I have some news for you: your compass is not actually pointing to true north, and hasn't been for 360 years. But that will change sometime in the next two weeks, when the magnetic field moves to point all compasses in Greenwich towards true north.
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Bats are widely misunderstood creatures in the animal kingdom - while they're associated with witches, vampires and darkness in general, they're actually super cute and interesting. And scientists have just discovered something amazing about them - bats use leaves as "mirrors" that reflect sound waves, helping them find insects hiding behind leaves. Cool, right? Or confusing? Keep on reading, we'll explain everything.
You've probably heard that the rules concerning emotional support animals on airplanes are changing, after a few incidents including a hamster flushed down the toilet, a VIP turkey and a few dog bites. Now, all animals except for dogs, cats and miniature horses are banned from flying. Yep, you heard me right: miniature horses. If you're more interested in taking your doggo on board, check out this travel guide for your fur babies. But if you have equine inclinations, read on.
Now this is our kind of politics. Here's the full BBC News story, but the title pretty much says it all. A regional assembly in Kenya's Homa Bay had to take a 10 minute break due to a particularly awful trouser-cloud someone laid in the chamber. Apparently there was a conversation over blame and an ensuing scramble to find some kind of air freshener, but the debate-stopping fart dissipated enough after a while for business to continue. We've read about farts shutting down job sites, but a fart that halt local government is a new high.
President Trump, pull it together, man. At the very least let's work to keep the condolences about the horrific, painful moments in history that are shootings, ACCURATE. Everything about this is a stomach-turning, comically absurd kind of FAIL. Yes, the President of the United States seemingly tweeted out his condolences about the Texas mass shooting, BUT forgot to change the name of the city to Corning, California where a mass shooting occurred at Rancho Tehama Elementary School.
This is so much to process. If you need a break, these Trump memes are what you will most likely want for said break.
Via News Be Funny
Bloop lovers, rejoice! News Be Funny has released their compilations of the best news bloopers of the year. The year 2016 didn't dissapoint.
Yup, over the last 365 days, we sure have spent a lot of time being afraid of the news. I, for one, have to take several deep breaths before loading up Twitter in the morning. But that doesn’t mean we can’t sit back and enjoy the times newscasters accidentally said the word “fart on air,” had their microphones thrown in a lake, or got drunk and told the kids at home that they couldn’t be whatever they wanted when they grow up. The magic of live television.
This is truly what this year has been leading to, and it is glorious.
Not enough bloops? Here’s part one:
Via Move Gifss
Many Bothans died to bring us this information.
While Disney has been happily jumping into their Scrooge McDonald-esque swimming pool of gold after the release of Rogue One, the rest of us are still watching Star Wars the old fashioned way. Apparently, the Mouse House has a 4K transfer of the Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope locked in the Disney Vault. But one man has seen it: Rogue One director Gareth Edwards. Help us, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope.
Talking to Little White Lies, Edwards discussed his first day of work on Rogue One, and it’s definitely much better than sitting down with HR and learning the dress code. He got to watch A New Hope in pristine 4K. He says:
On day one, we were in Lucasfilm in San Francisco with Industrial Light and Magic and John [Knoll], our supervisor, he said that they’ve got a brand new 4K restoration print of A New Hope — it had literally just been finished. He suggested we sit and watch it. Obviously, I was up for that. Me, the writer, lots of the story people and John all sat down, we all had our little notepads, we were all ready for this. I’ll add that I’ve seen A New Hope hundreds of times. So I was sat there, ready to take notes and really delve under the surface of the film. You have the Fox fanfare, then scrolling text with ‘A long time ago…’, and then the main music begins. Next thing we knew it had ended, and we looked around to one another and just thought — sh*t, we didn’t take any notes. You can’t watch it without getting carried away. It’s really hard to get into an analytical filmmaker headspace with this film. It just turns you into a child.
This dude is just trying to make us feel bad.
Edwards doesn’t say whether this is the original cut or that one with that awful CGI Jabba the Hutt, nor did he mention whether this would ever see the light of day, but he did make our little Star Wars-obsessed lives green with envy.
Via Global News
For Global News Calgary’s Leslie Horton, double dipping isn’t really going to be a problem.
While sharing her favorite holiday recipes on air last week, Horton admitted that something had gone “terribly wrong” with her artichoke dip. The congealed substance in a glass bowl known as “artichoke dip” looked closer to scrambled eggs and smelled of “vinegar,” despite there being no vinegar in the recipe. Her colleagues looked on in horror, fearing that they might be next to try.
“It’s not supposed to look like that,” someone off camera moans.
Everyone around the table looks visibly disgusted, with Leslie’s first victim eyeballing the dip in terror. Another comments, it “smells like a barn.” Leslie watches in glee, like a Bond villain monologuing their plans for global domination. Another spits up the dip.
“Is it edible?” asks anchorman Scott Fee.
The clip climaxes when meteorologist Jordan Witzel takes his first bite.
“At first, I’m like, ‘Well, it’s not that bad,’” he says. “But then the vinegar!”
“But there’s no vinegar,” replies Horton.
Other great moments: Anchor Amber Schinkle screaming “It burns.”
Apparently, Horton didn’t have the proper ingredients for the recipe, substituting an orange for lemon and just adding celery salt and oregano for no reason what so ever.
Watch the clip and remove Leslie Horton from your invite list.
Via Morning Consult
If you need to get your news, you could do worse than The Onion, a new poll shows.
