Weird things you can buy online | Hacker News Reader

Weird things you can buy online

hillelwayne.com

127 pointsmarvinborner51 comments

I'm enjoying the bed bugs store faq: https://www.cheapbedbugs.com/faq

>How do I keep the bed bugs alive?

>Bed bugs eat blood and blood only. They aren’t picky to a particular animal. At Cheapbedbugs.com, we use a custom made blood feeding machine.

>How do you feed bed bugs?

>Unfortunately this is one of the things I cannot share.

Yep, that's an arrangement with the blood god

I genuinely thought that was a parody site. Brilliant how they embrace the obscurity niche they're in with some great humour!

TIL bedbug sniffing dogs are a thing. I would never dare to train one, spilling the training material at the wrong place would be a very unpleasant experience.

After reading just the bedbug headline I couldn't imagine any non-shady use of living bedbugs besides science. I know some people which worked for or owned hostels - it's kind of a don't ask don't tell arrangement. This is why I would always take reasons which hostels give why you have to switch a room (pipe burst, issue with the electricity that needs immediate fixing...) with a grain of salt. You probably won't hear the word bedbug until you're the one reporting them to the hostel.

What kind of business license to I need to pretend to own to buy those bead bugs? I have several people I would really like to infest with bed bugs.

The "Chlamydia" one reminded me of the movie Antiviral, where people with celebrity obsession can buy a virus/illness sampled directly from their favorite vip.

edit, link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2099556

Such a good film!

Sigma is a huge supplier to the sciences; you can (with 40,000 pages of DEA approval) get just any chemical overnighted to you. For instance, you can order a Methamphetamine/Cocaine/Heroin solution (all in acetonitrile):

https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/cerillian/m025

One can order hundreds of pounds of silly putty directly from Dow Chemical Company for a rather reasonable price. If you need to pull the pictures off of a whole newspaper page, for instance.

It can be wonderful for soundproofing and vibration isolation mounts; gotta watch the temperatures tho. treat it as a fluid and float things on it.

The 55 gallon drum of lube on Amazon always cracks me up. The reviews are classic.

https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Lubes-Natural-Water-Based-Lub...

"Five Stars great for family reunions!!!"

> I used to buy 25 pound chocolate sacks for small-scale chocolatiering.

Used to buy these for the 14-person co-ops I lived in.

The box said "1000 count" on the front, but it was just a bag of ~25,000 chocolate chips.[0]

52,920 Calories, and I'm pretty sure I ate more than 1/14th of them.

[0] https://www.instagram.com/p/CGf1oUtFZHb/

Since it's 1000 chips per pound, I wonder if '1000 count' could be a size measurement/grade.

We used take apart owl poop during science class in middle school. I guess I never thought about where they came from until this post.

Ha, we did this in elementary school. I have never heard anyone else comment on doing this until you. Must be a pretty rare science class thing

Aha interesting, I thought this was standard for some reason

It is

We actually collected our own from a local park that had a family of owls.

if i remember right we had ours brought in from some park, as we were in a semi-suburban area.

It probably wasn't their poop (though I guess that's possible too) but rather their vomit. As I recall, they can't fully digest the bones and fur, etc of their little mousy victims so they throw it up after they digest the meaty bits.

Books by the foot is an amazing idea! And seems pretty reasonable in prices also. Kind of want to buy some to see what kind of interesting books I would get, that I would never buy otherwise.

Three yards of books, arranged as they are by colour in that photo, reminded me of a really great team leader at Automattic.

I forget his name - and even if I remembered it would not disclose - but when I had a Zoom with him the books were behind him. Nothing random, all perfectly arranged by spine colour. They looked fantastic. I do not recall if I asked as to why the arrangement, after all, not my business.

Maybe trying to build a Confusing Library: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dZznfGPYRY

(Two Ronnies' comedy sketch; UK TV years ago)

My wife's uncle owns a 2nd hand book shop and also seeks booked by the foot. They are books that are well kept but with near zero resale value - which generally means religious texts and some training materials. Often they are books of catholic scripture or training for subjects where newer materials will be more useful to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Books are sorted by size and colour - if you want to see the sort of books head to a Wetherspoons in the UK - the ones with 'bookcases' are filled with these sorts of books - they have no fear of anyone stealing them! And if they do they are likely worth les than the cutlery they provide.

Like looking for interesting rocks by buying a load of gravel.

I had a neighbor who bought books at sales to flip on Amazon so he had a large-ish, extremely varied, constantly changing selection. Any time I was over I'd see something interesting to talk about.

The service here seems reasonable in price, though replicating it would not terribly difficult and fun if you enjoy looking through bookstores/sales

I remember seeing on Twitter a while back that a really rich influencer lady had her husband buy enough books to fill a wall-sized bookshelf in their house purely for aesthetic purposes. I did some math in my head and, purchasing from somewhere like Barnes & Noble they would’ve spent something like $10,000 to get all those books. Now I realize they must’ve just ordered them from somewhere like this.

It's actually standard. Other than significant outliers they just don't have a high second hand value, low variance, not (for the most part) worth selling by name individually.

The site mentions owl poop, but it is really owl pellets which are coughed up fur and bones of the owl's food.

They list United Nuclear, but surprisingly they fail to mention that it's owned and operated by none other than Bob Lazar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lazar

Regarding bees: I encourage you if at all possible to find a local beekeeper willing to sell you nucs rather than ordering packages through the mail. Mann Lake, one of the largest package sellers in the country, positively screwed me to the tune of $400 this year. The packages you receive from national providers are almost by definition not healthy stock. Many of the sellers found online actually source their bees from the same few wholesalers (for lack of a better term) so be aware of who is actually providing your packages.

Nucs are generally better acclimated to your local environment, are already a complete colony, and especially for the beginning beekeeper are far more likely to get you started out right.

As early as 1988, you could get even more weird stuff by mail order:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=High_Weirdness_by...>

https://subgenius.com/hwbw.htm

Considering the number of missing nukes in the US, I can't help but wonder if one has ever been sold online. Maybe on the dark web.

An honorary mention to plutonium, which I think you can buy online as well. Although nobody has yet tried to build their own demon core, yet.

A little bit more than 20 years ago the Italian mafia acquired seven bars of enriched uranium from the failed government of Zaire that General Atomics sold them. It caused a bit of a stir at the time but now I can’t find any information in the event except a Guardian article so I have no idea how that got resolved. There haven’t been any dirty bombs so I assume they never managed to sell it to MENA terrorists.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005MR3IVO

Haha - I posted this one too. Always good for a laugh reading the reviews for this one.

Buying a second hand oil tanker is all good and well, but what's worth more, the old vessel, or the oil if it's completely filled up?

I was reminded of those cryptobro's buying a cruise ship.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voya...

According to YouTuber Patrick Boyle, Russia is buying lots of old tankers as a way to circumvent the price cap on Russian oil exports. So I guess it partially depends on which country’s oil is in your tanker!

Billions Trapped in Russia! — https://youtu.be/KV-gMmSd340?si=AyQvX6iRsYb36ecp

The insurance that holds the bag when said old vessel spills its cargo on a pristine beach somewhere.

Anyone can buy real human bones online

I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock.

I can get you ten. Local pickup only. Door will be open, just come in.

I like the commitment to this comment - you signed up for a handle "the-dude."

I marvel at Houses where walls are kind of an optional thing (the link to private islands)

I would buy the books by the foot for the look. I love the color ramp!

Almost non of these are weird.

The breastmilk one that has a specific category that says "Willing to sell to men" ?

I don't fall into this category, but a lot of serious weightlifters swear by breastmilk.

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