Strange News & Netflix

But before that, I'm going to start with a little bit of strange news. So without further ado, let's get into it. You are listening to the ninth episode of English with Dane. Hit it. So here it is. And I got it from Reuters. They tend to have good stories. This one happened three days ago. So on April 17th, the headline reads Thieves pinch rifles as Kenyan police watch Champions League football. Real quick, in this context, to pinch means to steal. Alright? Let's keep reading.

It says The temptation to watch WEFA Champions League quarterfinals football on TV featuring both Messi and Ronaldo backfired for some Kenya policemen when thieves raided their unmanned post and made off with weaponry. The incident occurred on Tuesday night after the officers shut down the Camorwan police post in a western region of Kenya and went in search of a TV screen.

As they watched two matches, Manchester United against Barcelona and Juventus against Ajax on TV at a nearby shopping mall, thieves raided the post and escaped with three rifles and ammunition, according to a police report seen by Reuters. It was not immediately known whether the absent without leave officers were disciplined. And as a final note, it says European football, particularly the English Premier League, is highly popular in Kenya and across the African continent.

So let's recap because there was some tricky vocabulary in there. So police officers left their post in order to go watch the Champions League matches that were going on, that were happening. They weren't authorized to leave, but they did so anyway. While they were away from their post watching the matches, three rifles were stolen by thieves, along with some ammunition, so bullets. Quick vocabulary recap. In the first paragraph, it says that their temptation backfired.

When something backfires, it goes wrong, right? It doesn't go according to plan. Then we have three tricky words in one sentence. It says, Thieves raided their unmanned post and made off with weaponry. A raid is a fast surprise attack on an enemy. So to raid means to quickly rob or attack, okay? With an element of surprise. The next one is unmanned. If the post was unmanned, it means there was nobody there. And finally, it says that the thieves made off with weaponry.

To make off with something means to take something and get away. So they made off with the weaponry. Oh and one more. It said, it was not immediately known whether the absent without leave officers were disciplined. Absent without leave. Basically, that means that they were unauthorized to leave their post. They were absent but without a leave. Usually to leave is used as a verb, right? To leave. I have to leave at four o'clock. But in this case, leave is used as a noun.

To be given a leave means to be given permission to leave, to be excused. So the officers were absent without leave. Terrible decision by the officers, but I guess that's the power of football. Okay, let's move on to another one. This one is from Australia and it happened on the 14th of April, so six days ago. The headline reads Man nabbed with exotic fish in a bag around neck at Australia Airport. Nabbed means caught, alright? Apprehended.

So he was caught with exotic fish in a bag around his neck at the airport. Let's keep reading. Vietnamese man was arrested at Australia's Adelaide Airport after he allegedly tried to smuggle into the country an exotic live fish in a plastic bag around his neck. The thirty-four year old man who arrived off a flight from Malaysia produced the plastic bag containing the fish during a frisk search, Australian Border Force said in a statement on Sunday.

According to Australian law, the maximum penalty for wildlife trade offenses is ten years imprisonment with a fine of up to two hundred and ten thousand dollars, Australian dollars that is, which is around one hundred and fifty thousand US dollars. But that's for individuals. For corporations it can be up to one million dollars.

The fish which was assessed for biosecurity risk was found to be a red Asian arawana, an endangered species native to Southeast Asia and also considered auspicious in Chinese and other Asian cultures. Auspicious means conducive to success, all right? Favorable. Let's continue. It is illegal to own an Asian arawana in Australia unless legally imported, while trade in the fish is strictly controlled under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

The Australian Border Force said that the fish had to be humanely euthanized since exotic species imported illegally could become pests and introduce new diseases. The Vietnamese man was arrested and will appear in court on May 15th. Poor fish. It had nothing to do with the situation but was euthanized. Oh well. So again, quick vocabulary check. We already discussed the verb to nab, right? To catch.

But let's look at the verb to smuggle, which means to move goods illegally in or out of a country. It's usually used in the context of smuggling drugs. However, in this case, the Vietnamese man was smuggling an endangered species of fish. There was another word, another verb, to frisk, which means to search someone for weapons or drugs, usually with your hands. So basically what they do before you get on an airplane, right? Before you board a plane.

