A new month and the same Dump that there has always been.

Locally–Wintery days of last week are replaced with balmy temps in the 70 degree range….snow is gone and black flies have returned to aggravate the crap out of people.

The national chain known as Chik-Fil-A just got permission to cut down old growth oak trees so they can have a parking lot (8 of them)….these trees survived Katrina only to lose out to corporate bullshit…. and the city has a ‘tree protection’ council….not doing a very good job.  I do not patronize this store and now after this ruling I would rather eat the acorns then go near this place ever.

Personal–Good news/bad news…..my cancer in the lung is shrinking that is the good…the bad is that the prostrate will have new treatments…..radiation 5 days a week for 6 weeks….the joy is unending.

I worry that this extra treatments will wear me down even further and my blogging will suffer….

I have more energy today so I will cook veal with lemon garlic sauce and green beans with a nice wine, a white blend….

Enough of my nattering on…..

Let’s begin with a very generous food bank donation….

A New York food bank was offered a huge donation of fresh fish this month—but it came with a catch. LocalCoho, a soon-to-close salmon farm in the small upstate city of Auburn, wanted to give 40,000 pounds of coho salmon to the Food Bank of Central New York, a mother lode of high-quality protein that could feed thousands of families. But the fish were still swimming in the farm’s giant tanks. The organizations would need to figure out how to get some 13,000 salmon from the water and process them into frozen fillets for distribution to regional food pantries. And they’d need to do it fast, before the business closed for good: LocalCoho is ceasing operations Friday, reports the AP.

“The fact that we only had weeks to execute this really ratcheted up the intensity and the anxiety,” said Brian McManus, the food bank’s chief operations officer. Christina Hudson Kohler was among dozens of volunteers who donned waterproof overalls to fill nets and empty the fish into cold storage containers. “It’s a little bit different,” Kohler said. “In the past, my volunteer work with the food bank has been sorting carrots or peppers, or gleaning out in the field.” LocalCoho can process about 600 fish a week by hand. But there was less than a month to clear the tanks of many times that number of fish.

The food bank enlisted 42 volunteers. A local business with refrigerated trucks offered to ship the fish for free to a processor an hour away in Rochester. And LocalCoho staff pitched in. “A lot of companies going out of business would just be like, ‘Take what you can get, we’ll do the best we can.’ I mean, they’re working extra hard,” said Andrew Katzer, the food bank’s director of procurement. The quick-frozen salmon will be distributed among 243 food pantries, as well as soup kitchens, shelters, and other institutions in the food bank’s network. All told, the catch is expected to yield more than 26,000 servings of hard-to-source protein for the hungry. “Protein, animal protein is very, very desirable. … and it’s difficult to get. And so this is going to make a very large impact,” said McManus.

Bravo for them!

Keeping with the fish stories….

Life as a carnivore is often tough. You have to catch your meals on the run, and depending on the predator, more than 80 percent of attempts to grab a bite can end in failure.

Because of this, scientists have often assumed that predators take what they can get from their prey and can’t afford to be picky. But gruesome scenes in South Africa have turned that idea on its head: killer whales are taking down a dozen or more sharks in one day—and rather than feasting on every meaty morsel, the orcas are meticulously cutting out the livers and leaving the rest of their kill to rot. This preference for a particular organ is not odd for orcas, according to marine biologists. They’re known around the world for going after the choicest cuts from their prey.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-killer-whales-rip-out-shark-livers/

In a galaxy far away….space stuff….

A U.S. asteroid-mining company has announced the target space rock for its upcoming test mission.

California-based AstroForge has identified asteroid 2022 OB5 as the destination for its Mission 2 spacecraft, named Odin, which is set to launch next month, SpaceNews reports. The Odin spacecraft will be flying as a secondary payload aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which will send Intuitive Machines‘ IM-2 lander toward the moon.

Odin will separate shortly after the Falcon 9 upper stage fires its engines to head for the moon. The launch window for the mission opens no earlier than Feb. 26.

2022 OB5 is a near-Earth asteroid that is up to 328 feet (100 meters) in diameter and could be metallic. It will take Odin around 300 days to reach the small celestial body, when the small spacecraft will make a flyby to gather information about the asteroid and its suitability for mining. This is preparation for more daring missions in the future.

“Odin’s role is to gather critical imagery of the target asteroid, preparing the way for our next mission, Vestri, which will aim to land on the asteroid and begin extraction,” according to AstroForge.

Vestri will also be on a rideshare mission with Intuitive Machines’ IM-3 lunar lander, potentially later in 2025.

(space.com)

More space stuff….travel to far away places….

Interstellar travel has long been a dream, but getting to the stars is incredibly difficult. A new project is bringing the space community closer to realizing this dream.

The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative — backed by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and scientist Yuri Milner — aims to send miniature spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system.

Interestingly, the spacecraft would use an innovative propulsion method: lightsails. These types of reflective sails use the pressure from lasers or starlight to propel spacecraft.

These ultrathin sails could achieve speeds never before imagined. But building and testing these sails is a complex undertaking.

“The lightsail will travel faster than any previous spacecraft, with potential to eventually open interstellar distances to direct spacecraft exploration that are now only accessible by remote observation,” explained Harry Atwater from Caltech.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/lightsail-propulsion-interstellar-travel

Just so you know your meds will go up this year and some already have…

Pharmaceutical companies have already raised the price of over 800 brand-name prescription drugs this year.

The increases apply to list prices before accounting for insurance, rebates to pharmacy benefit managers, or other discounts.

This year’s increases reflect a significant increase from Dec. 29 of last year, when drugmakers had shared plans to raise prices on just over 140 brands. More price hikes are also expected to be announced through the end of January, historically the busiest month for drugmakers to make increases. This is also a sizable increase from an earlier 46brooklyn analysis this month, when only about 250 drug price hikes had been announced.

The largest price increases came from Leadiant Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Italy-based Essetifin. Leadiant raised prices by approximately 15% to $149 per pill of Matulane, a Hodgkin disease treatment, and by about 20% to $2,597 on Cystaran, eye drops used to manage symptoms of the rare condition cystinosis.

https://qz.com/big-pharma-price-increases-1851749098

You would think that this would be a good story for our crackerjack MSM….but somehow was missed.