Eight People Suffer Burns After Attempting Viral 'Boiling Water Challenge' (abc13.com)

A burn surgeon at Loyola University Medical has treated eight different people for second and third-degree burns after they attempted to replicate the viral "boiling water challenge," according to one local news station. These people (like many others as seen across social media) heated water and threw it into the sub-zero air, expecting it to transform into a powder-like state and blow away in the wind. But that apparently didn't work out for everyone; sometimes the water stayed liquid and hit people. The youngest patient seen at Loyola is 3 years old. Sanford said that individual (like some of the other patients) was just standing next to someone else throwing the water.... Sanford said there are likely several others out there with first degree burns that didn't seek medical attention.
CNN Wire Services also reports at least three more "boiling water challenge" burn victims in Minneapolis and Iowa.

Comments

Darwin Challenge:

[Anonymous Coward]

Burn your bits and pieces off for an internet meme.

Hydrochloric acid challenge next?

[Ecuador]

In general we have removed the positive effects of natural selection from our society, which is leading us to a rather bleak future (just watch the semi-fictional film "idiocracy" for a good extrapolation). These stunts are one of the few natural selection sources left - whoever does a hydrochloric acid test for example should be removed from the human genome anyway. The problem is when bystanders get the effect instead of the idiot performing the actually stupidity...
It is definitely not news for nerds though, I don't see how it even remotely warrants inclusion on slashdot... Then again, I am not new here... :D

Yep, it takes decades to build up blind hatred

[rsilvergun]

they did the same with Hilary. Not that she didn't have plenty of good reasons to hate her, but the good reasons were things like "she'll sell us out to mega corporations" and "She supports TPP and outsourcing".

You're not allowed to talk about those kind of things; they're profitable business. So you're stuck with trying to instill a general sense of dread.

With AOC it's harder because she doesn't really have any dirt. She's a pretty girl, meaning they probably can find anyone she sexually harassed. She's from a basic, middle class family so they won't find corruption. And so far she knows better than to apologize for anything (Liz Warren shoulda told everybody, including the Cherokees, to go fuck themselves on the Indian thing. Apologizing is never good in politics, Trump taught us that).

Speaking of Trump, AOC has the potential to be the left wing Trump: Somebody who nothing sticks to and who can bypass traditional media and go directly to the voters. With the main difference being that when she says Drain the Swamp see seems to mean it. If you're a billionaire who doesn't like paying taxes you'll spend some time trying to bury her before that happens.

Hell on a sled

[swm]

I was up in the White Mountains, in a hiking lodge, state park, national park, I don't recall.
They have a roll--a memorial--of people who have died hiking in the area, going back to around 1900.
The plaque explains that hiking isn't extremely dangerous, but you are in the wilderness, you are on a mountain, and things can happen, and we should all be mindful of this.

Some of the deaths are mishaps; some are bad weather, some are just people who happened to have a heart attack while they were on the mountain. But about once every 10 years, someone dies sledding down Mt. Washington on a cafeteria tray. (I am not making this up.)

My guess is that when someone dies this way, word gets around, and then no one tries it for a while. But after a decade has passed, there is a new generation who came along too late to get the memo, and one of them does try it, and then there is a new name on the memorial.

...and this end is called the Thagomizer, after the late Thag Simmons.
-- Gary Lawson, The Far Side