So the maximum penalty for this offense, as we read, is 10 years in prison and 150,000 US dollars. They take this kind of thing very seriously in Australia. So yeah, if you were planning on smuggling exotic fish into Australia anytime soon, it's time to reconsider. Okay, that story was from iol.co.az. I have one more before moving on. This one is a little bit intense. It happened on the 11th of April, so nine days ago, and it happened in Taiwan.

Okay. The headline reads Doctors find four bees living in woman's eye, feeding off her tears. Yes, you heard that correctly. Four bees living in a woman's eye, feeding off her tears. So surviving on her tears. Let's read on to see what happened. It says, The 29-year-old woman had no idea why her eye was swollen shut. She was in unbearable pain and could not stop tearing up, so producing tears. The Taiwanese woman said she was confused why what she thought was an infection kept getting worse.

But then the woman received treatment at Fuyin University Hospital in Taiwan, and doctors didn't find a bacterial infection. While inspecting her eyes through a microscope, Hang Chi Ting, the hospital's head of ophthalmology, witnessed something he had never seen before. Insect legs were wiggling from one of her eye sockets. To wiggle means to move with small movements, okay? So he yanked out or pulled out a small bee called a sweat bee, and it was alive. The doctor, however, wasn't done.

Soon he pulled out a second bee and a third. And finally a fourth bee was pulled from the woman's eyelid. Then it says, craving salt, the bees had been feeding off her tears, the doctor said at a news conference last week, describing the odd medical diagnosis as a world first. The insects had made a new home inside the woman's eyelid, that is, until they were successfully removed alive.

The doctor later said, I saw something that looked like insect legs, so I pulled them out under a microscope slowly, one at a time and without damaging their bodies. So how did sweat bees end up inside a twenty nine-year-old woman's eye? He suspects it all started the previous day. As the woman recounted in the news conference, she was taking part in Qing Ming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day. The woman said, I was visiting and tidying a relative's grave with my family.

I was squatting down and pulling out weeds, so unwanted plants. As CTS News reported, she said that she felt something get in her eye. Thinking it was only dirt, she cleaned her eye with water and did not rub her eyes for much of the rest of the day. She didn't think much of it until her eyes began to swell up. She didn't think much of it until her eyes began to swell up later that night, and she experienced a stinging pain that made her eye tear up. Remember to tear up means to produce tears.

It would have been very likely for sweat bees to be around her at that time, Hung told reporters, as they tend to nest near graves and in the mountains. At the hospital the following day, when the doctor discovered that the sweat bees were feasting on her tears, the doctor was relieved that the twenty nine year old woman who wore contact lenses had not rubbed her eyes excessively when the pain got worse.

If she had, it could have inflamed her cornea and potentially led to blindness, so to permanent loss of her vision. He said, To my knowledge, this is the first case of a bee or wasp getting caught in a part of a person's anatomy. I'm sure the sweat bees got next to the eye and were squished between the eye and eyelid. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The woman was discharged and is expected to make a full recovery, and the bees are still alive by the way.

The doctor then said that this is the first time that they've seen something like this in Taiwan. Wow. That's like my worst nightmare. That's like a bad dream. And I'm sure some of you listening to the show are scared of bees and don't even want to think about it. Another quick vocabulary check and we'll move on. In the article it said that the woman's eye was swollen shut.

Swollen is the past participle of the verb to swell, spelled S-W E L L, which means to become larger or rounder in size, typically as a result of an accumulation of fluid. Another word from the article was craving, from the verb to crave, which means to feel a powerful desire for something, as in, I'm really craving some chocolate. And finally, I also saw the verb to squat or squat down that was used in the context of the woman squatting down to clean the tomb in the cemetery.

To squat or squat down means to crouch or sit with your knees bent and your heels close to or touching your butt, right? Okay, let's end the segment there. I hope you enjoyed these strange stories. Quick music break, and I'll be right back to talk to you about some Netflix related stuff. Similar experiences in a way, but extremely different too. So, like millions of people around the world, I'm a Netflix fan.

