STUFF: News, Technology, the cool and the plain weird

[MIKA27]

Terrifying California Bushfire Consumes 30,000 Acres In 24 Hours

A ferocious bushfire erupted in the San Bernardino mountains yesterday, ripping through more than 30,000 acres of brush in less than 24 hours. As of this morning, the Blue Cut Fire has forced more than 82,000 residents to evacuate.

The fire, which threatens several rural San Bernardino communities, is the latest in a spate of fast-moving, hard-to-contain blazes to strike central and southern California this summer, fuelled by strong winds, bone-dry brush and 37-plus degree days. That list includes the Soberanes fire which, after raging for more than three weeks and consuming 76,000 acres in the Carmel valley, remains only 60 per cent contained, and the Sand Fire, which scorched nearly 40,000 acres in Angeles National Forest before it was brought under control.

The Blue Cut Fire is an evolving situation. A full list of mandatory evacuation areas and road closures can be found on the Forest Service’s Incident Information System. The fire is considered to be zero per cent contained.

[MIKA27]

The Weirdest Dolphin On Earth Has A New Relative

In the murky waters of the Ganges and Indus rivers, a few thousand blind dolphins swim on their sides, snapping at prey with long, exaggerated beaks and using echolocation to navigate. Because of pollution and habitat destruction, the South Asian river dolphin is on its way to extinction — but a newly-discovered relative may strengthen the case for conserving it.

For more than 50 years, an unusual skull from southeastern Alaska sat in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s vast collections. By X-ray scanning that skull and carefully analysing a digital model, palaeontologists have now determined that it belongs to an extinct river dolphin that swam in subarctic marine waters some 25 million years ago.

Dubbed Arktocara yakataga, it’s a distant relative of the South Asian river dolphin Platanista gangetica, confirming that the geographically-isolated tropical species is the last surviving member of an ancient lineage.

“Considering the only living dolphin in this group is restricted to freshwater systems in Southeast Asia, to find a relative that was all the way up in Alaska 25 million years ago was kind of mind-boggling,” lead study author Alexander Boersma said in a statement.

“There are rocks preserved in Alaska that have the potential to tell us a lot about the early stages of whale evolution,” study co-author Nicholas Pyenson, the Smithsonian Museum’s curator of fossil marine mammals, told Gizmodo. “In particular, Alaska has a lot of rocks from the Oligocene.”

Artist’s reconstruction of Arktocara yakataga swimming offshore of Alaska 25 million years ago.

The Oligocene, a cool chapter in Earth’s history that followed the hot, ice-free Eocene, is thought to be a period of rapid cetacean diversification. Although the first whales evolved earlier, fossil evidence suggests that two large groups — the baleen and toothed whales — got their start during the Oligocene some 34 to 23 million year ago. But for palaeontologists interested in reconstructing the evolutionary history of whales, this time period is problematic. “We don’t know much about it, because there aren’t many rocks available,” Pyenson said. “People know a lot about much older or younger whales, but they have ignored the Oligocene.”

A rare opportunity to study Oligocene whales presented itself recently, when the Smithsonian got back an unusual cetacean skull that had been on loan to another researcher for years. First deposited in the museum’s collection in 1951 by geologist Don Miller, the skull was collected from a 25-million-year-old rock unit in southeastern Alaska.

Boersma and Pyenson’s analysis, published today in Peer J, confirms that the fossil belongs to a never-before-seen marine ancestor of the South Asian river dolphin.

There are only four species of river dolphin alive on Earth today. Distantly related and geographically disparate, all of them are considered vulnerable to critically endangered, because of centuries of hunting pressure and habitat loss. But as palaeontologists are learning from the fossil record, these strange, hard-to-find cetaceans are the descendants of a much larger group that went from sea to land multiple times, for reasons that are still unclear.

A 1927 illustration of the Indus river dolphin, one of two subspecies of Platanista gangetica.

In particular, the South Asian river dolphin has dozens of extinct relatives. Now, it can add another to its illustrious heritage. Arktocara yakataga is among the oldest and northernmost river dolphin ancestors have ever found, confirming that Platanista hails from an ancient and possibly globe-spanning group.

“This dolphin is singular today, but when we look at its ancestry, there are dozens of marine fossil whales closer to the South Asian River dolphin than to any other whales,” Boersma said. “What this tells us is we should protect [Platanista], because it’s the last of a lineage. It is representing evolutionary history that will wink out if we don’t preserve it.”

