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funnynewsheadlines · 5 years

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45 Times People Couldn’t Believe Their Luck In Thrift Stores (New Pics)

You can spend hours in a supermarket and still not find what you're looking for. Or you can go into a thrift store without searching for anything in particular and walk away with a full bag. I mean, how could you walk away from a plate with a drawing of a bird pooping, with the words, "Here's your snack, dumbass" written all over it? It would go beautifully with that cat-shaped dispenser that shoots tissues out of its butt. Bored Panda has collected some of the most delightfully weird second-hand finds people have ever come across and you have to see them to believe them!

Be sure to check out Bored Panda's earlier posts about people lucking out in thrift stores, flea markets and garage sales here, here, here, here, here, and here.

#1 Two Months Ago, My 20 Year Old Kitty Passed Away. After All Those Years, I've Been Heartbroken. Yesterday I Went Downtown To The Salvation Army Store And Found This Gem. I Pasted My Kitty's Photo In The Image So You Can See How Amazing This Is. I Mean. It Is Her!

Image credits: Linda Trem

According to research conducted by thredUp, the second-hand clothing market will grow to nearly 1.5x the size of fast fashion by 2028.

"The last few years of growth in the resale market have been driven by the early adopters (the same ones who first adopted Airbnb or Lyft or DoorDash), but now the skeptics are starting to come around," James Reinhart, Co-Founder & CEO of thredUP said. "We’re seeing first-time thrifters coming to platforms like ours in droves. Not surprisingly, the younger generations are leading this charge, with millennials and Gen Z adopting secondhand 2.5x faster than other age groups."

#2 I Found This Last Week And It’s Definitely My Favorite Thing I’ve Seen At An Antique Or Thrift Store. Introducing The Violin Vampire Killing Kit!

Image credits: Amanda Anatole

The thredUp report says that in 2028, the second-hand market will be worth US$64 billion, in comparison to US$44 billion for fast fashion. As of 2018, fast fashion was worth US$35 billion and second-hand US$24 billion.

"The retail sector needs to find ways to embrace, acquire, or partner with resale business models because customer adoption is likely to continue," broker-dealer business Cowen and Company said. "Customers of the future will look for ways to recycle, resell or upcycle, and will be drawn to the incredible value of buying secondhand. We believe that brands will need to partner with resale sites and support the circular economy."

#3 Had To Spruce Her Up A Bit

Image credits: Amber Jones

Even traditional retailers are starting to embrace secondhand. For example, Airbnb is building homes that are designed to be shared, not owned, and IKEA has announced plans to offer furniture rentals.

"The resale customer is no longer somebody else’s customer, they are everybody’s customer," Reinhart added. "Mass market or luxury, if people can find a high-quality product for much less, they’ll choose used. As the line between new and used apparel blurs for consumers, a powerful transformation in retail will unfold

#4 Y'all, My Local Bin Dig Store Had A Fill-A-Cart For $10 Sale, So I Started Filling Up On Small Toys To Hand Out At Halloween. I Grabbed This Fake Credit Card, Because It Said James Bond On It. This Morning, I Noticed There Was A Slider On The Back And Opened It. It's A Freaking Lock Picking Set!!!

Image credits: Amanda L. Richards‎

#5 Found This Yesterday And Bought For My Son, Who Loved It! Best £2 Spent Ever!

Image credits: Rachael Slater‎

#6 Now You're Singing It

Image credits: Faith Moultrup‎

#7 My 9 Year Old Daughter Found This Today At The Goodwill In Niles, Michigan. She Said He Had To Come Home With Us Because She Loves Weird Things And She Just Knew That Nobody Else Would Buy Him And He Would Be Lonely

Image credits: Katrina Hastings

#8 My 6 Year Old Spent Her Allowance On A Hand Painted, Canvas Portrait Of A Goat She Found At The Flea Market. Yes It Came Home. It's Now Hung In Her Room

Image credits: Angie Carey

#9 I Rescued This Incredible Globe From The Trash, It’s About 20” Tall And Handcrafted With Semi-Precious Stones And A Brass Base. Not Really That Weird But Definitely Second Hand And Pretty Unusual

Image credits: Pete Anthonius Leggio

#10 Lucky Enough To Find Matching Dresses For My Boyfriend And Me So We Could Do This Pose At The Stanley Hotel. Estes Park, Co Thrift Shop

Image credits: Robyn Maitland Ross

#11 This Large, Weird Mushroom House Lamp From The '70s Is One Of My Favorite Second Hand Finds.