I love getting home after a long day, grabbing some food, and sitting down to watch some shows, maybe a movie. Although I must say, the movie selection on Netflix is terrible. If you want movies, I think you are better off with HBO or Amazon Prime or something else. To be better off, by the way, means to be in a more desirable situation, right? A better situation. So if you want a good movie selection, you are better off with HBO or Amazon Prime.

However, Netflix does have some excellent shows or series, you can say both. It has Stranger Things, House of Cards, Big Mouth, Black Mirror, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which I watch, I'm not afraid to admit it. But one that I wanted to talk about, the experience that I wanted to talk about, has to do with one of those, with Black Mirror.

If you're unfamiliar with Black Mirror, if you don't know it, it's a show that examines modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies, right? It's a dark show and often makes you feel uncomfortable, but I love it. I love it because although it's dark and a little bit crazy, it feels very possible. It feels like we could be living in those times really soon. It doesn't seem like something very distant, alright? I highly recommend it.

However, Sinemargo, what I wanted to talk about isn't an episode of Black Mirror. It's the movie. They recently released a movie with a very interesting spin, an interesting twist, so a different element. In this movie, you are in charge of making decisions. It is a choose your own adventure movie. If you're around my age, you might remember those Goosebumps books, where you would read a page and at the bottom it would say, if you want to do this, go to page this and keep reading.

But if you want to do that, go to this page and keep reading. So you could choose the path, right? The way, the direction in which the story developed. So this Black Mirror movie is just like that, but much cooler. With your remote control, you make decisions. At first, they're simple decisions, such as which cereal the main character eats for breakfast. However, later on, they become much more complicated, more complex, and a lot more intense.

By the way, I didn't mention it, but the movie is called Bandersnatch, and it's named after a book. I'm not sure if the book is real, but it appears in the movie. The reason that I'm bringing this up, the reason that I'm mentioning this movie, is because I thought it was incredible. Not only in terms of how it was made, but in terms of content. It's outstanding. I can't say enough about it. I think you need to experience it on your own.

So I mentioned that I had two experiences, two similar but very different experiences. So I watched Bandersnatch, the Black Mirror movie, and I loved it. But then a few days ago, I go on Netflix and I see that there's another choose your own adventure thing. This time it's a show, a survival show with bear grills. If you're unfamiliar with bear grills, he's like an ex-Navy SEAL or ex-marine or something.

And he shows you and he shows you how to survive if you are ever in a desert or jungle or mountain by yourself, right? It's a survival show. He eats insects, he builds shelter, and he finds himself in general in difficult situations. And now he has a show in which you can decide what he does. And I couldn't watch more than five or ten minutes of it. I thought it was terrible. And I thought it was terrible for a few different reasons.

The first reason is unlike Bandersnatch, which is a fictional story in which you can do whatever you want, the Bear Grill show is limited to reality. So the decisions were like should I walk by the river or through the jungle? Should I walk on this log or should I swing on this vine? A vine is what Tarzan swings from, okay, una liana in Spanish.

And you knew that the options were safe because they were created because they created these situations on purpose, right, to show you how bear grills does them. It was really not exciting. And then to make the situation worse, there is this invented story about how he's going through the jungle to save a doctor who is delivering medicine, but she went missing. Nobody can find her. And now we have to find her. So it's this invented story along with these stupid choices.

I don't know, I thought it was ridiculous. I was watching it and I almost felt insulted. Insulted that they thought that the average viewer or spectator would enjoy it. Also, it's like for kids, but then it's not for kids. I don't know. I've watched Bear Grills before, and I like his show. Right? It was a good show just as it was. I think they thought that just with the novelty of making it a choose your own adventure thing, we would think it was incredible.

And then they realized that it wasn't enough because it wasn't exciting. And they added the part about saving a doctor that was lost in the jungle. Just no. I give it a three out of ten. I was not impressed. But if you get a chance to watch Bandersnatch, the Black Mirror movie, I highly recommend that you do. Okay, let's end it there. That's it for today's show. Tune in on Wednesday for episode 10 of English with Dane.

And in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iVox, Stitcher, etc. And remember, the best way to support the show is to give it a five-star rating and leave a comment. Okay, until next time. Bye bye.