Meta Sad
Mark Cuban: Buying real estate in the metaverse is ‘the dumbest’ idea ever
Buying digital land in the metaverse may not be the best use of your money, according to billionaire investor Mark Cuban.
Although Cuban is a well-documented cryptocurrency enthusiast, he called purchasing virtual real estate in the metaverse “the dumbest s— ever” in a recent interview on the Altcoin Daily YouTube channel.
Despite being an investor in Yuga Labs, which owns popular NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club that has sold digital land plots, Cuban said buying virtual real estate is “dumb.”
“It was great money for them, but that wasn’t based off utility,” he said.
In the physical world, real estate is valuable because land is a scarce resource. However, that scarcity doesn’t necessarily apply to the metaverse.
In these virtual worlds, “there’s unlimited volumes that you can create,” Cuban said during the interview.
Cosmic Chorizo
Top scientist admits ‘space telescope image’ was actually a slice of chorizo
By Toyin Owoseje
A French scientist has apologized after tweeting a photo of a slice of chorizo, claiming it was an image of a distant star taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Étienne Klein, a celebrated physicist and director at France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, shared the image of the spicy Spanish sausage on Twitter last week, praising the “level of detail” it provided.
“Picture of Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light years away from us. It was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. This level of detail… A new world is unveiled everyday,” he told his more than 91,000 followers on Sunday.
Rickrolled Whiners
Everybody Gets Rickrolled, Even The Director Of Rick Astley’s Infamous Video: ‘It’s The Worst Thing’
Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” has perhaps the most famous music video ever, or at least the most famed of the internet era thanks to the famous bait-and-switch “Rickroll” prank. The gag, which involves sharing links that unexpectedly lead to the video, has led to the 1987 visual being one of the most-viewed music videos in YouTube history. Simon West, the video’s director, says that even he’s been Rickrolled and he’s not a fan.
In an interview with Metro, West — whose directorial credits also include movies like Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Black Hawk Down, and The Expendables 2 — noted it’s happened to him “three or four times.” He said, “People are sensitive to it [but] people who know me really well know that I’m not gonna go ballistic. But when it happens, it’s the worst thing! You think they’re gonna send you a cool video about surfing or something and up it comes.”
On a related note, the US Open Of Surfing kicked off this weekend at Huntington Beach Pier, so here’s a video from that.
Monsoon Monzas
Nearly 80 Roofless Ferrari Monzas Caught in Surprise Rainstorm at Owner Event
If you’re going to go on a multiday rally in a $2 million roofless supercar, check the weather first.
When owners plunked down nearly $2 million for their beautiful but roofless Ferrari Monza SP1 and SP2 hypercars, gorgeous sunny days on the Amalfi Coast were probably in their minds, not getting caught in the rain while parked at a race track. All the money in the world can’t change the weather, so when a group of Monza owners recently gathered at Fiorano, the home racetrack of Ferrari, there was nothing they could do to stop the rain from ruining their group photo.
To make matters worse, those owners paid $30,000 to get rained on. The event was part of a Ferrari Monza owner’s rally of sorts, which had the millionaire and billionaire owners drive together through some of Italy’s prettiest scenery, stay at a five-star hotel, and then meet at the world’s largest event for Monza owners at the famous Fiorano racetrack. While at Fiorano, the group (herd?) of Monzas gathered for a photo, but the weather turned for the worse and rained on the multimillion-dollar topless Ferraris. YouTuber Varryx snagged some footage of the Fiorano fiasco before being told to stop recording by a track marshal.
BigPac-10 (or 12, or 14, not sure)
USC and UCLA rock college sports by leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten
BY J. BRADY MCCOLLOUGH, BILL PLASCHKE, RYAN KARTJE, BEN BOLCH
UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson scores past USC linebacker Ralen Goforth during a game on Nov. 20. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
It may be hard to imagine — USC cardinal and gold and UCLA blue and gold blending into the pageantry that permeates through frosty fall Saturdays in America’s heartland.
It may be hard to imagine — Trojans and Bruins annually competing with Ohio State Buckeyes and Michigan Wolverines for conference championships and bragging rights instead of Oregon Ducks and Washington Huskies.
But Thursday, when USC and UCLA officially announced they are leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten Conference, college sports fans from coast to coast were forced to conjure up a vision that what would have once — in simpler times, perhaps — seemed unthinkable.
The Trojans and Bruins, both of whom have been trying to reclaim past football glory with varying degrees of desperation, came together and completed a shocking move that will forever alter the national college sports landscape.
Insert Scrotum Here
Balldo
The “world’s first ball-dildo” is less of an erotic toy, more of a dadaist interrogation of the very concept of pleasure.
