Tag: stank

Are you ready for smart underwear?

Some researchers have invented smart underwear that monitors your flatulence. Side note: This conversation could go a couple of different ways, so let’s explore both! 🙂

On the serious side, this is actually helpful. Scientists can learn a lot about people’s gut health based on their flatulence, and up until now it was difficult to study. It has been attempted, but it involved “extremely invasive techniques”, and the less said about that the better! Now, with smart underwear, people can easily submit information about their microbiomes to scientists. It contributes to a research study called the Human Flatus Atlas. It tracks the amount of farts per day and the hydrogen content. Did you know your toots are made of mostly hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen? Methane is also in the mix, but less common.

The first group test with this new underwear included 19 healthy participants, and it found that the average number of farts per day was 32, ranging from 4 to a maximum of 59. While 59 is a rather large number of farts for one day, I had a college roommate who once passed gas over 100 times in a day. It was so excessive that he actually counted them. And I believe him, because I unfortunately had to witness some of that. I don’t know what he ate to enable that superpower.

Someone had told me about this smart underwear, so I searched for info on it, and one headline said, “Everyone does this. But how much is too much? Scientists want to know.” The article started out with: “Whether you call it breaking wind, sounding the trumpet, or cutting the cheese, everyone farts. But how much gas is too much? The short answer: no one knows – yet.” It’s safe to say that 100+ is too much for one day. Not only was something unusual going on with their health, but probably everyone around them!

Is this topic gross? To some, yes. But as another article said:

Whether you’re breaking wind, farting hard or just letting out a quick toot, flatulence is — whether you want to admit it or not — as much a daily necessity as breathing.

So while it is necessary, some people don’t like to talk about it. That’s fine. If you are one of those, you should probably not finish the rest of this post. You have been warned. 🙂

On the lighter side, this invention could be used for fun! For people who enjoy farting, there could be a competition setting. Someone could create a way for friends to have a leaderboard. The results could be uploaded to a shared site or sent via text. The smart underwear could track the number of times, the loudest volume, and the most stank. Obviously this isn’t for everyone, but I guarantee there are some people who would enjoy making it competitive.

the dangers of selling farts

You might think the title said “the dangers of smelling farts”, which would be a more expected post, but that’s a different subject entirely, and one I don’t care to dig into. This is actually about selling farts.

Before I get into the details here, let me warn you that this is dumpster fire type material. So if you really don’t want to know, you should stop here. I’ll even provide a link to take you to a random post here (which is also in the sidebar): Random Randomness.

The story starts with a 31-year-old reality star who had a side-business of selling her farts in a jar. I’m not too surprised that someone had the idea, but I am surprised that someone actually followed through with the idea, and I’m shocked that she has made over $200,000 somehow with this “job”. Apparently she was selling them for $100 to $500 each, and she was selling a lot. I don’t get it. I figured this was satire / parody / fiction / fake news. But a search has it showing up on legit news sources. So I just don’t know… Who pays that much for stank?!? I have no idea how famous she is — I don’t follow “reality TV” at all — but it really doesn’t matter. Why would you pay money to smell anybody’s farts? Perhaps if a jar was a dollar or two, I could see a few people buying one for a prank gift or a “dirty Santa” party, but not at hundreds of dollars. (BTW, some people have “dirty Santa” parties where they expect legitimate gifts around a certain dollar value, so it’s good to know the expectations.) I’ve seen prank gifts of candles that smell like poop, but they were $20, which is beyond prank gift budget for me. But I digress…

So far we’ve discussed how this is gross and/or silly, but it gets worse — hence the dangerous part. Demand for these fart jars increased to over 50 per week, and this woman switched her diet to beans and eggs. Those foods are good and healthy in moderation, but there was no moderation here. At one point the gas pains got so intense that she thought she was having a heart attack or stroke and went to the hospital. Fortunately for her it was “just a very, very severe case of gas”. It was enough to make her retire… somewhat… (Yeah, there’s more…)

The self-described “fartrepreneur” has decided to sell digital fart jars in the form of NFTs. (If you don’t know, an NFT is basically a digital item like a picture or video that is registered in the blockchain; it’s a trendy concept right now, with many people trying to cash in with dumb stuff, looking to get-rich-quick.) Anyway, I don’t know why anyone would buy a photo of a fart jar, so I reckon I’m not the intended audience.

This isn’t the first “fart art” I’ve heard of, though… there is actually some music that has flatulence in it, in a funny way. I’ll provide a link, since if you’re still reading you must have at least some interest in laughing at flatulence (or perhaps in being grossed out by it). 🙂

I hope this doesn’t make you lose too much faith in humanity… But it is a weird world out there…

the danger of cleaning a shared fridge

I used to work in a corporate environment, where a whole floor of people had to share the same refrigerator.  As you might expect, people sometimes forgot about their food and left it in there for a long time.  But a policy was developed that the fridge was cleaned out at the end of every week.   Apparently the AT&T building in San Jose, CA, didn’t have such a policy.

Recently an office worker was cleaning the office fridge, and the resulting smell was so noxious that 28 people needed treatment for vomiting and nausea, and 7 were sent to hospital.  I’ve smelled some stinky stuff before, but that’s inconceivably bad.  Actually, that’s beyond stink — that’s some stank!  They had to evacuate the entire building!  And it gets even worse — the hazmat team was called in!

When I lived at “the bachelor pad” in college, the fridge occasionally got out of control, and we joked about leftovers trying to conquer the fridge, but it never actually happened.   But obviously the mold did take control of that office fridge and required professionals to defeat it.

The irony of that story is that the person cleaning it didn’t get sick, because she couldn’t smell due to allergies.

There’s probably a moral to the story…