When you think of surfing, Oahu, Bondi Beach, southern California and other tropical climes come to mind. But, believe it or not, they surf way up north in Duluth, Minnesota, in winter yet.
Why Winter Is Surfing Season in Minnesota
Catching a curl on a subzero Lake Superior isn’t easy, but some locals can’t get enough.
One of the biggest hits of the 1960s, the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird,” originated in landlocked Minneapolis, where “hanging 10” seems laughably implausible. Up on Lake Superior, Minnesota’s surf scene is no joke. That is, unless catching a curl on subzero waters after brushing ice from your frozen eyelashes is funny to you. Papa-oom-mow-mow, cowboy.
“It kind of feels like a fairytale,” says “Big Wave” Dave Rostvold, who shapes boards by hand at his Duluth-based workshop Castle Glass Surfboards. “Surfing is a dream for a lot of people around the world. To be able to do it here in the Midwest, that’s a dream come true.”
After happening upon surfers working their magic on the frigid Superior waves, Joe Herron asked permission to photograph them. For both Herron and Rostvold, it took plenty of patience and study to gain any kind of confidence. Surfing is a deeply esoteric sport whose proponents are justifiably protective of their knowledge, especially in the North Shore’s frigid waters. Good waves are a finite resource, and mastering simple maneuvers, like “popping up” into a standing position, can be deeply humbling.
“It’s funny—I can both see that I’ve improved immensely since I started, but I’m also still really bad,” Herron says, chuckling. “It’s very tough, it’s physically demanding, it can be scary, but certain people just enjoy those kinds of activities.”
Bigger winds make bigger waves, which unfortunately means Superior is at its most surfable between November and February—when water temperatures barely tickle the high 30s. You need boots, gloves, and a high-quality, 6mm-thick hooded wetsuit. Herron says surfers warm up in their cars between “sets” of waves when temperatures become unbearable. He recalls photographing an experienced friend who somehow surfed for four straight hours in -17° windchill.
It’s easier to stay warm than you might think, though. All those waves mean you’re constantly in motion, to fight the current or stay in position. “What happens then is that your body heat gets elevated,” Herron explains. “So despite the fact that it’s very cold, if you’re always moving, you’re staying somewhat warm, provided you have a thick enough wetsuit.”
“It wouldn’t make sense for a natural formation to be black like that in such a shallow, small atoll/island”
PHOTO BY GOOGLE MAPS
Theories abound as Redditors speculate over an ominous ‘black hole’ in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
This page of more than 40,000 members discuss all things Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Street View, where such occurrences aren’t particularly unfamiliar. Google has been known to blur out sensitive locations such as military bases, prisons, islands, nuclear facilities, among other confidential sites.
“This looks nothing like an island,” said the original poster kokoblocks on the subreddit.
While some netizens offered satirical theories, one internet sleuth provided additional information on the tiny piece of land. “It’s an island called Vostok Island that belongs to the glorious Republic of Kiribati, what you see as black is actually very dark green, it’s a very dense forest made up of Pisonia trees.”
Some, however, are not convinced of this explanation. “It almost seems deliberately altered,” questions user cartoonsandbeers . “It wouldn’t make sense for a natural formation to be black like that in such a shallow, small atoll/island,” added user Jazzlike_Log_709.
A 2012 report by The Secretariat of the Pacific Community discussed how the land mapping of Vostok Island using GeoEye featured a clear aerial image of the small land mass, making users more skeptical of Google’s choice to keep the image dark.
According to a Cambridge University publication, the island, with the coordinates of 10.06 ° S, 152.31°W, was first sighted in 1820 by the Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, who named the island for his ship Vostok, which means East in Russian. It is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific Ocean, part of the Line Islands belonging to Kiribati.
While no geographical expert has clarified the confusion surrounding Google Maps’ rendering of Vostok Island, this is not the first, nor the last subject of the company’s satellite imagery mysteries.
This conspiracy theory should be easy to debunk: it is biologically impossible for viruses to spread using the electromagnetic spectrum. The latter are waves/photons, while the former are biological particles composed of proteins and nucleic acids. But that isn’t really the point — conspiracy theories are enticing because they often link two things which at first might appear be correlated; in this case, the rapid rollout of 5G networks was taking place at the same time the pandemic hit. Cue a viral meme linking the two, avidly promoted by anti-vaccine activists who have long been spreading fears about electromagnetic radiation, egged on by the Kremlin.
