All posts tagged: bears

TikTok Shoppers Thought They Were Bidding on iPhones. Instead, They Won Teddy Bears

TikTok Shoppers Thought They Were Bidding on iPhones. Instead, They Won Teddy Bears

Published by skeptic

A TikTok livestream host waves an iPhone box in front of the camera as around 250 viewers place their bids. “This could be yours, chat,” the host says. “Wake it up.” The host’s face is hidden from view, with just their hands visible in front of stacks of iPhone, iPad, and MacBook boxes. The TikTok auction starts at $1. As the timer counts down, the price quickly shoots up, with a bid of over $100 scoring the win. After the bidding closes, a digital prize wheel appears and spins through multiple possible products before landing on what the high bidder just won: a teddy bear. The winner was pissed. “I just paid $147 for a stuffed animal,” they wrote in the stream’s chatlog. “When I was bidding, you said that I could win that iPhone, and it gave me a BB3 Zodiac,” they said, referring to the Labubu-style plushie that retails for about $20. “That’s a scam. Please return my money.” This person was not alone in their frustration. Multiple viewers of the stream were …

Hairpin bends and bears on the highway: readers’ favourite European road trips | Road trips

Hairpin bends and bears on the highway: readers’ favourite European road trips | Road trips

Published by Sam Flores

Bear right in Romania Jeremy Clarkson described Romania’s Transfăgărășan Highway as “one unbroken grey ribbon of motoring perfection”. The route (the second highest in Romania after the Transalpina) with its hairpin bends and climbs over the mountain was thrilling. Although we’d been told bear sightings were possible, we didn’t anticipate spotting them literally on the roadside, with one hanging over a stone wall posing for photographs, taken through the car window. Because of the harsh winters in the southern Carpathian Mountains, the section of the road to Bâlea Lake is open only for a few summer months – it proved particularly beautiful.Helen Jackson Profile Readers’ tips: send a tip for a chance to win a £200 voucher for a Coolstays break Show Guardian Travel readers’ tips Every week we ask our readers for recommendations from their travels. A selection of tips will be featured online and may appear in print. To enter the latest competition visit the readers’ tips homepage – Thank you for your feedback. Highlights of Ireland The karst landscape of the Burren. …

Corrections Vs Bears: How The Fed Rewired The Market

Corrections Vs Bears: How The Fed Rewired The Market

Published by Jenni Sidey

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, After three decades of watching market cycles play out from both sides of the trade, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: Wall Street’s love of simple rules is one of the most dangerous aspects of investing. When stocks fall 10%, it’s just a “correction.” However, if they decline 20%, it’s a “bear market.” Simple, clean, repeatable, and printed on every financial media graphic from here to Tokyo. The problem is that the definitions of a correction and bear market have not been updated since Alan Shaw developed them at Smith Barney in the 1960s. Moreover, the market those definitions were designed to describe no longer exists. Currently, the S&P 500 index is roughly 83% above its long-term trend line, with the Shiller CAPE (cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio) hovering near 40. That valuation level was only exceeded once in the history of American financial markets. The Fed’s balance sheet, still at $6.7 trillion, is more than eight times its pre-2008 level. Under these conditions, the old bear-market definition no longer measures what it was built to measure. A 20% …

Japan runs out of robot wolves in fight against bears

Japan runs out of robot wolves in fight against bears

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Japan’s bear problem continues, and the country is running out of the robot wolves that help keep them at bay. First released in 2016 by the manufacturer Ohta, Monster Wolf was originally designed to ward off the agricultural foes like boars, deer, and the island nation’s Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) populations. The creative solution quickly went viral for its red LED eyes and menacing fangs—as well as its admittedly odd, furry pipe frame. Starting at around $4,000, each bespoke Monster Wolf is now equipped with battery power, solar panels, and detection sensors. Its speakers are programmed with over 50 audio clips including human voices and sirens audible over half a mile away. These aren’t assembly line products, however. Each Monster Wolf is custom made, and Ohta simply can’t keep up with the current demand. “We make them by hand. We cannot make them fast enough now. We are asking our customers to wait …

