Darendukes

In what's turning into a public relations headache for the solar industry, news has emerged that a recent test of the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada resulted in some 130 birds catching fire, when they flew into an area of highly concentrated solar energy.

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Fashionistas and fashion mistas everywhere, your time to shine has finally come. For the foreseeable future, you will not be asked to stuff your meaty legs into the denim casing of a skinny jean in order to make regrettable fashion sausage. Finally, a Chinese investor has invested cash into the believed-to-be-dead JNCO Jeans operation.

Everyone stand up! Hup hup!

The FADER reports via Women's Wear Daily that JNCOs (the jeans too big to hold your legs but too small to contain your dopeness) are gearing for a relaunch in 2015. That's right—this year. How have you been preparing? WWD reports:

"The core collection features traditional styles including a knit jean with a slouchy fit; the fashion group has joggers with zip bottoms and a drawstring waist, and the heritage collection offers leg openings of 20 inches and 23 inches, with high waists. All of the product will feature JNCO's crown logo."

Fuck yeah. No half-stepping on the double-pant-leg trend, my friends. JNCOs has a revamped website, which proudly claims an empire is being created:

JNCO – The iconic brand that defined an entire culture in the 90s is back, and we have been busy creating a new empire. Are you ready to join us on our new adventure? "Judge None, Choose One"

The new jeans brand will launch with three capsules: a core collection, a fashion collection, and a heritage range. I don't know what a capsule is but I'm down to clown if it means big jeans for my fashionable lifestyle.

[Image via Imgarcade]

What the hell is going on this video? First we see an adult human ass peeking through a hole in a wall, so perfectly chiseled that you wonder for a moment whether it doesn't belong to a department-store mannequin. Then the mallets come out, and the men start swinging.

According to the tabloidy European outlets through which the story has spent the last two days rocketing, the man is one Ivan Ozerov, a 31-year-old resident of the Russian city Barnaul. Ozerov was drunk, the story goes, and began crawling through a ventilation shaft because he smelled soup coming from the other side. That's when he got stuck.

Here's how the Austrian Times puts it:

Unfortunately for 31-year-old Ivan Ozerov, as he was crawling headfirst down the shaft apparently following the smell of soup, his trousers had started to come off and eventually wedged around his ankles.

Unable to move properly in the tiny 40 centimetre wide ventilation shaft, he had started calling for help and eventually firemen were able to trace his location, and started to break through the wall.

It's one of those stories—often out of Russia or China—that seem too good to be true, tailor-made for tabloid coverage. But in this case, there's video. That's a real butt. We'll have to take their word about the soup.

[h/t Arbroath]

As part of a "ground-breaking scientific trial" for Channel 4, reporter Jon Snow took an enormous hit from a vaporizer filled with "skunk and hash" and volunteered for an MRI. It, uh, didn't go so well. "It felt as if my soul had been wrenched from my body," he said after abandoning the project midway.

The report begins with Snow taking a huge rip from a vaporizer. Twenty minutes later, a visibly high Snow said he felt "woolly."

"I feel slightly separated from myself," he told his cameraman. Things would only get worse for the brave reporter.

After just a few minutes inside the MRI—the exact purpose of which wasn't clear; to check out his brain on weed?—Snow lost his shit. "I don't want to do this," he said. "It's horrible. Can you let me out?"

Once free, he explained the experience in detail and said he was shocked by the strength of the weed, which he called "aggressive filth."

"It did something. It robbed me of my persona, of my soul. I never ever want to be subjected to that again. Never."

[Channel 4]

This weekend an American college student answered the eternal question—"I wonder if it's worth it to pay money to get close enough to a bull that he could gore my sphincter?"—with a firm no.

Benjamin Miller, a 20-year-old Georgia resident, was celebrating at the Carnaval del Toro in Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain when he reportedly set out running alongside what turned out to be quite the aggressive bull. A photographer on scene documented the goring, which left Miller with serious injuries to his thighs, sphincter and back muscles.

"It's not the worst injury I've seen, but it's the biggest goring wound I've ever had to operate on," surgeon Enrique Crespo told reporters after performing a three-hour operation on Miller, who is now reportedly in intensive care.

[images via AP]

"I found out my second grader has not been eating lunch all year. I give him money for lunch but he apparently didn't know what it was for, so he threw it out. Wtf? I am sort of stunned. How did he not know this???"

»threw it out? like the trash?
»Yes.

Urban Baby dot com.

