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April 26th, 2024

Diversions

People With Issues | Suspicions Confirmed

News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

By News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd

Published Sept. 27, 2016

People With Issues | Suspicions Confirmed


Joshua Long, 26, was arrested in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in June for possession of a suspected-stolen human brain (which he allegedly kept in a shopping bag under the porch at his aunt's trailer home). Police believe that the brain had been a medical teaching aid, but that Long was lacing his marijuana with the brain's embalming fluid. (Long and a former resident of the trailer home called the brain "Freddy.") [PennLive.com (Mechanicsburg, Pa.), 7-15-2016]




Many website and app users are suspected of "agreeing" to privacy policies and "terms of service" without comprehending them (or even reading them), though most judges routinely assume the user to have consented to be bound by them. In a controlled-test report released in July, researchers from York University and University of Connecticut found that 74 percent skipped the privacy policy altogether, but, of the "readers," the average time spent was 73 seconds (for wordage that should have taken 30 minutes), and time "reading" terms of service was 51 seconds when it should have taken 16 minutes. (If users had read closely, they might have noticed that they had agreed to share all their personal data with the National Security Agency and that terms of service included giving up their first-born child.) [ArsTechnica.com, 7-12-2016]