Suspicions Confirmed | Want to Get Away?

• Visitors crowding into a Vancouver, Canada, street festival on June 17 were invited -- at $38 a pop -- to try a new health craze: Hot Dog Water.

The drink is marketed as a gluten-free, Keto diet-compatible, post-workout source of sodium and electrolytes, and every sleek bottle, which promises to help with weight loss, also contains a hot dog.

It's also a prank.

Hot Dog Water CEO Douglas Bevans told Global News the product was dreamed up as a response to the "snake oil salesmen" of health marketing.

In small print at the bottom of the sales sheet is this disclaimer: "Hot Dog Water in its absurdity hopes to encourage critical thinking related to product marketing and the significant role it can play in our purchasing choices."

Touche. [Global News, 6/17/2018]

• Many citizens of the world are weary of the war and strife that seem to be consuming the news, and about 200,000 of them have already signed up to put it all in the rear-view mirror by becoming citizens of Asgardia.

This coming-soon colony on the moon is led by Igor Ashurbeyli, a Russian engineer, computer scientist and businessman who was inaugurated as its leader on June 25 in Vienna.

Asgardia's parliament plans to set up "space arks" with artificial gravity in the next 10 to 15 years, where its projected 150 million citizens can live permanently, Reuters reports, and Ashurbeyli hopes settlement on the moon will be complete within 25 years.

Asgardia is named after Asgard, a "world in the sky" in Norse mythology. Its leaders hope to attract a population from among the "most creative" in humanity, perhaps using "IQ tests," according to Ashurbeyli.

Best of all: For the time being, becoming a citizen online is free. [Reuters, 6/25/2018]