For all my couples out there…..HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY

The end of a near perfect week….at least for me……relaxation and quality time with the pups….

Local–The last weekend before Mardi Gras Day…..parades and drunkenness is the rule.

Appears winter has slipped us by….low temps in high 50s and low 60s….highs in the mid 60s to high 70s and no rain and it has been this way for 10 days straight.

Personal–Another week off from my treatments but that down time comes to an end next week.

Enough claptrap….

The mental midget in charge of HHS has opened that mouth again….he believes a mental disease can be cured with diet.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amplified a controversial claim this week when he told a crowd that a ketogenic diet could cure schizophrenia, a statement experts say is unsupported by current science.

Speaking at the Tennessee State Capitol as part of a national effort to promote new federal dietary guidelines, Kennedy said the American diet contributes to mental illness.

“We now know that the things that you eat are driving mental illness in this country,” he told the audience. He went on to say that “a doctor at Harvard cured schizophrenia using keto diets,” and that he had seen studies showing people can lose a bipolar diagnosis through diet changes.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Schizophrenia Can Be ‘Cured’ With Keto Diets — Experts Disagree

All I can say is….he is an idiot!

There was a story last week of the ocean clean-up of the plastic island…..now there is another plan to help our sick oceans….

Ocean cleanup, in this case, looks less like a charity drive and more like a full-fledged manufacturing business. As the New York Times reports, a Spanish start-up called Gravity Wave is pulling abandoned fishing nets off the seafloor and turning them into furniture, stadium seats, and other commercial products. Nonprofits, like the Ocean Legacy Foundation, are doing similar work to address so-called ghost nets—long-lasting nylon fishing gear that can linger for centuries, trapping marine life and smothering coral reefs, per the CBC. But Gravity Wave’s approach is different in that it manages the entire chain: collection, recycling, product design, and sales.

Founded in 2019 by siblings Amaia and Julen Rodríguez, Gravity Wave works with more than 7,000 fishers in 150 ports across Spain, Italy, and Greece, paying them to bring in discarded nets and other ocean plastics. The company also partners with corporate clients that fund labor-intensive cleanups to bolster their environmental image and with manufacturers that buy the recycled material. The model hasn’t been easy to build. European rules on cross-border waste shipments forced Gravity Wave to find local recyclers in each country, and many facilities initially balked at handling tough, machinery-clogging fishing nets.

Now, in an industrial zone near Valencia, the collected material ends up as turquoise plastic pellets and panels, which are cut into decorative pieces and furniture. So far, the company says it has collected 1,400 tons of nets and plastic, processing more than half. “We are showing that plastic can have a second life, and that businesses can profit while protecting the environment,” Amaia Rodríguez says. Per the Guardian, another company, OrCA, has made a business selling nylon beads made from recycled fishing nets, which can be transformed into a wide variety of products, including filament used in 3D printing.

Let’s hope this does some good.

My late wife and I use to go to eateries about once or twice a month for a fine meal…as so many others as well….but have you ever wondered where the idea of a sit down restaurant originated?

I can help with that…..

French culture is often defined by its fine cuisine—but that wasn’t always the case. Until the late 18th century, travelers who wrote about their time in Paris painted a bleak picture of the city, complaining about not only the dimly lit streets but also the poor dining options: “Wealthy people of quality feast deliciously, for they all have their own cooks,” German scholar Joachim Christoph Nemeitz wrote in his 1727 tourist guide Séjour de Paris. Without an invitation to these banquets a typical visitor to the city “does not fare well at all, either because the meat is not properly cooked, or because they serve the same thing every day and rarely offer any variety.”

Dining out in prerevolutionary France offered little excitement. Inns and lodges fed both horses and humans with no particular elegance; hotels provided little more than staples; taverns and cabarets catered mostly to drinkers; rotisseries sold precooked meats to take home; and cafés served only ice cream and liqueurs. The concept of a restaurant as we know it—a place where you can choose from a menu and enjoy a good meal—didn’t exist yet.

The pot began to stir in 1765, when French entrepreneur Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau served up tiny cups of soup made with broth, salted poultry, and fresh eggs on little marble tables in a former bakery on Rue des Poulies, near the Louvre. Roze was also a philanthropist, and his revolutionary idea—to make good food accessible— was part of his broader egalitarian vision for French society still shackled by Louis XV’s reign.

….reads on….

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/first-restaurant-paris-france

As long as I am enlightening my readers…..do you visit a local coffee shop?

Ever wonder how this all began?

Guess what?  I can help with that as well….

Today, the idea of a coffee house brings to mind a cozy place that serves gourmet coffee and espresso drinks, with couches to lounge in while you sip. So how did the coffee house get its start? The history of the coffee house begins hundreds of years ago and certainly has changed over the years.