It’s worth repeating, as the World Health Organization (WHO) points out, that viruses cannot travel on mobile networks, and that COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in many countries that do not have 5G networks. Even so, this conspiracy theory — after being spread by celebrities with big social media followings — has led to cell phone towers being set on fire in the UK and elsewhere.
Bill Gates as scapegoat
Most conspiracy theories, like the viruses they resemble, constantly mutate and have several variants circulating at any one time. Many of these plots and subplots seem to involve Bill Gates, who became a new target of disinformation after gently criticizing the defunding of the World Health Organization. According to the New York Times, anti-vaxxers, members of QAnon and right-wing pundits have seized on a video of a 2015 Ted talk given by Gates — where he discussed the Ebola outbreak and warned of a new pandemic — to bolster their claims he had foreknowledge of the COVID pandemic or even purposely caused it.
A recent variant of this conspiracy theory, particularly beloved by anti-vaccination activists, is the idea that COVID is part of a dastardly Gates-led plot to vaccinate the world’s population. There is some truth in this, of course: vaccinating much of the world’s population may well be the only way to avoid an eventual death toll in the tens of millions. But anti-vaxxers don’t believe vaccines work. Instead some have spread the myth that Gates wants to use a vaccination program to implant digital microchips that will somehow track and control people. The spread of misinformation has meant that ID2020, a small non-profit that focuses on establishing digital IDs for poorer people around the world, has had to call in the FBI. (The Cornell Alliance for Science is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)
The virus escaped from a Chinese lab
This one at least has the benefit of being plausible. It is true that the original epicenter of the epidemic, the Chinese city of Wuhan, also hosts a virology institute where researchers have been studying bat coronaviruses for a long time. One of these researchers, Shi Zhengli, a prominent virologist who spent years collecting bat dung samples in caves and was a lead expert on the earlier SARS outbreak, was sufficiently concerned about the prospect that she spent days frantically checking lab records to see if anything had gone wrong. She admits breathing a “sigh of relief” when genetic sequencing showed that the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus did not match any of the viruses sampled and studied in the Wuhan Institute of Virology by her team.
However, the sheer coincidence of China’s lead institute studying bat coronaviruses being in the same city as the origin of the COVID outbreak has proven too juicy for conspiracists to resist. The idea was seeded originally via a slick hour-long documentary produced by the Epoch Times, an English-language news outlet based in the United States with links to the Falun Gong religious cult that has long been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Epoch Times insists on calling COVID “the CCP virus” in all its coverage. The theory has now tipped into the mainstream, being reported in the Washington Post, the Times (UK) and many other outlets.
COVID was created as a biological weapon
A spicier variant is that COVID not only escaped from a lab, but it was intentionally created by Chinese scientists as a biowarfare weapon. According to Pew Research, “nearly three-in-10 Americans believe that COVID-19 was made in a lab,” either intentionally or accidentally (the former is more popular: specifically, 23 percent believe it was developed intentionally, with only 6 percent believing it was an accident).
This theory that the Chinese somehow created the virus is particularly popular on the US political right. It gained mainstream coverage thanks to US Sen. Tom Cotton (Republican, Arkansas) who amplified theories first aired in the Washington Examiner (a highly conservative media outlet) that the Wuhan Institute of Virology “is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program.”
This theory can be easily debunked now that there is unambiguous scientific evidence — thanks to genetic sequencing — that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has entirely natural origins as a zoonotic virus originating in bats. The Examiner has since added a correction at the top of the original piece admitting the story is probably false.
The US military imported COVID into China
The Chinese government responded to the anti-China theories with a conspiracy theory of its own that seeks to turn blame back around onto the United States. This idea was spread initially by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who Tweeted “it’s possible that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan.” These comments, according to Voice of America news, “echoed a rumored conspiracy, widely circulated in China, that US military personnel had brought the virus to China during their participation in the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan last October.” For China, as the Atlantic reported, this conspiracy theory, and an accompanying attempt to rename COVID the “USA virus,”’ was a transparent “geopolitical ploy” — useful for domestic propaganda but not widely believed internationally.
These two look like your typical Trump supporters.
GMOs are somehow to blame
Genetically modified crops have been a target of conspiracy theorists for years, so it was hardly a surprise to see GMOs blamed in the early stages of the COVID pandemic. In early March, Italian attorney Francesco Billota penned a bizarre article for Il Manifesto, falsely claiming that GM crops cause genetic pollution that allows viruses to proliferate due to the resulting environmental “imbalance.” Anti-GMO activists have also tried to blame modern agriculture, which is strange, since the known path of the virus into the human population — as with Ebola, HIV and many others — was through the very ancient practice of people capturing and killing wildlife.
