Thread: Strange News

You being deloused before heading to the Shetlands Mendy?

• New bill would make the ‘shaka’ an official Hawaii state gesture

The story of aloha starts with a shaka! A newly introduced bill is looking to make the shaka an official state gesture.

“The spirit of aloha is embodied in this particular gesture,” stated Sen. Glenn Wakai. “It just adds to the allure and the mystique of Hawaii.”

The bill aims to share the pride of Hawaii by claiming the shaka. State officials believe Hawaii would be the first to officialize a state gesture if the bill passes.

“It’s one of the symbols that truly separate us from anywhere else across the world,” stated Rep. Darius Kila.

A documentary being made in support of the bill will go back 110 years to when the shaka was first believed to have been used. ID8 nonprofit Chairperson, Steve Sue, has been researching the shaka for the past five years for the film.

“There’s multiple origin stories to the Shaka,” stated Sue. “They all have different points in time that they start from. There’s different meanings of the word, there’s different gestures.”

Sue said the shaka origin story reflects a melting pot of countless groups in Hawaii who gave meaning behind the gesture and spread it.

“There’s a whole era in the seventies, the Japanese had a hand in it, so many people had a hand in it,” stated Sue.

The iconic symbol is known worldwide, but according to a study, 91% of locals don’t know much about the shaka. If the bill passes, officials hope the shaka will remind native Hawaiians of their roots.

“It originated from here and if people here don’t even know where it came from, then we really have some work to do to ensure that Hawaii is credited for this gesture, that the Hawaii meanings are imbued to it and used around the world appropriately,” said Sue.

• Roman egg found in Aylesbury still has contents after 1,700 years

Archaeologists and naturalists astonished to find yolk and albumen that may reveal secrets about the bird that laid it

It was a wonderful find as it was, a cache of 1,700-year-old speckled chicken eggs discovered in a Roman pit during a dig in Buckinghamshire.

But to the astonishment of archaeologists and naturalists, a scan has revealed that one of the eggs recovered intact still has liquid – thought to be a mix of yolk and albumen – inside it, and may give up secrets about the bird that laid it almost two millennia ago.

The “Aylesbury egg” is one of four that were found alongside a woven basket, pottery vessels, leather shoes and animal bone in 2010 as a site was being explored ahead of a major development.

Despite the experts extracting them as carefully as possible, three broke, producing an unforgettable sulphurous smell, but one was preserved complete.

Edward Biddulph, the senior project manager at Oxford Archaeology, which oversaw the excavation, said it had been amazing enough to find what is thought to be the only intact egg from the period in Britain. “We do often find pieces of shells but not intact eggs,” he said.

Discussions were being held last year about how to display the egg when Dana Goodburn-Brown, an archaeological conservator and materials scientist, suggested they scan it to help decide how best to preserve it.

Biddulph said: “The egg turned out to be even more amazing. It still contained its liquid, the yolk and the white.” The yolk and albumen appear to have become mixed together.

“We might have expected it to have leached out over the centuries but it is still there. It is absolutely incredible. It may be the oldest egg of its type in the world.”

Biddulph said the egg had been deliberately placed in a pit that had been used as a well for malting and brewing. “This was a wet area next to a Roman road. It may have been the eggs were placed there as a votive offering. The basket we found may have contained bread.”

The egg has been taken to the Natural History Museum in London. Biddulph said it had felt a little daunting riding on the tube and walking around the capital with such an extraordinary and fragile egg in his care.

Douglas Russell, the senior curator of the museum’s birds’ eggs and nests collection, was consulted about how to conserve the egg and remove the contents without breaking it.

There are older eggs with contents, such as mummified ones, but Russell said it was believed to be the oldest unintentionally preserved egg. A tiny hole may be made in the egg to extract the contents and try to find out more about the bird that laid it.

Goodburn-Brown said: “The egg ranks as one of the coolest and most challenging archaeological finds to investigate and conserve. Being the temporary caretaker and investigator of this Roman egg counts as one of the major highlights of my 40-year career.”

• Paul McCartney reunited with guitar stolen 51 years ago

Sir Paul McCartney has been reunited with the bass guitar he used on Beatles hits including Love Me Do and She Loves You, 51 years after it was stolen from the back of a van in London.

The news that the long-lost instrument was found was leaked by the family’s 21-year-old son, Ruaidhri Guest, who posted a pic of himself holding the legendary bass with a cheeky expression on social media.

The Höfner bass was found in a family's attic in Sussex thanks to a search by a project called the Lost Bass.

Sir Paul bought the guitar in 1961. It was taken in west London in 1972.

A spokesperson for the former Beatle said he was "incredibly grateful" for its return.

The hunt began after the star urged Höfner to find his beloved instrument. The bass was used on Love Me Do and She Loves You.

Following an appeal for information by the Lost Bass search project, a family living in a terraced house in Sussex contacted the team remembering they had an old bass guitar in their attic.

It was reunited with Sir Paul in December.

His spokesperson said: "Following the launch of last year's Lost Bass project, Paul's 1961 Höfner 500/1 bass guitar, which was stolen in 1972, has been returned.

"The guitar has been authenticated by Höfner and Paul is incredibly grateful to all those involved."

Speaking to BBC News, the team behind the Lost Bass project said they were thrilled to solve the case they dubbed "the greatest mystery in the history of rock and roll".

"There were no leads, no evidence really where it might be," said journalist Scott Jones, who alongside his wife and fellow journalist Naomi last year joined the search headed by Höfner bass expert Nick Wass.

