The eight elite Ivy League universities are better thought of as "hedge fund with classes," according to a March report by the activist Open The Books, and thus there is little reason for taxpayers to have given them the more than $41 billion in grants and entitlements they received over a recent six-year period. The schools are already legendary for their $119 billion "endowments" (based on donations from alumni and aggressive investment). Those endowments are enough, according to Open The Books, that (assuming donations continue to arrive at the same pace) schools could provide free tuition to every student in the eight schools--in perpetuity. (Even if no new donations are made, the eight schools could provide such free tuition for 51 years.) [Fox News, 3-29-2017]

Federico Musto was suspected recently by Wired.com of audaciously inventing academic credentials to help land his job as CEO of the company Arduino (a circuit-board manufacturer popular in the computer industry among coders creating, among other things, robots and motion detectors). Arduino's work is "open source"--creating hardware that others, by design, exploit and modify for their own loftier projects. It might thus be said that Musto's claimed academic "accomplishments" (his so-called MBA from New York University and claimed Ph.D from MIT) are themselves the product of his having "open-sourced" his own, previously modest curriculum vitae. [Wired.com, 4-16-2017]

In February, local government and sexual-assault critics unveiled a consciousness-raising exhibit on Mexico City's trains: a plastic seat onto which is subtly molded contours of a male body, except with genitals sharply exposed. (Men supposedly have been spotted absent-mindedly lowering themselves onto the seat only to leap up in shock.) A note on the floor by the body read (in Spanish): "It's uncomfortable to sit here, but that's nothing compared to the sexual violence suffered by women on their commute." [New York Times, 3-31-2017]

(1) Village police in Bangladesh arrested Yasin Byapari, 45, in January on the complaint of his wife--after she had learned that she was not, as he had told her, his second spouse but rather the 25th of his 28. (Police found him at the home of Number 27.) The accuser said she had, through sleuthing, tracked down 17 of her "competitors." (2) A male schoolteacher reported in February that he had been kidnaped by four women near Lupane, Zimbabwe, drugged with a beverage, and sexually assaulted. Police set up roadblocks and arrested three women with 31 condoms full of semen in what appears to be a return of the "sperm bandits" said to operate in the area. [BDNews24 (Dhaka), 1-24-2017] [Daily Mail (London) via MyNewsGH (Ghana), 3-1-2017]

 

Fun's over: China's shared sex dolls snuffed out
AFP News 21 hours ago

China's rentable sex dolls have been yanked off the market and the firm responsible for them has apologised, just days after the "shared girlfriends" began strutting their silicon stuff.

Chinese sex-products retailer Touch said in a statement on Monday that it "will actively explore healthier and more harmonious ways to diversify people's sex lives".

The firm, which only launched the erotic service on Thursday on a trial basis, was fined by police and ordered to cease its promotional activities, the Beijing News reported.

Touch offered for rent life-sized sex dolls supposedly of Chinese, Russian, Korean and Hong Kong women, as well as an Amazon-like "Wonder Woman" with a sword and shield.

Like many of China's shared-economy products, the silicon seductresses could be reserved via a phone app for up to a week at a time.

Clients could even have their date "warmed up" before delivery and, for an extra fee, have them equipped with a device that made sounds when manhandled.

They were available for short-term companionship starting at 298 yuan ($45) per night.

The company had said the "shared girlfriends" would help address the needs of the country's millions of men unable to find spouses because of a nationwide gender imbalance.

"We are sorry to announce that Touch will suspend the operation of the shared girlfriend project," the company, based in the southeastern city of Xiamen, said in a statement on Monday on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.

"Our intention was for more people to experience erotic fun.

"But not long after the project went online it got attention from society and caused heated discussion. After we got a notice from relevant authorities, we actively cooperated with all investigations and accepted punishment.

"We express our deepest apology for the bad influence the shared girlfriend had on society, especially on the internet opinion of the key meeting."

The "key meeting" is a reference to the ruling Communist Party congress on October 18 in Beijing, a sensitive time in China.

The country has gone sharing-mad in recent months with bikes, umbrellas and basketballs all up for rent.

 

.

 

Oh shit, during my voluntary hiatus, Chuck Shepard retired from his column "News of the Weird".

So now I'm going to attempt to resurrect his older columns and mine them for interesting weird shit.

 

.

 

Since Chuck Sheperd stopped his column and website, I have been searching for a suitable replacement. Just found this one, I give it a try for a while:


by the Editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
https://www.uexpress.com/news-of-the-weird/2018/7/1


@slutwolf Is this any of your doing?

Anyone we know?

Strange breeding might have been going on in Canada

This has to be one of ours

@magpie can you get us some aerial shots of this?

 

They've been selling moose turd everythings in Alaska for many many years.

 

I have a cow turd clock. Made out of 2 actual cow turds.