Ironically, GMOs will almost certainly be part of any vaccine solution. If any of the ongoing 70 vaccine projects work (which is a big if), that would be pretty much the only guaranteed way the world can get out of the COVID mess. Vaccines could be based on either GM attenuated viruses or use antigens produced in GM insect cell lines or plants. If GMOs do help save the world from the curse of COVID, maybe they’ll stop being a dirty word.
COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist
According to professional conspiracy theorists like David Icke and InfoWars’ Alex Jones, COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist, but is a plot by the globalist elite to take away our freedoms. Early weaker versions of this theory were prevalent on the political right in the notion that the novel coronavirus would be “no worse than flu” and later versions are now influencing anti-lockdown protests across several states in the US. Because believers increasingly refuse to observe social distancing measures, they could directly help to spread the epidemic further in their localities and increase the resulting death rate.
The pandemic is being manipulated by the ‘deep state’
Some believe that a “deep state” of America’s elite is plotting to undermine the president — and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the US coronavirus pandemic response — is a secret member. Fauci’s expression of disbelief when the deep state was mentioned during a press briefing supposedly gave the game away.
COVID is a plot by Big Pharma
Many conspiracy theory promoters are in reality clever actors trying to sell quack products. Alex Jones, between rants about hoaxes and the New World Order, urges viewers to buy expensive miracle pills that he claims can cure all known diseases. Dr. Mercola, a quack anti-vax and anti-GMO medic who has been banned from Google due to peddling misinformation, claims that vitamins (and numerous other products he sells) can cure or prevent COVID. NaturalNews, another conspiracist site, sells all manner of pills, potions and prepper gear. These conspiracists depend for their market on getting people to believe that evidence-based (i.e. conventional) medicine doesn’t work and is a plot by big pharmaceutical companies to make us ill. Big Pharma conspiracies are a staple of anti-vaccination narratives, so it is hardly surprising that they have transmuted into the age of the coronavirus.
COVID death rates are inflated
Another far-right meme is the idea that COVID death rates are being inflated and therefore there is no reason to observe lockdown regulations or other social distancing measures. Prominent in promoting this myth is Dr. Annie Bukacek, whose speech warning that COVID death certificates are being manipulated has been viewed more than a quarter of a million times on YouTube. Bukacek appears in a white lab coat and with a stethoscope around her neck, making her look like an authoritative medical source. Dig a little deeper, however, as Rolling Stone magazine did, and it turns out she’s actually a far-right anti-vaccination and anti-abortion activist, previously noted for bringing tiny plastic fetuses into the Montana state legislature. Her insistence that COVID death rates are inflated has, of course, no basis in fact. More likely the current death toll is a serious under-count. T0 further clarify the issue, the Centers for Disease Control has published information about excess deaths associated with COVID-19.
Many people will believe almost anything. Covid 19 conspiracy theories demonstrates this. Believers in this nonsense get their information mainly from social media. They don’t fact check the info, they just blindly believe it.
That moron Trump started a lot of this lunacy with his “fake media” diatribes. Don’t believe mainstream media (ie NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC to name a few) just believe media outlets that support your already embedded opinions, namely Fox News.
Trump and his propaganda has deeply divided the United States. The country is in ideological turmoil. Covid-19 has caused many Americans, who believe Trump’s insane assertions, to believe the conspiracy theories no matter how ridiculous and crazy.
Newly released footage from a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter suggests that the mysterious ‘jetpack man’ spotted near LAX on multiple occasions over the last year may have actually just been an errant balloon. The curious case began back in the summer of 2020 when a pilot approaching the airport reported to air traffic controllers that there was a “guy in a jetpack” flying around the area. This was followed by a subsequent sighting in October of last year as well as a third such encounter with the unidentified flying individual that took place this past July. An investigation by the FBI indicated that they suspected that the aerial anomaly was, in fact, a balloon, and now newly released materials reportedly released by the LAPD lend considerable credence to that theory.
