These are the top maybe-not headlines from the past 84-hours presented by The Conversation Project from raw engagement data from our social media to the headlines posted over the past weekend.
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The 8 topics that our followers ranked as the most conversational are:
OIL DRONE ATTACK DAMAGE REVEALED AT SAUDI ARAMCO KHURAIS OIL FACILITY
Abqaiq, located in the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern province, is the world’s largest oil processing facility and crude oil stabilization plant with a processing capacity of more than 7 million barrels per day (bpd). Khurais, which lies about 110 miles southwest of Abqaiq, has capacity to pump around 1.5 million bpd. In a tour run by the state-owned oil company, reporters were shown the damage at Aramco’s facilities and the rebuilding work taking place. A company executive conducting the tour told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble that 200 people were inside the Khurais facility when the sudden attack targeted four separate locations at the production plants. The officials added that by the time the staff at the Khurais facility had attempted to put the fires out from the first wave of attacks, more strikes had targeted the plant.
[SOURCE: cnbc.com]
DOD DELETES TWEET THAT JOKED ABOUT BLOWING UP MILLENNIALS TRYING TO STORM AREA 51
On Friday, the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDSHUB) tweeted a picture of a B-2 bomber on the flight line with a formation of airmen in front of it along with the caption: “The last thing #Millenials will see if they attempt the #area51raid today.” If death is easy and comedy is hard, jokes about wiping out millennials with precision guided munitions are particularly difficult to pull off. The tweet no longer exists online, but Task & Purpose was able to get a screenshot of it before it was deleted. “Last night a DVIDSHUB employee posted a tweet that in NO WAY supports the stance of the Department of Defense,” DVIDSHUB said in a statement to Task & Purpose on Saturday. “It was inappropriate and we apologize for this mistake.”
[SOURCE: taskandpurpose.com]
MUSIC STARTS FOR EARTHLINGS AROUND AREA 51 EVENTS IN NEVADA
The “Storm Area 51” invitation spawned festivals in the tiny Nevada towns of Rachel and Hiko nearest the military site, and a more than two-hour drive from Las Vegas. Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee estimated late Thursday that about 1,500 people had gathered at the festival sites and said more than 150 people also made the rugged trip several additional miles on bone-rattling dirt roads to get within selfie distance of the gates. An Associated Press photographer said it wasn’t immediately clear if a woman who began ducking under a gate and a man who urinated nearby were arrested after the crowd gathered about 3 a.m. Friday.
[SOURCE: apnews.com]
SI: CALVIN JOHNSON SMOKED POT AFTER HIS GAMES INSTEAD OF TAKING OPIOIDS
Calvin Johnson, who retired from the NFL after playing nine seasons, told writer Michael Rosenberg that he would heal himself after every game by smoking marijuana. Johnson’s revelation comes at an interesting time as the NFL’s marijuana policy could be an issue in upcoming CBA negotiations with the NFLPA. In exchange for the players agreeing to an 18-game regular season or an expanded playoff field, many NFL owners might be willing to “make concessions to the union on the commissioner’s disciplinary authority and the sport’s marijuana policy,” according to The Washington Post.
[SOURCE: insidehook.com]
UGLY SCENE ERUPTS AFTER UFC FIGHT RULED NO CONTEST
Yair Rodriguez (11-2 MMA, 7-1 UFC) hit Jeremy Stephens (28-16 MMA, 15-15 UFC) with an open-fingered swipe that landed in Stephens’ left eye in the first exchange of the featherweight matchup. After the full 5 minutes to recover elapsed, the bout was ruled a no contest, leading to an ugly scene in which bottles and debris were thrown into the octagon at Mexico City Arena. Referee Herb Dean did everything within his authority to let Stephens continue after Stephens took the eye rake. Dean repeatedly reminded Stephens he could take the full 5 minutes allotted under the rules and made the cageside doctor aware, as well.
[SOURCE: usatoday.com]
WOMAN TRIPLES SIZE OF HER LIPS WITH 15 SURGICAL PROCEDURES
Twenty-two-year old Andrea Emilova Ivanova, from Sofia in Bulgaria, says she dreamt of having fuller lips from a young age and now she’s an adult she’s happy to fork out for fillers to achieve her goal. Andrea, who studies German Philology at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, says she’s visited dozens of clinics in her home city and pays around £135 ($168) per treatment. Lippy linguist Andrea said: “I like my lips now, more than before and I feel very good and very happy with my new lips, because according to me with bigger lips I look prettier and in Bulgaria this is fashion now.
[SOURCE: ladbible.com]
A ROMANIAN TV SHOW HOST HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF ‘EXTREME RACISM’ AFTER SAYING SERENA WILLIAMS LOOKS LIKE ONE OF ‘THOSE MONKEYS AT THE ZOO’ LIVE ON AIR
“Serena Williams looks exactly like one of those monkeys at the zoo with the red asses,” Radu Banciu said on his late-evening show on B1 TV, according to a translation of a press release last week from the National Council for Combating Discrimination in Bucharest by Insider’s associate translation editor, Ruqayyah Moynihan. “If monkeys wore trousers, they’d look exactly like Serena Williams does on the court,” Banciu said. Banciu has been fined about $1,875 for the comments. But it does not appear that he will lose his job.
[SOURCE: businessinsider.com]
AMERICAN AIRLINES EMERGENCY LANDING AFTER PASSENGER SMOKES JOINT
We’re told the plane was going from Phoenix to Minneapolis, but an hour into the flight the pilot went on the intercom and said they had to make an emergency landing in Denver because of “a security issue in the back.” The passengers were a little freaked out, trying to figure out what was going on. The buzz in the cabin was that someone in the back said he was telling everyone around him, he was on cocaine. That’s when the guy with dreads in the video ran to the back of the plane into the bathroom and locked the door. Passengers tell us the flight attendants were super concerned and huddled around the bathroom door, trying to coax the guy out, to no avail.
[SOURCE: tmz.com]
Eight Things To Talk About uses the raw engagement data from the social media engagement from The Conversation Project to generate the top-ranking headlines over the course of a weekend.
A full weeks’ data (from Friday to Friday) is compiled, weighed, and sorted to produce the content for the Wrap-Up Show with J Cleveland Payne, published every Saturday as a podcast available at ThisIsTheConversation.com or wherever your favorite podcasts are found.
To ‘participate’ in the rankings of the headlines for this newsletter or the podcast, follow the Conversation Project on social media and engage with the posts to give them more ‘votes.’ The Conversation Project can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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