And a good Saturday morn to everyone.
Time for one of those now famous news dumps….
Personal–I am still recovering from my surgical procedure and waiting on the test results….I hate to wait!
Locally–Here on the MS Gulf Coast we dodged a bullet with Hurricane Francine….we did get lots of wind 40-60 mph and a bunch of much needed rain….no major damage to my little slice of heaven.
Enough chit chat….let us get to the grits and gravy….
Now for the ‘Dump’….
This is when you know you have more money than you know what to do with…..
A tech billionaire popped out from a SpaceX capsule hundreds of miles above Earth and performed the first private spacewalk Thursday, a high-risk endeavor once reserved for professional astronauts.
Tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman teamed up with SpaceX to test the company’s brand new spacesuits on his chartered flight. The daring feat also saw SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis going out once Isaacman was safely back inside.
This spacewalk was simple and quick — the hatch was open barely a half hour — compared with the drawn-out affairs conducted by NASA. Astronauts at the International Space Station often need to move across the sprawling complex for repairs, always traveling in pairs and lugging gear. Station spacewalks can last seven to eight hours; this one clocked in at less than two hours.
Isaacman emerged first, joining a small elite group of spacewalkers who until now had included only professional astronauts from a dozen countries.
The commercial spacewalk was the main focus of the five-day flight financed by Isaacman and Elon Musk’s company, and the culmination of years of development geared toward settling Mars and other planets.
All four on board donned the new spacewalking suits to protect themselves from the harsh vacuum. They launched on Tuesday from Florida, rocketing farther from Earth than anyone since NASA’s moonwalkers. The orbit was reduced by half — to 460 miles (740 kilometers) — for the spacewalk.
This first spacewalking test involved more stretching than walking. Isaacman kept a hand or foot attached to the capsule the whole time as he flexed his arms and legs to see how the spacesuit held up. The hatch sported a walker-like structure for extra support.
(apnews.com)
I can think of many things to do with my cash and this is nowhere on the list.
I admit I do enjoy my chocolate, not milk but rather dark, but the industry is falling on some sad times….
Climate change is stressing rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa bean grows, but chocolate lovers need not despair, per the AP. Cocoa trees grow about 20 degrees north and south of the equator in regions with warm weather and abundant rain, including West Africa and South America. Climate change is expected to dry out the land under the additional heat. So scientists, entrepreneurs, and chocolate lovers are coming up with ways to grow cocoa and make the crop more resilient and more resistant to pests—as well as craft chocolatey-tasting cocoa alternatives to meet demand. A look around:
- The market: US chocolate sales surpassed $25 billion in 2023. Many entrepreneurs are betting on demand growing faster than the supply of cocoa. Companies are looking at either bolstering the supply with cell-based cocoa or offering alternatives made from products ranging from oats to carob that are roasted and flavored to produce a chocolatey taste for chips or filling.
- In California: California Cultured is growing cocoa from cell cultures. It puts cocoa bean cells in a vat with sugar water so they mature in a week rather than the six to eight months a traditional harvest takes, says CEO Alan Perlstein. The process cuts back on water and labor. “We see just the demand of chocolate monstrously outstripping what is going to be available,” Perlstein says.
- In Israel: Celleste Bio is taking cocoa bean cells and growing them indoors to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter, says co-founder Hanne Volpin. In a few years, the company expects to be able to produce cocoa regardless of the impact of climate change and disease—an effort that has drawn interest from Cadbury maker Mondelez.
- In Germany: Planet A Foods contends the taste of mass-market chocolate is derived largely from the fermentation and roasting in making it, not the cocoa bean itself. The company tested ingredients ranging from olives to seaweed and settled on a mix of oats and sunflower seeds as the best-tasting chocolate alternative, says rep Jessica Karch. “The idea is not to replace the high quality, 80% dark chocolate, but really to have a lot of different products in the mass market,” Karch says.
- Back to California: California Cultured plans to seek FDA permission to call its product chocolate, Perlstein says, because it’s genetically identical. “We’re growing cocoa—just in a different way.”
I will make note for I will NOT knowingly buy any product from Israel.
A penny for your thoughts….
