodents. Joanna Ebenstein and Pat Morris

Whether you keep the dead animals around to admire their beauty or reflect your power, taxidermy is a stitched and stretched symbol of death.

Converting the vital to the lifeless and holding it in that unnatural amber brings an energy of quiescence and by extension, depression.

The same goes for dead flowers, folks. They send the message that your home is where the living goes to die. Yikes.

If you don’t mind taking the stagnation with the stag horns, you can counterbalance the negativity with a plethora of live plants.

The importance of proper plumbing is stressed by feng shui practitioners, as water systems are linked to financial viability.

As Suzanne Roynon of Interiors Therapy explains, “Water is a symbol of wealth and abundance in feng shui, but when it leaks or drips, it represents a loss of these precious energies. Those seemingly harmless leaks may be draining more than just your water bill!”

Similarly, a clogged drain can be seen as a blockage that prevents health and wealth from washing over you and energy from running through you.

Broken objects

Busted alarm clock with broken glass on a dark background; Shutterstock ID 605886251; Purchase Order: - 5

As anyone with a Taurus placement and/or a toxic ex can attest, we often exhibit an uncanny need to hold on to broken things.

Unsurprisingly, this practice does not bode well for good vibes or optimal chi.

Chipped cups, cracked pottery and the remnants of failed relationships should be discarded to bring hope and harmony to the home front.

Broken clocks and outdated calendars are particularly negative influences, as they represent ruts of all kinds, stalled energies at best, and a shortened life span at worst.

https://nypost.com/lifestyle/pre-holida ... way-today/

[Fatima99]

Pristine Coral Reefs Discovered Are Thousands of Years Old And Teeming With Life



Everyone knows of the Galapagos Islands’ biodiversity and scientific value on land, but a recent deep-water expedition has revealed that this biodiversity carries on fathoms below the bellies of the islands’ giant tortoises.

An international expedition from the Schmidt Ocean Institute has revealed the presence of two pristine, cold-water coral reefs growing alongside the walls and bases of several seamounts over 1,000 feet below the surface.

Tropical coral reefs typically grow within 120 feet of the surface, but have sometimes been found at lower depths. These however were cold-water corals, known sometimes by their shorthand of “stony corals,” and were found at depths ranging from 1,200 to 1,375 feet (370 to 420 meters).

The larger of the two reefs spans over 800 meters in length, the equivalent of eight football fields. The second, smaller reef measures 250 meters in length. They exhibit a rich diversity of stony coral species, suggesting that they have likely been forming and supporting marine biodiversity for thousands of years.

The inhabitants of these reefs included sea fans, or Gorgoans, and stony corals from the subclass Hexacorallia, or six-sided corals, which include almost only deep-sea corals but also sea anemones.

These are the second and third deep-sea coral reefs found in the Galapagos Island Marine Reserve, following the discovery of the first one this April by scientists onboard a research vessel from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The Schmidt expedition began in September and was led by Dr. Katleen Robert of the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. The expedition included 24 participating scientists representing 13 organizations and universities and lasted 30 days.

“This information is not only valuable from a scientific perspective, but it also provides a solid foundation for decision-making that effectively protects these ecosystems, safeguarding the biological diversity they harbor and ensuring their resilience in a constantly changing environment,” stated Danny Rueda Córdova, director of the Galápagos National Park Directorate.



One goal of the expedition was to apply laser scanning technology to create extremely high-resolution maps of these reefs and the seamounts they grow on—which was accomplished at an astounding 2-millimeter resolution.

In addition to investigating coral biodiversity in the Galápagos, the scientists explored areas within the Isla del Coco National Marine Park, a protected area managed by Costa Rica.

The team explored seamounts southwest of Isla del Coco and examined links between coral communities on seamounts in the Galápagos and those in Costa Rica. On one of the remotely-operated submersible dives, the researchers observed multiple deep-sea coral species laden with eggs.

This research contributes data to inform the management of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor, a network of interconnected marine reserves managed by the governments of Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia.

