Another weekend begins and another IST News Dump.

All the news you cannot possibly use.

Local stuff….I am old and on Medicare and my doctor prescribed a med to help with the problem…..for one month supply the total came to $537….and that is with the dynamite Medicare coverage.  Plus for that kind of cash it should have come with a red head hooker.

This from the files of the “Lawsuit Lotto”….

Halloween-themed Reese’s peanut butter candy for $4.49, drawn in by the “cute looking” carvings shown on the candy’s outer wrapper. That’s per the Florida woman’s new federal lawsuit against parent company Hershey, who Kelly claims uses “misleading” packaging for its popular brand of holiday-geared confections, reports Reuters. The $5 million class-action complaint filed Thursday in Tampa alleges that Hershey’s labels are “materially misleading,” and that “numerous consumers have been tricked and misled by the pictures on the products’ packaging.”

Specifically, per Kelly’s suit, the candy Hershey promoted on its wrappers lacked the “explicit carved out artistic designs” that Kelly thought she was getting with her purchase. In the case of the Halloween candy she says she bought, Kelly says she expected the pumpkin-shaped candy to have a carved mouth and eyes, as depicted on the package (she notes in her suit that there were no carvings on the candy itself). Kelly claims the same for Reese’s peanut-butter footballs and bats, and also its white chocolate ghosts, per CBS News.

In the case of the football candies, Kelly says they were indeed shaped like footballs, but lacked the “laces” as shown on the packaging. “Looks like eggs!!” reads the caption of a photo about the football candy attached to the complaint. Kelly’s attorney also included links to YouTube videos showing others disgruntled over the supposedly false advertising, per WFTV. Kelly maintains that thousands of people have suffered harm due to the alleged deceptive packaging. Reuters notes that, per Kelly’s lawyer, she has also sued Burger King and Taco Bell over food that didn’t look like its advertised versions.

The Lawsuit Lotto….too many trying their hand these days.

One of the big stories was that ESPN showed a bare female chest on-air at the Sugar Bowl….

A woman baring her breast in New Orleans isn’t usually headline-worthy, but a woman baring her breast on national television in New Orleans has ESPN more than a little red-faced. ESPN apologized Monday night for the video clip of a woman baring her breast that was shown during the broadcast of the Sugar Bowl. It was aired coming out of a commercial during the second half of Washington’s 37-31 victory over Texas in a semifinal game of the College Football Playoff. A clip of people wandering on Bourbon Street in New Orleans showed a woman pulling down her top to expose her breast. “We regret that this happened and apologize that the video aired in the telecast,” ESPN’s Bill Hofheimer said in a statement to the AP.

Seriously?  The Sugar Bowl is played in New Orleans….NOLA is famous for three things….Mardi Gras, Gumbo and ‘tit flashing’….what did they expect?

Those of us that live near NOLA and spend time there are thinking….really?  Get over it!

Would you take an elevator ride into space?

I am talking about outer space not some 100 story high rise.

A spectacular design for a space elevator, with the goal of efficiently transporting passengers into outer space, has been awarded a $11,000 prize.

As the BBC reports, British architect Jordan William Hughes won the prize for space architecture and innovation from the Jacques Rougerie Foundation in Paris.

His concept, dubbed Ascensio, connects an ocean-based ship to a structure in Earth’s orbit via a cable-like structure. The ship is designed to keep up with the spaceport by moving around the ocean.

Of course, it’s only an inspired work of science fiction and likely won’t be built any time soon, if ever. But that doesn’t mean we can’t dream of a future in which space is a simple elevator ride away.

“It would revolutionize the way we get to and from space and make it more viable,” Hughes told the BBC.

Space elevators would elegantly solve one of the biggest hurdles in space travel, foregoing the need for heavy and expensive rockets to access the Earth’s orbit. The concept was first envisioned by Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in a 1895 book called “Dreams of Earth and Sky,” in which he described an imaginary 22,000-mile tower. Russian engineer Yuri Artsutanov later expanded on the idea, describing a cable that connects the Earth’s surface to a geosynchronous satellite.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/design-for-space-elevator-wins-prize

I will stay on the ground floor….thank you.

Did you ever see the movie about people getting arrested before they committed the crime?

What if there is a machine that can read your mind?

As the world inches ever closer to mind-reading technology, some scientists are calling to legally enshrine the right to keep our thoughts to ourselves.

In interviews with Undark, neuroscientists — including those who are working to make these so-called brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) happen — revealed their concerns about the devices.

In one particularly telling exchange, a pair of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin who’ve successfully created a BCI that can rudimentarily translate brain waves into text described how it felt to realize their device was actually reading their thoughts.

“Holy shit,” UT neuroscientist Alexander Huth, who had been working on BCIs for almost a decade when he achieved a breakthrough in 2020, recalled exclaiming. “This is actually working.”

For Huth, the moment was especially strange because he’d often tested the devices on himself.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-mind-reading-rights

My friend John recently posted about contaminates in our water….

Millions Of Microscopic Pieces Of Plastic Found In Bottled Water

I just wanted to show that this problem is deeper than the water…..

A new investigation from Consumer Reports has found plastics in “almost every food” it tested, affirming that these chemicals remain “widespread” in what we eat despite the risks they pose to our health.

The chemical phthalate, a type of “plasticizer” used in plastic manufacturing that makes the material more flexible and durable, was found in all but one of the 85 common food items tested. Bisphenol A, another chemical used in plastic manufacturing, was found in 79 percent of the samples.

Technically, none of the levels found exceeded the acceptable limits set by American and European regulators. But, as CR argues, that’s just one reason why the likes of the US Food and Drug Administration is sorely behind what the science says on how dangerous these chemicals — phthalates especially, given their ubiquity — can be.

It notes that there’s no confirmed safe level of phthalates, and a broad body of studies have linked them to asthma, diabetes, reproductive issues, and hormonal problems, even at levels “well below” the limits set by regulators.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-phthalates-almost-all-food

That is about it for this Saturday’s News Dump…..hopefully you found something that caught your fancy.

Go out and enjoy your weekend….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”