Next year, Boersma and Pyenson are planning to return to the site in southeast Alaska where the Arktocara skull was unearthed more than half a century ago. Hopefully, they can find more bones from the extinct creature, and start to flesh out the story of how this lineage evolved and spread to new habitats halfway across the world.

“There are still a lot of questions,” Boersma said. “I think it’s exciting to find the relative of a tropical river dolphin at the poles. It tells us just how much we don’t know about whales.”

 

[MIKA27]

Scientists Solve Mystery Of Deep Sea Creature’s Strange Jaws

The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) remains one of the strangest known deep sea creatures. The shark is sometimes referred to as a “living fossil” due to the fact that it is the last known living creature in the family Mitsukurindae, which largely disappeared over 100 million years ago.

The goblin shark has fascinated biologists since the animal’s discovery. The animal’s most distinctive feature is its large, protruding snout which extends frontward like a comically-large nose. The shark’s jaws then extend below the snout, but are proportionally dwarfed by the animal’s strange facial appendage.

The goblin shark also features a unique translucent coloration, made pink by blood vessels just beneath the shark’s skin. Without a doubt, though, the goblin shark’s creepiest and strangest feature is its jaw. The seemingly ineffectual upper and lower jaws, made unassuming by their small size, can spring forward as the animal feeds.

 

A 2016 study recently published in Scientific Reports analyzed recent rare footage of goblin sharks feeding and finally deduced why the shark might possess such strange jaws. According to the mostly Japanese researchers who published the study, the jaws are an adaptation that (you guessed it) help the shark catch food in the barren wastes of the deep ocean:

The rapid and extensive jaw protrusion of the goblin shark may compensate for its apparent lack of ability for fast and sustained swimming to pursue prey. The jaw protrusion of the goblin shark will serve the species to expand the accessible distance to the prey, and enable it to capture the faster swimming prey, allowing it to seize elusive prey.

That’s some cutting edge research, Scientific Reports. Because food is scarce in the black void of the ocean bottom, goblin sharks must be able to capitalize on prey whenever it appears. The jaws make up for the physical limitations of the awkward shark, enabling it to catch food without actually moving its body too much. Thus, the goblin shark goes down as one of the creepiest AND laziest sea monsters out there.

The discovery of the shark is an interesting tale in itself, famously described in an 1989 article in the Proceedings of California Academy of Sciences. The first known goblin shark specimen was caught by a Japanese fisherman, who gave it to English naturalist Alan Owston who then passed it along to University of Tokyo biology professor Kakichi Mitsukuri; the shark’s name comes from the surnames of these two men.

 

[MIKA27]

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly Will Finally Make Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson Actually Funny

In 2009, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law took on the iconic roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. In 2010, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman played the same characters for a modern crime drama version on the BBC. Throughout the last half decade, each take on the iconic detective and his sidekick have gotten a number of sequels, with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows hitting theaters in 2011 and subsequent seasons of the BBC series most recently in 2014.

Now, two very different actors will be taking on the roles of Holmes and Watson: comedy power duo Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Having teamed up in Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, the two will take on crime solving with Etan Cohen directing a take on the Arthur Conan Doyle classic. Naturally, Ferrell will play Holmes and Reilly Watson.

Where the Downey Jr. version was a blockbuster action movie and the BBC series a technical and dark crime drama, the upcoming Ferrell/Reilly take on Holmes/Watson will be a full-on comedy. As Deadline reports, the previous "iterations have stoked worldwide awareness for the characters, and hopefully will create an appetite for a full out comic version of the super sleuths, anchored by a couple of stars who are two for two in the hit column together."

Reminder: Will Ferrell has been in a buddy crime solving film very recently.

 

[MIKA27]

CODEX SILENDA PUZZLE BOOK

When was the last time you sat down in a chair and just spent hour after hour reading a book? How about playing with a puzzle? If you can’t quite remember, you might need to do a little double time with the Codex Silenda Puzzle Book in order to make up for lost time.