According to Morning Consult, “a media and technology company at the intersection of politics, policy, Wall Street, and business strategy,” the satirical newspaper The Onion, which recently ran the headline “Report: Bananas Still Most Popular Fruit For Pretending To Receive Phone Call” is more credible than Infowars, which recently ran the headline “The Shocking Proof That Multiculturalism Has Failed.” No surprise here: The Onion headline is true.
In a shocking upset to conspiracy theorists and screaming men around the globe, 18 percent of people polled considered The Onion (again, the paper put together for laughs) credible, while only 17 percent considered InfoWars credibe. Even more shocking is our new Chief Strategist to the White House Steve Bannon’s former stomping ground, Breitbart, is only considered 19 percent credible. People aren’t just finding white supremacy very helpful these days.
Of course, as the poll points out, this might be affected by the fact that people haven’t heard of Breitbart or Infowars.
“Credibility was significantly lower for far-right sites such as Breitbart and InfoWars, but both were also hampered by being largely unknown. Forty-two percent of people said they “never heard of” Breitbart, and 49 percent said the same about InfoWars. Twenty-six percent said Breitbart was not credible, while 21 percent said the same of InfoWars. Breitbart and InfoWars did better with Republican men, with 32 percent and 27 percent respectively saying the sites were credible.”
You’re still probably better off choosing The Onion. Check out this headline from the other day. Topical!
Via ABCNews.com.co
Fake news is a serious problem. In fact, bogus headlines might have been partly responsible for very real headlines, like ones about a “pizzagate shooter” and a billionaire reality TV game show host winning the presidency.
To arm yourself against Fake News, the only thing you can do is be vigilant. It’s clear that critical thinking and media literacy are not at the top of most school’s lesson plans, so NPR put together a solid list of things to look out for when reading the news. After you check out the list, send it to any family members or former classmates who keep clogging our newsfeeds with this stuff.
Pay Attention to Domain and URL
Addresses that end in “[dot] com” — good.
Addresses that end in “[dot] com [dot] co — bad.
Read the "About Us" section
According to NPR, if the “melodramatic and seems overblown, you should be skeptical. Also, you should be able to find out more information about the organization's leaders in places other than that site.”
Read the quotes in the story
Journalism, of the most part, relies on first person accounts to get the stories. Traditionally, although becuase of the internet this has been dwindling, it’s a journalistic responsibility to speak to more than one source.
If you’re reading a story and there aren’t that many quotes, raise your eyebrows and look into who they’re quoting.
Read the comments
This goes against smart practices, but if you think something might be fake, read the comments. Because so many comment sections are linked to other social media sites, there’s a good chance someone is already calling the article “fake” in the comments.
Reverse image search
Honestly, if you’ve already gone through the other steps and still can’t whether it’s fake news or not, either check another news outlet or get off the internet. But if you really want to know how to do this, NPR says, “You can do this by right-clicking on the image and choosing to search Google for it. If the image is appearing on a lot of stories about many different topics, there's a good chance it's not actually an image of what it says it was on the first story.
BONUS: See who’s writing this garbage
If every article is written by Jimmy Rustling, and they include headlines like “DRUGS IN COLORADO: New Deadly Strain Of Marijuana Turning Users Gay,” you’re on a fake news site, buddy.
BONUS BONUS
Jimmy Rustling’s bio on abc.com.co is unbelievable.
Via Emoji Emoticons
TGIF, Daily Whaters.
We’ve been through a lot this week. From a public frozen fish graveyard to a washing machine with a brick in it on a trampoline, this has been one for the history books.
But a lot happens in a week, and we are but one website. With that in mind here are some stories that we didn’t get to but think are worth your time.
Enjoy or don’t, the choice is yours!
Domino’s decided not to have reindeer deliver pizza because duh via Mashable.
Nike released its first pair of self-lacing sneakers (for $720) via QZ.
White Supremacist’s former classmates raise money for refugees via The Daily Dot.
This furniture is assembled like Legos and is surprisingly comfortable and affoardable via Mashable.
Unused copies of Newsweek’s Madam President cover are selling for almost $10,000 via NBC.
Have a great weekend!
Via Giphy
Nothing will stop 2016 until pigs fly.
According to Andre Calatzopoulos, chief executive of cigarette and tobacco behemoth Philip Morris, “he would like to work towards the ‘phase-out’ of conventional cigarettes.”
What? Philip Morris not making cigarettes is something akin to a dairy farmer making soy milk or a slaughterhouse making seitan or a poison maker making an antidote. What’s going on here?
The BBC reports:
In his first UK broadcast interview, he has told the Today programme that the company knows its products harm their consumers, and that the only correct response is to "to find and commercialise" ones that are less harmful.
"That is clearly our objective," he said.
The company has announced a new “healthier” cigarette, which boasts 90% less of the 'nasty toxins that come from cigarette smoke.'
The innovation in this new system, called lqos, doesn’t burn cigarettes, it heats them.
It works like this. You buy a pack of “tobacco sticks” and pop them in a heater. You put the stick to your mouth and puff. This causes much less smoke and smell.
But of course, let’s not forget smoking is still incredibly dangerous. Anti-smoking groups aren’t taking their eyes off the prize.
“On current trends, smoking will kill one billion people in the 21st century, most in poor countries,” Deborah Arnott, said, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health. "If Philip Morris really want to see the end of smoking they have to stop promoting smoking to new young smokers around the world."
Pigs, you have 31 days to start flying.