“The Galápagos Marine Reserve is an area of outstanding biological importance, connected to partner marine protected areas across the Eastern Pacific. Finding such deep and long-lived reef takes us important steps closer to protecting hidden dimensions of ocean diversity and understanding the role that deep habitats play in maintaining our ocean’s health,” said Charles Darwin Foundation’s CEO Stuart Banks.

“These fascinating new findings continue to feed important research to inform better management of existing and future marine protected areas in the region.”

[rflash8]

Helicopters are making crocodiles horny — here’s why



The Project star Sarah Harris took a moment to apologize to Channel 10 bosses during Tuesday night’s episode of the panel show.

Harris was speaking about crocs with co-stars Waleed Aly, Tom Cashman and Kate Langbroek when she made an X-rated confession.

The panel were discussing news that Queensland’s male crocodiles “are being driven into a mating frenzy by the sound and vibrations of Chinook choppers flying overhead” when things took a lewd turn.

The owner of a crocodile farm in the state recently revealed that their mating season had started especially early this year due to being sparked accidentally by the armed forces.

Harris explained: “That’s right – helicopters are making the crocs horny. No, easy way to say that.



Experts aren’t sure why, but they think the helicopter may have sounded like a thunderstorm – which can often get the reptiles feeling randy.”

Her co-stars then questioned how experts can even tell when the crocs are “aroused,” and it sparked a cheeky confession from Harris.

“I’ve been doing a bit of a deep dive,” laughed the host, before turning directly to the camera to speak to Channel 10 bosses.





“Apologies to Channel 10 because I’ve made some unsavoury searches on my work phone this afternoon.”

Waleed then joked that Harris was just making excuses, teasing: “Nice cover, Sarah.”

Harris didn’t stop there though, and she went on to imitate the sound the “horny crocs” make by slapping the palm of her hand against the table over and over again.

“The thudding is what they think the helicopters are,” explained Cashman.

“So have some empathy. Imagine when a helicopter went over you heard a male human sex noise.”



Longbroke then chimed in, laughing: “What would that sound like?” to which Cashman responded: “Probably, ‘Oops. Sorry,’ or ‘Please’”.

John Lever, who owns Koorana Crocodile Farm in Rockhampton, Queensland, recently told the ABC that the bulls among his stable of about 3,000 crocodiles were sent into a mating frenzy when a Chinook helicopter came in low over the farm.

“All of the big males got up and roared and bellowed up at the sky, and then after the helicopters left they mated like mad,” he revealed last month. “There’s something about the sonic waves that really gets them stirred up.”

[PennySerenade]

Ontario man gets worldwide attention for potential world-record-breaking zucchini



An Ontario man’s gardening skills might have other gardeners green with envy as one of his vegetables could be the longest in the world.

While Henry D’Angela’s garden in Thorold, Ont., is filled with a variety of produce from tomatoes to fresh herbs, it is his Sicilian zucchini that might squash a world record.

“When this zucchini became very long I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder what the record is,’ and I saw the record, and I knew it was close,” D’Angela said. The current title holder is Giovanni Batista Scozzafava in Niagara Falls, who broke the record about nine years ago in Aug. 28, 2014 at 8 feet and 3.3 inches. D’Angela’s is measured at 8 feet 4.79 inches.

The city councillor says he became an avid gardener at the same time he became a homeowner, gaining his green thumb from his parents who always had a flourishing garden. D’Angela says he doesn’t do “anything special” for his – he cultivates the soil and uses a manure mixture in the springtime.



For his zucchinis, D’Angela said he grew them along the side of his house, which faces south, in a little strip that typically hosts his sunflowers and tomatoes – a first for him. He hung the zucchini on a manmade trellis to keep them off the ground, although he had to add a makeshift wooden support to lift it up even further so it could keep growing.

While his zucchini thrived, the other produce in that same garden did not grow nearly as well.

“This year, none of my tomatoes grew. I don’t know if it’s because the soil nutrients were brought up by the zucchini plant or if it was just because they were shaded from all the foliage of the zucchini plant,” D’Angela noted. “Then my sunflowers grew maybe about eight feet or so, not very high, not their normal size there … so I think the zucchinis had an impact on that.”

