BOO!  Today is the day that kids have been dreaming about….a wealth of sweets and scary stuff….yep it is Halloween.

Local–Cooler temps but still no rain for almost 2 months….my yard is looking like the Mojave.

Personal–I recently got a letter from Donny saying that I will get an extra $90 on my social security….that ought to make things better (sarcasm)….

I start my ‘Dump” with a quick history lesson of the day….

The origins of the Halloween holiday date back thousands of years. Here is the story of the traces of the original lore that remain and how we went from carving turnips in the British Isles to spending $3 billion on candy annually in the United States. Halloween as we know it is a secular celebration with roots in the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, which was observed in ancient Britain and Ireland on November 1st. Samhain marked the halfway point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, the beginning of the new year. This coincided with a seasonal harvest and the start of winter preparations. This was also the day during which the Celts believed that the veil between the mortal and the supernatural was thinnest. Priests held rituals, and people lit bonfires to brighten the dark to scare away supernatural beings. People donned masks to disguise themselves from the ghosts, faeries, and demons that were thought to roam this night. In the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV established All Saints’ Day in May. The date of this celebration was later moved to November 1st, possibly to overshadow any pagan traditions of Samhain, possibly because coinciding with the harvest meant there were more resources available at that time of year. Either way, this made the night before, October 31st, All Saints’ Eve or All Hallows’ Eve, hence Halloween. Later, All Souls’ Day was proclaimed on November 2nd, introducing another Christian religious holiday to the period. Together, beginning with Halloween on October 31st, these three days are sometimes called Allhallowtide. By the end of the 15th century, All Hallows’ Eve had become a blend of sacred and secular.  Secular celebrations remained especially strong in Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. One of the customs in Ireland in the 1800s involved carving vegetables—usually turnips, potatoes, or beets—into frightening faces to scare off spirits. These designs evolved to hold candles, as metal lanterns were prohibitively expensive for most people. A museum in Ireland is still exhibiting a preserved “ghost turnip” today. When a number of Irish people immigrated to the United States in the mid-1800s to escape the Great Famine, they brought their Halloween traditions with them. They found pumpkins and other gourds, native to America, especially suitable for carving, giving rise to the now ubiquitous jack o’lanterns. Halloween grew in popularity, becoming one of the primary holidays in the United States by the 20th century.

(britannica.com)

Now that I have bored you to death I will move on to the other stuff I have lined up….

As a cancer patient I am always looking for reports that would help others that may get this terrible diagnosis….

A single snapshot of a cancer patient’s face may someday help forecast how long they’ll live. Researchers at Mass General Brigham say they’ve built an AI model, FAHR-FaceSurvival, that estimates mortality risk using only a facial photograph, according to a study in Lancet Digital Health. Among patients whose scores landed in the top 10% for risk, about half died within 90 days; in the lowest 10%, roughly 2% did, the Washington Post reports.

The system grew out of an earlier tool, FaceAge, which guesses a person’s “biological age”; that system collects different information about a patient’s health, per the Guardian. Attention maps suggest the new AI focuses on areas below the eyes and along the nose, though scientists don’t yet know what precise signals it’s reading. Outside experts call the work intriguing, per the Post, but stress that it must prove it adds information beyond what doctors can already see—and that it avoids encoding racial or other biases.

But can AI be trusted with this task?

We have all heard about the rush to build AI data centers, right?  Finland just screwed itself….

Earlier in October, Finnish authorities ordered Google’s affiliate data center developer Tuike Finland Oy to immediately suspend the illegal cutting of some 1,300 acres of forest. The tech giant was given a week to draft a report explaining its actions, which soon became a flashpoint for Europe’s growing outrage over the data center boom.

As the anger grew, reporters descended on the scene — and what they found is a clear-cut example of the AI revolution’s impact on the environment.

New reporting by the Guardian shed fresh light on the impacts of Google’s deforestation. After the 1,300 acres of pristine boreal forests were reduced to tracts of mud and stumps, fauna which once called the woods home has been forced to vacate.

In the felling-site near the Finnish village of Otanmäki, the ensuing loss of prey has forced packs of wolves to search for food elsewhere: nearby villages.

https://futurism.com/future-society/wolves-finland-google-ai-data-centers

Let me guess….the answer to this problem will be to kill the wolves.

Exotic food….you know what I mean….like bear kidneys for virility and other such nonsense….well there is a new one….

When journalist Sophie Haigney was talking to a friend about her fascination with some of the more outlandish-sounding diets out there, her friend came up with the term “dark nutrition.” And in a piece for the New York Times Magazine, Haigney digs right in. The story, for example, opens with influencer Kelly Pi sampling raw buffalo brains. It turns out that everything is raw for Pi, who eschews the cooking of anything, even the roadkill she occasionally scavenges. If that sounds crazy to you, Pi counters that the typical American diet of processed foods and alcohol—people “are basically poisoning themselves”—sounds crazy to her. Haigney heard this same argument again and again as she interviewed people on the fringes of nutritional thinking.

“Some avoided specific vitamins, or disavowed seed oils, or believed that vegetables were unhealthy,” she writes. “Some swore by organ meats, some by cane sugar. Some snacked on raw chicken or took large doses of supplements. However weird their diets seemed, they told me, the standard American diet—filled as it is with pesticides and preservatives, dyes and junk—was weirder.” Haigney’s story is less about evaluating the diets’ nutritional merits than about exploring why people adopt them. As it turns out, many interviewees described turning to unconventional diets in response to health problems. The story also discusses the “n of one” principle popular in dark-nutrition circles, “the idea that the only way to learn what is good for you is by ignoring broad samples and experimenting on your unique self.” Read the full story, in which Haigney samples some of the fare herself.

These food trends are stupid and pathetic.

In the age of Donny books appear to be the enemy and ruination of society so what do they do….ban them…..

PEN America released a report on Monday documenting nearly 12,000 book bans involving more than 7,300 individual titles in US schools during the 2025-2026 school year, which the organization said were the largest censorship case numbers it had ever recorded.

The state of Texas accounted for more than 8,100 book bans—roughly three-fourths of the nationwide total and more than double that of Florida, which was the second-most censorious state with over 3,200 book bans.

PEN America said that the surge in Texas book bans came from SB 13, a state law passed in 2025 that banned a broad array of books that censorship proponents view as “profane” or “indecent.”

According to PEN America, the Texas book bans carried out over the last year have been particularly broad because officials in the state used artificial intelligence to make a recommended list of banned books.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/book-bans-texas-florida

Florida and Texas….no surprise from the two most ass kissing states….right?

How about a ban on cellphones?

The Wall Street Journal recently explored the issue of phones in restaurants, noting that many eating establishments have come to resemble “scroll zones that simply serve food and drinks.” The paper had earlier declared, “phones are becoming the new cigarettes.” You might think that very few individuals would appreciate their dinner companions staring down at their Apple devices during shared outings, but, then again, you often see whole tables absorbed in scrolling as a way to avoid actually communicating with each other or just to stave off social awkwardness, thereby often increasing the awkwardness.

Why Some Restaurants Are Starting to Ban Cell Phones (and Why Customers Are Loving It)

I think it is a good idea….how about you?

That does it for me today….I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”