Captured in November of last year, but only coming to light this week, the footage as well as some photos show what is clearly a sizeable human-shaped balloon floating at a high altitude above the city of Los Angeles. Specifically, it is believed that the object is a seven-foot-tall inflatable depiction of the character Jack Skellington from the hit film Nightmare Before Christmas. Given the time frame of the video, it is suspected that the balloon may have ‘escaped’ or was released from a residence where it had been used as a Halloween decoration. While this particular piece of footage was not captured during one of the three aforementioned ‘jetpack man’ sightings, authorities believe that it serves as a proverbial proof of concept that explains the seemingly inexplicable incidents.
To that end, the FBI says that their investigation into the series of events has failed to yield any additional ‘jetpack man’ witnesses nor any video footage from the three encounters that spawned headlines and led to authorities looking into the matter. For their part, the FAA issued a statement saying that the department “has worked closely with the FBI to investigate every reported jetpack sighting” and stressed that “so far, none of these sightings have been verified.” So while the case may not technically be closed, the LAPD footage is the best evidence yet that the ‘jetpack man’ was not an ill-advised prankster making trouble, but a balloon that was only briefly spotted by the bewildered pilots.
City’s attempt to cut Texas man’s grass leads to a standoff, a fire and his death, police say
A SWAT officer shot the man after he exited the home with weapons in his hand, according to police in Austin.
An attempt by Austin, Texas, officials to serve a search warrant and provide lawn care resulted in shots fired, an hourslong standoff, a house fire and a death, police said Wednesday.
Police officers and code enforcement officers arrived at a home at 9:16 a.m. to serve a nuisance search warrant, but could not make contact with the resident, Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said at an evening news conference.
The warrant was left at the door and contractors for the city’s code enforcement began working on the lawn. About an hour later, the resident started shooting from inside the house, Chacon said.
“And they immediately backed off. They got all of the staff that was working on the house to safety and and a SWAT call was initiated for a barricaded subject,” he said.
SWAT, mental health officers and a crisis negotiator arrived on scene, but could not get the man out of the home, leading to the lockdown of a nearby elementary school and the closure of several streets.
“SWAT spent the next several hours trying to negotiate with the individual to just simply come out of the house,” Chacon said.
At about 3 p.m., the resident started shooting at officers again. “And because of that immediate threat … they made entry using a robot,” Chacon said.
The robot helped officers determine that a fire had been started in the home, and was quickly spreading, he said. Officers still couldn’t get the man to come out of the house as it became fully engulfed in flames.
But then the man exited through the garage with weapons in his hand. “At that time, a SWAT officer shot and struck the resident who went down with a gunshot wound,” Chacon said.
Officers got the man away from the house and treated him before he was taken to a hospital, where he died. It’s unclear what caused his death.
The fire was eventually put out, and the school lockdown was lifted.
The SWAT officer who shot the man will be put on administrative duty during investigations into the incident, Chacon said. The officer has been with the department for eight years, according to the chief.
The resident of the home has not been identified. Austin Police spokesperson Jose Mendez said he was a white man in his 50s.
Mendez said the department had made previous welfare visits to the home, but were never able to communicate with him. Officers were in touch with his family during Wednesday’s standoff.
Their main goal Wednesday was to get the man in compliance with the local homeowners association.
“They attempted to cut the lawn for him, and this is the reaction they got,” Mendez said.
The incident took place in Rajasthan’s Churu where a bull was found to have climbed right on top of a water tank.
The incident took place in Rajasthan’s Churu where a bull was found to have climbed right on top of a water tank. The Bull had climbed right to the top and it threw the city authorities in a fix as they were wondering how to bring the animal down. Even the police did not believe the callers when they called in to report the bull on top of the tower. But then soon, as similar calls began coming in from many different people, the police decided to investigate. Initially, they thought of calling for a crane but that did not look feasible. Also, it was already evening when the bull was spotted and the army officials said that they couldn’t begin an operation at that time as the sun was close to setting. The bull was then shown delicacies and people tried luring it too the ground but the bull, clearly enamoured by the view, did not budge!
Many people tried climbing the tower and bringing the bull down. It loudly moo-ed everyone away! Finally, they found one solution and decided to tie up the bull and rappel it down the tank. A doctor was called and the bull was injected with sedatives. Once it lost consciousness, a double rope and safety belt was tied around the bull before it was rappelled down from the tank and brought safely down. The bull also wrapped in thick blankets so it would not hurt itself in any way during the descent. Well, quite a trip for a bull!
Odd green light spotted at Indonesian volcano was a meteorite
A series of photos of Indonesian volcano Mount Merapi have gone viral after a photographer captured images that look like a laser is erupting from the massive peak, but it’s most likely a meteorite, according to experts.