D’Angela’s potential new world record has even garnered worldwide attention, with late night talk show host Stephen Colbert exclaiming, “That's a lot of gourd.”



“I don’t pretend to be news, this is a late night show, ok? I try not to get swept up in the sensationalism of the modern news grind but when history is being made – I can’t ignore it,” Colbert said during the Nov. 2 episode of his titular show.

“Which is why tonight’s episode is an Ontario man’s eight-foot zucchini might be the longest in the world, which of course raises the question, ‘Is that a world record in your garden or are you just happy zucchini?’”

D’Angela submitted his zucchini for consideration to Guinness World Record, but said it could take weeks until he finds out if his summer squash is a winner. A spokesperson for the organization confirmed it did receive D’Angela’s application for this title and attempt.

“We are currently awaiting evidence to review,” the statement read, adding the standard review process takes up to 12 to 15 weeks. “Once received and reviewed, our Records Management Team will then confirm the success or failure of the record attempt.”

D’Angela says if his zucchini is crowned, he will put a challenge out – especially since the last extraordinarily lengthy courgette was from Ontario.

“We must have good soil, I find that a little strange and unusual,” he said. “Next year … I’ll put a challenge out to everyone in Niagara and see if they can grow a bigger one and keep us on the map.”

[lush]

Woman Who Held 16 Jobs Simultaneously for Three Years Never Actually Did Any Work
092223*

A Chinese woman has been charged with fraud after it was revealed that she was employed by 16 different companies at the same time, but she never really showed up for work at any of them.

The woman, identified as Guan Yue (pseudonym) by Chinese media, had reportedly been juggling over a dozen employers and collecting paychecks for at least three years, without actually getting any work done for any of them. She and her husband, who is also a suspect in this case, allegedly kept a very tight record of employers, her exact role at each company, the date she had started working for each of them, and the bank account details provided for the woman’s monthly salary. Guan Yue would constantly be looking for new employers, and when going to new job interviews, she would take photos and send them to current employers as proof that she was meeting with clients. Believe it or not, the fraud worked flawlessly for years, allowing Guan Yue to buy an expensive apartment in Shanghai.


Photo: Ahmet Kurt/Unsplash+

Guan Yue was so busy in her constant search for corporate employment, that whenever she had multiple job interviews lined up at the same time, she would pass them on to other people, in exchange for commissions. However, she did keep most of the jobs for herself, always finding other companies to work for whenever she got fired for lack of results.

Unfortunately, the fraudster’s scheme started falling apart this past January, when one of her former employers found a resignation letter from Guan Yue on an online work group. Liu Jian, the owner of a tech company, had hired Yue and seven other associates in sales positions but fired them after a three-month probation period because they hadn’t generated a single sale.

Some time later, the woman made the mistake of sending her resignation letter to another company and several online work groups. Jian was a member of one of these groups and realized that Guan Yue had been working for another company while in a full-time position at his tech firm. After doing a bit of investigating himself, Liu Jian contacted the police about the former employee.


Photo: Headway/Unsplash

Liu Jian’s actions set in motion the exposure of a massive fraud that went back at least three years and exceeded 50 million yuan. Ironically, Guan Yue was arrested right in the middle of an interview for a new job. She had 16 jobs at the time of her arrest but wasn’t putting in any actual work for any of them. She was getting monthly paychecks though, as well as commissions from associates she had helped get hired.

Yue, her husband, and more than 50 accomplices involved in the salary fraud were arrested. According to Chinese media, this kind of labor fraud is a massive problem in China, with hundreds of specialized groups reportedly taking on jobs from multiple employers. They are trained interviewees, have polished résumés, but are only interested in free paychecks.

[Misstee]

'A disembodied head walking about the sea floor on its lips': Scientists finally work out what a starfish is


By Richard Pallardy

Scientists have discovered something strange happened to starfish over the course of their evolution, and they ended up as heads scampering around the seafloor.


Scientists have discovered starfish are essentially heads with feet.



Scientists have finally solved the puzzle of starfish's unique bodies. As it turns out, sea stars and other echinoderms are essentially walking heads with little to no body.