Made by a college student as a part of his senior thesis, this book features five separate pages, each with their own puzzle and story written into the page. With each puzzle you crack, you get another part of the story. The best part about it though? Even after you’ve made your way through the entire puzzle you can still start over again and find something new and different due to the fact that the puzzle is designed to have multiple solutions. These are expected to hit the market in the early summer of 2017 and will retail for north of $150. [Purchase]

 

[MIKA27]

LOS ANGELES BARN HOUSE

Owned by Apollo 13 producer Brian Grazer, the Los Angeles Barn House gives a 1930s Cliff May ranch a sleek update. Clad in grey-washed cedar, the monochromatic facade conceals a mishmash of architectural styles, while brise soleil covers the enlarged windows for added privacy. Designed by Waldo Fernandez, the interior's crisp white walls act as a gallery for works by Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, and Andy Warhol. The property also features a basketball court, a yoga platform, and a rectangular pool and sits just a mile away from the Santa Monica coastline. The former garage was covered into a screening room, fit for viewing Oscar-winning films.

 

[MIKA27]

TUSCAN COUNTRY HOUSE

Built in 1887, the exterior of this Tuscan Country House shows its age. The interior does not. It's situated on a hill not far from the town of Lucca, and while the inside still retains as many original features as could be saved — original beams and exposed brick among them — it incorporates a number of sleek, modern surfaces that add to the juxtaposition of old v. new. There's also a swimming pool outside with olive trees integrated into the decking to help connect it with the surroundings, and an adjacent extension that uses black furnishings and white exterior walls to stand out from the rest of the residence.

 

[MIKA27]

GOOD TO GO GOURMET DEHYDRATED MEALS

Rarely do you see the words "dehydrated" and "gourmet" used together. Yet Good To Go Gourmet Dehydrated Meals are no joke. Designed for campers who love the freedom of a tent but crave real food, these bagged meals require nothing more than some boiling water and time to go from dry to delicious. They're made from real ingredients like fresh veggies and ground whole spices, portioned to keep your energy levels up, and come in a variety of dishes, including pad thai, mushroom risotto, and three bean chili.

[MIKA27]

The Retooled MacGyver Reboot Adds A Sense Of Humour To All The Gadgets And Explosions

 

It hasn’t been smooth sailing for the MacGyver reboot. We already saw one trailer back in May, which has since been scrapped along with the original pilot. Australian director James Wan (Furious 7, The Conjuring) — a show producer who originally planned to helm the pilot, then stepped away — was hastily brought back for damage control.

Last month, at San Diego Comic-Con, Wan had just begun shooting the pilot after an overhaul that included several casting changes and a haircut for star Lucas Till. The new trailer introduces us not just to the daring title character, but also to “the muscle”, “the boss”, “the best friend” and “the hacker” — and makes copious references to Mac’s inventive ways with chewing gum and tin foil. Plus, explosions. And jokes.

The hands-on involvement of Wan (a huge fan of the original show) has made a big difference — this looks way more goofy and spontaneous than the earlier take, exactly the way a contemporary MacGyver should be.

 

MIKA: I loved the original but I will already bet this won't make it past season 1

 

[MIKA27]

The Cast of Batman '66 Returns for a New Animated Movie

It’s been over a year since Adam West revealed that he and Burt Ward would reprise their roles as Batman and Robin for a new animated feature—but now we have the first look at it in action: Holy footage, Batman, it’s a trailer for Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders!

Featuring the vocal talents of Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar, Return of the Caped Crusaders is coming out in just a few months—but really, you should watch the first trailer, released through Entertainment Weekly today, in which Batman explains to Robin the premise of their own movie while escaping being trapped on a giant TV dinner tray.

I’m already in love. According to, err, Batman, the movie will see the dynamic duo face off against the Joker, the Riddler, Penguin, and Catwoman (with presumably new actors stepping in to replace the dearly departed Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, and Burgess Meredith) on Earth and in space. If this trailer is any indication, this whole goddamn movie is going to be a total delight.

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders will be available digitally on October 11th, and on Blu-Ray November 1st. (And on Torrent in-between  )

[MIKA27]

Here's the Ultimate Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Blu-Ray Set You've Been Waiting For

Pretty much ever since the Hobbit movies were announced, fans have clamored for an ultimate box set that gathered the (then-future) extended editions of those films with the extended Lord of the Rings cuts in a single box set. Well, you’ll soon be able to—and it’s pretty spectacular.

Emerging out of an Amazon.com listing today, the “Middle-Earth Limited Collector’s Edition” features a whopping 30 Blu-ray discs of footage: Extended cuts of An Unexpected Journey, Desolation of Smaug, Battle of the Five Armies, Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, and Return of the King, and all of the previously released and monstrously extensive behind-the-scenes documentaries that were included in past extended edition releases.