The first record of a public place serving coffee dates back to 1475. Kiva Han was the name of the first coffee shop. It was located in the Turkish city of Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Turkish coffee was served strong, black and unfiltered, usually brewed in an ibrik. They took coffee very seriously, too. In fact, it was such an important item during that time, that it was legal in Turkey for a woman to divorce her husband if he could not supply her with enough coffee.

https://www.thespruceeats.com/evolution-of-the-coffee-house-765825

Our airways are awash on the GLP-1 ads for weight loss and now there may be a dirty secret around these drugs…..

Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonist drugs have become an enormously popular way to lose weight. And with generic, much cheaper versions of the medications on the horizon, their use could soon grow even further.

But apart from being a clinically proven way to shed pounds — at least temporarily — along with a whole constellation of other health benefits, the drugs also turn out to be a major strain on the environment.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, researchers from the University of Melbourne investigated how the process of producing peptides — short chains of amino acids that aren’t just used for GLP-1 agonists, but plenty of other drugs and treatments as well — releases huge amounts of organic solvents and other plastic byproducts that don’t break down on their own in nature.

Fortunately, the researchers say they’ve come up with a much more environmentally friendly procedure that could make producing peptide-based treatments far more sustainable in the long-run.

So far, they’ve been manufactured using a technique called “solid phase peptide synthesis,” or SPPS, which anchors the first amino acid building block to a synthetic resin, such as polystyrene beads. Toxic solvents — including dimethylformamide, a component of paint strippers — are then used to add each amino acid one by one, which can then leak into the water supply.

https://futurism.com/health-medicine/glp-1s-environmental-catastrophe

There seems to always be some type of doping scheme at the Olympics…..this year it is ‘penisgate’….

A doping agency that usually worries about blood samples is now fielding questions about something far stranger: alleged penis injections in Olympic ski jumping, the Guardian reports. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) says it will examine claims, first reported by German tabloid Bild, that some male jumpers are artificially enlarging their genitals before body scans in order to secure looser, more aerodynamic suits. The paper alleges athletes are using hyaluronic acid injections or even stuffing clay in their underwear to temporarily alter measurements, which are taken with a 3D scanner from the lowest point of the genitals.

WADA president Witold Banka, whose home country Poland is a ski-jumping power, responded with a mix of caution and humor. “Ski jumping is very popular in Poland so I promise you I’m going to look at it,” he said. Director general Olivier Niggli added that while he had not previously heard of the practice, WADA could look at whether anything is going on that would fall into a banned category. Under the agency’s code, techniques that endanger athletes and violate the “spirit of sport” are prohibited. The International Ski and Snowboard Federation has not commented, Reuters reports.

I have no words for this idea.

Continuing with the Olympic stuff….apparently there is much more going on at the Olympics that a sport or two…..

Condoms at the Olympic Village didn’t just go fast—they vanished in what one Italian outlet is calling record time. The Guardian reports that condoms handed out to athletes at the Winter Games were gone in three days, at least according to an anonymous competitor who spoke to the Italian newspaper La Stampa. “The supplies ran out,” the athlete said, adding that organizers had promised more but hadn’t said when they would arrive.

La Stampa criticized the planning, noting that organizers stocked “not even 10,000” condoms for the roughly 3,000 athletes in the village—far fewer than the 300,000 available to about 10,500 athletes at the Paris Summer Games, a supply that worked out to roughly two per athlete per day. KFI AM notes it’s the first time that the condom supply has been depleted at the Games.

Apparently it is not all work and seriousness….

Finally, another adrenaline junkie taps out…..

One of France’s top wingsuit skydivers died in a jump over the Alps after his parachute failed to deploy. Pierre Wolnik, 37, a two-time freefly world champion, leapt from a helicopter Saturday over Mont Blanc, France’s highest mountain, People reports. After the wingsuit flight, his parachute did not open for reasons that remain unclear, and he hit the ground at high speed, reports the New Zealand Herald. He was found dead in the village of Les Bossons in the Chamonix valley, according to French media. Authorities have opened an investigation.

Wolnik was considered a leading figure in wingsuit flying and was known for his daring stunts. He also worked as a videographer for the Fédération Française de Parachutisme, which paid tribute to him as a gifted teammate whose presence would stay with those who knew him. Federation president Yves-Marie Guillaud described Wolnik as a “talented young man with such a friendly smile.”

I gave up getting high on adrenaline after Vietnam…..’shrooms are better and a lot safer.

If you are celebrating Valentines I hope that you and yours have a wonderful day….and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”