This Week in WTF, July 24, 2015

– The grossest thing you’ll see all day (maybe all week): You might just want to trust me on this.

– I’m sure it happens all the time: When prison inmate Ramon Somoza mailed a pro se filing to a judge in Utah, he included a razor blade along with the paperwork. This led to an investigation, but he will not face any charges. The prosecutor reportedly determined that it was an accident:

“He files a number of documents with the court, and he does not have access to white-out,” the prosecutor explained. Using the razor blade, Somoza “cuts out small strips of paper that he uses as white-out if he makes a mistake.”

That’s a really good idea—except for the mailing-it-to-the-judge part—given that correction tape is sure to be in short supply in prison. (h/t Scott Greenfield)

– Where is the deed recorded?: You might not think of real estate litigation as a place for the fanciful and bizarre, but oh how wrong you’d be: Continue reading

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There Might Be Beaver Exudate in Your Yogurt

By Steve from washington, dc, usa (American Beaver) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Via Wikimedia Commons

You’ve probably never heard of castoreum, which Wikipedia defines as:

the exudate from the castor sacs of the mature North American Beaver (Castor canadensis) and the European Beaver (Castor fiber). Within the zoological realm, castoreum is the yellowish secretion of the castor sac in combination with the beaver’s urine, used during scent marking of territory. Both male and female beavers possess a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail.

Why do I mention this? Well, according to the natural-products company Conscious Box, castoreum is commonly used as a food flavoring. Continue reading

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