On top of that, each movie is wrapped up in its own faux-leather-wrapped book case, which themselves sit on an elaborate wooden shelf—hilariously described in the official release as “crafted from solid wood with a design selected by Peter Jackson.” If that wasn’t enough, the collection also comes with a recreation of the Red Book of Westmarch—the book Bilbo and Frodo “wrote” The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in—filled with pages of official concept art, as well as individual recreations of concept art from the films by Alan Lee and John Howe.

It’s certainly an elaborate collection (even moreso than perhaps people might have expected from the first time these movies are gathered in a single bumper collection) and it might be an expensive one. Amazon.com has since removed pricing details from the product, but it was initially posted with an $800 price tag for an October 4th release.

That’s yet to be confirmed—I’ll update this post as soon as a price is officially known—but it seems a bit crazy, even for as grand a set as this is.

[OZCUBAN]

Love it but BlueRay is so yesterday don't you think ? 

[Fuzz]

3 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

The Retooled MacGyver Reboot Adds A Sense Of Humour To All The Gadgets And Explosions

MIKA: I loved the original but I will already bet this won't make it past season 1

 

Exactly my feeling. Ya don't go messing with the classics! There's no way they will be able to re-create RDA's mullet!!

[OZCUBAN]

11 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

Exactly my feeling. Ya don't go messing with the classics! There's no way they will be able to re-create RDA's mullet!!

exactly,nothing new coming out of Hollywood 

[oliverdst]

6 hours ago, OZCUBAN said:

exactly,nothing new coming out of Hollywood 

 

6 hours ago, Fuzz said:

Exactly my feeling. Ya don't go messing with the classics! There's no way they will be able to re-create RDA's mullet!!

 

10 hours ago, MIKA27 said:

The Retooled MacGyver Reboot Adds A Sense Of Humour To All The Gadgets And Explosions

MIKA: I loved the original but I will already bet this won't make it past season 1

 

[MIKA27]

The Fourth Phase Pairs Red Bull With The World's Wildest Snowboarders

Red Bull is continuing its progress towards a full film production house with the release of their latest trailer for The Fourth Phase, a daunting snowboarding docu-film following the powdered pursuits of Travis Rice. The story follows Rice around the hydrological cycle as he chases down some of the most stunning and isolated snow caps created in the north Pacific. Think towering mountains topped off with silky white stuff and Rice getting heli-lifted to these locations before the mandatory Red Bull footage kicks in.

The film spreads over various regions including the Japanese Alps and the volcanoes of Russia and Alaska. It’s no snow party without a crew of course so Rice has called along a few buddies who are also considered some of the world’s most innovative riders. Mark Landvik, Eric Jackson, Bryan Iguchi, Pat Moore, Mikkel Bang, Jeremy Jones, Victor de Le Rue and Ben Ferguson all give a helping hand on this epic 4K adventure.

You also might notice Rice’s epic snow gear, designed in collaboration with Quiksilver as part of The Highland collection, a signature range of high performance outerwear, clothing and accessories made from a progressive blend of technology and design perfect for taking on some of the world’s most challenging environments. The collection represents the pinnacle of waterproof outerwear technology, and will be available from September 1.

 

[MIKA27]

Arrival's Hong Kong Poster Has A Mistake That's Causing Political Unrest

Here’s a case where film marketers being incurably Western causes a big problem: Arrival released 12 posters depicting alien monoliths appearing across the world. One of them photoshopped a building from Shanghai into a Hong Kong skyline. Oops.

Bigger oops was not thinking about the tense history between Hong Kong and China, of which Shanghai is the largest city. 

Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997, when the Handover transferred its sovereignty to China. There’s been a fair amount of tension between Hong Kong and mainland China, especially in recent years. The political unrest culminated recently in the proliferation of groups calling for independence from China. And then Arrival stepped right into that debate.

The tower in the righthand corner is the distinctive Oriental Pearl Tower, a TV tower in Shanghai. The rest of the poster is of Victoria Harbour, a name that pretty clearly gives it away as being in Hong Kong and not Shanghai.

