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80,000lbs of Walnuts Purloined In Northern California
Penurious Penguin writes "While not quite as epic or bitter as losing 600 barrels of maple syrup — in two separate heists, 80,000lbs of walnuts have been stolen in Northern California since last week. The heist was discovered after the walnuts failed to reach their destinations in Miami, FL and Dallas, TX. If you happen to see a large man (approximately 6' 2") driving a white semi-trailer and munching on $300,000 worth of walnuts, it may be the villain. Officers with highly trained squirrels have yet to be posted at interstate weigh-stations."
Thank you, I'll be here all week!
who's there?
Walnut.
Walnut Who?
Walnut too strong, don't lean on t.
(hahahahaha. I crack myself up. get it? walnut? *crack* myself up? come on! )
-badford
What is this place, The Onion?
Okay, so maybe it really did happen...why the F is it on ./?
Nerds could care less about a truckload of nuts.
Hitting America where it hurts....the nuts.
Apple.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
They just look like walnuts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkcOsuV_gmc
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
As the only owner of highly trained squirrels in the country I've had bad experiences working with Californian law enforcement and refuse to do business with them again.
They can try to get some squirrel worker visas from India or the Philippines, but the paperwork is absolutely atrocious and the squirrels only speak broken english. I wish them the best though.
Who would you go to to fence something like that?
No fencing required; obviously this a conspiracy. Here's a quote from The Straightdope:
"Authorities believe the culprit is the same person who also picked up another load of walnuts days earlier from Los Molinos. Those walnuts were intended for Texas, but also disappeared."
Is it an agent working for China, the largest producer of walnuts, next being the U,.S., wanting to control the Great Paper Tiger?
Could it be someone trying to beat the commodities market pricing for walnuts, to cover a loss or to make a profit?
If it turns out to be either one of those, I will ... laugh-out-loud.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
We need to appeal to their talent for finding what was once lost. They can team up with Department of Homeland Security, from their new insane asylum headquarters (St. Elizabeth's Hospital), to locate the missing Freedom Walnuts, and save Democracy in time for the election. Please Rocky and Bullwinkle, save us!
"Authorities believe the culprit is the same person who also picked up another load of walnuts days earlier from Los Molinos. Those walnuts were intended for Texas, but also disappeared."
Good. There's enough nuts in Texas already. At least they weren't headed to California.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Eh, many nerds do consider nuts after years of no GF.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I find it suspicious that your UID ( hutsell ) is merely an "n" away from a permuted nutshell. Who are you working for?
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkcOsuV_gmc
From Wikipedia; "Paulie got his nickname 'Paulie Walnuts' due to hijacking a truck in the early 1990s which he believed to be filled with television-sets, but only contained walnuts."
it's gotta be a large maple walnut cookie in the works, stake out farms they are sure to hit them next
Or, walnut pancakes. Goes perfectly with that missing maple syrup.
Can't find a conspiracy there? Seriously, you're just not trying hard enough!!
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I get da nuts! I just need a little more time, Squeezle.
A friend of mine owns 50 acres in the Central Valley. He used to grow citrus on it to pay the property tax on it.
Then one morning he gets a call, heads out to the farm, finds all 50 acres had been harvested in the middle of the night.
Across the street, there were some pretty ballsy guys selling what were very likely his oranges. The cops didn't do anything ("Can you prove they're your oranges?"). He just wanted to hire them to harvest his farm for next year - it took his normal contract labor something like a week to do the same job.
Waldorf iSalad. You heard it here first.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I couldn't resist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SQGTufqOBQ - Waldorf Salad (Fawlty Towers)
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
... and where exactly are you going to sell them? Craigslist?
http://saveie6.com/
Man, I hate me some walnuts. They don't add anything to the food they are used in, they get stuck in my teeth, and they taste bitter. I wish somebody would steal ALL of them, and get into a huge fireball of a wreck on the highway (with no one hurt, of course). Now, if this were about pecans I might actually give a shit. Pecan pie season is upon us!
BTW, I saw a couple of pretty shady looking squirrels apparently making some sort of deal this morning.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Someone must be planning to get on Santa's good side with a reeaally big plate of cookies.
Be on the lookout for future heists of butter, sugar, flour, raisins, rolled oats in the next few weeks.
Goes perfectly with that missing maple syrup.
BLASPHEMER! You just may burn in hell for wasting perfectly good maple ambrosia on food contaminated with walnuts. But I guess you have to add a little bit of heaven to anything containing walnuts if you are to choke it down, so I hope you don't in fact burn in hell.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
80,000 lbs is peanuts.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The theft of bulk food commodities is becoming more and more of a problem with commodity prices climbing. Even in more traditional areas like grains such as wheat. Most farms, if they don't sell or ship off the combine store their grain in bins or silos sometimes for months, and sell it and ship it slowly. Right now I am looking out my window at a row of shiny bins that hold a crop worth between $100k and $200k per bin depending on how much is in the bin (worth that to me; worth ten times that to the company that I grew under contract for). We actually put padlocks on the bottoms of our more expensive crop bins. Won't keep out a very determined thief, but it will hopefully provide a bit of a pause.