Caity Weaver calls it the “Perpetual Penny Paradox.” In a New York Times Magazine story about the American coin, she tries to understand why the US keeps minting them when almost nobody uses them. The piece has a “it would be funny if it weren’t true” vibe, with the bonus of actually being funny. Weaver begins by noting that most pennies produced by the Mint and doled out as change never get spent:
- “Because these replacement pennies will themselves not be spent, they will need to be replaced with new pennies that will also not be spent, and so will have to be replaced with new pennies that will not be spent, which will have to be replaced by new pennies (that will not be spent, and so will have to be replaced). In other words, we keep minting pennies because no one uses the pennies we mint.”
- At this point, an estimated 240 billion pennies are out there, not being used. So many that if they were used, the logistics would overwhelm banks. So why do we keep making them, especially since Treasury officials and even presidents have been pointing out the coin’s failures for decades? “Political inertia” is a factor. (Weaver tries to get an answer from the Treasury Department, which refers her to the Federal Reserve, which refers her to the US Mint, which refers her back to the Federal Reserve.) Others cite sentimentality or lobbyists (in, say, the copper and zinc industries), but Weaver says the real answer that we put up with the uselessness of the penny is simpler: “We may have forgotten that we don’t have to.” Read the full story for her full explanation.
Ever noticed there seems to be a TP story every month or so….well guess what?
“Toilet paper is shrinkflation at its absolute worst,” laments writer Mark Dent over at the Hustle. His deep dive into the ever-dwindling size of the rolls confirms what many have suspected for some time. Yes, your toilet paper is probably running out more quickly, and Dent has brought the receipts. He began by going on eBay and tracking down a package of Charmin Ultra from 1992 with 170 single-ply sheets per roll. By comparison, a regular roll today has 56 sheets and even a “double” roll 154, he writes. As part of his quest, Dent connected with consumer advocate Edgar Dworsky, whose collection of vintage TP goes back even further. In the ’70s, a Charmin roll had 650 single-ply sheets, but began shrinking consistently over the years. It was down to 400 in 1979.
Roll size tells one story, but another undeniable marker of shrinking TP is how much it weighs. Dent writes that a four-pack of Scott, which advertises 1,000 sheets per roll, weighs about a pound, down from 2 pounds a decade ago. “They know consumers are not net weight conscious,” says Dworsky. “They know they’re price conscious. So if they can try to avoid raising the price by giving the consumer less, that’s what they do.” The story explores all facets of the issue: smaller sheets, prices in the pulp industry, confusing lingo (“mega,” “double, “super mega,” etc.) and more. But the takeaway is that consumers are paying more money for less product when compared to years ago. (Read the full report here.)
Could this be a ‘cure’ for world hunger?
Meatless Monday might have just gotten a whole lot more interesting.
A research team at Germany’s University of Tübingen recently created a new protein product using some easy-to-source ingredients — a few you can even get from thin air.
Using carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen, and a little electricity, added to microbes and some baker’s yeast, the team — led by Dr. Lars Angenent — created a protein source ideal for human nourishment.
By processing these ingredients in a laboratory bioreactor system, the result is a sustainable, nutrient-rich protein substitute full of vitamin B9.
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/carbon-dioxide-meat-free-protein
Will this ‘discovery’ just get pushed back because I believe that curing world hunger is not a priority.
Finally….did you know that animals can breath through their butts?
I know….say what?
And that discovery won a prize…..
The world still holds many unanswered questions. But thanks to the efforts of the research teams awarded the IG Nobel Prize on Thursday, some of these questions – which you might not even have thought existed – now have answers.
We now know that many mammals can breathe through their anuses, that there isn’t an equal probability that a coin will land on head or tails, that some real plants somehow imitate the shapes of neighboring fake plastic plants, that fake medicine which causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine without side-effects, and that many of the people famous for reaching lofty old ages lived in places that had bad record-keeping.
The awards – which have no affiliation to the Nobel Prizes – aim to “celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative – and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology” by making “people laugh, then think.”
…
Among those collecting their prizes was a Japanese research team led by Ryo Okabe and Takanori Takebe who discovered that mammals can breathe through their anuses. They say in their paper that this potentially offers an alternative way of getting oxygen into critically ill patients if ventilator and artificial lung supplies run low, like they did during the Covid-19 pandemic.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/science/ig-nobel-prize-ceremony-2024-intl-scli/index.html
Sorry that is all for this Saturday….hopefully something grabbed you fancy….I will move on….please try to enjoy your Saturday and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
