Hilarious Photos That Have Aged Like Milk (Best of the Week)

• Burn your batteries in the fire

  

  This newspaper clipping from the 1950s proposes a "useful tip" for getting rid of old batteries: by burning them in the fireplace. This poses a number of health hazards that are potentially life threatening. 

  Batteries contain many materials that are harmful to humans, including lead, sulfuric acid, cadmium, nickel, zinc, and manganese. While some of these minerals occur naturally, they become highly explosive inside batteries. 

  Subjecting batteries to fire creates an even more explosive environment for them, causing them to explode or leak high levels of chemicals. This creates the "colorful flames" which actually contain high levels of toxic materials that can cause irreversible harm to humans (including cancer) and can eventually lead to death. 

  Batteries in the 1950s mainly contained zinc and carbon, which are less harmful to humans than what batteries contain today. However, even in the 1950s disposing of batteries in the fireplace was never a good idea, and it certainly isn't today. There is a proper way to dispose of old batteries which is not harmful to humans. 

  Via Reddit

• The guy who sold his 1,700 Bitcoin

  

  This unlucky guy bought 1,700 Bitcoin for $102 and sold them for $510 in 2011. Since then, the value of Bitcoin has soared beyond anyone's expectations. If Greg hadn't sold his Bitcoin for $510, they would now be worth $22.6 million. His investment would have aged like the finest whiskey, but instead he threw it out like old milk. What a shame. 

  Via Reddit

• Jared from Subway (the pedophile)

  

  This screenshot shows a moment from The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Episode XVI, which was aired in 2005. Chief Wiggum is dressed as Jared Fogle from the Subway ads and says "I'm only a little overweight and sexually ambiguous." 

  Jared Fogle was a spokesperson for Subway and did ads for them from 2000 to 2015. In 2015, Fogle was investigated and found to have paid for sex with minors and received child pornography. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The Simpsons episode clearly picked up on something strange about Fogle, calling him "sexually ambiguous." This turned out to be absolutely correct, and isn't the first time The Simpsons has predicted a future event. 

  Via Reddit

• Asbestos, the magic mineral!

  

  Talk about going out of fashion. Asbestos used to be the thing, but now people can't get away from it fast enough. Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral that is highly heat resistant and has very good electrical insulation qualities. For this reason, it was used extensively in construction from the end of the 19th century. Every home, office and building had asbestos built into the walls and ceiling. 

  However, around the 1970s a lot of people began to die, and soon it became apparent that exposure to asbestos is extremely dangerous for humans and animals and can cause various life-threatening ailments including many types of cancer, asbestosis (scarring of the lungs), and mesothelioma. That's a pretty scary, considering that any buildings built before the 1970s have the dangerous material inside them. 

  Obviously, building with asbestos was gradually banned (67 countries have banned it as of today), but the effects of the dangerous "magic mineral" still kills 90,000 people annually across the world. Not exactly something you want to advertise about. 

  Via Reddit

• "Unpolitical" Kanye West

  

  Kanye West has always been a controversial person, but he has rarely contradicted himself so blatantly. While the celebrity has been known to dabble in many different activities (like running his cultish Sunday Service), getting into politics has got to be one of the weirder things he did. 

  In 2018, Kanye tweeted that he was "distancing [himself] from politics." Until then, he had been very vocal about supporting Trump and donned his red MAGA hat many times. But all that stopped with this proclamation. Or so we thought (or not...Kanye isn't so good at keeping his word). 

  Just two years later he ran for the 2020 presidential election as head of the independent Birthday Party. Kanye's party missed the filing deadline in most states, but of the 12 states he ran in, he raised 60,000 votes out of 160 million. Although he wasn't close to being elected, he tweeted a photo with the caption "KANYE 2024" so we can expect to see him running for president again next election. So much for staying away from politics. 

  Via Reddit

• Lose weight with Ayds!

  

  Talk about bad branding. This advertisement is for a diet suppressant candy called Ayds. It was created in the mid-1930s and experienced popularity during the 1970s and 1980s.

  However, by mid 1980, AIDS (the disease) had killed thousands of people and come into popular knowledge as a horrible, incurable disease. It was also heavily stigmatized as AIDS most prevalently affected gay and bisexual men. To be associated with AIDS was undesirable, to say the least. 

  The brutal irony is that one of the main side effects of AIDS was that its victims lose weight severely and rapidly - which is exactly what Ayds, the diet suppressant, aimed to do. Not to mention the fact that when speaking, it is impossible to distinguish between AIDS and Ayds, making their slogans problematic to say the least. After a few unsuccessful name changes, Ayds closed down. 

  Via Reddit

• "I can't breathe."

  

  This screenshot from the Bee Movie shows an old woman with her head pressed onto a table and her arm twisted back, police officers with guns surrounding her as she says "I can't breathe." While this scene would have been unremarkable before May 2020 (except for the notable police brutality), the phrase has become the slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd. 

  George Floyd, an unarmed black man, had his head pressed to the ground by the knee of a police officer, for nearly 9 minutes. The last thing he said before dying was "I can't breathe." Following this death, protests erupted across the US and the world, conveying anger with police brutality against black people. It is ironic that this scene from a children's movie would accurately predict a moment that completely changed the civil rights movement in 2020. 

  Via Reddit

• Tesla: not worth the investment

  

  This screenshot from 2015 shows a Reddit user asking for advice about how to spend $30,000 of inheritance. One user gives their opinion that Tesla isn't worth investing in, as it's largest gain was already over. Unfortunately this advice aged like milk. Since 2015, Tesla's value has skyrocketed and today Tesla is one of the most profitable businesses today. 

  If the Redditor decided to invest all of their $30,000 in Tesla stocks, they would have bought 647 stocks at the price of around $46 each. If they kept those stocks without touching them, their 647 stocks would be worth $317,104 USD today. That's a profit of $287,104 they would have made from their inheritance money. 

  Let's hope that the Redditor ignored the advice from the other user and invested in Tesla, because they'd be rolling in it now. If not...never take advice from Reddit. 

  Via Reddit

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