“WE DEFINITELY LIVE in the worst timeline, but I’m glad I get to see things like this,” my friend messaged me, along with a link to the Balldo. It took me a minute to comprehend what I was looking at. It’s a sex toy, and that’s about as clear as it gets. The company’s site described it as a “ball dildo” that allows you to “penetrate your partner with your balls,” which not only raised new questions, but unanswered so many questions about sex that I thought I previously understood.
I had to know more.
For anyone who doesn’t want to go down same rabbit hole, which includes multiple NSFW videos featuring both cartoon and real phalluses—the latter of which we won’t link to–here’s the short version of how the Balldo is supposed to work, according to its creators:
The skin of the human scrotum has a surprising number of nerve endings across its surface–an amount “comparable to the vulva,” Balldo’s marketing materials repeatedly remind the viewer. And yet, again according to Balldo’s marketing, said nerve endings have gone underutilized in sex. What—an exuberant voiceover asks two excited cartoon scientists and one inexplicably more excited cartoon naked man—could be done to solve this egregious oversight!?
Xbombing
SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites Are Photobombing Astronomy Images, Study Says
Streaks left by passing satellites mar observatories’ celestial images, potentially hinder spotting of dangerous asteroids
By Aylin Woodward
As the armada of satellites circling Earth grows, a new study shows that astronomy images are being marred by streaks of reflected sunlight left by the fast-moving objects.
SpaceX alone launched nearly 150 of its expanding fleet of Starlink telecommunications satellites in the past month.
For the study, published Jan. 14 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers examined the effects of Starlink satellites on about 300,000 images taken by an instrument at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California. Between November 2019 and September 2021, they noted a 35-fold increase in the number of corrupted images.
B-O-L-O-G-N-A Mask
Oscar Mayer bologna-inspired face mask hydrates and horrifies
My bologna face mask has a first name.
by Amanda Kooser
Maybe don’t wear this out in public.Oscar Mayer
I have no idea what’s in bologna. The off-pink deli meat is something I haven’t thought about since childhood. Then along comes meat-maker Oscar Mayer with a bologna face mask, and I’m now having deep thoughts about lunch and self-care.
Scratching sound. Rewind. Bologna face mask?! Oscar Mayer, never one to shy away from flashy marketing moves, is selling a $4.99 Bologna Hydrogel Sheet Face Mask on US Amazon as of today, for as long as supplies last.
Oscar Mayer is riffing on the playful idea of biting out eye and mouth shapes from a piece of bologna and then holding it over your face like a mask. Where did this bizarre ritual come from? I don’t know and I’m afraid to ask, but it sounds like a very American thing to do.
Jiggle Jiggle Tinkle
Workers Are Using ‘Mouse Movers’ So They Can Use the Bathroom in Peace
“The tables have turned in favor of the Worker,” said one mouse jiggler company. “They are in power today.”
By Samantha Cole
Leah didn’t expect her TikTok video about a work-from-home hack to go viral. She started using a mouse mover—a small device placed under her computer mouse, to keep the cursor active—after her job as a business lead in advertising transitioned to remote work at the start of the pandemic. Her company-issued computer set her status to “away” whenever she stopped moving her cursor or got up from her desk for more than a few seconds, and with three kids at home who needed help doing remote classes during school lockdowns, that little “away” signal was driving her nuts.
“Working remotely, your colleagues can’t physically ‘see’ when you get up to go to the bathroom or grab lunch. Or even take 30 minutes to reset on the couch,” Leah told me. “The last thing I wanted during those moments was to be paranoid that people thought I wasn’t working—especially since I felt like I was working more than ever.”
I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know how to unlock your front door.
How Amazon Outage Left Smart Homes Not So Smart After All
by Isabella Steger
The outage at Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing arm left thousands of people in the U.S. without working fridges, roombas and doorbells, highlighting just how reliant people have become on the company as the Internet of Things proliferates across homes.
The disruption, which began at about 10 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday, upended package deliveries, took down major streaming services, and prevented people from getting into Walt Disney Co.’s parks.
Affected Amazon services included the voice assistant Alexa and Ring smart-doorbell unit. Irate device users tweeted their frustrations to Ring’s official account, with many complaining that they spent time rebooting or reinstalling their apps and devices before finding out on Twitter that there was a general Amazon Web Services outage. Multiple Ring users even said they weren’t able to get into their homes without access to the phone app, which was down.
Anything Brooks
Mel Brooks says his only regret as a comedian is the jokes he didn’t tell
by Terry Gross
As a child in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mel Brooks assumed he would grow up to work in Manhattan’s garment district. That’s what most of the kids in his working-class Jewish neighborhood did.
But everything changed when he saw his first Broadway musical — Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman.