Echinoderms — sea stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and their relatives — have unique bodies that have long puzzled evolutionary biologists. These animals evolved from bilateral organisms — those that have two symmetrical sides — but somehow they evolved a radial body plan, meaning their body parts are arranged around a central axis. In the case of adult sea stars, five (or more) arms emanate from a central structure.

They are among the few members of the clade Bilateria, which includes everything from worms to humans, to have discarded this original form. Sea stars' planktonic larvae, however, are still bilateral, which scientists believe is evidence of their ancestors' bilateral body form.

Scientists have several hypotheses that could explain their weird bodies.

One, known as the duplication hypothesis, posits that echinoderms retained a general bilateral body plan and simply multiplied it — with each arm of a sea star, for example, exhibiting the same bilateral form of its more typical relatives. This hypothesis suggests that the anterior, or head region, is positioned at the center and that there are five posterior regions radiating outward — the arms.

The stacking hypothesis alternatively proposes that the top of a sea star is the posterior end, with the rest of the body stacked beneath it, leading to the anterior at the bottom.

But in a new study, published Nov. 1 in the journal Nature, researchers argue that neither of these hypotheses is accurate. Instead, they suggest that over time, echinoderms lost nearly all of their trunks and that their head is their body.

To locate the head and work out their body structure, the researchers ran genetic tests on bat stars (Patiria miniata) to determine which types of genes were expressed in each area of the animal's body.

"We made slices of the sea star and sequenced each slice to construct a 3D model of the messenger RNA [mRNA] across the body," lead author Laurent Formery, a developmental biologist at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, told Live Science.

The researchers then used fluorescent dye that highlighted particular types of mRNA, enabling them to see the mRNA under a fluorescent microscope and identify where it was expressed in the sea star's body.

"We found that anterior genes are expressed all the way to the tip of the arms," Formery said. Genes coding for more posterior regions were expressed at the outer edges of the arms. If the duplication hypothesis was true, the anterior genes would be expressed at the tips of the arms. And if the stacking hypothesis was true, they would likely be expressed on the central, top side of the organism.

Intriguingly, this is likely the case even in seemingly bilateral echinoderms such as sea cucumbers. The sea cucumber body plan superficially appears to be typically bilateral, but it too exhibits a radial body plan. It is probably a stretched-out head laying on its side rather than a head with a trunk, despite its resemblance to a chubby worm, according to the researchers.

"Although a slight oversimplification, the findings suggest that one could think of the body of a starfish (at least in terms of the anterior–posterior identity of its surface tissues) as a disembodied head walking about the sea floor on its lips — the lips having sprouted a fringe of tube feet, co-opted from their original function of sorting food particles, to do the walking," Thurston Lacalli, a biologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who was not involved in the research, wrote in a News & Views article.

It is unclear why echinoderms developed this novel body plan. Bilateral body plans have been incredibly successful over the course of evolutionary history. Echinoderms first emerged at the start of the Cambrian (541 million to 485.4 million years ago) — a period during which an enormous diversity of organisms emerged.

"If you look extant animals, all of their body organization types originated about at the same time," Formery said. So, while the evolutionary forces in play at that time led to our own bilateral symmetry, something strange happened to the echinoderms and they ended up as heads scampering around the seafloor.

He Found his Dad’s 1930s Car at An Auction–and Got it Working Again


Malcolm Stern and his Talbot-Darracq once upon a time, and now again restored – supplied to the press by the Stern Family.


A man found his father’s beloved old yellow car from the 1930s going up in an auction, and with his son’s help bought and restored it over the course of the pandemic, reuniting their family with a rare and treasured heirloom.

Every family has its stories—the ones heard around the dinner table a hundred times—and for the Sterns of England it was about Grandad’s bright yellow Talbot-Darracq motor car.

Bought in 1935, proud Alec Stern, a Londoner who made his bones parking cars in a city garage, used to drive his wee son Malcolm around town whilst reveling in the long, sloping fenders, chrome grill, and banana yellow bodywork.