[Photo: AP]

Two tiny cups of coffee, filled with water boiled on a tiny stove and poured over a tiny pinch of coffee grounds. A shrimpy shrimp, dipped in a shrimpy bowl of batter and deep-fried in a shrimpy pot of cooking oil. Baby chunks of chicken, grilled on baby skewers (they're actually toothpicks). These are but a few of the extra-small wonders found on Miniature Space, your new favorite YouTube channel.

Whoever's behind Miniature Space has been steadily publishing bonsai cooking videos for about two months, racking up five- and six-figure view counts on each of 26 total clips. He or she creates a dish that appear to be fully edible—the yakitori is made from real chicken; the sushi from real fish—with ingredients and utensils that are super small and cute as hell. "Welcome to miniature space channel," reads the channel's description, Google-translated from Japanese. "You have made a small miniature of cuisine you can eat."

Miniature Space makes miniature shrimp tempura.

And an adorable stack of quarter-sized pancakes.

Miniature Space makes sushi.

And pipsqueak french fries.

Tiny-ass Mentos in tiny-ass coke.

And the tiny-ass utensils used to cook it all.

Where are Miniature Space's thousands of fans coming from? Trawling the YouTube comments shows that many of them are simply connoisseurs of tininess—"Oh my god I absolutely LOOOVVE miniature stuff. Subscribed!!!!" reads one—or fans of the Japanese kawaii aesthetic.

A popular Reddit thread reveals an alternate possibility: people are watching Miniature Space videos because of ASMR, the name given to a tingling sensation some people experience while hearing quiet, tactile sounds like whispering or crinkling paper. "Goddamnit ASMR, I don't have time to be searching youtube for other adorable mini kitchen videos, I have work to do," one commenter wrote on Reddit's ASMR board today. Another responded reassuringly: "No search necessary! This channel has all the mini cooking you could ever need."

It wouldn't be the first time junkies were driven to seemingly strange places to get their kicks: tutorial videos for a Japanese just-add-water candy called Popin Cookin—which, incidentally, also looks like miniature food—have millions of views each, and are filled with comments espousing their pacifying auditory powers.

Even if you're not an ASMR person, it's hard to deny there's something calming going on here. See if you can avoid drifting into a peaceful reverie as you watch Miniature Space whip up some kawaii fried eggs.

Ukranian soldiers outside Debaltseve received a mass text message telling them that they would not be killed if they surrendered to rebel troops who have surrounded the city, the Guardian reports.

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Diena Thompson helped set fire to the Orange Park, Fla. home where her daughter was held hostage, raped, and killed six years ago Thursday. The burning was part of a training exercise for the local fire department. "Burn, baby, burn," she said as the house went up in flames.

Thompson's seven-year-old daughter, Somer, was abducted by Jarred Harrell on her way home from school and held captive in his parents' former home, in the midst of foreclosure. Harrell later confessed to raping and killing Somer before dumping her body in the trash; she was found two days later in a Georgia landfill. He's serving a lifetime prison sentence.

The home was eventually transferred to Thompson's ownership. From the Florida Times-Union:

The house, owned by Harrell's mother, became vacant and eventually went into foreclosure. The bank transferred ownership to Diena Thompson's Somer Thompson Foundation, which then donated it to the Orange Park Fire Department for the training exercise. Future plans for the property include a possible memorial garden, but Thompson said nothing has been finalized.

"I get to burn their house down," Thompson told the Times-Union. "I'm the big bad wolf this time knocking down your door, not the other way around. It's really nice to know that I'm not ever going to have to drive in this neighborhood again and see this piece of trash."

[H/T NY Daily News // Screengrab via WJXT]

Conan O'Brien and The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun hanging out nude in a Korean spa was uncomfortable for everyone involved, except for one very forward naked man who was happy to grab Conan's pasty white pecs. Conan doesn't speak any Korean, but one naked man squeezing the breast of another naked man is the universal language.

A lesser-known fact about Conan is that he's got abs way beyond anything you'd expect to see on lanky, 50-year-old comedian. Even Jeff Goldblum is an admirer of Conan's "six-pack-or-a-twelve-pack-or-something," but it's rarely been seen since he showed it off in that shower scene with Chelsea Handler. You'll see a lot of his whatever-pack here.

You'll also see Conan get tortured by a masseur, roll around in a roomful of "cocoa puffs," and confuse the hell out of a bunch of spa visitors who, despite not knowing who this enormous ginger gentleman is and why he's all up in their jimjilbang with a camera crew, have fantastic comedic timing.

Weird Conan is best Conan.