“My hands stung from applauding so much after it was over,” he says. “And I remember going back in Uncle Joe’s cab and I remember saying as he was driving me back home to Williamsburg, ‘Uncle Joe, Uncle Joe! I’m going to do that! … I want to be in show business!’ “
Too Much Pig Trotter
China: Man banned from all-you-can-eat BBQ for eating too much
Mr Kang was banned after seafood and pig trotter binges (file photo) IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
A Chinese food live-streamer says he has been blacklisted from a grill buffet restaurant for eating too much.
The man, known only as Mr Kang, told Hunan TV that he was banned from the Handadi Seafood BBQ Buffet in Changsha city after a series of binges.
He ate 1.5kg of pork trotters during his first visit and 3.5kg to 4kg of prawns on another visit, he said.
Mr Kang said the restaurant is “discriminatory” against people who can eat a lot.
Tree Sends Poachers To The Pokey
Trees fight back: First-ever use of tree DNA in prosecution sends poacher to prison
by Adela Suliman, Washington Post
The trees are fighting back.
They’re under threat from the effects of climate change and raging forest fires – and this week they have ensured the person behind an illegal logging operation will be imprisoned for 20 months.
A case in Washington State represents the first use of DNA evidence from trees during a prosecution in a federal criminal trial.
Justin Andrew Wilke, 39, and a crew of associates were found to have conducted an illegal logging operation in the Elk Lake area of the Olympic National Forest in Washington State, between April and August 2018. The group removed highly-prized Maple trees – used to produce musical instruments such as violins and guitars – and forged permits to sell the wood, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office Western District of Washington. Wilke was sentenced on Monday.
Walken Graffitis Banksy
Yes, Christopher Walken Personally Destroyed a Genuine Street Artwork by Banksy in the Course of Filming a BBC TV Show
The production company behind the show confirmed that the work is an original Banksy, and that Walken “destroy[ed] it.”
Although Banksy has his fair share of haters, it’s beginning to feel as if no one likes seeing the artist’s work destroyed as much as Banksy himself.
This time, instead of an artfully concealed shredder, Banksy’s weapon of choice was acting legend and beloved weirdo Christopher Walken. Walken took a paint roller to one of the anonymous street artist’s signature stenciled rats in the final episode of the BBC limited series “The Outlaws,” which aired in the U.K. Wednesday night.
The comedic crime-thriller follows a motley crew of lawbreakers sentenced to do community service in Banksy’s hometown of Bristol, where things get newly complicated after they stumble onto an illicit sack of cash wanted by even more unsavory characters. As Walken and his cohorts continue paying their debt to society in the finale by painting over graffitied walls, his character, Frank, a small-time career criminal, encounters the rat image accompanied by two cans of spray paint and Banksy’s signature.
“Diane, look at this rat I found,” he says to his probation officer. Without lifting her eyes from her novel, she instructs Walken’s character to bag and bin any vermin under 10 kilos.
Cultural Karens Killing Comedy
‘Airplane!’ creator slams joy-killing threat: ‘Twitter 9 percent’
By David Zucker
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the release of “Airplane!,” the comedy I wrote and directed with my brother Jerry and our friend Jim Abrahams. Just before the world shut down, Paramount held a screening at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, followed by a Q&A in which an audience member asked a question we never used to receive: “Could you make ‘Airplane!’ today?”
My response: “Of course, we could. Just without the jokes.”
Although people tell me that they love “Airplane!” and it seems to be included on just about every Top Five movie-comedy list, there was talk at Paramount of withholding the rerelease over feared backlash for scenes that today would be deemed “insensitive.”
Prince William Jealous He Didn’t Get To Go To Space
William Shatner Reacts to Prince William’s Disapproval of Space Race
By Paige Gawley
William Shatner is responding to Prince William‘s criticism of space travel. ET’s Nischelle Turner spoke with the 90-year-old actor on Thursday, one day after he traveled to space, and Shatner was quick to defend his journey, and space travel as a whole.
“He’s a lovely Englishman. He’s going to be king of England one day,” Shatner told ET of the Duke of Cambridge. “He’s a lovely, gentle, educated man, but he’s got the wrong idea.”
Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek, went to space with Blue Origin, the company founded by Jeff Bezos, as one of four passengers on board the New Shepard NS-18 ship.
Though the duke didn’t mention Bezos by name, he told BBC, “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.”
Lesbian Space Commune, cool
Grimes Wants to Rebound from Elon Musk With ‘Lesbian Space Commune’
Elon Musk and Grimes announced they were “semi-separated” last week—and Grimes has plans for her next move.
Everyone deserves a little rebound moment after getting out of a long term relationship. Grimes, the electronic artist who spent three years dating SpaceX founder Elon Musk, announced that her post-breakup plan involves settling on one of Jupiter’s moons to establish a “lesbian space commune.”
Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, sat in the other room while Musk broke the news about their “semi-” separation last week to Hollywood gossip newspaper Page Six.
“I’ll be colonizing Europa separately from Elon for the lesbian space commune,” she wrote in an email today to Page Six. In July, NASA awarded Musk’s rocket ship company SpaceX a $178 million launch services contract for its mission to Europa.
‘Out of Cluck’
New Zealand Cops Arrest Men Entering Locked-Down City With ‘Large Amounts’ of Illicit KFC
by Jamie Ross
Two men have been arrested in New Zealand for allegedly attempting to bring a “large amount” of illicit KFC into Auckland, where a lockdown has forced all fast-food outlets to shut their doors. According to The Guardian, the men were attempting to speed away with a trunk full of chicken and coleslaw when they were pulled over by police. Cops said they found at least three buckets of chicken, 10 tubs of coleslaw, and a big stash of fries on the side. Police also found $100,000 in cash and a number of empty ounce bags. Cops posted a photo of the delicious evidence, and a spokesperson said: “The vehicle was searched and police located the cash, alongside empty ounce bags and a large amount of takeaways.” The Guardian reports that the men are expected in court for breaching COVID rules and could face prison for up to six months or a fine of up to $4,000.
F–k this mart
Walmart worker resigns over store loudspeakers: ‘F–k this job’
By FOX 5 NY Staff
NEW YORK – A Walmart worker quit in a profanity-laced tirade over the Louisiana store’s loudspeakers.
Beth McGrath’s posted the video of her resignation on Facebook.
“Attention Walmart shoppers and associates, my name is Beth from electronics,” Beth McGrath said over the store’s PA system. “I’ve been working at Walmart for almost five years and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid.”
In a Facebook video she posted of the stunt, McGrath said, “The attendance policy is bulls–t. We’re treated from management and customers poorly every day. Whenever we have a problem with it, we’re told that we’re replaceable.”
“I’m tired of the constant gaslighting,” McGrath went on to say. “This company treats their elderly associates like s–t. To Jarred, our store manager, you’re a pervert. Greta and Kathy, shame on y’all for treating our associates the way you do. I hope you don’t speak to your families the way you speak to us.”
She ended the 1:11 video with “F–k management and f–k this job. I quit.”
She posted the video on Facebook with the comment, “On to better things.”
Thousands of people have responded to her post. McGrath posted a follow-up video thanking everyone who had commented, liked, and shared the post.
Watch Your Head
Scorned wife raids ex-husband’s cryogenics lab stealing frozen brains of people who hoped to be brought back to life
by Will Stewart
Valeria Udalova, 59, and staff from her company grabbed the remains of people who paid thousands of pounds hoping they could be resurrected.
Some of the corpses were from Britain and the US and were stored in Valeria’s ex-husband Danila Medvedev, 41, lab in the Moscow region of Russia.
The lab is Russia’s leading cryo-storage facility, say reports.
They drained liquid nitrogen from giant dewar flasks containing frozen bodies and grabbed these and some detached human brains, then loaded them on trucks.
Police were called and intercepted the macabre cargo of human remains preserved by “Frankenstein” technology offering humans the chance to “come back to life” in future.
But Medvedev told RTVi: “The police did not catch Valeria.
“She left, taking someone’s brain from the cryo-storage.
Silly Filly
Racehorse bucks jockey, escapes Ellis Park, takes a run in traffic
A racehorse bucked its rider and escaped Ellis Park Saturday afternoon, taking a run down a major highway before being captured, media outlets reported.
Video posted on Twitter showed the #4 horse racing alongside traffic on the shoulder of the road. Another video, shared on Facebook by Cullen Stanley, showed the horse running toward vehicles that appeared to be stopped on a four-lane highway.
“Horse running at me full speed on I-69 today,” he wrote. “No idea how it started or ended. Odd times we live in.”
Masturbation Going Viral
Can masturbating REALLY boost your immune system and fight Covid?
by Vanessa Chalmers
WITH a deadly virus circulating the past year and a half, many people have been wondering how they can boost their immunity.
Masturbating is sometimes touted as a way to give the immune system a kickstart.
When Covid first started causing chaos in the Western world in March 2020, Google searches for “can masurbation boost immunity” went wild as people searched for ways to protect themselves.
Unfortunately, touching oneself will not be the difference between catching Covid and not, as there are many factors that influence a person’s risk of getting the disease.
But Dr Jennifer Landa, a specialist in hormone therapy, suggests that indulging in some self-love might be able to strengthen your body’s natural defence forces.
“Masturbation can produce the right environment for a strengthened immune system,” she said, according to Men’s Health.