I used to work at a little used book store, and one day this guy just showed up with a box of old books and two of these lamps in it and said "Keep 'em". My boss didn't want them, so my coworker and I each got one

Image credits: ‎Boston Corbett‎

#12 Who Remembers ....

Image credits: Scott Smith II‎

#13 Thrift Store Painting To Which Someone Had Added A Dinosaur

Image credits: Lisa Haslbauer

#14 Just Had To Share This Charming Tissue Dispenser I Came Across In New York

Image credits: Sarah Greene Reed

#15 Yes. It Came Home With Me. Haven't Read It Yet

Image credits: Mags Denizkizi

#16 Bought A Nice Frame At Goodwill For $0.50. Put A Photo In It And Kept Seeing A Smudge. Removed The Back And Held It Up To The Light And Saw This...

Image credits: Jordan Bem

#17 I Literally Darted Across The Store When I Saw Her. She’s So Fancy I Love It

Image credits: Adele Küntz

#18 Finally... I Can Drink My Beer With Ladylike Class!

Image credits: Judith van Es

#19 Yes I Did Buy This Elephant Sweatshirt. Made Me Laugh Too Hard Not Too

Image credits: Melissa Nowicki

#20 I Found This At Goodwill! This Has Officially Become My Wedding Rehearsal Bouquet!

Image credits: Jennifer Sanford

#21 I Don't Know If These Qualify As Weird As Much As They Do Amazing. Found At A Small Local Thrift Store. I Picked Them Up Without Hesitation

Image credits: Shalon Cade

#22 Check Out This Kraken Stand I Have In My Kitchen Now

Image credits: Cheyanne Cooper

#23 So... I Couldn't Be Happier With My Goodwill Find Today. I Previously Worked For A Termite And Pest Control Company But They Closed 2 Julys Ago

Today...I was hired as a data entry coordinator at a new and much better pest control company!!!! I headed to goodwill to beef up my office clothing and found this gem!!! Perfect addition to my eccentric office lady wardrobe!

Image credits: ‎April Piper

#24 My Four Year Old Daughter Absolutely Could Not Live Without This Four Foot Rainbow Trout!

Image credits: Jenea Villaseñor

#25 Really Beautiful And Intricately Carved Skull At Asiabarong Gallery, Great Barrington Ma

Image credits: Hannah Helena

#26 So Brought These From Savers And Didn’t Look At The Back

Image credits: Shannon Rose Van Nek

#27 Got The Dragon For Free! It Stands About 7 Feet Tall And Is Hand Pounded Tin

It was a tent topper for a circus I think. I got it from a guy whos uncle had one of PT Barnums houses here in Denver. I gave him some real estate advice and he gave me Dragon. It has a hole where the mouth is for smoke and a spot for the tongue but the tongue is missing. It’s super light! It had been in the back yard for years and was covered in weeds. I dream that it traveled the world on sideshow adventures

Image credits: Jeanette Wild

#28 Pencil Flats. I Hope A Teacher Somewhere Out There Will Stumble Upon These Gems

Image credits: Sydney Morris

#29 Mad At Your Spouse???

Image credits: Blanca Juarez

#30 Obviously This Shirt Had To Come Home With Me Today. It's Way Too Large For Me But Oh Well

Image credits: Summer Morgan

#31 The Other Ladies Thought It Was Super Weird, As Soon As I Seen It I Knew It Had To Come Home With Me!! (Whether It Fit Or Not)

Image credits: Kristle McElroy

#32 Thank You To The Saint Who Donated This. It’s Now Thriving In Its New, Loving Home!

