Month: April 2021

Josh Fight: Hundreds Gather In Battle For Their Name

~ FmH

‘Hundreds of people who share the first name Josh gathered on Saturday in Lincoln, Neb., to vie for the “right” to their name. Armed with pool noodles, Joshes from across the country met at Air Park, where they brawled as onlookers with other names cheered from the sidelines….’

— Chloe Weiner via NPR

How to Kill a Zombie Fire

~ FmH

‘Underground peat fires are bedeviling: They refuse to die, even when flooded with water. Could this new weapon put them down for good?…  “Smoldering is the most persistent type of combustion on earth, because it’s really easy to start and very difficult to stop,” says Imperial College London engineer Guillermo Rein, co-author of a new paper describing the work in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. “They call them zombie fires, but the equivalent would be like an army of zombies. They are very, very difficult to suppress.”

— via Atlas Obscura

 

The Supreme Court could make the NRA’s dreams come true

~ FmH
Trump-appointed justices Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.

‘…The plaintiffs in Corlett include a New York state gun rights group and two New York men who applied for a license to carry a handgun in public and were denied that license. They claim that “law-abiding citizens” have a Second Amendment right to carry a gun in public — and the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, could agree with them.

Indeed, Corlett could potentially dismantle more than a decade of judicial decisions interpreting the Second Amendment, imposing prohibitive limits on lawmakers’ ability to reduce gun violence…’

— via Vox

The US Troops Who Think They Saw Bigfoot in Vietnam

~ FmH

 

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‘Although Americans tend to think of Sasquatch as a North American phenomena, there are legends of hidden giant apes or ape-men all around the word. These legends are fed by unexplained sightings, which are most surprising when they are made by those unfamiliar with the local legends, such as American troops in Vietnam. Gary Linderer of the 101st Airborne reported seeing a five-foot-tall creature with muscular arms when he was on patrol in the Kontum Province near the borders of Laos and Cambodia….’

— via Neatorama

R.I.P. Bob Fass

~ FmH

 

Pioneer of Underground Radio Dies at 87

‘His provocative “Radio Unnameable,” long a staple of the New York station WBAI, offered a home on the FM dial to everyone from Abbie Hoffman to Tiny Tim….’

— via The New York Times

I credit listening to him on WBAI growing up in New York with much of any of my initial countercultural cred.

Pentagon: leaked photos and video of UFOs are legitimate

~ FmH

‘Furthering the growing interest in unidentified flying objects, or what the US government refers to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), the Department of Defense confirmed on Thursday that recently leaked photos and videos of UFOs were legitimate and taken by navy personnel.

Sue Gough, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, confirmed to CNN that images and footage of a blinking triangular object in the sky, along with other UAPs that were categorized as a “sphere”, “acorn” and “metallic blimp”, were taken by navy personnel in 2019….’

— via The Guardian