"To have found it quite quickly is amazing and we've heard how thrilled Paul McCartney is to have it back.

"That's just the icing on the cake to know that bloke we all love is smiling tonight because his old guitar is back."

The guitar was retrieved in late September and verified by experts to confirm it is genuine.

Luckily the bass was complete and still with its original case, but will need some repairs to make it playable again.

During their investigation, the team received tip-offs about the theft from the back of a van in Ladbroke Grove in October 1972.

They found it was then sold to a landlord of a pub in the area, before it made its way to Sussex, where it was sitting in a family's attic.

Speaking on why people came forward, journalist Mrs Jones said: "People wished McCartney well and wanted to help, because of that we had all these people come forward.

"The search wasn't about attributing blame. We were saying to people you can speak to us on an anonymous basis."

The guitar, originally purchased for £30 in Germany in 1961, has not been valued, but the Lost Bass team think it would be worth more than the most expensive guitar ever sold - a Kurt Cobain guitar which sold for a record $6m (£4.9m) at auction in 2020.

John Lennon's stolen guitar sold for $2.4m (£1.9m) when it resurfaced half a century later.

• Ruined centuries-old town re-emerges as Philippines dam dries up during heatwave

Ruins of a centuries-old town have emerged at a dam parched by drought in the northern Philippines.

After a prolonged spell of intense heat and little rain, water levels in the dam have fallen to reveal parts of a sunken church, tombstones and the foundations of structures from the 300-year-old town in Nueva Ecija province.

“When I heard about the sunken church of old Pantabangan town resurfacing, I got excited and wanted to see it,” said 61-year-old retired nurse Aurea Delos Santos.

Water levels at the Pantabangan dam have fallen by 26 metres so far this year, with its current level seven metres lower than a year ago.

Tombstones in the cemetery of the old sunken town of Pantabangan see the light of day for the first time since the 1970s.

Some locals have benefited by making it something of an attraction, ferrying tourists to the island. “Back then, I was only earning 200 pesos [$3.50] from fishing, but when the tourists arrived, I’m earning 1,500 to 1,800 per day,” said fisher Nelson Dellera.

The town’s population was relocated in the 1970s during the construction of a dam, which now serves as the main irrigation and water source for Nueva Ecija and nearby provinces, according to the local government.

The Philippines and other countries in south-east Asia have been grappling with extreme heat in recent weeks, prompting schools to suspend classes and governments to urge people to stay indoors to prevent heatstroke.

On Thursday, Cambodia blamed the extreme heat for an explosion at an ammunition storage facility that killed 20 soldiers.

The blast – which destroyed an entire truck of munitions and levelled buildings – also wounded several soldiers and at least one child in rural Kampong Speu province on Saturday.

The ruins at Pantabangan have become something of a tourist attraction.

The defence ministry said that investigators believed the heatwave played a role in the old weapons detonating.

“The incident of the ammunition explosion on April 27, 2024 ... was a technical issue because the weapons are old, faulty, and the hot weather,” the ministry said in a statement.

Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters from heatwaves to floods to wildfires. At least a dozen of the most serious events of the last decade would have been all but impossible without human-caused global heating.

Very strange.

• Scientists are learning the basic building blocks of sperm whale language after years of effort

Scientists studying the sperm whales that live around the Caribbean island of Dominica have described for the first time the basic elements of how they might be talking to each other, in an effort that could one day help better protect them.

Like many whales and dolphins, sperm whales are highly social mammals and communicate by squeezing air through their respiratory systems to make strings of rapid clicks that can sound like an extremely loud zipper underwater. The clicks are also used as a form of echolocation to help them track their prey.

Scientists have been trying for decades to understand what those clicks might mean, with only minimal progress. While they still don’t know, they now think there are sets of clicks they believe make up a “phonetic alphabet” that the whales can use to build the very rough equivalent of what people think of as words and phrases.

“We’re now starting to find the first building blocks of whale language,” said David Gruber, founder and president of the Cetacean Translation Initiative or CETI, an effort devoted to translating the communication of sperm whales.

Very strange.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Very strange.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Very strange.

Title to the thread "strange news"

you'll see strange news articles

Oh yes, one would expect to see strange news articles…

you seems lonely

you should take some time and read up on our changing climate and the cause/s

it's not the sun

You wanna turn this thread into a climate nonsense thread too?

Originally Posted by S Landreth

you should take some time and read up on our changing climate and the cause/s

Got any recommended reading?

Strange news = climate emergency nonsense.


Another decent concept for a thread about to be ruined.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Strange news = climate emergency nonsense.


Another decent concept for a thread about to be ruined.

by you

Nope. 'twas already ruined by a multitude of mundane news articles thinly masquerading as strange news, I guess for the extra view count, eh?

You're the one that wants to bring climate change nonsense into it. We've seen how you've drowned other threads and forums in that, and no one reads your crap any more, so don't bring it here. Take the hint. ,

Originally Posted by DrWilly

no one reads your crap any more

It's either snore or ignore.

Now, there's an idea, eh?

Unfortunately it doesn't stop him killing off threads.

It seems he sees a chance of killing off a forum elsewhere.

Fluke says he already has one scalp.

But admittedly, fluke is a nutter.

Originally Posted by cyrille

It's either snore or ignore.

Now, there's an idea, eh?

I already have one or two bulls on ignore and it is a blessing, but unfortunately new posts button shows those ignored as new threads anyway. So ignore or not ignore the dicks can clog up the forum just like a toilet in a teenage boys boarding house.

sure

you don't miss a post I make

Believe that if it makes you feel better, Pal.