An Independent Trump, Hackable Cars, and Albino Lobsters: This Week's Odds

Step up, take a chance. You wanna visit a faraway planet? Or just watch the history of the world through old newsreel footage? Maybe you just want to dip a rare lobster in lemon butter. We’re not saying any of that will happen, but maybe it could?

1. Even As an Independent, Donald Trump Won’t Win the Presidency

In one of the first installments of The Odds, we boldly predicted gonzo political celebrity Donald Trump had a whopping 0 percent chance at sitting his billionaire-ish ass behind the Resolute Desk come election season. Unfortunately, The Donald and his supporters in battleground states aren’t making this easy. He currently leads polls of Republican Party candidates with about 18 percent. But he’s the loosest of cannons, whether he’s calling all Mexicans rapists or making fun of John McCain for getting captured during the Vietnam War. Even the GOP may get tired of him. If he finishes the race as an independent it’ll be Christmas in November for Democrats.

Odds that the Democratic Party will win the election: 63 percent

2. No Single Person Will Ever Catch These Two Rare Lobsters Again

Windham, Maine resident Bill Coppersmith is lucky in lobsters. The fisherman managed to bag an extremely rare orange lobster from the Gulf of Maine. The discoloration makes it seem like the crustacean has already been cooked, which sets it apart from its normal, darker-hued brethren. Catching an orange lobster isn’t a common occurrence, but even more uncommon is snaring a white albino lobster, which Coppersmith did in the same Maine waters in 1997. If only he caught winning lottery tickets instead of tasty arthropods, then he’d be something more than just a nice seafood dinner. But, you know, you have to put these sorts of things into perspective.

Odds of catching an orange lobster again: one-in-10 million. Odds of catching a white albino lobster again: one-in-100 million

3. Your Chrysler Is Probably Hackable

Poor Chrysler. As if its record $105 million lawsuit for violating federal safety laws over a slow recall of deficient cars wasn’t enough, intrepid hackers may be able to run amok in Chrysler cars’ Internet-connected systems. It was announced recently that the uConnect system could potentially be hacked, and that anybody with the ability to access the system could potentially drive the car remotely, which could seriously endanger people’s lives or be the greatest thing my eight year-old self could think of.

Over/under odds on how many Chrysler cars need to be recalled: 1.4 million

4. We’ll Probably Be Able to Dump Earth in the Future And Move to Another Planet

Who needs this planet when another waits around the corner? NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which is soaring through the cosmos to find hospitable planets like our own, recently discovered what may be the closest approximation to Earth 2.0 we’ve ever seen. It’s named Kepler-452b, it orbits around a sun-like star for a 385-day year, and may have suitable temperatures for water, which means it may be able to sustain life. Once we ruin this giant blue dot we can pack our bags and rocket to good old Kepler-452b, a mere 1,400 light-years away. The closest potentially hospitable planet is just 13 light-years away, which is also impossible to get to. The plausibility Earth 2.0 isn’t looking good, but at least we know they’re out there.

Over/under odds on the number of potentially hospitable planets discovered by the Kepler spacecraft: 4,696

5. Spend The Rest of Your Life Watching This Collection of AP and British Movietone Footage

In the age of the Internet, vast troves of human knowledge are literally at your fingertips. The Associated Press and British Movietone are doing their part, putting more than 550,000 historical videos spanning more than 120 years up on YouTube for free. Watch coverage of the Hindenburg disaster, VE Day in London in 1945, a showcase of fancy sunglasses from 1971, or even JFK’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. It’s the perfect place to get lost in history forever.

Over/Under on how many minutes it would take to watch all of the footage uploaded by the AP and British Movietone: 1 million