IST Saturday News Dump–08Aug26

Another sweltering week in the Deep South and another week of news that did not make onto the front page….that is where I come in…..

Question of the week:  Why do so many women want to be blonde?

Local–Not much interesting happening this past week other than the heat and the humidity.

Personal–After many doctor’s visit the conclusion of that extra shadow on my lung is most likely a scar from radiation but of course  they want to keep an eye on it.

I bought a new washing machine, no bells or whistles just a standard top loading simple washer….cost $700 and then found that I have a weak valve that needs replacing and since my home insurance went up to $1500 a month I will have to wait before a get a hook up….ain’t retirement wonderful?

Shall we begin the ordeal?

This person gets my title of “hero”….

An animal-rights influencer in Texas has announced a bounty of $10,000 for the identities of any Wyoming hunters who might lawfully kill gray wolves that venture outside Yellowstone National Park.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department called the bounty an “outrageous” attempt to harass hunters.

Jonas Black of Austin published the reward to Facebook Wednesday. In a post of an AI-generated graphic titled “Wildlife Outlaws,” he offered a $10,000 reward for “information regarding anyone who would harvest [wolf] 1090F or a member of her pack.”

“Anybody harvests one of these wolves during Wyoming’s wolf season and somebody snitches? That snitch gets ten grand cash,” Black wrote. “And the person who pulls the trigger? We’re going to make them famous. What happened to the guy who killed Cecil the lion is going to look like child’s play next to the heat that comes with this one.”

Despite seeking information about lawful hunters, Black told Cowboy State Daily that he is not against hunting and that he supports fair chase. He claims hunting wild wolves that have lived inside Yellowstone is like “shooting a dog.” It is illegal to hunt or trap inside Yellowstone National Park, but game can and does leave its legal boundaries every year.

https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/bounty-wolf-hunter-identities/

With all the ‘information’ and I use the term loosely….there are those that keep believing….

Could ancient humans really have built the pyramids without extraterrestrial help? Or do such questions reveal more about modern anxieties than the past itself?

The idea that aliens assisted the builders of ancient monuments was promoted by the Swiss author Erich von Däniken in his bestselling book Chariot of the Gods – published in 1968. Von Däniken died in January 2026, but his vision of ancient astronauts still captivates millions.

The author had pointed to ancient structures such as the pyramids, along with enigmatic ancient artefacts, as supposed evidence that beings from beyond Earth shaped the civilisations of the past.

Though these ideas have been repeatedly debunked, television shows such as the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens continue to air similar narratives.

https://theconversation.com/why-some-people-still-believe-that-aliens-shaped-ancient-civilisations-277993

I do not buy into this theory in the least.

There are some scientists that are working on those near-death experiences…..

In the 1960s, while filming Cleopatra, the actress Elizabeth Taylor developed such a severe case of pneumonia that she fell into a coma and was pronounced dead by doctors, according to her own account on The Oprah Winfrey Show. While Taylor was in a nonresponsive state, she apparently had a near-death experience. She remembered seeing the doctors working on her in the operating room, and saying they thought they had “lost” her. She remembered a brief reunion with her ex-husband and producer Mike Todd, who had passed away a few years earlier. She remembered Todd telling her it wasn’t yet her time. When she eventually recovered from the coma and the pneumonia, she had lost her fear of death, she told Winfrey.

Taylor’s experience has some of the classic features of a near-death experience, or NDE, a term first coined in 1975 by psychiatrist, philosopher, and researcher Rick Moody, who had one himself. There are now hundreds of such accounts in the research literature, and yet they remain among the most mysterious phenomena known to neuroscience. This is partly because much of what scientists do know about them comes from subjective self-reports from survivors long after the experience is over. But as resuscitation science has improved, more people are surviving life-threatening events, such as comas and cardiac arrest, which is changing the tools we have to plumb their depths.

One Belgian researcher named Charlotte Martial, from the University of Liege, recently completed the first EEG recordings of patients in the throes of near-death experiences and helped to develop a neurophysiological model that she says can explain how they arise and why they might have evolved. I talked with Martial, who has been studying near-death experiences for over a decade, about how NDE memories shift over time, the possible adaptive value of NDEs for humans, and what mysteries remain.

https://nautil.us/the-new-science-of-the-near-death-experience-1279957

I really do not buy into these things….I guess it is one of those things that one needs to experience.

Let’s venture into the world of weight lose….you know those GLP-1 thingys….

Weight-loss injections may be shrinking waistlines—and blowing up marriages. That’s an emerging concern around GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, as rapid physical change collides with long-established relationships. A Swedish study on gastric band patients found those who lost weight quickly were roughly twice as likely to divorce; its lead researcher tells the Telegraph similar patterns may follow the GLP-1 boom, as one partner’s “new life” leaves the other behind.

In interviews, spouses describe two main shifts: revived desirability and dampened desire. Some, like Emily, say newfound attention from others exposed how sexually dormant their marriages had become. Others report the opposite—partners who slimmed down but seemed emotionally “flat,” less interested in food, fun, and sex. Biologist Giles Yeo notes the drugs don’t just dull appetite; they can blunt reward pathways more broadly. That can mean fewer late-night feasts and wine-fueled parties—but also less enthusiasm for intimacy and shared pleasures. As one husband put it, he never expected his wife’s once-a-week shot would reshape his own life so much. His hope? That “one day soon she decides to go off them.”

There is so much on the negative side to these injections….but a fad is a fad….

This is the best and worse healthcare in the country….

New Hampshire may be better known for its foliage, but a new analysis says its healthcare is what really stands out. WalletHub ranked all 50 states and Washington, DC, on nearly four dozen measures of cost, access, and outcomes and found the Granite State on top. New Hampshire’s edge comes from having the lowest average monthly health insurance premiums in the country, at about $469, and the second-lowest out-of-pocket costs. Here, the top and bottom 10 states:

Best States

  1. New Hampshire
  2. Minnesota
  3. Iowa
  4. Rhode Island
  5. Hawaii
  6. Massachusetts
  7. Maine
  8. Wisconsin
  9. Colorado
  10. Nebraska

Worst States

  1. Tennessee
  2. Arkansas
  3. New Mexico
  4. Louisiana
  5. Alabama
  6. West Virginia
  7. Texas
  8. Georgia
  9. Mississippi
  10. Alaska

See how other states rank here.

Golly be!  My state is next to last….go figure.

Have you noticed that most of the worst healthcare is in the South….once again….go figure.

How does your state measure up?

Finally more useless plastic research….

That plastic bottle you just threw away in the recycling bin? According to the latest US industry figures, there is still less than a one-in-three chance that it will be recycled. The US collection rate for PET bottles stood at 30.2% in 2024, while the average recycled content in US PET bottles reached 15.9%.

Even when a bottle is recycled, it may not be turned into another food or beverage bottle. It can instead become packaging, clothing fibre or another product. Repeated processing, contamination and additives can gradually damage the plastic’s properties and limit what manufacturers can make from it.

But what if there was a way to recycle plastic a third, tenth, or even one-hundredth time? Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder believe this is indeed possible for certain plastics designed with recycling in mind. They described how they broke down a type of hard plastic used in aerospace and microelectronics into its basic building blocks. They then used those building blocks to make the same type of plastic again without sacrificing its desirable properties.

https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/study-recycles-plastic-on-and-on-rep/

There is always a solution we are told and yet nothing is being done.

That does it for me on this Saturday….I hope everyone enjoys there day and as always….Be Well and Be Safe…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

‘lego ergo scribo’