Indonesian photographer Gunarto Song took the photos on May 28 that have now garnered more than 28,000 likes. The caption on the photos reads: ‘a meteor fell into the peak of Mount Merapi?’
However, it’s likely that the strange green light stems from two meteor showers, the Eta Aqarid meteor shower and the Arietid meteor shower, that happened during the time, according to National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN).
The beam was captured in a still photograph and confirmed by CCTV monitoring of the volcano by the Kalitengah Kidul Post for a few seconds.
‘So, from these two data, it can be assumed that the flash of greenish light that appears near Mount Merapi may be related to meteor shower activity,’ LAPAN wrote in a translated version of its website.
The Eta Aquarids meteor shower happened between April 19 to May 28, while the Arietids shower started on May 14 and will last through June 24.
As for the bright greenish hue, that can likely be explained by the level of magnesium in the space rock.
‘Given that the light emitted is green, it is likely that the meteor that feel around Merapi was dominated by the element magnesium,’ LAPAN added.
A piece of an asteroid or comet is also known as a meteoroid. Upon entering Earth’s atmosphere, it turns into a meteor, fireball or shooting star.
The pieces that reach the ground are known as meteorites.
Speaking with CNN Indonesia, Gunarto said he set the shutter speed of his camera at four seconds and hoped for the best.
‘Because I use a speed of 4 seconds. Like it or not, the photo [of light] will be long. But the light is round light, hurry up, the round light keeps falling,’ Gunarto told the news outlet.
Mount Merapi on the border of Central Java and the Special Region of Yogyakarta,, is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. It last erupted on March 27, 2021, with prior eruptions happening twice in March 2020.
Indonesia sits on the ‘Ring of Fire,’ a tectonic plate in the Pacific Ocean that results in frequent seismic and volcanic activity.
‘Birds Aren’t Real’: Whether comedy or conspiracy, the movement explains the post-truth era
via Birds Aren’t Real / Instagram
A lot of talking heads have remarked that we live in a post-truth era. In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary defined it as “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
Media bias, political microtargeting, social media, fake news websites, Donald Trump, and man’s innate desire to prefer being right over correct, have all unwillingly conspired to create a society where people cling to tribal beliefs, regardless of their validity.
This has resulted in a social milieu where conspiracy theories have become mainstream. Sure, they’ve always been around, but they seem to have recently graduated from the basement to the mainstream.
Open up Facebook and you’re sure to find a post from someone about QAnon, flat-Earth theory, pizzagate, faked moon landings, false-flag shootings, 9/11 truth, Bill Gates’ microchips, and Birds Aren’t Real.
Yep, Birds Aren’t Real is a thing. A pretty big one, too. Birds Aren’t Real has over 300,000 followers on Instagram and 66,000 on Twitter. Plus, there are local Birds Aren’t Real chapters sprouting up all over the U.S.
The theory postulates that in the ’50s, the CIA began killing off America’s bird population and replacing them with flying surveillance robots. Birds Aren’t Real estimates there are currently 12 billion birds watching us from above.
The group recently held a rally in the non-specific town of Springfield.
However, it’s pretty clear that Birds Aren’t Real isn’t an actual conspiracy theory. Rather, a piece of comedic performance art revealing how ridiculous ideas take hold in the post-truth era.
Its de facto leader Peter McIndoe won’t tell you that it’s a fake conspiracy, at least not overtly.
“That’s one of the saddest things, that people consider that this could be some sort of mass-improvisational performance, or some sort of showcasing, highlighting a new era we’ve entered into as a society where anything can be true,” he told Newsweek. “Even if [the movement being satirical] was the case, you really wouldn’t even be able to tell.”
He thinks that if it were a parody movement, it could help people cope with living in absurd times.
“I think if it were a parody movement, that might be a point it was trying to make, or maybe, allowing people to cope with those types of presences in our society in a way where you can come together and laugh about the absurdity of a post-truth era, because it’s a horrifying thing,” he said. “The thing is, we’re not that, though.”
While for many, the conspiracy theory is a way to shine a light on the ridiculous conspiracy theories corrupting society, McIndoe claims he isn’t stopping until all of the birds are culled from the sky.
“The end to this project would only exist in the case of societal acceptance and shutting down the 12 billion robot birds that currently swarm the skies of our nation,” McIndoe said, tongue planted firmly in cheek.
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