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Killer
Hornets:
Remember
how here in Oz we finally breathed a sigh of relief when the bushfires were put out by
the rain, then the rains turned into floods.
When the floods abated we breathed a sigh of relief and thought we could
get on with our lives and commence rebuilding businesses, homes, tourism and
the environment. Then the virus hit
worldwide. We looked back at the
bushfire days and thought that maybe they hadn’t been as bad as we then
thought.
Now
we have another threat on the horizon, one that at a future day may make us
look back at Covid-19 and think “We thought
we had it bad back then.”
What
I am talking about are Killer Hornets, aka Murder Hornets.
Some
notes:
- Giant
Japanese Hornets are the world’s largest hornets and look they’re out of the
1976 sci-fi flick Food of the Gods.
Adult
length is 10 centimetres/4 inches with a wingspan of 7.5cm/3 inches.
I t
administers seven times more venom than a honeybee when it stings. This acts as
a neurotoxin and can lead to seizures and cardiac arrests. The sting is
described as incredibly painful.
It
has a habit of sacking bee hives, decapitating the workers and stealing the
young.
The European honeybee has no defence against the invader. Its stings can
also prove fatal to humans. In its
native Japan, it kills 50 people a year on average.
Most
alarmingly, they have arrived in the US, with sightings in Washington, close to
the Canadian border, and elsewhere.
There
are concerns that the hornets might decimate the country's honeybee hives,
which the species is known to sack to take their young and dead workers as
food. A beekeeper in Washington found one of his colonies dead last November,
with 'thousands and thousands' of honeybees lying on the ground with their
heads torn off.
The
hornet, which is awakening from hibernation, can sting through most beekeeping
suits.
Authorities
are trying to hunt down the hornet hives and remove them before the species
establishes itself.
Source
Daily
Mail
May
6, 2020
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The
Name Game:
Elon
Musk and singer Grimes announced the birth of their first child together on
Tuesday, telling fans their son's name is X ร A-12.
Not real tattooing, just filters.
Grimes
has explained the name:
✔
@Grimezsz
•X, the unknown variable ⚔️
•ร, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial
intelligence)
•A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent ๐ค
+
(A=Archangel, my favorite song)
(⚔️๐ metal rat)
Whatever
all that means.
Musk
later liked a tweet that guessed the name stands for “X Ash Arcangel.”
Some
reader comments to the article:
'That
awkward moment when all names are taken, so you smash all the keys on the
keyboard.'
‘Someone
please remove this child from unfit parents.’
‘I've
always thought that the midwife should be allowed to slap the parents when they
announce the child's name.’
‘Pretty
sure it's pronounced "Idiot" ‘
‘Master
Musk it is then.’
‘I'm
not sure but I think it's pronounced 'dooshy mc'nutbag'. ‘
‘I
think someone needs to unplug musk and grimes, wait 10 seconds, and plug them
back in.’
Source:
Daily
Mail
May
6, 2020
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Stupidity
does not have geographical boundaries . . .
My
attention was drawn to the following item by my wife, Kate. Thanks, Kate.
I
am reprinting a part of it as is, no further comment needed . . .
Concerns
over church in Australia selling bleach which its US leader claims can cure
coronavirus
The
Australian chapter of an international church that peddles bleach as a cure for
coronavirus is selling the product locally.
It sells the industrial bleach as Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS),
stating it can cure COVID-19 as well as autism, acne, cancer, diabetes and
more.
MMS
is not approved for human consumption in Australia or the United States. Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration
warned that MMS poses a serious health risk if consumed and should be labelled
with the word "poison".
The
US leader of the church, Archbishop Mark Grenon, claims he wrote to President
Donald Trump about its "sacramental cleansing water" days before
Trump's infamous press conference in which he suggested injecting disinfectant
as a potential coronavirus cure.
It
prompted health experts to issue warnings advising the public not to attempt
it.
Mr
Trump later claimed he was being sarcastic.
In
a video, Archbishop Grenon said he told Mr Trump that chlorine dioxide could
"rid the body of COVID-19".
"There
is so much evidence proving it is a wonderful detox through oxidation that
kills 99 per cent of the pathogens in the body, that is why we have so many
testimonies," he said.
Source:
ABC.net.au
May
5, 2020
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Fatberg:
Don’t
read this if you haven’t yet had breakfast.