[h/t Team Coco]

Police in Pasco, Washington, shot and killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes Tuesday after the 35-year-old allegedly threw rocks at a group of officers. A video uploaded to YouTube shows a person who appears to be Zambrano-Montes being shot several times near a busy intersection as he runs away from the police.

Ryan Flanagan, Adam Wright, and Adrian Alaniz, the officers involved in the shooting, have been placed on administrative leave, according to a statement from the Pasco Police Department. Police chief Bob Metzger told NBC News that the officers had received reports of Zambrano-Montes throwing rocks at vehicles before they arrived at the scene.

Zambrano-Montes' killing was the fourth fatal police shooting in Pasco in the past sixth months, the Tri-City Herald notes. In three of those instances, the shooters were Pasco police officers; the fourth involved the Benton County Sheriff's Department.

The video above, published yesterday, shows a man running across a street at a traffic light as police fire their weapons from the opposite side. Eventually, the officers pursue him across the street and fire several more shots, at which point the man falls to the ground. A longer video of the incident taken from a different camera was uploaded to Facebook.

An unnamed witness told NBC News that Zambrano-Montes "kept on screaming, 'shoot me, shoot me'" at the officers as he threw rocks. Benjamin Patrick, another witness, told the Seattle Times that Zambrano-Montes was unarmed and "just trying to walk away" when he was killed. According to Metzger, police used a Taser on Zambrano-Montes before shooting him.

About 100 people attended a rally in Pasco yesterday to protest the killing, the Tri-City Herald reports.

Police in the Netherlands raided an otherwise normal-looking house in the city of Haarlem last week when they surmised from the lack of snow on its roof that there was some suspicious activity going on within. The house was full of sweet, sticky reefer. Go figure.

The Telegraph reports that when the police arrived at the house, which was the only one on the street not covered with a light dusting of snow, they discovered an "industrial-scale cultivation of cannabis" and all kinds of heat lamps to nurture the owner's little baby buds.

While the Netherlands has lax laws regarding weed consumption (spring break, babyyy), it is illegal to grow more than five cannabis plants at home. As a warning to other growhouses in the Netherlands, Dutch police tweeted out a photo of the snowless house asking house owners to snitch on their neighbors. Very unchill.

Kijk eens in uw wijk naar de daken. Geen sneeuw? Mogelijke #hennepkwekerij. Bel 0900-8844 of anoniem 0800-7000. ^ps pic.twitter.com/X0zFZWEnNp

— Politie Delft (@PolDelft) February 5, 2015

[Image via Twitter]

Good morning, sweet lover. Our bed is warm and solid. We have a bounty of food to share, food that other lovers have left behind for us. It is warm and pungent where we rest our heads. Wait...what is happening? What's that noise? Why is this dumpster moving?

The Associated Press reports that an inebriated couple near Tampa, Florida who had been snuggling quietly in a dumpster were awoken to a different kind of motion when their temporary domicile was picked up and the pair was dumped into a garbage truck.

The couple caused quite a commotion when their home was disrupted, and began angrily banging on the walls of the garbage truck, probably shouting something like, "Rude!!! We were sleeping in here!!!"

Police who came to the scene to help the lovebirds initially believed the couple had been living in the dumpster, but discovered instead that "they were highly intoxicated after hanging out at a nearby casino."

Happy Valentine's Day!

[Image via Shutterstock]

Twenty-eight inmates escaped from the Nova Mutum jail near Cuiaba, Brazil after several women drugged and handcuffed three wardens, having seduced them with promises of an orgy, the Mirror reports.

According to the Mirror, three women—one reportedly a girlfriend of a prisoner—arrived at the prison early Thursday morning, around 3 o'clock. The women reportedly asked to be let inside to "chat and drink," eventually leading the three prison guards to the staff's sleeping quarters.

"They served them cheap whiskey with some substance to knock them out, then unlocked the central gate which accesses the internal cells," Police Chief Angelina de Andrade Ferreira told a news conference. "Whoever wanted to escape left by the front door."

Police found a bag of lingerie and law enforcement-themed dominatrix outfits, believed to have been worn by the women who came to the prison on Thursday morning. Authorities believe the jailbreak was planned by 18-year-old Bruno Amorim, serving time for attempted murder, robbery, and firearms possession.

The inmates made off with rifles, shotguns, revolvers, and some ammunition, Ferreira said. The three wardens have been arrested and will be charged with "facilitating a jailbreak" and "culpable embezzlement."

Eight of the 28 escaped inmates have been returned to prison.