Summer continues to amaze the world….smoke covering a good portion of our northern tier of states, excessive heat in the Southwest, a a bunch of hot air from DC….
Local–X Games are coming to NOLA….we have been cooler than most Summers it has only been in the low 100s and as usual not a drop of rain for the last 2 weeks….but the tropics has been quiet and that is always good.
Personal–No doctors this past week but that will soon come to an end….have to go today to buy a new washer….I hate shopping….
A couple of questions….who decided to call jumbo shrimp prawns? Was there a meeting I missed?
Shall we get to the grits and the gravy?
Since my diagnosis of double cancer I try to find stories about the progress in fighting this disease….
Scientists at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have identified a naturally occurring bacterium from the intestines of Japanese tree frogs (Dryophytes japonicus) that demonstrated remarkable anticancer activity in mice. The findings, published in Gut Microbes, introduce a new approach to cancer treatment that uses living bacteria to directly target tumors rather than simply altering the gut microbiome.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260709160655.htm
I say get to work and approve this if it works as well as they say.
Another problem that causes a bunch of money to be spent…..baldness…..
A good hair day can boost your confidence tenfold. This is because, for many, hair is a form of identity. We style, dye, or shave it as an expression of self. But what happens when that trait starts to disappear? That’s the unfortunate reality for 50 million men and 30 million women in the United States who suffer from androgenic alopecia, a common form of hair loss, colloquially called pattern balding. Studies show that androgenic alopecia is a significant stressor in people’s lives, negatively impacting quality of life.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a71891892/balding-cure-chinese-root/
I do not put much credence in Popular Mechanics but I include this because so many men are having sleepless nights worrying about their hair loss.
More cancer research…..
Not all cancers behave the same way. Some stay slow-moving and contained, while others become aggressive and hard to treat.
Scientists have long known that the tumor itself plays a role in that difference, but new research suggests the tissue surrounding the tumor matters just as much.
At the center of this study is a gene called ASPA, which encodes an enzyme that normally keeps the support cells around a tumor from switching into a cancer-promoting state. When the gene goes quiet, which happens consistently across multiple cancer types, things start to go wrong in the tissue around the tumor.
To further investigate the role of the ASPA gene, researchers looked at gene activity in five different types of cancer: breast, colorectal, ovarian, lung, and prostate. Rather than focusing on the tumors themselves, they examined the seemingly healthy tissue surrounding them and compared it with healthy tissue from elsewhere.
They found that ASPA was consistently much less active in the tissue around tumors across all five cancer types. The researchers then used advanced lab techniques, human tissue samples, and mouse studies to figure out what happens when this gene is switched off.
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/could-one-gene-explain-why-some-cancers-never-turn-aggressive
Tattoos help with health monitoring…..
Engineers at Penn State have created a new type of paint-on electronic tattoo that combines art with advanced health technology.
The colorful, washable conductive ink can be painted directly onto the skin in almost any design while serving as a highly accurate sensor for monitoring the body’s electrical signals.
The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to more comfortable wearable health devices that help detect heart problems, monitor brain activity, control robotic prosthetic hands and eventually measure important health markers such as glucose or cortisol.
Scientists create paint-on electronic tattoos that can monitor your heart, brain and muscles
Parkinson’s Disease seems to be attacking willy nilly……
Researchers have discovered new genetic differences inside brain cells that may help explain why Parkinson’s disease is more common in men than in women.
The findings were presented at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum 2026 by scientists from Saarland University in Germany.
Although the work has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, it offers important new clues about how Parkinson’s disease develops and why it may progress differently in men and women.
Religion and Native Americans butt heads….
As the Northern Arapaho Sundance ceremony was in its final day on July 5, Foundations For Nations Pastor Sarah Lucas stood before her congregation on the Wind River Reservation and suggested Native people should turn away from their traditional ways, calling them a false “idol.”
“I pray as the people coming out of Sundance today, their last day, they’re going back into community,” she said in a video of the sermon that’s since gone viral. “You have generations, generations, centuries of people doing this offering, going in and being, making vows to change, Father God. And we see no fruit.”
Christian church vows to fight tribal order to leave Wind River Reservation
I say throw them off the Rez….if they cannot accept the religion of their ancestors then who needs the fuckers?
There is some sad news for America….we are entering in the ‘postliterate age’….
The headline in the Atlantic strikes a jarring note: “The End of Reading Is Here,” it declares over a deep dive into the subject by Rose Horowitch. She makes the case that the country isn’t becoming illiterate so much as “postliterate”: still surrounded by words, but steadily losing the habit—and capacity—for deep, sustained reading that once shaped everything from individual thinking to democratic life. The numbers she cites are stark: Fewer than half of US adults read any book in 2022, and only 38% read fiction, while the percentage who read for pleasure on any given day shrank from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. And finally this: Gambling is now more popular than reading, with 57% of Americans placing a bet last year.
Horowitch traces how this shift—from books and newspapers to phones, short-form video, and now AI—appears to be reshaping brains, classrooms, and politics. Kids arrive at school with shorter attention spans, teens see reading for fun as odd, college students balk at dense texts and turn to ChatGPT to “translate” them. Meanwhile, social media rewards punchy, visual populism over argument, helping usher in what she calls the era of the “postliterate president.” A devoted minority is reading more than ever—an estimated 20% of Americans accounted for 80% of book-reading last year—but it seems to be turning into a niche hobby.
Read the full story
How about ‘Gus’ the T-Rex going for $50.1?
Sixty-seven million years ago, Gus the T. rex was fighting for his life – just ask the bite marks on his skull (thought to have been made by another T. rex, ouch). Today, he’s just sold to an anonymous private buyer for $50.1 million.
It’s a big number. But then, it could be said that a specimen as complete as Gus is priceless, packed full of information that can teach us about ancient animals, their environment, and behaviors.
The bitter irony of it is all that value could be lost if Gus ends up in somebody’s living room.
Meanwhile there is more on the time traveler front…..then there is Mike from the year 3700….
Every now and then, someone on the Internet claims to be a time traveler, or else have spotted telltale signs of time travelers, for example, an iPhone in old videos and paintings.
These usually turn out to have plausible alternative explanations which don’t require humanity to have figured out backwards time travel at some point in our future, nor the traversal of a wormhole. That doesn’t stop the claims of time travel coming, though.
In a particularly stupid example highlighted by the Daily Mail recently, we can add the tale of “Mike” the time traveler to the list.
Mike, a man blurred out in an extensive interview with ApexTV, makes a number of strange and impossible-to-test claims. According to the man, who claims to be on the run from fellow time travelers, he became involved in several secret projects at Canada’s national security agency, which included a number of military gadgets and, why not, a time machine.
I think I have filled your head with enough disjointed stuff and will call it a day…..
I hope everyone will go out and enjoy this Summer’s day and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”