Then in World War II, when the British Government ordered the evacuation of children to the countryside, young Malcolm Stern remembers being driven away on a coach watching his dad follow along behind in his Talbot-Darracq.

And that was it for the story of Alec and his yellow car, who sold it in 1942.

Fast forward to 2020 and Malcolm was 91 years old looking for a new hobby when he decided to buy a 3D printer to make small models. That’s when he got the idea to make one of his father’s Talbot-Darracq; a grand idea, but he needed to understand the dimensions of the real thing before he could scale it down.

It only took a few clicks and keystrokes on the computer for Malcolm to locate his father’s actual car—plate numbers and everything—because it was being auctioned.

“An amazing story of serendipity,” Malcolm’s son Jonathan told The Washington Post. “To find the car by just coincidence. We were egging each other on, ‘Oh Dad, you’ve got to buy it…'” he remembers saying. “‘You can’t let it go again.’”

The cost was £8,000, or just over ten grand, a price indicative of fortune since Jonathan was able to afford it; but being of an age quite similar to Malcolm, it was in bad need of repairs before hitting the road.

Jonathan was at first doubtful that his father was up to the manual labor required to refurbish the car, but in Malcolm’s garage in Rickmansworth, a British town north of London, he launched a 3-year project, hiring professionals when he needed to, doing everything else himself, and even using the 3D printer which would have otherwise almost certainly become a coat rack in the face of the restoration of the Talbot-Darracq.

Then the day came, 3 years after repairs first started, and with Malcolm (and the car) 3 years older, when the engine groaned to life, and even though the nonagenarian struggled with the heavy steering and ancient transmission, Malcolm and his son rumbled 15 miles to the parking lot of a local watering hole where a gathering of vintage car enthusiasts were meeting.

Arriving in the Talbot-Darrcq with a fresh coat of canary yellow paint, those gathered were in awe of the old man and the old car.

“The two of us, I think our faces hurt from smiling so much,” Jonathan said. “He [Malcolm] was the star of the show. Ninety-four years old, driving around this great big yellow car.”

Scientists show off the wide vision of Europe’s Euclid space telescope
The $1.5 billion Euclid telescope will use light to study the dark Universe.


One of the first galaxies that Euclid observed is nicknamed the "Hidden Galaxy." This galaxy, also known as IC 342 or Caldwell 5, is difficult to observe because it lies behind the busy disk of our Milky Way.

The European Space Agency released the first five science images from the Euclid space telescope Tuesday, showing how the wide-angle observatory will survey familiar cosmic wonders like galaxies and stars to study the unseen dark energy and dark matter that dominate the Universe.

Stationed nearly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, Euclid will scan one-third of the sky over the next six years, collecting an estimated 1 million images of billions of galaxies. Scientists have developed sophisticated algorithms to analyze the data coming down from Euclid to measure the distances and shapes of each of these galaxies.


From that, scientists can infer how the influence of dark matter pulls on the galaxies, forming clusters and causing them to spin faster. Dark energy is the mysterious force that is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe.

It's a novel way of studying something that defies detection with telescopes. If the mission is successful, Euclid won't become famous for producing pretty pictures like the larger Hubble or Webb telescopes, but it could rewrite astronomy textbooks if it makes fundamental discoveries about the makeup of the Universe.

Still, the pictures are breathtaking.

“What these images tell us is that the instruments of Euclid are working fantastically, that we are getting ready to start with the ultimate goal of Euclid," said Guadalupe Cañas Herrera, a space science research fellow at ESA.

Using light to see the dark

Euclid's 3.9-foot (1.2-meter) telescope is half the size of Hubble's primary mirror and five times smaller than that of Webb. The secret sauce of the $1.5 billion Euclid mission is its ability to view the Universe with a wide field of view. For example, one of Euclid's first science images shows the Horsehead Nebula, a star-forming region in the constellation Orion about 1,375 light-years from Earth. Many telescopes have observed this nebula before, but Euclid captured a wide, but still sharp, view of the Horsehead Nebula in about one hour.