‘The Bear’s one-dimensional love interests have got to go

‘The Bear’s one-dimensional love interests have got to go

Published by skeptic

Whenever The Bear introduces a new female character, I pray she doesn’t become a love interest for one of the male leads. Not because I hate romance, but because I specifically hate the way The Bear does romance. SEE ALSO: ‘The Bear’ just dropped a surprise episode. Here’s how to watch it now. The clearest offender is Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) relationship with Claire (Molly Gordon). A childhood friend who re-enters Carmy’s life, Claire is less a real human character than she is a walking self-help book for Carmy. She spends almost every moment she’s on screen talking about him: her memories of him, his mental health struggles, his relationship with his family. In theory, she has a life apart from Carmy — her defining character trait outside of being his girlfriend is vaguely “nurse” — but in watching The Bear, you wouldn’t know it. Usually a great performer (see: Shiva Baby, Oh, Hi!, and more), Gordon is reduced to two modes here: luminous love interest hanging onto Carmy’s every word, or calming therapist. She’s …

40 years on from the disaster, why there are foxes, bears and bison again around Chernobyl

40 years on from the disaster, why there are foxes, bears and bison again around Chernobyl

Published by skeptic

In the novel When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift, the Chernobyl disaster and its legacy is extrapolated to a near future where natural habitats are depleted and precarious. This work of eco-fiction deftly explores issues of possible paths to a future where animals return to a nature depleted area. In the real world, a parallel version of this story has been unfolding as nature is thriving around former nuclear power plants. This is especially evident at the former Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, where the absence of human activity has enabled wildlife to flourish despite continuing radiation, 40 years after the nuclear disaster there. A 2,600km² exclusion zone was established following the world’s worst civilian nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986, which released a radioactive cloud across Europe and led to the evacuation of around 115,000 people from the surrounding area. Almost immediately, radiation poisoning killed 31 plant workers and firefighters. It is 40 years since the Chernobyl disaster that led to the creation of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). Since 1986, it has …

The Download: the state of AI, and protecting bears with drones

The Download: the state of AI, and protecting bears with drones

Published by skeptic

For seven years, Sarmento worked to keep both bears and humans out of trouble. He acted like a first responder, trying to defuse potentially dangerous situations. He even got caught in some himself, which led him to a new wildlife safety tool: drones. Find out the results of his experiments in digital ecology.   —Emily Senkosky  This article is from the next issue of our print magazine, which is all about nature. Subscribe now to read it when it lands on Wednesday, April 22.   The must-reads  I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.  1 Human scientists still trounce the top AI agents at complex tasks  The best agents perform only half as well as experts with PhDs. (Nature) + Can AI really help us discover new materials? (MIT Technology Review)  2 OpenAI is escalating its fight with Anthropic while pulling away from Microsoft A leaked memo exposes plans to attack Anthropic. (Axios) + And says Microsoft “limited our ability” to reach clients. (The Information $) + While touting a budding alliance with Amazon. (CNBC)  3 Carbon removal technology is stalling—and that may be good news Better solutions could now emerge. (New Scientist) + Here are …

The Turin Shroud bears DNA from many people, plants and animals

The Turin Shroud bears DNA from many people, plants and animals

Published by skeptic

The Turin Shroud bears an image of a man said to resemble Jesus Christ public domain/Art Collection 2/Alamy DNA analysis has identified a vast array of animal, plant and human material contaminating the Turin Shroud, complicating the story of the mysterious relic purported to be the cloth that Jesus Christ was wrapped in after his crucifixion 2000 years ago. The shroud, which measures 4.4 metres long and 1.1 metres wide, is one of the world’s most famous and controversial Christian artefacts. Its first documented location was in France in 1354, and for nearly half a millennium, it has remained at the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. In 1988, researchers used radiocarbon and accelerator mass spectrometry dating techniques to determine that the shroud was made sometime between 1260 and 1390, excluding the possibility that the person perceived as being imprinted on the cloth could have been Jesus. However, this dating of the shroud to the later medieval period remains contested by some scholars of Christianity. In 2015, Gianni Barcaccia at the University …