The first weekend of a new year….a year of reckoning by some opinions….we all have been warned and now all we can do is keep our ourselves and our family safe.

Nationally—Sorry to do this but it needs reporting….Johnson wins speakership….

Mike Johnson will keep his gavel. The new Congress convened on Friday with one big question hanging in the balance: Did Johnson have the votes to retain his position as House speaker? The answer turned out to be yes, on the first round of balloting no less, reports CNN. Johnson secured the bare minimum of 218 votes needed, with only one GOP defection when the vote was finalized.

Let the drama begin!

Locally–New Orleans has had a massive terror attack and the region is on stand-by since NOLA is only about 50 miles away.  We here on the Gulf Coast are getting a bit of a taste of winter.

Personal–Started my immunotherapy last Friday….The drug kicked my bony butt to the point that I all did was sleep the day away….I will see if there are any residual effects until the next treatment.

Let’s start the “Dump’…….

More bad news for coffee drinkers…..

Climate change has done long-term and perhaps irreparable damage to the Brazilian coffee crop, which is among the largest in the world. The result is that Americans have begun to pay a great deal more for coffee. This will affect everything from the coffee people brew at home to the cost of a drink at Starbucks.

Brazil accounts for about a third of the world’s coffee supply, which makes it the largest supplier. The trouble with the current crop is that there has been “below average” rain. In reality, some of the crops have been plagued by drought. Last week, Barchart wrote, “Coffee prices have rallied sharply over the past two weeks based on the outlook for a smaller Brazilian coffee crop.”

Trading Economics looks at the short-term future. The result of the weather is, “This shortfall has raised alarms about the potential impact on the 2025/26 crop, with analysts predicting a 5% year-over-year decline in production.”

Coffee Is About To Get A Lot More Expensive

I will stick with coffee for tea taste like dirty sock water to me.

As my readers know I am not big on social media…..I think it is where brains gop to die….but one of the new fads is a beef facial….you read that right…..BEEF….

Bet you didn’t have this one on your TikTok trend bingo card: The buzziest skincare trend on the platform involves whipping up homemade beef tallow creams (or paying big bucks for artisan blends). The New York Times, however, notes that not all dermatologists are on board with the practice.

• What doctors say: Dr. Zakia Rahman, a clinical professor of dermatology, told the Times that beef tallow has too much oleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid, for the face, and too little linoleic acid, which should make up more content in facial creams. “I give it a thumbs down from the scientific and dermatologic perspective. It could potentially cause acne flares or cause irritation.”
• Rave reviews: “I made my own to start, just by getting meat from Costco and stripping the fat off the meat and rendering it,” beef tallow enthusiast Sascha Green told the Times. She uses her homemade concoctions on everything, from bug bites to rashes, in addition to her skincare routine. On TikTok, plenty more users concur.
• No thanks: Over at Vogue, writer Daisy Jones took the beef tallow trend out for a spin, and it didn’t go as well. She found the greasy layer the tallow left on her skin (and its beefy scent) deeply unpleasant, and ended up breaking out by the end of her one-week trial. She acknowledges that the trend might be helpful for people with dry skin conditions, but for her, “I may as well have dunked my face in fryer oil. Which is, weirdly, exactly what beef tallow is usually used for.”
• Test drive: If you want to join Jones and test out the trend, Healthline notes it could most benefit people with dry skin and eczema, but to proceed with caution. Using no more than two “penny-sized portions,” start a routine slowly. “This should only be done once or twice a week,” says dermatologist Dr. Anil Sharma. “Tallow is extremely oily and isn’t good for everyday use.”

I will stick with my beef on the grill.

Since we are talking about Social Media….I do not use any social media….no FB, no TikTok, no Instagram and so on….like I said earlier I feel social media is where the brain goes to die….

It turns out that the slang “brain rot” may not be an inaccurate description of what’s actually going on in our domes while we endlessly scroll TikTok.

As Spanish newspaper El País reports, a growing body of scientific evidence over the past decade suggests that consuming mind-numbing content, from sources ranging from algorithmically driven social media junk to sensationalist news, can literally reduce the physical gray matter in our brains. That’s along with wreaking other pernicious effects like shortened attention spans and weakened memory.

The nefarious thing? These symptoms are often by design. The most infamous example is the implementation of infinite scrolling in apps, which is intended to feed our compulsive desire to endlessly consume content, or “doomscroll.”

“This can significantly impair attention and executive functions by overwhelming our focus and altering the way we perceive and respond to the world,” Michoel Moshel, lead author of a 2023 meta-analysis documenting the neuropsychological impacts of disordered screen use, told El País.

According to Moshel, who is a researcher at Macquarie University, doomscrolling is a consequence “of our brain’s natural tendency to seek out new things, especially when it comes to potentially harmful or alarming information, a trait that once helped us survive.”

https://futurism.com/neoscope/brain-rot-poisoning-minds

I am proud that at age 78 my mind is still as sharp as it ever was and willdo nothing to change that.

On the Green Energy front….

A desert might not be the first place you’d expect to be a hive of activity, but northwestern China’s Kubuqi Desert is currently bucking the trend, as an ambitious project to build a “Solar Great Wall” continues to transform the desolate landscape.

Once completed – expected to be sometime in 2030 – the solar farm will be 5 kilometers (3 miles) wide and stretch for 400 kilometers (250 miles) across the sand. That might seem quite short in comparison to the 21,196-kilometer (13,171-mile) Great Wall of China, but its greatness aims to come from power rather than length.

The maximum generating capacity of the farm is expected to be 100 gigawatts, with 5.42 gigawatts having been installed so far, according to state-owned newspaper China Daily. That capacity will come courtesy of millions of solar panels, soaking up the desert’s estimated 3,100 yearly hours of sunshine.

It’s hoped that upon completion, the vast solar power plant will generate enough electricity to power the country’s capital city, Beijing.

https://www.iflscience.com/china-building-solar-great-wall-that-could-power-beijing-and-beyond-77429

Finally the big news of the last week…..

Reincarnation is often viewed as a mystical concept, but could it have a scientific basis?

The universe operates on energy. Everything – from galaxies spiraling in space to thoughts forged in the human mind – involves energy.

Science tells us that energy can be neither created nor destroyed; it simply transfers from one form to another. Applying this principle to consciousness yields staggering possibilities.

Could our consciousness, as energy, be truly immortal, merely transitioning from one existence to another?

A controversial U.S. Army study, declassified in 2003, explores this captivating theory of reincarnation.

The goal was to unravel what Army personnel were encountering at a small institute in Charlottesville, Virginia.

This establishment was developing the “Gateway Experience,” a unique training system designed to enhance personal strength, focus, and coherence in a way that would change the fabric of consciousness.

The Gateway’s aim was to take consciousness beyond the physical constraints, even transcending the limitations of time and space. It seems that the purpose was to alter the mind in order to create a kind of psychic spycraft.

https://www.earth.com/news/u-s-army-intelligence-study-suggests-that-reincarnation-is-real/

That does it for me for today….another day of trying to cope with a drugs side effects….

I hope you have a perfect first Saturday of 2025…..and as always….Be well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”