“We could make this up with other images from other telescopes, but it would take us an awfully long time to take an awful lot of observations and stitch them all together," said Carole Mundell, ESA's director of science.


Euclid shows us a spectacularly panoramic and detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33 and part of the constellation Orion.

Scientists say it would take Hubble hundreds of years to complete the same extra-galactic survey as the one planned for Euclid, which will cover in a week the same area of sky that Hubble has observed in its 33-year mission. The objective is for Euclid to gather enough data for a statistical survey of galaxies to improve astronomers' understanding of dark energy and dark matter, which are thought to make up about 95 percent of the Universe. The rest of the cosmos is made of regular atoms and molecules that we can see and touch.

“If you want to observe the Universe in a cosmological way, you don’t want to be restricted to particular areas,” Giuseppe Racca, ESA’s Euclid project manager, said before Euclid's launch. “You really want to observe a lot.”

Built in Europe, Euclid launched on July 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and reached its observing orbit in deep space about a month later. Since then, ground controllers have carefully calibrated the observatory's two instruments—a 600-megapixel visible light camera and a 64-megapixel near-infrared spectrograph and photometer.

Engineers discovered a relatively minor issue with sunlight reflecting off a bracket back toward Euclid's visible camera, but it's only an issue at certain viewing angles. Mission planners have redesigned Euclid's sky survey—due to begin early next year—to avoid pointing the telescope at these problematic angles, which could have minor impacts on the mission's observing efficiency but not on data quality.


The image from Euclid shows 1,000 galaxies belonging to the Perseus Cluster and more than 100,000 additional galaxies farther away in the background, each containing up to hundreds of billions of stars.

Another image from Euclid contains a collection of cosmic wonders, showing the Perseus Cluster, a grouping of thousands of galaxies some 240 million light-years away. In the background, the image contains more than 100,000 additional faint galaxies as far away as 10 billion light-years, most of which were previously undetected. In a press statement accompanying Tuesday's image release, ESA called this image a "revolution for astronomy."

Jean-Charles Cuillandre, a Euclid scientist and expert in wide-field ultra-deep imaging, said the Perseus Cluster could only have formed in the presence of dark matter. Galaxy clusters condense at the crossroads of filaments of dark matter that pull together massive galaxies over billions of years.

Euclid has also observed a galaxy that is obscured by the bright foreground of the main disk of our own Milky Way. This spiral galaxy, named IC 342 and sometimes called the "Hidden Galaxy," appears similar to what we might see if we could see our own galaxy from the outside. Hubble has previously imaged the core of the Hidden Galaxy, but Euclid takes a wider view, as seen in the image at the top of this page.

“This is the first telescope which can capture in one single exposure the entire galaxy and the surroundings with this exquisite resolution, so you have very sharp images," said Francis Bernardeau, deputy lead of the consortium of scientists ready to analyze data from Euclid.

"What’s so special here is that we have a wide view covering the entire galaxy, but we can also zoom in to distinguish single stars and star clusters," said Leslie Hunt, a scientist in the Euclid consortium, in an ESA press release. "This makes it possible to trace the history of star formation and better understand how stars formed and evolved over the lifetime of the galaxy.”

Python hunters team up to tackle massive 198-pound snake



A group of python hunters in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve banded together to capture a monster 17-foot snake that tipped the scales at 198 pounds.

Conservationist Mike Elfenbein, 45, said he and his 17-year-old son, Cole, were out looking for the invasive snakes in the 729,000-acre preserve when they came across the massive python.

Fellow hunters Trey Barber, Carter Gavlock and Holden Hunter also spotted the behemoth Burmese and joined in the fracas.

"We were strangers," Elfenbein told CBS News. "But the five of us knew we had to capture this thing."

The five hunters struggled with the female snake for about 45 minutes.

"I grabbed her by the head and my son had her by the tail. We stretched her out across the road and Carter, Holden, and Tray jumped on top of her to try to hold her down. She literally lifted us up the ground," Elfenbein told WSVN-TV.

Professional python hunter Amy Siewe was summoned to the scene to collect the captured snake. She said it weighed 198 pounds, making it the second-heaviest on record in the state.