Strange Times
- South Korean airport authorities crack down on Trader Joe’s bagel seasoningwww.theguardian.com South Korean airport authorities crack down on Trader Joe’s bagel seasoning
Travellers say the popular seasoning mix by US brand Trader Joe’s has been the subject of increased confiscation, because it contains poppy seeds
- Your smartphone might be linked to crocodile attacks in Indonesiaphys.org Your smartphone might be linked to crocodile attacks in Indonesia
What's the connection between your smartphone and crocodile attacks? It's quite straightforward.
- ‘Serial slingshot’ suspect who terrorized California neighborhood arrestedwww.theguardian.com ‘Serial slingshot’ suspect who terrorized California neighborhood arrested
‘We’re not aware of any kind of motive other than just malicious mischief, say police, of 81-year-old man who was arrested
- ET welcome: Kentucky city beams message into space inviting extraterrestrial visitors | AP Newsapnews.com ET welcome: Kentucky city beams message into space inviting extraterrestrial visitors
The Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau in Kentucky used an infrared laser to beam a message into space as part of a campaign to promote tourism.
- Ghana's masked presidential candidate adds sense of mystery to electionnews.yahoo.com Ghana's masked presidential candidate adds sense of mystery to election
Little is known about the masked figure or their campaign, but there has been plenty of online speculation
- ‘An unusual one’: human skull found in Goodwill donation box in Arizonawww.theguardian.com ‘An unusual one’: human skull found in Goodwill donation box in Arizona
Police are investigating discovery of ‘ancient’ skull with several teeth attached and what appeared to be a missing mandible
- Why are magic ‘witch bottles' used for spells washing up on Texas beaches?www.nbcdfw.com Why are magic ‘witch bottles' used for spells washing up on Texas beaches?
Another eerie bottle has washed up on the Texas Gulf shore. Here’s what we know about them.
- A bus driver ate gummies containing THC, then passed out on highway. He’s now on probation.thehill.com A bus driver ate gummies containing THC, then passed out on highway. He’s now on probation
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — A commercial bus driver who pulled over on a Connecticut highway and passed out with 38 passengers aboard after eating THC-infused gummies has been granted a probation prog…
- Taliban Militants Fed Up With Office Culture, Ready to Quiet Quittime.com Taliban Members Fed Up With Office Work, Ready to Quiet Quit
A new report says some jihadists who transitioned to desk jobs after the Taliban’s takeover are tired of the 9-to-5.
- Beauty Pageant Director Accused of Using Contestants to Overthrow Governmentwww.vice.com Beauty Pageant Director Accused of Using Contestants to Overthrow Government
No, this isn’t the plot for Miss Congeniality 3. But it could be.
- Sinking horse rescued from Colorado bogwww.upi.com Watch: Sinking horse rescued from Colorado bog - UPI.com
Firefighters in Colorado teamed up with local residents to rescue a horse that wandered into a bog and started to sink.
- Black bear lumbers in, grabs gummy bears at Lake Cowichan storevancouversun.com Black bear lumbers in, grabs gummy bears at Lake Cowichan store
The bear grabs, then eats, a small bag of five-cent gummy bears
- Mysterious Jellyfish Actually 1,020 Worms Who Want To Be Poop | Defectordefector.com Mysterious Jellyfish Actually 1,020 Worms Who Want To Be Poop | Defector
In April 2018, the underwater photographer Ryo Minemizu watched as a creature the size of a ladybug bobbed around 50 feet underwater off the shores of Okinawa, Japan. The thing resembled a jellyfish, a yolk-like center with trailing, wispy tentacles. Minemizu posted photos of the creature to social ...
- A Lab Test That Experts Liken to a Witch Trial Is Helping Send Women to Prison for Murderwww.propublica.org A Lab Test That Experts Liken to a Witch Trial Is Helping Send Women to Prison for Murder
The “lung float” test claims to help determine if a baby was born alive or dead, but many medical examiners say it’s too unreliable. Yet the test is still being used to bring murder charges — and get convictions.
- Weekly Weird News for 6 October 2023sharonahill.substack.com Weekly Weird News for 6 October 2023
It's a hot one. This edition is chock-full of strange news stories - record heat, drought, strange animal discoveries, weird crimes, many mysteries.
Weekly Weird Newsletter - a collection of stories from these strange times.
