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The auction house says Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun outbid six other rivals to get the "Comedian" installation of the Italian visual artist on Wednesday.

"In the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience," Mr Sun was quoted as saying.

The taped banana - now perhaps one of the most expensive fruits ever sold - was actually bought earlier in the day for a mere $0.35, according to the New York Times.

"Comedian" was first unveiled to the public in 2019, instantly becoming a viral sensation and also provoking heated debates about what art is.

The installation - which has travelled around the world - comes with instructions on how to replace the banana whenever it rots.

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Head on a swivel for the good people of NEP. There is a potential serial pooper stealing toddler’s clothes and using them as toilet paper while he fertilizes your back lawn.

Is this even illegal by the way? Sometimes you just have an emergency. Notice in the picture he went all the way to the last house to to do it. This feels like it might’ve been DEFecateCON 5. As a guy who has had some emergency shits in his day I’ve shit outdoors plenty of times in some of the scariest places. Golf course bushes, the James Gandolfini rest stop, a porta potty in Jetro. I never understood people who were afraid to shit in public. I’ve shit on a plane before which is probably the craziest place anyone can do it. That one I’m not proud of. Not only do your balls almost scrape the bottom of the toilet and it’s tough to maneuver enough to wipe, but you also have to be quick unless everyone knows you shit in there and that’s humiliating.

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The Ark Encounter says in a federal lawsuit that rains in 2017 and 2018 caused a landslide on its access road. The lawsuit says the road has been rebuilt. The ark was not damaged.

The Courier Journal reports the attraction's insurance carriers refused to cover the damage, however.

The 510-foot-long wooden ark has been a popular northern Kentucky attraction since its 2016 opening. Answers in Genesis, the company that operates the Ark Encounter, also operates the Creation Museum in Petersburg, which opened its doors in 2007.

The suit names Allied World Assurance Co. Holdings of Switzerland, its use company and three other insurance carriers.

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The City of Bonnieville, Kentucky will soon be no more. An audit after Election Day confirmed residents voted to dissolve their local government by only seven votes. 

It's left some residents with many questions on what will happen to City Hall, the roads and streetlights.

The Hart County community is where just over 200 Kentuckians call home. Just off of I-65 you'll see a welcome sign for Bonnieville, which was established in 1958. But by next week all signs, banners with the city's name will be removed. 

"We're making history," Bonnieville Mayor Marie Whitlow said. "Sad history but we're making history."

On Tuesday, residents believed a majority voted against dissolving the city. But a second audit revealed it actually passed with 60 people voting no and 67 voting yes.

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The vice-president of the Philippines said she instructed an assassin to kill the president if she were killed. In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Vice-President Sara Duterte told press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, his wife and the Speaker of the Philippine House if she were to be killed. “I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.” [...]

Continue Reading.

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Mobile operator O2 has created an AI-powered tool that sounds like an elderly grandmother, keeping phone scammers on calls and away from the general public. The telecoms giant said it had created the so-called “scambaiter” tool in response to research which found that seven in 10 people wanted to get their own back on scammers but did not want to waste their own time in doing so.

The firm said it had worked with leading scambaiters – people who take on and disrupt scammer networks – to get phone numbers linked to its AI tool, known as Daisy, added to known lists used by scammers to target vulnerable consumers, and had been given the voice of an elderly grandmother to play on scammer biases about older people.

It said the tool had been successful in keeping numerous scammers on calls for up to 40 minutes at a time and frustrated them with meandering stories and explanations about their tech use, as well as providing false personal information and made-up bank details.

O2 said that by tricking fraudsters into thinking they were scamming a real person, Daisy has prevented them from targeting real victims, but had also exposed the common tactics used so the firm can help customers better protect themselves.

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The Skokomish River is home to an annual salmon migration, but it's also the most flood-prone river in Western Washington.  And when you put the two together, the salmon get an unexpected detour and drivers get an unexpected sight.

"There's a road nearby (the river)," says hydrologist Brent Bower with the National Weather Service in Seattle. "So basically what's happened is (the salmon) are trying to go up the river. But when the river floods, they don't necessarily know what's the actual river channel, and what's not, so they just follow the water. And sometimes that water takes them across the road."

Youtube: November 2016 via TWC.

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We crafted our first rodent car from a plastic cereal container. After trial and error, my colleagues and I found that rats could learn to drive forward by grasping a small wire that acted like a gas pedal. Before long, they were steering with surprising precision to reach a Froot Loop treat.

As expected, rats housed in enriched environments – complete with toys, space and companions – learned to drive faster than those in standard cages. This finding supported the idea that complex environments enhance neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change across the lifespan in response to environmental demands.

After we published our research, the story of driving rats went viral in the media. The project continues in my lab with new, improved rat-operated vehicles, or ROVs, designed by robotics professor John McManus and his students. These upgraded electrical ROVs – featuring rat-proof wiring, indestructible tires and ergonomic driving levers – are akin to a rodent version of Tesla’s Cybertruck.

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A Swedish minister's phobia of bananas has reportedly led to government officials asking for rooms to be free of the fruit.

Local media outlet Expressen has quoted from leaked emails it has seen, in which staff working for minister Paulina Brandberg ask for any bananas to be removed before official visits.

Brandberg, the country's gender equality minister, is said to have posted on X in 2020, saying she has the "world's weirdest phobia of bananas". The posts have since been deleted.