A
giant fatberg has been pulled from a Sydney sewer after residents clogged up
the system with wet wipes and tissues. Footage
of the dark and dripping mass, which was at least two metres tall, was shared
to Facebook by Sydney Water.
'PSA:
This is what our teams deal with when non-flushable items such as wipes and
tissues clog our system!' the post said.
'Please
remember to only flush the Three P's down the loo - pee, poo and (toilet) paper
and keep our pipes clear.'
While
wipes might look like toilet paper, they are made from a very tough material
which does not break down in water in the same manner as toilet paper,' the
statement said. 'Similarly, products
like make-up wipes, baby wipes, cleaning wipes, nappies, female sanitary
products, condoms, cigarette butts, cotton buds, dental floss, hair and
unwanted medication should never be flushed down the toilet, but should be
placed in the bin.'
Gallery:
Source:
Daily
Mail
May
6, 2020
-----oOo-----
Fatberg is a compound of the words fat and berg, after iceberg. The word was used in 2008 to describe "large, rock-like lumps of cooking fat" washing up on beaches in Wales, and by 2010 was used in reference to sewer-blocking fat deposits in London. The word was added to Oxford Dictionaries Online in 2015.
Some Famous Fatbergs . . .
- 6 August 2013: A fatberg roughly the size of a bus that weighed 15 tonnes (17 tons), consisting of food fat and wet wipes, was discovered in drains under London Road in Kingston upon Thames, London.
- 1 September 2014: A solid mass of waste fat, wet wipes, food, tennis balls and wood planks the size of a Boeing 747 aeroplane was discovered and cleared by sanitation workers in a drain beneath a 260-foot (80 m) section of road in Shepherd's Bush, London.
- 3 September 2014: The sewerage system beneath Melbourne, Australia was clogged by a large mass of fat, grease and waste.
- January 2015: As part of a campaign against drain blocking, Welsh Water released a video showing a fatberg in drains in Cardiff.
- April 2015: A 40-metre-long (130 ft) fatberg was removed from sewers under Chelsea. It took over two months to remove, and the damage it caused cost an estimated £400,000 to repair.
- July 2015: A 120-metre-long (390 ft) fatberg was discovered in Welshpool in mid-Wales.
- January 2016: A blockage caused by a fatberg near Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, damaged the Eleebana sewage pumping station. The fatberg "weighed about one tonne (1.1 tons) and took four hours to remove" by crane.
- September 2017: A 250-metre-long (820 ft) fatberg weighing over 130 tonnes (140 tons) was found under Whitechapel, London. Even working seven days a week at a cost of £1 million per month, officials estimated it would take two months to destroy it. Two pieces of the fatberg were cut off on 4 October 2017 and, after several weeks of drying, were displayed at the Museum of London from 9 February 2018 through June 2018, as part of the museum's City Now City Future season. According to curator Vyki Sparkes, the fatberg became one of the museum's most popular exhibits.
- September 2017: A fatberg of congealed fat, wet wipes, and waste was discovered under the streets of Baltimore, Maryland that caused the spillage of 1.2 million US gallons (4.5 million litres; 1.0 million imperial gallons) of sewage into Jones Falls.
- April 2018: A fatberg discovered under South Bank in London is suspected to be larger than the one found under Whitechapel.
- December 2018: Sewer workers discovered a fatberg in Sidmouth, Devon that was 64 metres long. Workers took eight weeks to remove it. It was the largest fatberg discovered in the UK outside a major city, and the largest in the history of South West Water.
- February 2019: The largest fatberg in the UK was discovered in a sewer at Birchall Street in Liverpool. It weighed 400 tonnes and was 250 metres long. It is still (July 2019) being removed from the sewer as it is proving to be difficult to break-down using conventional tools and equipment.
- December 2019: The first occurrence of a large fatberg in the north of England was reported by United Utilities under HM Prison Manchester. The 170 ft-long (52m) fatberg was estimated to weigh "around the same as three elephants", taking several weeks to remove fully.
- April 2020: A 42 tonne fatberg the size of a Petrol Tanker was discovered in Melbourne, Australia. It's unusually large size in relation to other Australian blockages(far exceeding the 2014 and 2016 Australian fatburgs) was blamed primarily on the shortage of Toilet Paper caused by the Covid-19 outbreak.
Source: wikipedia
You may now resume your breakfast.
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