- Video captures mysterious boom that startled neighborhood near Salt Lake International Airportkutv.com Video captures mysterious boom that startled neighborhood near Salt Lake International Airport
They heard it, felt it, and a couple of people even said a "loud boom" rattled their homes in West Valley, but an explanation on a cause for the boom was a bust
- A Monkey-Themed Banana Holder Is Tearing a Texas City Apartwww.thedailybeast.com A Monkey-Themed Banana Holder Is Tearing a Texas City Apart
Allegations of racism and demands for the mayor’s resignation are gripping Hutto, Texas.
The City Council meeting in Hutto, Texas, had been in session for just a few minutes on Aug. 31 when local resident Nicole Calderone stepped up to the podium, moments after another speaker angrily rebuked Mayor Mike Snyder.
What happened next would plunge the city of less than 40,000, just a half-hour drive north of Austin, into a ferocious debate about racism. At the center of the controversy—improbably or inevitably, depending on where you stand—is a $20 banana holder that some see as a physical manifestation of the disgusting trope that compares Black people to monkeys.
Calderone’s three-minute speech began with a recounting of a visit to her cancer-stricken mother-in-law’s home, where she admired a banana stand and said she would love to give it to the mayor “as encouragement to continue the work he is trying to accomplish.” She then bent down to reveal to meeting attendees the colorful holder, which featured a figurine of a cartoonish monkey at the base and five ripe bananas hanging from the hook.
“I’m one of the many monkeys who keep trying to climb the ladder for bananas, regardless of how many times other monkeys try to pull me down and beat me up,” Calderone said in the meeting. “To me, the bananas represent what I expect and what I’m willing to fight for: low taxes, keeping a roof over our heads, and food on the table. Authentic community.”
When she was done talking, Calderone took the banana holder up to the dais, where it sat in front of the mayor’s face for the rest of the two-hour meeting. Its prolonged presence there has since sparked outraged complaints of racism and calls for the mayor—who is white, like approximately 49 percent of his constituents—to resign.
“I believe the mayor has some racist tendencies that I think should be really alarming to the citizens he claims to represent,” Brian Thompson, one of two Black members on the seven-seat Hutto council, told The Daily Beast last week.
Calderone insisted that the monkey theme of her gift had no racial implications. Snyder apologized for offending anyone but claimed he wasn’t even aware of of the monkey trope and insisted that he was not racist.
“I tried everything I can do to understand things. For instance, I work at a company where our market is run by a Black man, and his boss, who runs the entire company, is a Black man. They know I'm in politics, and I run a lot of things by them,” Snyder said.
“Last winter, our Santa Claus got COVID… so we asked for a Santa. And they’re like, ‘well, but he’s Black.’ And I’m like, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’” he added. “So we made a decision that Black Santa is fine… and not one person made a comment.”
The uproar over the banana hanger did not come out of nowhere, and this was not the first time that Snyder, a Republican who was elected mayor in March 2021, was accused of racial insensitivity. Three years ago, when he was a council member, Snyder was named in a race discrimination and breach-of-contract lawsuit against the city.
The December 2020 complaint filed in Texas federal court by Odis Jones detailed a host of allegations against the city, including the claim that Snyder created a “hostile work environment” after he was elected to the council. Jones was Hutto’s first Black city manager, and after complaining about his treatment, he negotiated a $412,000 severance package to vacate his post.
Days after the deal was approved by the council, the lawsuit alleges, Snyder and another council member launched a campaign to disparage Jones and scuttle the severance payout. They allegedly put out a press release that accused Jones of violating the agreement, trashed him in the media, and threatened to ruin his “life and career.”
What the suit described as a “racially motivated crusade” culminated with the city declaring the severance agreement void and demanding a refund of the money it paid Jones nearly a year earlier. Jones sued the city the following week, and after a four-day trial in March 2023, the jury sided with him, finding the city illegally breached his contract because of race. The jury voted for $12.5 million in damages for Jones; the city appealed in April and asked for a new trial, claiming there was no evidence to support the “excessive” award. (A judge dismissed individual claims against Snyder and the other individuals prior to trial, but the mayor did testify.)
In an interview last week, Snyder “100 percent” denied all the allegations made at trial, said there was “a lot of misunderstanding,” and predicted the truth would come out during the appeal. Jones disagreed—and seems to be well aware of the current race controversy enveloping Snyder.
“After a trial featuring testimony from multiple witnesses, including Mayor Mike Snyder, a federal jury considered the evidence presented and unanimously returned a historic verdict against the City of Hutto,” Ted Smith, one of his attorneys, said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “The jury found that the City had breached its agreements with Odis Jones, the City’s first Black City Manager, and had taken that illegal action against him because of his race.
