Weird Shit in 2020

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I wanted to have a thread to catalog all the stuff that on its own would make you go, "Hmm, that was odd." Furture historians can then consult it.

I'll try to keep it to offbeat things. For instance: a terrible announcer "Joe Buck" getting told that he is going into the NFL Hall of Fame during halftime of a pointless Thursday Night Game is one such event. I would say "wild fires in Australia" are not. Even though the wildfires are only slightly more of a tragedy than what happened to the Hall of Fame, there are wildfires (unfortunately) all the time.

Obviously the big ones like the pandemic, impeachment and Houston Astros cheating scandal qualify. Some others that come to mind:

- George Floyd protests
- There were two hurricanes that were supposed to cause havoc at the same time at one point.
- Murder hornets made the news for one day and that was it.
- Ginsberg died
- Twitter hack where famous people hilariously said they would "give back"
- A fast radio burst is detected from the Magnetar SGR 1935+2154, the first ever detected inside the Milky Way, and the first to be linked to a known source.[106]
- Headlines about how life on Venus was found were floated out there.

[bryanb]

I think we can add Novak Djokovic accidentally hitting a lineswoman in the throat with a tennis ball and as a result getting thrown out of the US Open to the list. That's one of the best tennis players in the world...one of the best ever...out of a Grand Slam due to a freak accident. I don't like him so I enjoyed the tournament more as a result (I should say here that the lineswoman is OK, though she did receive a few death threats from Novak fans for no reason whatsoever), but it was pretty bizarre.

[Billy Mays]

I wanted to have a thread to catalog all the stuff that on its own would make you go, "Hmm, that was odd."

Not to be confused with "Huh. (Well, that's a thing.)" which can be found here:

https://www.joltcountry.com/phpBB3/view ... =9&t=11043

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I think we can add Novak Djokovic accidentally hitting a lineswoman in the throat with a tennis ball and as a result getting thrown out of the US Open to the list. That's one of the best tennis players in the world...one of the best ever...out of a Grand Slam due to a freak accident. I don't like him so I enjoyed the tournament more as a result (I should say here that the lineswoman is OK, though she did receive a few death threats from Novak fans for no reason whatsoever), but it was pretty bizarre.

Wait, he tried to return or serve, accidentally hit somebody and they threw him out?

[bryanb]

I think we can add Novak Djokovic accidentally hitting a lineswoman in the throat with a tennis ball and as a result getting thrown out of the US Open to the list. That's one of the best tennis players in the world...one of the best ever...out of a Grand Slam due to a freak accident. I don't like him so I enjoyed the tournament more as a result (I should say here that the lineswoman is OK, though she did receive a few death threats from Novak fans for no reason whatsoever), but it was pretty bizarre.

Wait, he tried to return or serve, accidentally hit somebody and they threw him out?

No, he lost a key game, hit a ball blindly in annoyance (not during play), and just happened to nail the lineswoman in the throat. During play it probably wouldn't have happened as the lineswoman would have been watching the ball and could've ducked out of the way.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

How big was her throat?

[RealNC]

Hurricanes in Greece.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/worl ... silda.html)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Do you guys normally get hurricanes? Do you give them names after broads like we do or after Greek myth gals?

[Billy Mays]

Do you give them names after broads like we do

We don't name them after broads. A government agency compiles a list of names in advance, something like a hundred names or so from all genders and backgrounds, and just applies them in sequential order as they hit. Over 95% of the storms aren't even news worthy in the bigger sense so nobody hears that particular name being used.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

Also, I'm going to have to insist that this gets discussed in "Huh. (Well, that's a thing.)" since what we are talking about here is a thing and not a one off event.

[RealNC]

Do you guys normally get hurricanes? Do you give them names after broads like we do or after Greek myth gals?

No. If we did this wouldn't be Weird Shit in 2020 :P

No idea what the naming rules are either. They named this one "Janus", so I think they use names of Gods, maybe?

[Jizaboz]

No hurricanes in my area fucking up anything aside from the water clarity this year. (We expect at least 2 every season)

2 years ago about this time I spent days drying out a trailer that was floating in 4 feet of water.

Aside from the coronamania and Cat Dracula running off last month, 2020 is OK I guess. Could be worse!

[Tdarcos]

Speaking of weird shit, lately I've been having serious diarrhea every day. In fact, I want to tell you guys all about it. First, it consists of black, liquefied

[The remainder of this message has been deleted for discussing things decorum prohibits mentioning. We do not want to hear about that literally weird shit!]

[Flack]

I would like to add firenadoes.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/24/us/calif ... index.html

I would also like to add "see-through basketball players during the NBA finals."

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Good point. I honestly thought that was two years ago when I saw the screen shot. But no.

[Billy Mays]

I would like to add firenadoes.

The article points to firenadoes being a thing and not a one off event. Please stop hijacking my thread from a different thread, it's getting absurd.

[Tdarcos]

The "transparent players" problem is related to marketing (and greed). There are some sponsors who want their logos to appear during games. They don't want to pay for a (probably more expensive) placement on the walls (or the floor) of the stadium, or the stadium owner doesn't want logos cluttering up the floor (or they're not allowed). So it's been discovered the broadcaster can use the equivalent of chroma key (green screen or blue screen) to allow advertisements to appear.

Now, it's more sophisticated, they can target a specific part of the floor and create a virtual advertIsement in that spot. The computer is supposed to not put the ad in spots that don't look like the floor, but when something goes wrong, the ad gets pasted over everything, and thus the ad "bleeds" onto the players. The ad is only virtual, if you were in the audience at the stadium, you would not see it.

[Flack]

The "transparent players" problem is related to marketing (and greed). There are some sponsors who want their logos to appear during games. They don't want to pay for a (probably more expensive) placement on the walls (or the floor) of the stadium, or the stadium owner doesn't want logos cluttering up the floor (or they're not allowed). So it's been discovered the broadcaster can use the equivalent of chroma key (green screen or blue screen) to allow advertisements to appear.

Now, it's more sophisticated, they can target a specific part of the floor and create a virtual advertIsement in that spot. The computer is supposed to not put the ad in spots that don't look like the floor, but when something goes wrong, the ad gets pasted over everything, and thus the ad "bleeds" onto the players. The ad is only virtual, if you were in the audience at the stadium, you would not see it.

It has nothing to do with stadium owners being greedy.
Floor advertisements are not cheaper than floor advertisements.
The NBA is the stadium owner.
They are not using green screens or blue screens.

I'm sure you got some other things wrong but I haven't had my coffee yet.

[Flack]

I would like to add firenadoes.

The article points to firenadoes being a thing and not a one off event. Please stop hijacking my thread from a different thread, it's getting absurd.

Paying $750 in federal taxes is absurd.

[Billy Mays]

I would like to add firenadoes.

The article points to firenadoes being a thing and not a one off event. Please stop hijacking my thread from a different thread, it's getting absurd.

Paying $750 in federal taxes is absurd.

Can you provide the source of the documents or even the documents themselves?

[Flack]

Please stop hijacking ICJ's thread, it's getting absurd.