 

I think this belongs here. Yesterday there was a lot of news about a clash between China and India soldiers. They reported 20 Indian troops were killed. And I just assumed they were shot. But the clash literally started by throwing rocks at each other.

Deadly India-China Clash Saw Soldiers Club Each Other With Barbed-Wire Batons, Says Report

*This could actually be very serious if it escalates. Shortly after both India and Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons the entire world had to declare an emergency and send experts from all over the world rushing into India and Pakistan because it looked like both sides were going to resort to nuclear war. But the technology had surpassed their actual knowledge because neither country had any idea what would happen if they used nuclear weapons against each other. So experts had to rush in and convince both countries that no one would survive and it could create "nuclear winter." And that is the only way they could talk them out of using their nukes. But India's Prime Minister is as crazy as Trump and could actually launch nukes without knowing what nuclear war would really be like.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/india...-with-barbed-wire-batons-says-report?ref=home

 

I am going to have to drag this thread up again because I have two contributions. One I will just relate. Human existence in the Americas has now been pushed back to 30,000. Which shoots holes in all the archeological theories because that's twice as long as anyone thought. And they have been found in cave dwellings down in Mexico. There's a really big international effort going on and the evidence looks really solid.

And then there's this. Because things like this just keep leaking out. Except this time by our government. Which has steadfastly always said there are no such things. And I am wondering if they are not trying to tell us something.

I will even spare you the tweets and only highlight one thing. Because people always wanted named sources.

Collective freakout occurs after New York Times report on ‘off-world vehicles not made on this earth’

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/07/co...on-off-world-vehicles-not-made-on-this-earth/

 

-- Neighbors on Occidental Street in a North Oakland, California, are at odds over the presence of Bruce, aka Paco, aka Peter, aka Pierre, aka Abraham ... a peacock. While some residents are happy to welcome him, SFGate.com reported on July 15, others want him to move on and have lodged a complaint with the city. "For the past 15 weeks or so he has screamed relentlessly, every day," Jesse T. wrote on the Nextdoor app. "It literally feels like he is inside my house." The peacock is believed by Animal Control to be feral. But Dennis Fett of the Peacock Information Center in Minden, Iowa, thinks Bruce/Paco/Peter is providing a service. "They're like a watchdog," Fett said. "They have keen hearing. (The neighbors) should count their blessings." [SFGate.com, 7/15/2020]

 

A comment by @the Farm Boy on the buried sex doll thread, brought this old thread to mind, so for the first time in over a year, here are some weird news items:

@shootersa missed this one.
On a Delta airlines flight in November from Syracuse, New York, to Atlanta, the woman sitting in 13A allegedly tried to breastfeed her hairless cat, much to the cat's (and other passengers') distress. Flight attendants repeatedly asked the woman to return the yowling cat to its kennel, the New York Post reported, but she refused. "Her shirt was up and she was trying to get the cat to latch ... and the cat was screaming for its life," said Ainsley Elizabeth, a flight attendant who was on board during the incident. Finally, a message was sent through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) alerting the ground crew in Atlanta that they would need a Red Coat team member to apprehend the woman at the gate. (Red Coats are specially trained to handle customer service issues, which now include cat-breastfeeding.) It's unclear what happened to the woman or her cat after the flight landed. [New York Post, 12/2/2021]

Is this @Cherrypop ’s kid’s team?
Cuteness Alert

The Flower Mound Rebels, a youth football team in Texas, won't be in the playoffs this year, NBC News reported. The Rebels, composed of 7- and 8-year-olds, are "too good" for their league, boasting a perfect record and having outscored their opponents 199-6, according to Keller Youth Association Vice President Rhett Taylor. "They are a select-level team." He said if the team had competed in the league's super bowl, he would have caught it from parents of other teams. Center Greyson Tanner, 8, reported being "very sad" about the ruling. [NBC News, 11/19/2021


Now this one sounds like @shootersa was horny:
Randy Aliens

Preacher and author Sharon Gilbert, 69, raised a reaction when she appeared on the "Jim Bakker Show" on Nov. 23 and described the moment when an alien visited her for nefarious reasons. "After Derek and I got married, one night, this other Derek appears in our bed. The real Derek is lying down next to me; other Derek sits right up out of him. It startled me," she said, according to Newsweek. No doubt! Gilbert asked the "critter" who he was, "Because he clearly wanted to have sexual relations." Along with claiming to be Derek, the creature said he was Xerxes, but Gilbert wasn't having it. "I reached up, grabbed his face and I said, 'You are a liar, and Jesus is real.' And I pulled that face off, and beneath it was a reptile." One Twitter user responded, "This is a story a 7-year-old tells when you ask them why they're late for something." [Newsweek, 11/24/2021]

 

Shooter did not have sex with that woman, Mrs Gilbert!