Image credits: Summer McCusker

#33 I Wanted To Give Y’all An Update On How Absolutely Perfect This Crazy Piece Looks In My Bright, Plant Filled Dining Room

Image credits: Chels Collins

#34 My Best Friend And I Wore Thrift Store Wedding Dresses To A Showing Of Bridesmaids. After The Show, This Woman Stopped Us. She Was The Original Owner Of Our Dresses. Both Dresses!!!

Mine is from her first wedding and my friend's from her second..... A small world post from today reminded me of this glorious moment

Image credits: Tacky Joe

#35 You Could Have Heard Me Squeal With Glee When I Walked Up On This Gem! I Grabbed It And Held On Tight (Granted No One Else Was Around At The Time)

Image credits: Diane Elizabeth Dunn

#36 In At Atlanta Area Goodwill, July 15. When I Told My Son I Didn't Buy It He Said "What's Wrong With You?!"

Image credits: Jason Spears

#37 Found This Gem Today At Savers In St. Louis. Pretty Sure It’s Homemade (No Tags) And For $2.99, You’d Better Believe It Came Home With Me

Image credits: Pam Marty

#38 Found This At A Goodwill. Adorable Little Animals To Impale What A Weird Toy

Image credits: Jenny Popples

#39 Here’s Looking At You, Kid

Image credits: Meg Brown

#40 I Present... Bizarre Cat Trinket Pot! It Did Not Come Home With Me

Image credits: Rachel Johnson

#41 Went To An Antique Store Liquidation. Mostly A Bust But I Did Leave With Some New Bling

Image credits: Justin Jones

#42 Back In January, I Acquired One Of My Most Prized Possessions- A Life-Sized Cast Replica Of An Apatosaurus Femur Bone!

It is a little over 6 feet tall and made of fiberglass. My friend Kathleen and I found it at a Pocono antique mall for a little over $160. The first time I saw it I actually left it behind, wondering “do I reallyyyy need a dinosaur bone?” And I regretted it all week! Once the market was open again I raced up to bring it home in the middle of a snow storm and it is now permanently on display in my living room

Image credits: Hillary Pierson

#43 My Niece Found This Fabulous Dinosaur Dress At The Salvation Army Store Today. It Is So Cute On Her And It Did Go Home With Her

Image credits: ‎Lisa Ginzel‎

#44 I Found Casket Barbie Today. I Low Key Regret Not Taking Her Home

Image credits: Katrina Sara

#45 I Found This In A Yard Sale

Image credits: Kirby Shofner

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tastydregs · 7 years

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A Search for Anti-Aging Secrets Starts With the Blood of 600 Estonians

Silicon Valley runs on two things: obscene amounts of cash and the tales people tell about who they are. Which is perhaps why the Bay Area has rapidly become ground zero for people pursuing one of the oldest mythologies in human history—the legend of everlasting life.

Well, maybe not ever lasting life exactly, but vastly-expanded-and-improved life. Call it healthspan extension, call it geroprotection: Silicon Valley wants to find a way to keep humans healthier for like, way longer. What was once a fringe science is rapidly becoming one of the Valley’s hottest investments, thanks to high profile endeavors like Alphabet’s $1.5 billion bet on Calico and Bezos and Thiel-backed Unity Biotechnology.

Most of the excitement around these ventures rests in the drugs they’re developing—pills to prevent damaged proteins and treatments to flush out toxic cells. But a new company launching today called BioAge, is instead selling a process: a way to predict mortality. And it’s doing so with advanced machine learning, a horde of lab mice, and the blood of 600 especially long-lived Estonians.

See, aging isn’t one disease. It’s the dysfunction of many different organ systems, first little by little, then all at once. It will take more than one molecule to reverse that sput-sput-sputtering out. But immortality research isn’t exactly a high priority for federally-funded research: To date, the National Institute for Aging has tested only 30 compounds, compared to the thousands trialed in cancer research at the NIH. One of those, a drug called rapamycin, has a future in combatting the decline of the immune system. Metformin, a diabetes drug, is currently in trials testing its anti-aging properties. But testing longevity drugs, of course, takes a long time.

So BioAge, based in Berkeley and run by a Stanford bioinformatician, is building a platform that doesn’t require waiting for its subjects to actually age. Instead, it wants to measure biological age using signals floating in a drop of blood. Biomarkers aren’t a new concept; it’s standard practice to use protein signals to guide drug discovery for conditions like cancer and heart disease. But up until now, no one outside academic research has really done it for anti-aging.