“Mr. Jones is saddened, but not surprised, to learn of this kind of reported racism continuing at Hutto City Hall.”
The lawsuit and the massive jury verdict—a sum that exceeds more than 10 percent of the city’s entire budget—put Snyder in a precarious position.
“The lawsuit confirmed to me what I had already seen happening, which was not upholding people’s civil rights,” Onnesha Williams, a community advocate and co-founder of Black Families of Hutto, told The Daily Beast. “The lawsuit had people holding their breath because the city is on the hook for it.”
Still, nobody could have foreseen that a special summertime council meeting to discuss a new revenue tax proposal would leave Snyder under such intense public scrutiny.
After the meeting kicked off with the Pledge of Allegiance, the floor was given to a resident who sounded off on Snyder for ignoring “anyone who doesn’t agree” with him. “Every lawsuit this city has faced in the past few years has been a direct result of your actions,” the speaker told the mayor.
When Calderone walked up to the podium, she was carrying a teal shopping bag, which she set down before launching into her speech. After she pulled the banana holder out of the bag and presented it to Snyder, she continued her remarks, which included a series of things she wants for Hutto, from the preservation of natural resources to limited government.
Calderone, who ran for mayor in 2019 and lost, told The Daily Beast last week that her speech, gift, and explanation of it referred to the “five wet monkey experiment and challenging group think.” In this experiment, scientists placed monkeys in a cage that had a ladder with bananas at the top and would spray all the animals with cold water when one tried to climb for the fruit. The other monkeys would pull down and attack the climber until they all learned not to climb the ladder.
“To understand the five monkeys experiment is to understand a little bit of the politics that's been happening in Hutto,” Calderone explained. “I refer to myself as a monkey trying to climb the ladder and getting pulled down, and then what those bananas represent.”
That is not how some others at the meeting viewed the gift or the fact that it sat in a place of prominence for the entire meeting.
Dana Wilcott, the other Black councilmember, said she froze in shock when Calderone whipped out the banana stand. She said that she and Thompson immediately stared at each other across the dais in disbelief. Their dismay only grew, she said, when Snyder not only accepted the gift but placed it right in front of his place before continuing the public comment section of the meeting.
Wilcott told The Daily Beast that she and Thompson texted each other, asking, “Did that really just happen?" but did not say anything publicly. Several meeting attendees told The Daily Beast that there was no obvious reaction in the audience.
“We chose not to respond at that moment because we wanted to remain professional,” Wilcott said.
Thompson said that he did not think the “over-the-top” gift was racially motivated until after Calderone stressed that it was specifically for Snyder. “Then I started to get very angry,” he said. “I understand bringing a prop and presenting it to get your point across, but then gifting it to a mayor, knowing that the mayor has had allegations of being racially biased?”
The councilman added that having to look at the fruit stand for the rest of the meeting made him feel like he had been “put in my place” and that if he spoke up, he would be perceived as “an angry Black man.” It was not until a private session after the public meeting that Thompson and Wilcott said they complained. Wilcott said that Snyder acted “really oblivious” and insisted that the gift was harmless. (Snyder denies talking to Wilcott and Thompson privately about the gift.)
“We’re not supposed to be accepting gifts anyway,” she added.
Before long, the banana stand with the monkey motif was the talk of Hutto—a town previously best known for its ubiquitous official symbol: a hippo.
The morning after the council meeting, Facebook posts featuring Calderone’s speech and her gift began to pop up. Several residents told The Daily Beast that they immediately thought the fruit stand was racially charged and an example of Snyder’s insensitivity to minorities.
“I was mortified, to be honest,” Heather Mack, a Hutto hair salon owner who saw the banana stand on Facebook, told The Daily Beast. “I couldn’t believe someone in this day and age was not better educated about what a banana and a monkey mean.” (There are a variety of monkey-themed banana holders available through retailers, including Walmart and Amazon.)
Onnesha Williams, the community advocate, called the banana holder the “straw that broke the camel’s back” when it came to Snyder. Calls for his resignation ballooned, as did the online tensions between Synder supporters and critics. “The mayor, in my opinion, has been highly harmful to marginalized people,” Williams said. “My immediate reaction is that it is one thing in a collection of issues that has been escalating.”
The imbroglio featured at the Sept. 7 council meeting, where one resident slammed Snyder for allowing “bananas on the dais with a monkey.”
Terrence Owens, a school board member, also skewered Snyder. “When he spoke, we saw bananas,” he said, demanding that the council get diversity training. “We have to do better.”
