Weird or Funny News Stories
I Watched Sperm Race With Hundreds of Teens. It Was a Total Sh*t Show.
THERE ARE MANY things one can do to relax at the end of the week. Dinner and drinks with your partner. A baseball game. The movies. I chose to spend the last Friday night in April inside a downtown Los Angeles sound stage, designed to resemble a Vegas title fight arena, to watch sperm race.
This Sperm Racing event (I know, I know) was conceived by Eric Zhu, a 17-year-old tech entrepreneur from Indiana who got kicked out of high school after the principal caught him taking fundraising meetings from the bathroom. The precocious teen now lives in San Francisco, running one of his bathroom-born companies, Aviato, which builds B2B software tools. He’s also a general partner at Bachmanity Capital, which backs startups in deep tech and space (as in literal outer space).
According to Zhu, the idea for Sperm Racing started as a joke. An unnamed billionaire—described by the event’s (also teenage) media handler as someone who moves in the same circles as right-wing, tech demi-god Peter Thiel—flew Zhu to New York and asked for his “craziest” idea. He pitched competitive sperm racing, assuming it would flop. Instead, the billionaire loved it. He didn’t love it enough to fund it, but the reaction got the ball rolling. Zhu soon raised $1.5 million, mostly from friends at early-stage venture funds, to “turn health into a sport.”
The event was supposed to take place at the Hollywood Palladium, a classic Los Angeles concert venue that’s hosted everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jay-Z. Zhu claimed Sperm Racing would draw 5,000 people, which should’ve raised a red flag, considering the Palladium maxes out at around 4,000 people. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn the venue cancelled their contract days before the race for reasons Zhu wouldn’t disclose. Instead, I got a last-minute email the day before the race inviting press to swing by a setup at a totally different location: Los Angeles Center Studios, where they just so happened to be filming The Lincoln Lawyer. A lucky break, maybe—just in case things got so out of hand the Sperm Racing team needed a slick TV attorney.
That evening, Zhu met me and about a half dozen other members of the media inside a cavernous soundstage, where three dozen production assistants were hammering, shouting, and trying to rig up a digital scoreboard and a jumbotron the size of a highway billboard. Zhu was accompanied by Shane Fan, his co-founder (one of three) who has his own blockchain startup but is better known for making social media videos that estimate people’s real height.
Drawing inspiration from F1, UFC, and the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, Sperm Racing would include two races. The first would be a single, prizeless, do-or-die-match between internet personalities Noah Boat and Jimmy Zhang. Then, the title match, a best-of-three race between Asher Proeger, a freshman at UCLA, and Tristan Wilcher, a sophomore at rival USC. Both had been given $1,000 to “train” during a prep period that, according to tongue-in-cheek promo videos, involved Wilcher compulsively working out and downing two gallons of pineapple juice. Proeger apparently focused on eating ice cream, steak, and tanning his balls—which, ironically, reads more like a checklist of what not to do for healthy sperm. The guy with the fastest swimmers would get $10,000.
“It was a lot harder than we thought to race sperm,” Zhu said as he explained that his team had to scramble to pull together the elaborate production and develop the technology that could somehow make watching sperm…compelling. First, the racers would give a sperm sample at the venue about an hour before showtime. It would be warmed, filtered for the fastest swimmers, and placed on a microscopic track in fluid that mimics the female reproductive tract. The sperm would then be released, and computer vision—basically AI that interprets visual data—would follow their movement and turn it into the animated race that we, and those watching the livestream at home, saw on screen. Each race would run about two minutes.
Click on the link for the full story
THERE ARE MANY things one can do to relax at the end of the week. Dinner and drinks with your partner. A baseball game. The movies. I chose to spend the last Friday night in April inside a downtown Los Angeles sound stage, designed to resemble a Vegas title fight arena, to watch sperm race.
This Sperm Racing event (I know, I know) was conceived by Eric Zhu, a 17-year-old tech entrepreneur from Indiana who got kicked out of high school after the principal caught him taking fundraising meetings from the bathroom. The precocious teen now lives in San Francisco, running one of his bathroom-born companies, Aviato, which builds B2B software tools. He’s also a general partner at Bachmanity Capital, which backs startups in deep tech and space (as in literal outer space).
