Two-Headed Fish, Most Boring Jobs, the End of Meat and More Mysterious News Briefly — March 21, 2022

Mysterious News Briefly — March 21, 2022

A sheep found wandering on Mount Alexander in Australia had been lost for at least six years, which explains why it produced 88 pounds of fleece when it was finally sheered. “Been there, done that, still scratching” said everyone who got two wool sweaters for Christmas knitted by each grandma.

Here’s the easiest job in the world -- Seres Therapeutics, a biotech company in Arizona, will pay for your poop at a rate of at least $25 and up to $75 per sample, and claims a person can earn up to $1,500 a month if they have regular bowel movements, are of normal weight, don't smoke, are not pregnant, have no history of gastrointestinal disease or history of alcohol and drug abuse and show up three to four times a week. Bring your own magazine or phone to read.

A new study on the “science of boredom” found that the top 5 most boring jobs are Data Analysis, Accounting, Tax/insurance, Cleaning and Banking, and the top 5 most boring hobbies are Sleeping, Religion, Watching TV, Observing animals and Mathematics. You get a triple boring score if your hobby is sleeping during math class and praying your teacher doesn’t catch you.

Speaking of sleeping, a study on alarms found alarming results in how most alarm devices and clocks jolt us out of sleep and leave us groggy, cranky and non-productive at work, so researchers developed a “custom rhythmic melody” alarm that led to significantly better performance upon and after waking when compared to standard beeping alarms. No matter how good it is, some people will still want a ‘snooze’ feature for ten more minutes.

A beach cleaner on Itarare Beach in Sao Paulo, Brazil, discovered an extremely rare mutant two-headed fish in the shape of a heart that appeared to be surviving well before being beached. Rumored last words: “I’m tired of going your way.”

A study published in the journal Animal Behaviour reveals that adult Mexican howler (Alouatta palliata mexicana) and golden-mantled howler (Alouatta palliata palliata) monkeys use play to avoid conflict and reduce group tension, especially when foraging and competing for fruit. Is it time to change the old saying to “Human see, human do”?

Fifteen years after they were first detected, an international team of scientists tracked hundreds of fast radio bursts from five different sources and found clues in FRB polarization patterns that appear to reveal that their origin point is surrounded by a highly magnetized dense plasma that causes depolarization at lower frequencies. In other words, they’re still not sure but it’s definitely not aliens.

McGill University conducted the world's largest study on psychedelics and the brain and found how drug-induced changes in subjective awareness are anatomically rooted in specific neurotransmitter receptor systems, which will lead to new hallucinogenic drug compounds designed to reliably create desired mental states. These studies claim to use volunteers taking psychedelics, yet not one ever contains the word “Whoa!”

Bad news for those planning to escape Planet Earth with Elon Musk – in a response to a tweet,  the SpaceX CEO has changed his expected departure date from 2026 to to 2029. Is his dating life interfering with his Mars goals?

The CEO of Impossible Foods told the audience at a summit that his company’s plant-based meat will be so good, by 2035 nobody will be eating meat from slaughtered animals at all. Go ahead and start stockpiling now – fast food burgers have been shown to last for decades.