Thompson also addressed the matter at the September meeting, saying he was “deeply concerned and disappointed” that Snyder accepted the gift of bananas, which is a “historically racist symbol used to demean and dehumanize African Americans.” He demanded an apology.
In response, Snyder said he was sorry and that he could now see how the gift “could be taken wrong.” “Looking back, had I known it would be viewed or construed that way by other members of the community, then it’s an easy decision,” Snyder said at the meeting.
The anger over the banana stand initially surprised Calderone, she said, because nobody in the community reached out to her. “I did look inward, and I was like, maybe I am culturally insensitive,” she said. “So I started researching race relations and where do we go from here.”
Calderone said her research took her to the writing of black conservative Shelby Steele, and she stressed that her message and gift to the mayor never had racial undertones. Despite the apologies and soul-searching, the furor does not appear to be dying down. At recent meetings, more residents put forth demands for Snyder to resign, and anger from both sides is bubbling over online and in person.
At the Sept. 28 meeting, Calderone once again stood at the podium, thankfully without a shopping bag this time. She slammed the anti-banana stand group for never reaching out to her and said they had “no intention of trying to make this into a teachable moment.”
“You have no intention of trying to bridge gaps between race; all you want to do is divide,” she said. Then she began to speak directly at Wilcott, whom she claimed was shaking her head on the said dais. “Is this a safe space for me? Are you trying to call me out and attack me? Fuck you,” Calderone said.
“As I was walking out, Onnesha was like, ‘Oh, that’s nice; I'll tell that to my kids,’ and I was like, ‘Good, First Amendment, look it up. And fuck you, too,” Calderone told The Daily Beast.
Despite the deepening discord, Snyder told The Daily Beast he has no intention of resigning because he does not believe that will solve the problem. He said he hears the community's anger and wishes he had handled the gift, which he threw away at home after the meeting, differently. Also, he noted, he is allergic to bananas.
Meanwhile, residents are worried about what Snyder’s refusal to resign and the continuing hostility will mean for a community centered around the “hippo way” of kindness and inclusiveness.
“Things have never been worse,” Wilcott said. “I have been here for 13 years, and it has never been so divided as it is right now.
- Almost 1,000 birds die after crashing into Chicago buildingwww.chicagotribune.com Almost 1,000 birds die after crashing into Chicago building
Weather patterns, badly timed rain and the lit windows of the Lakeside Center building blamed for the carnage.
- FEMA emergency alert creates conspiracy fodder spreewww.rumorguard.org FEMA emergency alert creates conspiracy fodder spree
After the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced an Oct. 4 test of its emergency alert system, conspiracy theorists began spreading false rumors that the alert, which is sent to phones, radios and TVs, would activate particles in the COVID-19 vaccine that enable the government to track and co...
- Weekly Weird News for 29 September 2023sharonahill.substack.com Weekly Weird News for 29 September 2023
Hi everyone. I’m happy to present the weekly roundup of news stories that are a bit weird, maybe scary, but par for the course in these strange times. So let’s get going. This week: flamingos in Wisconsin, another alligator fatality, a secretive church is buying out a town, AI continues to generate ...
- Vacuum containing hundreds of hornets stolen from Philadelphia beekeeper's truck6abc.com Vacuum containing hundreds of hornets stolen from Philadelphia beekeeper's truck
"Those girls should be full of life and extra spicy. I anxiously await your unboxing video," read a message directed at the thief.
Whoever stole the shop vac is in for a very big surprise.
- For nearly 2 decades, this St. Louis woman says she has been trying to prove she’s not deadwww.ksdk.com For nearly 2 decades, this St. Louis woman says she has been trying to prove she’s not dead
Madeline-Michelle Carthen tells the I-Team she has been wrongly labeled as dead, and it has impacted every aspect of her life.
- New Orleans braces for drinking water emergency from drought-stricken Mississippi Riverwww.nbcnews.com New Orleans braces for drinking water emergency from drought-stricken Mississippi River
Lingering drought conditions have kept the Mississippi River at abnormally low levels and significantly weakened its flow, allowing salt water to creep in.
- Atlas of Mysterious Fairy Circles Shows They're More Widespread Than We Thoughtwww.sciencealert.com Atlas of Mysterious Fairy Circles Shows They're More Widespread Than We Thought
Mysterious, bare patches of ground that polka-dot the deserts of Namibia and Australia are far more widespread than we knew.