According to Zhu, the idea for Sperm Racing started as a joke. An unnamed billionaire—described by the event’s (also teenage) media handler as someone who moves in the same circles as right-wing, tech demi-god Peter Thiel—flew Zhu to New York and asked for his “craziest” idea. He pitched competitive sperm racing, assuming it would flop. Instead, the billionaire loved it. He didn’t love it enough to fund it, but the reaction got the ball rolling. Zhu soon raised $1.5 million, mostly from friends at early-stage venture funds, to “turn health into a sport.”
The event was supposed to take place at the Hollywood Palladium, a classic Los Angeles concert venue that’s hosted everyone from Frank Sinatra to Jay-Z. Zhu claimed Sperm Racing would draw 5,000 people, which should’ve raised a red flag, considering the Palladium maxes out at around 4,000 people. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn the venue cancelled their contract days before the race for reasons Zhu wouldn’t disclose. Instead, I got a last-minute email the day before the race inviting press to swing by a setup at a totally different location: Los Angeles Center Studios, where they just so happened to be filming The Lincoln Lawyer. A lucky break, maybe—just in case things got so out of hand the Sperm Racing team needed a slick TV attorney.
That evening, Zhu met me and about a half dozen other members of the media inside a cavernous soundstage, where three dozen production assistants were hammering, shouting, and trying to rig up a digital scoreboard and a jumbotron the size of a highway billboard. Zhu was accompanied by Shane Fan, his co-founder (one of three) who has his own blockchain startup but is better known for making social media videos that estimate people’s real height.
Drawing inspiration from F1, UFC, and the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing match, Sperm Racing would include two races. The first would be a single, prizeless, do-or-die-match between internet personalities Noah Boat and Jimmy Zhang. Then, the title match, a best-of-three race between Asher Proeger, a freshman at UCLA, and Tristan Wilcher, a sophomore at rival USC. Both had been given $1,000 to “train” during a prep period that, according to tongue-in-cheek promo videos, involved Wilcher compulsively working out and downing two gallons of pineapple juice. Proeger apparently focused on eating ice cream, steak, and tanning his balls—which, ironically, reads more like a checklist of what not to do for healthy sperm. The guy with the fastest swimmers would get $10,000.
“It was a lot harder than we thought to race sperm,” Zhu said as he explained that his team had to scramble to pull together the elaborate production and develop the technology that could somehow make watching sperm…compelling. First, the racers would give a sperm sample at the venue about an hour before showtime. It would be warmed, filtered for the fastest swimmers, and placed on a microscopic track in fluid that mimics the female reproductive tract. The sperm would then be released, and computer vision—basically AI that interprets visual data—would follow their movement and turn it into the animated race that we, and those watching the livestream at home, saw on screen. Each race would run about two minutes.
Click on the link for the full story
RACCOON GRABS METH PIPE DURING TRAFFIC STOP, COPS SAY
It seems Rocket Raccoon's fallen on hard times ... 'cause instead of saving the Marvel Universe, he's smoking meth in Ohio -- or, at least a raccoon that looks like him is.
Body cam footage from in Springfield Township, Ohio Monday evening is going viral after an officer pulled a woman over and told her she had a warrant out for her arrest.
After putting her in cuffs, he goes back to the car ... and finds a raccoon sitting in the front seat -- hands wrapped around a glass cylinder.
The officer claims it's a "meth pipe" ... and, he's giggling while watching the raccoon playing with it.
Click on the link for the full article and video
It seems Rocket Raccoon's fallen on hard times ... 'cause instead of saving the Marvel Universe, he's smoking meth in Ohio -- or, at least a raccoon that looks like him is.
Body cam footage from in Springfield Township, Ohio Monday evening is going viral after an officer pulled a woman over and told her she had a warrant out for her arrest.
After putting her in cuffs, he goes back to the car ... and finds a raccoon sitting in the front seat -- hands wrapped around a glass cylinder.
The officer claims it's a "meth pipe" ... and, he's giggling while watching the raccoon playing with it.
Click on the link for the full article and video