Fellow Swedish politician, Teresa Carvalho, also said on X that she too had bananaphobia, and was united with Brandberg on the issue.

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Russian scientists tracking migrating eagles ran out of money after some of the birds flew to Iran and Pakistan and their SMS transmitters drew huge data roaming charges.

After learning of the team’s dilemma, Russian mobile phone operator Megafon offered to cancel the debt and put the project on a special, cheaper tariff.

The team had started crowdfunding on social media to pay off the bills.

The birds left from southern Russia and Kazakhstan.

The journey of one steppe eagle, called Min, was particularly expensive, as it flew to Iran from Kazakhstan.

Min accumulated SMS messages to send during the summer in Kazakhstan, but it was out of range of the mobile network. Unexpectedly the eagle flew straight to Iran, where it sent the huge backlog of messages.

The price per SMS in Kazakhstan was about 15 roubles (18p; 30 US cents), but each SMS from Iran cost 49 roubles. Min used up the entire tracking budget meant for all the eagles.

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LignoSat, developed by Kyoto University and homebuilder Sumitomo Forestry, will be flown to the International Space Station on a SpaceX mission, and later released into orbit about 400 kilometers (250 miles) above the Earth.

Named after the Latin word for “wood,” the palm-sized LignoSat is tasked to demonstrate the cosmic potential of the renewable material as humans explore living in space.

“With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever,” said Takao Doi, an astronaut who has flown on the Space Shuttle and studies human space activities at Kyoto University.

With a 50-year plan of planting trees and building timber houses on the moon and Mars, Doi’s team decided to develop a NASA-certified wooden satellite to prove wood is a space-grade material.

“Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood,” said Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata. “A wooden satellite should be feasible, too.”

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Antonia produced two adorable kits at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia, earlier this summer. The news marks a groundbreaking achievement in the use of cloning to preserve genetic diversity in endangered species.

“The successful breeding and subsequent birth of Antonia’s kits marks a major milestone in endangered species conservation,” Paul Marinari, senior curator at the Smithsonian’s NZCBI, says in a statement. “The many partners in the Black-footed Ferret Recovery Program continue their innovative and inspirational efforts to save this species and be a model for other conservation programs across the globe.”

Black-footed ferrets, also known as American polecats, are carnivorous relatives of weasels with dark patches around their eyes and paws. They are also one of the most endangered mammals in North America because of habitat loss, diseases and a decline in the population of prairie dogs, their main prey, per Newsweek’s Jess Thomson.

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Fuck yeah they gave it a mech

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Frontline officers in B.C. got the mozzarella but didn't get their man in a recent "cheese heist" at a Whole Foods in North Vancouver.

RCMP say they were on patrol Sept. 29 when they found a cart full of cheese outside the grocery store near East 13th Street and Lonsdale Avenue.

It was 4 a.m., and the store was closed, so police say they started to investigate and identified a suspect, who fled on foot, leaving the cheese behind.

Full article

Glad the person got away, but what the fuck is up with all the dairy heists happening right now? Guelph just had a string of butter heists.

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

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Members of the House Oversight Committee have spent more than a year trying to uncover secret government research into alien life and UFOs, also referred to as "unidentified anomalous phenomena" or UAPs. Wednesday's hearing, titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," featured four experts who said the U.S. government and the Pentagon should be more transparent about UFO sightings and research. 

Boebert agreed, saying, "The American people are being kept in the dark." She then questioned the experts on rumors she'd heard about aliens. 

"There are rumors that have come up to the Hill of a secretive project within the Department of Defense involving the manipulation of human genetics with what is described as non-human genetic material for the enhancement of human capabilities, hybrids," Boebert said. "Are any of you familiar with that? Yes, or no?"

All of the experts said they were not familiar with that claim. Boebert spent most of her time asking about non-human civilizations in the ocean's depths.

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People should spend an average of five to 10 minutes on the john, according to Dr. Farah Monzur, an assistant professor of medicine and director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Stony Brook Medicine on Long Island, New York.

Why is it a problem if you stay longer? First, here’s a short physics lesson. Gravity keeps us grounded on Earth, but that same gravity also forces the body to work harder to pump blood back up to the heart, Xue said.

The open oval-shaped toilet seat compresses the buttocks, keeping the rectum in a lower position than if you were sitting on the couch. With gravity pulling the lower half of the body down, the increased pressure affects your blood circulation.

“It becomes a one-way value where blood enters, but blood really can’t go back,” Xue said.

As a result, the veins and blood vessels surrounding the anus and lower rectum become enlarged and engorged with blood, increasing the risk of hemorrhoids.

Go fuck yourself know nothing piece of shit

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Mattel's packaging for its "Wicked" movie doll lives up to its name, but not in a good way. 

The toy manufacturer is apologizing after mistakenly including a web address for a pornographic site on the boxes holding the company's newly launched "Wicked" dolls, rather than the official website of the movie adaptation of the Tony award-winning musical.

According to social media users, the information on the doll's packaging leads to a website that requires people to be 18 years or older to enter. The company intended to direct people to a similarly worded URL promoting the two-part film starring singer Ariana Grande and actress Cynthia Erivo.

The "Wicked" doll is made for children 4 years and older.

Mattel, the maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels, did not immediately respond to a request from CBS News for comment.