About that iPhone Electrocution Story

Woman electrocuted by iPhone!!! That'll bring in the clicks. But let's see how this story surfaced, and what's really going on. Verge headline: Apple investigating death of woman allegedly electrocuted by her iPhone 5

The post:

According to Reuters, eh? Well, let's follow the link.

So the Verge story refers to the Reuters story which refers to the Xinhua story, which says:

So this is based on a Tweet? Well, the article does say the police were involved, and had confirmed she died of electrocution. But what does that mean? Poke around, and you'll find the Wall Street Journal's China News page:

Oh okay then. Also, the Xinhua story says:

So the Reuters story which says she was a flight attendant got that detail wrong. Now let's see how the story's played elsewhere. Foxnews.com:

ZDnet goes for the gusto:

Stewardess electrocuted while on iPhone 5

MSN frets:

Got that? People in China. Which ones? You know, the ones who are approaching their phones with fear.

But only if they have an iPhone 5, because that's what the relative said, right? I know that if a loved one was killed by an electronic device, I would announce the fact via twitter and make sure to include the model number. Or did she? Wall Street Journal again:

Say, let's go to that link for the microblog feed linked in the article, shall we? Here's the penultimate post, run through Google Translate:

So it's a 4. Also, it doesn't appear to be the sister's microblog at all.

Other than that, yes, by all means, run with that ELECTROCUTION BY iPHONE 5 story.

The Verge story has interesting comments; because the site has a nerdy-techy readership, everyone starts arguing about amps vs. volts.

THIS IS THE THEORY THAT IS MINE Perhaps you saw this story: All of the Pixar movies take place on the same earth. They're all connected. It's the type of article where this sentence makes sense:

I would feel guilty about linking something that was running around the web last week, but unlike most of those pieces I have a response from Pixar. I tweeted Lee Unkrich, who of course is the director of "Toy Story 3," to ask if it's true. He tweeted back:

It's a number so important it has its own wikipedia entry.

Then again, so does 43.

As well as 202.

I don't want to spend the rest of the afternoon typing numbers into Wikipedia to see if there's an entry. I do want to spend the rest of the afternoon reading them, though; they're interesting. Here's a fact gleaned from the page about 62:

VIDEO Today's series of Russian explosions: for some reason, a truck full of propane tanks caught on fire, with the utterly expected results you'll find in a country with a lax notion of "safety."

At the beginning, some punctured gas tanks start chasing the onlookers, who demonstrate the fine art of Getting Away. The second video has even more:

At 3:24 you can see a cylinder actually take flight on the right and hiss its way into low orbit, perhaps.

If you google "Russian Propane Explosion" you see it's not particularly uncommon. We'll leave you with this short one, when everything goes up at once.