There are two good reasons for that: One, anti-aging drugs don’t have a clear path to making money, because the FDA doesn’t treat aging as a disease in its own right. Two, it’s really freaking hard. Whoever figures it out first will have a serious leg up in the fight to plumb the Valley’s fountain of youth.

“These studies take so long to complete; you have to give drugs to a mouse for four years before you get results,” says BioAge CEO Kristen Fortney, who crossed over into the private sector two years ago from Stanford’s Center on Longevity. Her company launched from stealth with a $10.9 million Series A today, with investments from Andreessen Horowitz and AME Cloud Ventures, run by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. “We’re trying to get that down to just a few months,” says Fortney.

The idea is to find mortality predictors whose signals are just as strong in humans as they are in mice. Studies at Stanford and elsewhere in the past few years have shown that transfusions from young mice can restore liver and brain function in older mice, suggesting that there’s something in the blood that promotes aging, that it can be measured, and that it can be counteracted. (This is where that rumor you heard about Peter Thiel feeding on the blood of young entrepreneurs probably came from. While he’s not a vampire, he is funding start-up where you can pay $8,000 for a transfusion from the sub-25-year-old set.)

Anyway. To find that signal, Fortney’s team needed lots of data. And Estonia, with its socialized health care system and relaxed views about health data privacy, was the perfect place to start. About 10 years ago, the nation’s largest biobank began gathering data on its population at a massive scale: genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, you name it, all combined with medical health records. BioAge picked a cohort of 600 elderly people, and its scientists started to mine their data for longevity secrets.

First, they sorted out the people who died right away or came down with illnesses—cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease—from those that went on to live another 10 years or more. Then, using machine learning, they identified molecular differences in their blood, focusing on molecules that humans and mice have in common (so their findings could translate into a mouse-based lab test). At the end, Fortney’s team had found a number of promising proxies for the onset of age-related diseases.

The next step is checking whether those biomarkers will respond to known anti-aging compounds. So they’re about to take a bunch of mice and shoot them full of things like rapamycin and metformin, then see if the biomarkers respond. If all goes well, they can use those compounds to screen against whatever promising chemicals BioAge’s data-mining algorithms turn up—kicking out a thumbs-up, thumbs-down ruling on a new compound in months rather than years.

“Reliable biomarkers would greatly accelerate this whole field,” says Tom Rando, who directs Stanford’s Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging and first discovered the phenomenon of parabiosis—young blood reversing the effects of aging in old mice. He says that while there have been indications that certain molecules might be strong predictors of biological age, there hasn’t been enough data to establish any of them. “If there were good biomarkers out there we’d all be using them,” he says, “but there’s not.”

It’s possible this is all a wild goose chase, and that we already have a powerful biomarker for aging. Steve Cummings, a longtime aging researcher at UCSF, pulled together NIH study data from over 30,000 people over 30 years to look for markers of disease-free survival. The strongest, most consistent signal he found isn’t in blood at all: It’s walking speed. Another good one is how fast you can connect dots of letters and numbers, a measure of cognitive function.

They identified a few molecules as well, like cystatin-C, which tells you how healthy your kidneys are (can’t live without your kidneys), and a few other measurements that reflect inflammation. But even with lots more molecules to work with, Cummings still thinks that blood-based tests are more hype than anything else. “Even 20 to 30 predictors together adds only a little to prediction of survival by age,” Cummings says. “And I’m confident that walking speed alone will outperform any new biological marker.”

That isn’t stopping Fortney, though—or her competitors. Calico is reportedly tracking a thousand mice from birth to death to sift out a few good chemical predictors of morbidity. Given that they launched in 2013, and mice live about four years, the secretive Alphabet offshoot is due for some results. (The company declined to comment on any specifics for this story.) BioAge should be finished with its first round of validation studies before the year is out, and then it can move on to testing novel drugs. Which should give Silicon Valley’s tech titans plenty of new candidates on which to hang their hopes of 100-year-old retirement.

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