- Flamingos in Wisconsin? Tropical birds visit Lake Michigan beach in a first for the northern stateapnews.com Flamingos in Wisconsin? Tropical birds visit Lake Michigan beach in a first for the northern state
Five flamingos that showed up in Wisconsin to wade along a Lake Michigan beach attracted a big crowd of onlookers eager to see the unusual visitors venturing far from their usual tropical setting.
- Weekly Weird News for 22 September 2023sharonahill.substack.com Weekly Weird News for 22 September 2023
Hi everyone! Thanks for joining me for another fun-filled episode of the Weekly Weird News. I’m on the road this week so apologies if the writeups are a little shorter than usual. Welcome to new subscribers! As usual, I have a number of animals stories this week and a few weather related anomalies. ...
- When something goes bump in the night: A loud sound, the house started shaking and the roof is damaged with no explanation in a north Phoenix home.www.12news.com When something goes bump in the night: A loud sound, the house started shaking and the roof is damaged with no explanation in a north Phoenix home
The homeowner said the damage happened just after it felt like an earthquake shook the house.
The homeowner said the damage happened just after it felt like an earthquake shook the house.
- Weekly Weird News for 15 September 2023sharonahill.substack.com Weekly Weird News for 15 September 2023
Fake information shakes down social media. It's been a very busy week!
- 'This is complete nonsense': Scientists rail against 'alien' bodies shown before Mexican congresswww.livescience.com 'This is complete nonsense': Scientists rail against 'alien' bodies shown before Mexican congress
Scientists blast claims of two 'alien' bodies that a journalist presented to Mexico's congress.
- Police storm street after fake body parts hang out of wheelie binwww.somersetlive.co.uk Police storm street after fake body parts hang out of wheelie bin
It sparked fears that a grisly crime had taken place
- Climate Change Is Creating Strange ‘Polygon Fields’ In the Arctic, and Scientists are Worriedwww.vice.com Climate Change Is Creating Strange ‘Polygon Fields’ In the Arctic, and Scientists are Worried
The presence of geological polygons can mean "faster rates of erosion" in permafrost, and may be a globally important phenomenon.
- Everything You Need to Know About the 'Alien Mummy' Unboxing in Mexico's Congresswww.404media.co Everything You Need to Know About the 'Alien Mummy' Unboxing in Mexico's Congress
Mexico's government just revealed 'non-human corpses' on live television. What is going on?
Two words = Fraud >> Jaime Maussan
- Woman Found Secretly Living In Stranger's Home For A Yearwww.theguardian.com Woman found living in closet
Man finds middle-aged homeless woman living on the top shelf of his closet and stealing food from his fridge
- Videos of ‘Earthquake Lights’ Above Morocco Are an Unexplained Mystery.www.nytimes.com Videos of ‘Earthquake Lights’ Above Morocco Are an Unexplained Mystery.
Sightings of aerial luminous phenomena, often observed during earthquakes, are being shared online. Experts aren’t sure what causes them.
Note: I'm not seeing anything in these videos that suggests they are anything more than electrical wires falling or transformers exploding. Yet, the media sources are incompetent and credulous in saying they are mysterious. For more on EQLs, see https://spookygeology.com/earthquake-lights/
- Weekly Weird News for 8 September 2023sharonahill.substack.com Weekly Weird News for 8 September 2023
Lots of weird, scary and bizarre stuff in this week's edition of WWN. Buckle up, it's a roller coaster - animal thiefs, more alligators, thrift shop surprises, deadly snack food, and, suddenly, gnomes.
- Ball lightning makes a rare appearance in recent storm in Stockbridge MA (Letter to editor)www.berkshireeagle.com Letter: Ball lightning makes a rare appearance in recent storm
To the editor: A few days ago, we had a fierce thunderstorm around 7 in the morning.
- YouTube under no obligation to host anti-vaccine advocate’s videos, court saysarstechnica.com YouTube under no obligation to host anti-vaccine advocate’s videos, court says
YouTube had the discretion to take down content that harmed users, judge said.
- Claude the koala unmasked as prolific plant thief in Australiawww.bbc.com Claude the koala unmasked as prolific plant thief in Australia
It ate thousands of seedlings that had been earmarked to help boost Australian koala habitat.
- ‘Dinner plate-sized’ device found in woman 18 months after caesareanwww.nbcnews.com ‘Dinner plate-sized’ device found in woman 18 months after caesarean
The woman complained to her doctor of severe pain after her baby was delivered via caesarean section, according to an official report released Monday in New Zealand.