This has caused a pretty predictable backlash. Though it has since been taken down, if you wanted to see marketing gone horribly, horribly wrong, you could scroll through the 2700 — and rising — comments on the image on Facebook (Link not attached as the page has been removed). You’d find it had been taken over by people proclaiming “#HongKongIsNotChina”. Commenter Cherry Ben took it even further than just the hashtag with, “Lets boycott this piece of shit. Putting the fucking tower in Vic. Harbour doesnt mean it represents China you fucking idiot. #Hongkongisnotchina”

Mostly, though, the comments were exactly what you’d expect. Some polite requests that the marketers do some research and respect other nations before doing things like this. Others making fun of them for making a stupid mistake. Some general dislike of the design of the tower. A fair bit of mocking the “Why are they here?” tagline, which seems especially ironic given this mistake. But mostly, comment after comment with just the hashtag.

Although the best response has to come from Horace Chin Wan-kan, a leader of the “Hong Kong Autonomy Movement” and who is running Hong Kong’s Legislative Council election. Here’s his response, as reported by Variety:

The movie adaptation of the sci-fi novel Arrival, which obtained the Nebula Award, [has] decent director Denis Villeneuve and actors Amy Adams [and] Jeremy Renner. However, everything is ruined by this improper poster.

The use of “decent” there is an especially strong burn.

Let this be a lesson to marketers and movie makers everywhere: Sometimes your ignorance just makes you look dumb. Sometimes it’s a political nightmare.

[MIKA27]

This Guy Is Better At Archery Than You'll Ever Be, And He Has No Arms

Feeling proud of yourself for getting to work on time in the morning? You won’t be as impressed with your accomplishment when you watch Paralympic archer Matt Stutzman, born without arms, nail a bullseye using his legs and feet.

Not only is Stutzman a member of the US Paralympic Archery Team, he also holds the Guinness World Record for “farthest accurate distance” in archery by hitting a target over 283m away. And yes, that record is open to archers with arms as well, making it all the more impressive.

MIKA: This is truly the most amazing feat (No pun intended) I've seen all year. WOW, and some people bitch and moan about the dumbest first world things.  

[MIKA27]

At This Incredible Hotel In Antarctica, You Can Freeze Your Arse Off In Style

If, unlike me, you look ineffably cool wearing a giant parka, slogging around in the snow and freezing your butt off, you might consider a jaunt to the White Desert camp in Antarctica. Also, you’ll need $US72,000 ($94,070) for an 11-night stay.

The camp has been around for some time — it’s supposedly played host to members of the Saudi royal family, Prince Harry and two “brawling heiresses” — but as Bloomberg reports, it recently received a “complete luxury overhaul” for its 10th birthday.

What does that mean, exactly? Bloomberg has all the one-percenter friendly details:

What it now humbly calls “sleeping pods” are six heated fibreglass domes, with bamboo headboards, Saarinen chairs, fur throws, and en suite bathrooms stocked with sustainable Lost Explorer-brand toiletries, created by a scion of the de Rothschild family. Wooden skis adorn the walls; thick parkas for each guest hang from free-standing coat racks. And each suite stands alone on a rugged strip of land in the interior of Antarctica, midway between a frozen lake and towering walls of ice.

Whereas the dining room once consisted of one long wooden table, it’s now a more formal affair, with furs thrown over chairs that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Brooklyn Heights apartment. After hangout sessions with 6,000 emperor penguins, this is where guests share convivial, three-course meals comprising ingredients and wines flown in from Cape Town. (They’re prepared by an in-house chef who cooks privately for the British Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton when he’s not at camp.)

If you have the money, however, that $US72,000 ($94,070) price tag is all-inclusive, so you can check out blue ice caves, go kite-skiing and partake in abseiling. Throw in an extra $US7500 ($9799) for an overnight trip to the South Pole, and you’ll be the proud owner of a “custom Bremont timepiece [that] comes engraved with the date of your visit”. That’s basically the same thing you get when you use one of those coin elongation machines, right?

 

 

[MIKA27]

This Incredibly Detailed Lightsaber Is The Best Reason To Own A 3D Printer

3D printers can make lots of cool things, but lightsabers might be the coolest. If you need proof, I submit Tested’s video as evidence.

This lightsaber uses old camera parts as the basis of the build, which is exactly what the prop designers used for the original Star Wars lightsaber in 1977.

In order to get that impressive detail, Tested used a FormLabs Form 2 printer, an expensive, pro-level machine that uses special resins and, fittingly, lasers. So you likely can’t recreate this build perfectly with any old 3D printer, but you can sure try.

[MIKA27]

A Clue Remake Is Coming From Fox Because It's 2016 And Everything Is A Remake

Clue, the shining example that all board game movies (if they have to exist at all) should strive to emulate, is getting a remake.

