June 22, 2022

Greetings fellow Bizarros:

You think a 'Vaccine Pass' is a good idea? It will get you into bars, restaurants, sporting events, concerts, give you access to travel... all while keeping those filthy 'spreaders' at home where they can't infect us healthy people. Look at how well it's working in China.

According to www.vice.com Chinese bank depositors planning a protest about their frozen funds saw their health code mysteriously turn red and were stopped from traveling to the site of a rally, confirming fears that China's vast COVID-tracking system could be weaponized as a powerful tool to stifle dissent.

A red health code designated the would-be protesters as suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients, limiting their movement and access to public transportation. Their rallies in the central Henan province this week were thwarted as some were forced into quarantine and others detained by police.

A 38-year-old software engineer was among hundreds who could not access their savings at four rural banks since mid-April. She had planned to travel from her home in Jiangxi province to Zhengzhou, Henan's capital city, to join a group petition this week to demand her money back. But her health code turned from green to red shortly after she bought a train ticket. She said a nucleic test for COVID she took the night before came back negative and her hometown has not reported any infection recently.

More than 200 bank depositors from all over the country saw their health codes turned red over the past week, which effectively foiled a planned protest outside the Henan branch of China's banking regulator. Chinese activists and dissidents have reported similar experiences in the past, but the latest crackdown appears to be the most brazen example of how the authorities could exploit the supposed COVID-19 measure for political purposes.

Bizarrely,
Lewis

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Questions? Comments? Email: lewis@gopher-news.com

That comes to one push-up every second

An Australian athlete broke his second Guinness World Record by performing 3,182 push-ups in an hour. Daniel Scali, who previously broke the Guinness World Record for longest time in the abdominal plank position (male), officially broke the record for most push-ups in one hour (male), Guinness announced. The record-keeping organization said Scali performed more than 100 push-ups more than previous record holder Jarrad Young, who completed 3,054 push-ups in one hour in 2021. Scali said he had to flight through the discomfort caused by complex regional pain syndrome, which he has had since breaking his arm at age 12.

Mmmm... crab whiskey

A New Hampshire distillery unveiled a new whiskey with an unusual key ingredient -- invasive green crabs. Tamworth Distilling said it teamed up with the University of New Hampshire's NH Green Crab Project to develop House of Tamworth Crab Trapper, which is billed as being "made with a bourbon base steeped with a custom crab, corn and spice blend mixture." Steven Grasse, owner of Tamworth Distilling, said the developers boiled more than 90 pounds of the tiny crabs into a crab stock that was then fortified with Tamworth-made neutral grain spirits and distilled on a rotary vacuum. "It has crab on the nose, for certain," Grasse said. He said the taste is like "a briny and better Fireball." The crabs used for the liquor came from a Seabrook, N.H., trapper. Green crabs are native to Europe and are considered an invasive threat to the New England ecosystem. "We are raising awareness of the problem in a way that is fun and interesting, but it also shows that through creativity and gumption, we can turn these pesky critters into a tasty treat," Grasse says. House of Tamworth Crab Trapper is being sold at a price of $65 for a 750 milliliter bottle.