Yes my friends it is that magical time once again…..the Saturday ‘Dump’….

Locally–we have had two weeks of winter weather that may not seem like much to some but down here we have not seen temps this low for this long in over a decade.

Personal–My treatments are wearing me down….I am fatigued constantly.  I hate it.

The weather has been cold and grey so I decided to make my famous chili (not an idle boast for it has been written up in region’s newspapers) I make it from scratch and it last no time at all…..served with fresh cornbread it is to die for…..

Enough messing around let’s get to the good stuff….

It has been a bit of a boring week for me…..I found it difficult to locate interesting stuff to share….these are the best I could do with the time I had…..enjoy.

This is for all those sushi eaters…..

It’s as long as a motorcycle and weighs just as much, but it sold for far more. The annual new year auction of a bluefin tuna at Tokyo’s Toyosu market went to a familiar name on Sunday: Michelin-starred sushi chain operator the Onodera Group, which won the auction for its fifth straight year. The price was more of an outlier. At 207 million yen or $1,316,835, auction organizers say it’s the second-highest bid recorded since the event’s 1999 start. The Washington Post reports the 608-pound fish—that’s about the weight of a male grizzly bear, the paper notes—was caught Saturday morning off Oma.

Oma tuna, as the Pacific bluefin is known, is called the “black diamond” of tuna thanks to the “unique balance of fat” it has due to the colder waters it inhabits and its diet of squid and fatty saury fish, per the Post. Onodera, which bought the fish in partnership with seafood wholesaler Yamayuki, will offer the tuna to its conveyor-belt diners for 1,160 yen (about $7.50), with a limit of two pieces per person, reports Kyodo News. NBC News reports the top bid ever recorded was 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million at the time) paid in 2019, but after the pandemic curtailed dining out, prices dropped

A short trip into the future….have you heard of the ‘grandfather paradox”?

A physicist believes he may have solved the notorious “grandfather paradox”, suggesting that time travel to the past may not be ruled out by this particular branch of physics.

First off, what is the grandfather paradox? Unlike the bootstrap paradox, which gets a little messy, the grandfather paradox is fairly simple to explain. Say you had a time machine and a taste for familial homicide, you could go to the past and attempt to kill your grandfather before he had any children. If you were successful, your parent would not be born, and so you would not be born in order to go back in time to kill your own grandfather. 

It is a thought experiment, of course, but one that seems to suggest that time travel to the past may be impossible, as it would lead to inconsistencies in the universe. Because of this, Stephen Hawking proposed the chronology protection conjecture, or the idea that there will be laws of physics yet undiscovered that would prevent time travel from happening.

Nevertheless, according to the physics we know so far, time travel to the past is not yet ruled out. One idea that comes out of Einstein’s work is that “closed timelike curves” could be possible, where spacetime is so warped (deliberately or by nature, say around a supermassive black hole) that an object or observer traversing it would be returned to their starting point.

Keeping with the sciencey stuff…..did you see the movie ‘The Lost World’…..

A team of geophysicists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland has made a baffling discovery while analyzing earthquake waves to investigate the internal structures of the Earth.

Specifically, they found areas in our planet’s interior that appear to be the leftovers of submerged tectonic plates deep below large oceans.

The finding also presents scientists with a new puzzle: the pieces are far away from plate boundaries — nowhere near where they expected to find them.

It’s an intriguing finding that suggests a “lost world” could be lurking deep below the Pacific Ocean, highlighting how much there still is to learn about what’s going on deep below our planet’s crust.

https://futurism.com/evidence-lost-world-under-pacific-ocean

Not as thought provoking as you thought, huh?

Recently China is considering build a second great wall only this one would be for solar …..and now they are considering something similar for space….

Space-based solar power stations are the next big thing. China is trying something bolder and bigger. 

China has reportedly announced an ambitious plan to build large-scale solar power stations in space with the help of super-heavy rockets.

The South China Moring Post (SCMP) reported that a senior rocket scientist, Long Lehao, is leading this ambitious endeavor. He likens this project to “another Three Gorges Dam project above the Earth.”

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-plans-masssive-space-solar-station

A bit of medical news….dementia is the subject….

The lifetime risk of developing dementia is higher than earlier thought and with Americans living longer, new cases are set to double to 1 million a year by 2060, researchers say. According to a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, the average person’s risk of developing dementia after age 55 is 42%. The lifetime risk is 35% among men and 48% among women, largely because women live longer. Previous estimates were up to 14% among men and 23% among women, the researchers say. The rate is slightly higher among Black Americans—44%, compared to 41% for white people, according to the study.

If you start at age 55 and go forward until your 95th birthday, there are two options: You die before dementia, or you get to dementia before death,” says researcher Josef Coresh, per the Washington Post.

• Coresh says the risk of developing dementia between 55 and 75 is only around 4%, but it climbs steeply after that, especially after age 85.
• Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for around 80% of cases, the AP notes. Other forms include vascular dementia, in which heart problems or small strokes impair blood flow to the brain.
• The study looked at more than 15,000 people who were tracked for more than 20 years, NBC News reports. Experts described the study as “very important” and said it detected the higher rate of lifetime risk because patients were tracked for a long time and it included a more diverse group of participants than earlier studies.
• Researchers say there are many ways in which people can reduce their risk of developing dementia, including stopping smoking, exercising more, avoiding obesity, and reducing their blood pressure. “All of our research suggests what you do in midlife really matters,” Coresh says. Coresh and other experts say other important factors in reducing dementia risk include reducing social isolation, treating hearing loss, and taking steps to avoid head injuries.

I saw an ad for a new whiskey…..Skrewball Whiskey…..it is a peanut butter whiskey…..that’s right peanut butter!  What is it with this younger generations that everything has to be flavored?

Only a matter of hours before the next Big Bang……coming Monday.

Go out, if you can, and enjoy your Saturday and as always….Be well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”