More Than Just Birdcage Liner
At the Advocate, we’ve had our fair share of readers disagreeing with our coverage claim the only thing this paper is good for is lining their birdcages. Well, an Australian newspaper took things a step further, and printed extra blank pages for readers to use as toilet paper. Australians, spurred by fears of the coronavirus and accompanying quarantines, have been stocking up on toilet paper to such an extent that some of the countries major grocers have had to institute limits on how much customers can buy. The NT News saw a niche to fill, and printed eight extra pages with instructions on how people could cut them out to use. Is this the way to save journalism?
Don’t feed your Fitbit to a pig
A large chunk of a United Kingdom farm is a flaming ruin after a mishap with a pig. The pig swallowed a pedometer, and then when it went to do its business, the pig’s dung reacted with the copper in the pedometer battery. With the addition of dry hay in the pigpen, the result was a massive blaze that ate up 75 square meters of farmland, including four pigpens. How did the pig get at the pedometer? Simple. The pigs at the farm were fitted with them to prove that they were free range. The only problem was that one pig ate one off of another pig. Luckily, no pigs were harmed in the fire, and the local fire department took the opportunity to claim in a tweet that they “saved the bacon.”
Water into wine
In a small village in Italy, for some local residents the wine flows like water. Faucets flow with red wine, but it’s not a choice those residents made to install a wine tap. Instead, it’s due to a fault at a nearby winery. The village of Settecani in the Castelvetro area of Modena, Italy, recently had Lambrusco Grasparossa, a locally-produced wine, flowing through water pipes after wine leaked from a silo into the pipes due to a high pressure leak. Although the local water board repaired the leak, local media reported that residents made sure to stockpile the wine flowing from their faucets by bottling it.
I can’t believe it’s not bug butter
Scientists from a Belgian university are experimenting with larva fat to create an alternative to butter, producing what they say could be a more sustainable product. Researchers soaked black soldier fly larvae in a bowl of water, blended them into a grayish liquid, and then used a kitchen centrifuge to separate out insect butter. “They are more sustainable because (insects) use less land (than cattle); they are more efficient at converting feed … and they also use less water to produce butter,” one of the researchers from Ghent University said. Would you try a butter cake made from larva fat?
A lewd skeleton
A New Mexico woman is facing a larceny charge after law enforcement authorities say she stole an anatomical skeleton from her neighbor. The reason? She claimed the skeleton was making an offensive gesture at her. The woman, from Cuyamungue, in Santa Fe County, told sheriff’s deputies she was offended by the way the skeleton’s hand was posed — with the middle finger pointed up. She also said the incident was the culmination of a months-long feud with the neighbor, whom she claimed had been harassing her family and other nearby residents by, among other things, playing loud music at all hours and shooting off a propane cannon, something more typically done by farmers to scare birds from their fields. The skeleton was the last straw, she told the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper: “It just put me to the boiling point.” The skeleton has since gone missing, the newspaper reported.
Fashionable llama
A man from Ohio was playing the long game at his sister’s wedding. Five years ago, during a road trip with his sister, he promised to bring a tuxedo-clad llama to her wedding as a plus one. Well, after she became engaged in October, she got a text from her brother saying that he booked a llama rental. Lo and behold, the man did, in fact, bring a llama dressed in a tuxedo to his sister’s wedding. A photo of the bride, her brother, and his plus one has since gone viral thanks to Reddit.
A nice try
It looked pretty bad for a Las Cruces, New Mexico, woman who was pulled over in what appeared to be a stolen car. But then she alighted on a brilliant idea — she would explain to police that she was pop music star Beyonce. Unfortunately for the woman, police were able to identify her using a fingerprint scanner, and she was arrested and charged with motor vehicle theft, concealing identity, and resisting arrest.