The news comes from Tracking Board, with no official word, so take this news with whatever amount of salt that means for you. According to the article, Hasbro and Fox are working together to get the movie made.

The last time we heard of this, it was when Universal gave up on making a Clue movie in 2011, with Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Gore Verbinski attached to direct. It’s more than believable that Hasbro went looking for another partner, since they have made Monopoly and Risk deals and managed to get Battleship made.

While it’s unlikely that a remake will match the highs of the original Clue, at least we can all bet it will be better than Ouija.

[MIKA27]

Lost Ark Continues To Look Incredible

I don’t know who Lost Ark’s engineers are, but they’re worth their weight in gold.

If you haven’t heard of it, Lost Ark is a Diablo-esque aRPG being made in South Korea. It’s been in the works for a few years, with early testing for the game only opening in South Korea later this year.

After everyone saw the visuals of the early trailers, gamers began hitting up developers Smilegate — who also developed Crossfire — to see whether it’d get a Western release.

It’s not hard to see why people are keen.

Christ that looks a treat. This is all being done with an ancient version of DirectX as well, according to a recent Q&A with South Korean media.

The footage is from a closed beta test, the first of three. There’ll be a “final test” after that, although given where we are in the year it’s unlikely we’ll see Lost Ark become playable to Westerners in any fashion until 2017 at the earliest.

[MIKA27]

Ancient Shoe For Trapping Evil Spirits Found in College Wall

Anyone who’s ever lived in a college dorm room knows that bad things probably happened there in the past and it’s best not to look behind or under things or to peer into mysterious holes in the wall. How bad must things have been at St. John’s College in Cambridge , England, in the 17th century to convince students to place an ‘evil spirit’ trap in a wall?

The spirit trap was found recently in the school’s Second Court building which was built between 1598 and 1602. Workers were removing panels to do electrical work in the Senior Combination Room – a multi-purpose room where teachers and staff members meet and relax – when they found a single man’s shoe. It appeared to be about 300 years old and would have been a size 6 by today’s measurements. The shoe was also in very good shape except for a hole in the sole. Why did the workers immediately recoil in fright from what they called a spirit trap?

It was positioned between the chimney breast and the window, which is exactly the sort of location where you would expect to find a shoe being used in this way.

Richard Newman was brought in from the Archaeological Unit of St. John’s College and concluded the shoe had been placed there to catch evil spirits, demons and witches and hold them forever … or at least until next semester when they became someone else’s problem. He says this was a common belief in 17th and 18th century England. Newman was pretty excited about the shoe.

These discoveries are important because they give us a material record of what people may have believed at the time. There is not a lot of documentary evidence about people’s beliefs in ritual magic in the past, and often the sources that we have are very negative and disparaging about such practices.

That’s not surprising. Besides shoes, people in this period also protected their houses and dorm rooms with dead cats, horse skulls and so-called ‘witch bottles‘ which contained hair and urine from the current resident or owner. And you thought YOUR dorm room smelled bad.

Of course, no one believes in spirit traps and witch bottles anymore … do they? After Newman finishes studying the shoe to get an accurate determination of its age, he plans to place it back in the wall before the workers replace the panels …

… out of respect for the wishes of earlier residents.

Why mess with success? After all, the shoe has protected the room from 300 years of college students.

 

[MIKA27]

Did a Super Cartel Really Kidnap El Chapo’s Son?

The most mysterious fact of Alfred Guzmán’s capture is that he was captured at all. Rival narco kings kill their enemies. What gives?

In the annals of the gruesome Mexican narcowars, the kidnapping of jailed drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s son and heir apparent at the beginning of the week is, to say the least… strange.

In the dark early hours of Monday morning, heavily armed sicarios, or hitmen, abducted 29-year-old Alfredo Guzmán and five other men at a restaurant called La Leche in the Mexican resort town Puerto Vallarta, Mexican authorities said.

The interior of the upscale establishment is all white, like leche, or milk, and in a movie about the gang wars of Mexico, blood would be splattered all over the décor after an incident like this. But there was not a drop. Not a shot was fired. And the nine women who were with the kidnapped men weren’t taken, weren’t shot, weren’t hurt at all.

 

In the days since, authorities have concluded the kidnappers were from Mexico’s new “super cartel” known as the CJNG, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación. The cartel has spread like a flesh-eating bacteria across the Mexican underworld, challenging any gang that looked weak, even and especially, it would seem, El Chapo’s once-mighty Sinaloa Cartel since he was returned to prison in January.