Recently a trucker told me he was hauling out of a remote bin for a farmer. Because it was quite hassle to put the auger in the bin to unload, once he was set up he just left it set up, and would come about twice a day for loads. During that time someone came along with a truck and helped themselves to a load. The bin was about 15 tonnes short; exactly one small truck load. So after that he started taking the belts with him, and disabling the auger's engine. Not a lot of money was lost (this was wheat after all... only between $3k and $4k), but not a happy thing for the trucker who had to make up the difference.
So yes, theft happens in bulk, and it can be a lot of money. Sounds funny, or nutty, but still a serious concern.
WHY?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I thought that said walruses, not walnuts. I should go to sleep. :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
If it had involved eight large tankers of oil (one each of lime, cassia oil, lemon oil, nutmeg oil, coriander oil, neroli oil, and lavendar oil, plus 3 tankers of food grade gum arabic , then there plans would be obvious:
They're planning on making industrial quantities of Open Cola , and they know all of the ingredients of the GPL'ed recipe for open cola from OpenCola. Next they'll be stealing a large tanker of vinegar and a large truck with calcium-carbonate in order to create the vast quantities of fizzy water to reconstitute with the syrup.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/30476
Sugar and cream. The goal is clearly maple walnut ice cream. I just can't work out why. Where is Adam West when we need him?
The cream will be last because it spoils, so watch out for a massive sugar heist next.
No, even worse. nutsell obviously means he is the one who stole them and is now trying to sell the walnuts!
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Maybe not the walnuts themselves, but the pattern is emerging... Maple Syrup, Walnuts, next we'll see sugar missing, then cream. Look for a back-of-the-woods monster ice cream maker and someone's gonna corner the market on maple walnut ice cream, one of my favorites. Won't someone think of the children...
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
The same group that stole hundreds of thousands of gallons of maple syrup from the Canadian strategic reserve?
Folks I believe there is a new supervillian out there. and he is after our food.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
But if they are just doing this: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ellie-krieger/maple-glazed-walnuts-recipe/index.html all they need is some salt...
Be seeing you...
I think a Johnny Cash song would be appropriate right about now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWCDBKx8Q_w
Here we go again!
Wow! While I am amused by the theft of 80,000 lbs of nuts, I wonder what it has to do with Slashdot's mandate. Is there some secret walnut sniffing device being deployed? Are they using formerly secret walnut scanners?
Or am I missing something?
1. Steal 600 barrels of maple syrup.
2. Abscond with 36,287.4 kg of walnuts. (Yes, kg. I'm Canadian, you insensitive clod!)
3. ???
4. Profit!
The thief will have to sell the goods on the black walnut market.
As a 32 year old, I was never taught what lbs are in relation to kilograms or metric tonnes. According to Google, it's about 36 metric tonnes, for anyone who cares.
Follow me
It is elementary. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the solution.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Tender walnut meat is a taste fit for the gods! I'll be making my Kentucky Derby pie for our Thanksgiving potluck in two weeks and I look forward to snacking on the leftover walnuts during the process.
Seriously though, if you're eating bitter walnuts you're not eating good walnuts. Walnuts are one of the least bitter nuts around.
At least it is quite hard to mix it with other products without the customer becoming somewhat intrigued...
BTW it is probably much less dangerous and more profitable to steal 300K of walnuts, than an equivalent quantity of more recreative agricultural products...
And the lawyer can easely plead insanity: He though he was a squirrell.... works better than "he though he was a junky"..
It is an european conspiracy they are trying to create bootleg nutella to undermine peanut butter!!
Of course the British didn't participate, they would have stollen beer yeast to foister marmite upon you...
That is so nucking futs!
Research is what I doing when I don't know what I am doing - Werner von Braun
I find it suspicious that your UID ( hutsell ) is merely an "n" away from a permuted nutshell. Who are you working for?
Obviously, he's working for a gang of crimnial charcater stifhers.
Ezekiel 23:20
Obviously, they put it right next to the 30,000 pounds of bananas:
http://vimeo.com/16809690
Is it an agent working for China, the largest producer of walnuts, next being the U,.S., wanting to control the Great Paper Tiger? Could it be someone trying to beat the commodities market pricing for walnuts, to cover a loss or to make a profit?
If it turns out to be either one of those, I will ... laugh-out-loud.
Probably somebody with contacts back in China. Steal $300k in something. Ship it back to China where it probably came from before. Sell to supplier (probably also a family member) cheap who will then just ship it back to the US for another $300k. Perhaps even ship back the truck.Shipping container to China is probably a few thousand and everything else is profit.
I am unclear as to the relevancy of this article..
Probably somebody with contacts back in China. Steal $300k in something. Ship it back to China where it probably came from before. Sell to supplier (probably also a family member) cheap who will then just ship it back to the US for another $300k. Perhaps even ship back the truck.Shipping container to China is probably a few thousand and everything else is profit.
Otherwise, a finite for-looping of the four step (hand waving) profit list?
.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why