That’s Odd

this week to connect with people when Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram went down on Monday for hours.

Facebook’s site wouldn’t load at all; Instagram and WhatsApp were accessible but could not load new content or send messages.

Facebook tweeted just after 6:30 pm ET that its apps and services were beginning to work again.

“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry,” it said. “We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us.”

Later Monday, Santosh Janardhan, Facebook’s VP of infrastructure, released a statement saying the company was “sorry for the inconvenience caused by today’s outage across our platforms.”

“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt,” Janardhan said.

Janardhan said the company has “no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime.”

Earlier, multiple security experts quickly pointed to a Domain Name System (DNS) problem as a possible culprit. Around 1 pm ET, Cisco’s internet analysis division ThousandEyes said on Twitter that its tests indicated the outage was due to an ongoing DNS failure. The DNS translates website names into IP addresses that can be read by a computer. It’s often called the “phonebook of the internet.”

As services began to come back online, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted to his Facebook page.

“Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger are coming back online now,” he wrote. “Sorry for the disruption today – I know how much you rely on our services to stay connected with the people you care about.”

Fat Bear Week

We may all be feeling a bit like we’re ready to start hibernating after all that challah we consumed over the past few weeks. In Alaska, and around the world, bears are preparing for a long winter – and that means that they’re gorging on salmon, berries, and veggies.

Of course, who can’t resist an adorable bear delicately nibbling on leaves on a tree? And so, the folks in Alaska in charge of Katmai National Park and Preserve have created a contest to determine which bear is the cutest and roundest in the park.

Fans can vote on their favorite bear online during Fat Bear Week, which ended on October 5. On the website, voters were able to view photos of their bears along with their winter weight.

Last year, the Fat Bear Week web page had 1.6 million visits, with about 650,000 people actually participating in the voting. The event began in 2014, when it was just a one-day event.

“Fat Bear Week gives us a chance to have a little fun,” Candice Rusch, spokesperson for Explore.org, noted. “It lets us celebrate the fact that the salmon run was healthy enough to get the bears (to) their peak fat state. And who doesn’t love how adorable the bears are as they round out in the fall?”

Images of Winnie the Pooh and Paddington are popular characters for kids and adults.

“When you look at how much weight bears need to gain to survive six months of famine, you can’t help but cheer them on. People love bears and they love a good competition,” said Amber Kraft, interpretation and education program manager at the Katmai National Park and Preserve. “For us, we are happy to share because fat bears exemplify the richness of Katmai National Park and Bristol Bay, Alaska.”

The park, in the southwest corner of Alaska, is home to approximately 2,200 bears, according to a survey done in 2004. In 2020, there were more than 90 individual bears, not including cubs, along the Brooks Riv-

er, the 1.5-mile waterway where the salmon run. When preparing for hibernation, a dominant adult male might catch and eat more than 30 fish a day, and by the end of the fall, they can weigh over 1,000 pounds.

Pass me the honey pot, Piglet.

He’s Lost & Found

Scores of people set out to find a Turkish man last week. Thankfully, after a few hours of searching, Beyhan Mutlu was found – by himself.

Mutlu, 50, had alarmed relatives when he did not come home on Tuesday night. His wife hadn’t been able to reach him on his cellphone; friends thought he may have gone missing and was lost in a nearby forest after a night of drinking.

A search party was formed. Mutlu, who was drunk, joined in searching for the missing person.

For several hours, the group combed the woods. But then, one searcher called out Mutlu’s name.

“Who are we looking for?” Mutlu asked, surprised. “I am here.”

It seems that he had found himself.

Authorities gave Mutlu a ride home after confirming that he had, indeed, been found safe and sound.

Take the Money and Run

Is it art or is it robbery? We’ll let you decide.

In 2007 and in 2010, artist Jens Haaning created two works of art – banknotes framed to represent the average annual salaries of an Austrian and a Dane in euros and in Danish krone.

This year, the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Denmark asked Haaning to recreate his art pieces for an exhibition that opened on Friday. But when gallery staff took delivery of the recreated artworks ahead of the show, they were in for a surprise: the frames were empty. No, thieves did not pilfer the $84,000 in transit; it was Haaning himself who pocketed the cash.

“I have chosen to make a new work for the exhibition, instead of showing the two 14- and 11-year-old works respectively,” Haaning told the museum in an email, the text of which is now displayed next to the empty frames.

“The work is based on/responds to both your exhibition concept and the works that we had originally planned to show.”

The “new” conceptual piece, which Haaning has titled “Take the Money and Run,” is now at the center of a dispute between museum and artist over labor, contractual obligations, and the value of work.

“I saw, from my artistic point of view, that I could create a much better piece for them than what they could imagine,” Haaning told CNN. “I don’t see that I have stolen money... I have created an art piece, which is maybe 10 or 100 times better than what we had planned.

“What is the problem?”

The museum, though, has a problem. It had lent Haaning 534,000 Danish krone ($84,000) for the cashfilled artworks and had agreed to pay a further 10,000 krone ($1,571) for his work, as well as covering costs like framing and delivery. It’s out all that money.

For now, the museum is displaying “Take the Money and Run” as it is, putting it on a platform to be considered and critiqued. It is giving Haaning until January to pay up or face legal action.

Sounds like he’s giving them a run for their money.

I Do – 75 Years Later

Seventy-five years is a long time – and it’s a wonderfully long time if you’re married for that long to the same person.

Recently, a couple from West Virginia celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in high style. Ulysses and Lorraine Dawson recreated their wedding ceremony for the more-thanseven-decades that they have been together.

Some things remained the same this time around. The groom, 94, was dressed in the same World War II uniform he wore the first time around.

“That’s the way we met each other. He was in uniform,” Lorraine said.

Lorraine, though, was dressed in white. When the couple married in 1946, she had been wearing a red twopiece suit.

Still, after so many years, Lorraine is head over heels for her husband.

“I thank G-d for him. I could never find a better one,” Lorraine, 92, said.

Asked about their connection 75 years later, Ulysses says their bond is stronger than ever.

“The knot was tied awful tight. And it’s still holding.”

Winner, Winner

Susan Fitton is proof that there’s a lot of luck going around.

The 64-year-old from Boca Raton, Florida, is now a multi-millionaire after she claimed two winning lottery tickets on the same day.

Fitton purchased two $2 million Mega Millions with Megaplier tickets and claimed them on September 14.

According to the Florida lottery, Fitton’s tickets “matched all five of the white ball numbers but did not match the Mega Ball.”

However, the tickets’ Megaplier features did help to increase Fitton’s winnings, Florida Lottery communications manager Meredyth Hope Norman told The Miami Herald. The feature can result in a ticket’s earnings being multiplied as much as five times.

“The Megaplier number for the September 14 drawing was 2, which doubled Fitton’s prize from $1 million to $2 million,” Norman explained. “But she bought two tickets with the same numbers, so that became $4 million.”

Fitton spent a total of $18 to purchase the two winning tickets.

You win some and then you keep on winning.