Law enforcement officials noted that nobody in El Chapo’s family has filed a report on the kidnapping or asked for help from the police. But that’s no surprise. This is the kind of thing the cartels settle among themselves. And what we’ve seen of the quotidian carnage at the hands of both Sinaloa and the CJNG can be absolutely hideous.

As The Daily Beast reported in March, the CJNG isn’t just super-sized. It’s also super ruthless and hyper-violent, even by Mexican cartel standards. Back in 2011 the group slaughtered 35 members of the Zetas, a rival cartel, and dumped the bodies—including 12 women—on an interstate highway at rush hour. Commuters were confronted with a hellish scene worthy of some modern Hieronymus Bosch.

And, as we reported, that was just a warm-up act. Since 2015 the CJNG has developed a reputation for taking the fight to law enforcement, launching guerrilla-like assaults that have claimed dozens of officers’ lives. In at least one instance, they managed to shoot down a Mexican Army helicopter, killing everyone aboard.

So, given that record, what’s with this bloodless coup at La Leche?

Is it some grotesque exaction on El Chapo’s son in the offing? Or is this an inside job, and not a CNJG op at all? Could it be a ruse? In Narcolandia, no one theory necessarily excludes another; in a war of succession, the game of cartel thrones, who is loyal? Who betrays? Who knows?

In June, for instance, a large group of men reportedly attacked the house of El Chapo’s aged mother. But that wasn’t the CNJG. That appears to have been an intra-family feud between one Guzmán relative known as “El Guano,” bird shit, and another called “El Mochomito,” the little desert ant (after Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, a jailed drug lord and Chapo rival who was the Big Desert Ant). Mama wasn’t there in any case, but several people were killed at what once was the sanctum sanctorum of El Chapo (which means Shorty, in case you were wondering).

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which follows these stories in detail but with prudent detachment, notes that a core rivalry inside the Sinaloa Cartel appears to be between an old crony of El Chapo’s, Mayo Zambada, and El Chapo’s sons, los Chapitos, Ivan (still at large) and Alfredo, who apparently was kidnapped.

Both of the boys have had, to say the least, a presence on social media. Last year Ivan posted an Instagram image of his gold-plated AK-47 propped up against the dashboard of his Ferrari. Alfredo posted a pic of a snarling lion cub on the trunk of his Bentley.

But we know a bit more about Alfredo, up close and personal, thanks to Sean Penn’s extended Rolling Stone article in January about El Chapo in hiding.

Alfredo had acted as Penn’s escort to the secret meeting place:

“He’s handsome, lean and smartly dressed,” wrote Penn, “with a wristwatch that might be of more value than the money housed by the central banks of most nation-states. He’s got one hell of a wristwatch.”

As they flew to the rendezvous with Chapo, Penn asked Alfredo how he could be sure they were not being followed or watched.

Alfredo smiled (Penn noted that he didn’t blink very often) and pointed out a red scrambler switch below the cockpit controls.

“That switch blocks ground radar,” said Alfredo, adding that the cartel had an inside man who told them when the military’s high-altitude surveillance plane has been deployed. “He has great confidence that there are no unwanted eyes on us,” Penn wrote.

As they drove deep into the jungle, two uniformed government soldiers, weapons at the ready, approached their vehicle. “Alfredo lowers his passenger window; the soldiers back away, looking embarrassed, and wave us through,” wrote Penn. “Wow. So it is, the power of a Guzmán face.”

What power that face has now is an open question.

[MIKA27]

Oak & Oscar Sandford Watch 

The Sandford Watch by Oak & Oscar gets its name from Scottish inventor and Canada Explorer Sandford Fleming, Sandford was also one of the first persons responsible for definig and using different time zones. So this watch aims to be somewhat of a hommage to this great character. Its subtle, discreet and vintage look goes a long way on someone’s wrist, a beautifully designed and built timepiece that uses a Swiss automatic Soprod movement inside and is delivered with a great looking Horween leather strap, made by the American Woodnsteel company and an olive green PVC strap, that will give it a more military look. It has a rotating inner bezel that enables you to keep track of the different time zones you may travel to. A new beautiful timepiece brought to us by Oak & Oscar, the Sandford surely is a well designed watch and will be most cherished by its proud owners.