Toxic people includes women

 My father was successful and known for his generosity. A double edged sword. He helped others in various ways especially when their situation put them in dire straits food clothes the basics.

Of course this reputation also exposed him to friends and family that felt entitled to be helped.

I met Liz, an older relative, for the first time when I was a teen. She wanted to help with my University application. (She didnt know what she was talking about). Then wanted to be paid for it. She asked me about my career plans interests until the convo made me uncomfortable. She had slowly switched the conversation to my dad's business, asked nosey questions remarked that our furniture looked like mahogany but wasn't (huh? Weird we didn't pretend it was, but why bring it up? Had my mother said something?)

I didn't like her. I couldn't pinpoint it her tone was aggressive demanding but she had not said anything in particular...I told my dad that I didn't like her and didn't want university or career advice from her.

I forgot about Liz. But Liz didn't forget about us. Gossip was practically forbidden in our household so by the time I heard about what happened. Well. 

Liz had a career that would provide her with a good pension and job safety. As a side hustle she had some business plans. She asked my father to invest he said no. People came to him with cockamamy harebrained business ideas all the time and didn't understand that venture capitalism was not his field, nor within his means. Thats all there was to it. He was firm not insulting, but Liz turned it into a vendetta.

Years later I spoke to other relatives. They were hurt because my parents had not invited them to their soirees and parties and therefore my parents thought they were above them. What? What parties? "Liz told us that she'd attended..."

Deep sigh. My parents occasionally hosted (boring) get togethers with business associates as did everyone else and Liz wouldn't have been invited. The Mahogany furniture. My mom had asked around for Mahogany COLOR.

Liz drove a wedge into our extended families. Some of the things she did were a lot worse. Everyone eventually realized what she was and avoided her. Intrigue. Scheming. Gossip. Spinning facts. Ingratiating herself. We just noticed it sooner. Pop Psychology calls her toxic. She thrived on harm and destruction. Felt entitled to climb the social ladder. Ruled by greed and envy.

I've met many Lizzes in my life. The idea that women can't be toxic, mean spirited or conniving is ridiculous. I have enough friends whose MILs almost destroyed their marriages.

The only way to treat those people is to not let them into ones life. They don't change, they get worse over time. There is no let's work this out, remorse or resolution. If all else fails, there are legal measures.

Niagara Falls

 Lake Ontario is a shared great lake between Canada and New York. I can't recall the details but it produces hydroelectric power for both countries. Most of it supplied by Canada.

As is Niagara Falls, which feeds into it. I was lucky to visit Niagara Falls when I did as I was able to cross a bridge to take in the immense natural power of both sides of the Falls. We took the the ride called lady of the mist (or something like that). A boat that took us close to the bottom of the Falls. We were given long rain coats as we basically drove into spray and mist. Should have taken goggles as the "rain" made it difficult to see anything. It was so loud that even wow was drowned out.

It was spectacular and beautiful. The adjoining towns can only be described as campy low end  Las Vegas. One is called Niagara Falls NY the other Niagara Falls Ontario. The Canadian side is more beautiful and dramatic. My friend did not want to walk through either town, but I insisted to at least see them. After an hour walk through we drove to Niagara on the lake. A picturesque beautiful little town where we found a cozy restaurant with a real fire place which turned the slightly hassled tourist experience into a wonderful day. Fond memories.

Those beautiful memories are now being disturbed. Additional friends and relatives who had the Falls on their to do list when they visited are part of those memories.

So. Google maps has already decided to call it lake America (at worst shouldn't it be lake new york/lake ontario?) for Americans and lake ontario for everyone else. More confusion.

Water is an important resource.

What's next? Niagara Falls becomes America Falls?

Please do not insult any politicians.

Climate River Danube, heatwave and interesting website

 Geography is not within my area of expertise. Anytime we learned about major rivers around the world I would get distracted by the neat patterns that rivers make on a map.

Nature is very artistic. Rivers look like horizontal lightning bolts...I digress every time geography is involved.

The NYT used to be a good paper that I would read but the headline was "Europe's rivers are dying". Sensational garbage that sounds like a trash paper. The best of bad journalism.

The Danube runs through Europe. I'm sure everyone has seen the Nuclear power plant being shut off in Bulgaria (to cool it off), the rivers running so low that a nazi ship and mammoth fossils were exposed. (Never thought I'd put those two in the same sentence).

Obviously this is not good, but when a river that joins up the north sea to the black sea dries up this severely in just one summer it's often due to meddling with natural waterways. Low an behold part of it was artificially constructed to join the two in the 1990s.

It reminded me of similar issues with the Colorado river.

It will refill in the fall and winter, so it's far from "dying". This fear mongering is scaring people, who end up doing nothing about it. 

We all share this climate.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/05/climate/europe-rivers-record-lows-satellite-space-rhine-danube

Here's a new website

https://www.climate.us/news-features/feed/climateus-launches-independent-website-trusted-climate-information

Here's the Amanpour interview:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OMhD51xyeps

Please no mention of politicians

Science research the bad the good and the ugly

 

Study 5 years for two degrees

Study 5 more for PhD

Join lab, start working

Spend years studying problem

Form hypothesis, gather

evidence.

Test hypothesis, form

conclusions.

Report findings, clear peer review.

Findings published, reported in

press.

Guy on Internet: "Bullshit".

(Paraphrasing science journalist Frank Swain)

Most people dont know how science research works. The major findings are often presented by science journalist to the public through the media.

Often science journalists don't understand the science they report. Even if they have a bachelors degree in one of the sciences like biochemistry, it doesn't give them the understanding of other fields. It's why I always tell people to do a quick search on the background of who is writing the article.

There are many examples, but the one that comes to mind was in 2009 when a NASA scientist had discovered a bacteria with a non carbon based gene sequence. Exciting news, but the media sensationalized it and presented it as an extra terrestrial  lifeform.

Long story short. Nasa was premature in publishing it as it had likely discovered an extremophile. (Life that can live in toxic environments). At the time, nasa was fighting to maintain funding for its space program before corporations like Amazon's blue dragon and the other one took over. The article was retracted last year. It happens. Poor research methods. Political pressure. There are many reasons.

Studying extremophiles is important. Hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria gobble up.......OIL SPILLS.Whoopwhoop. They've been around for millions of years splitting natural oil seeps into co2 and water. If there's a food source something will evolve to eat it. In fact, when major oil spills happen we've been using dispersants to thin out the oil film which interferes with the natural clean up crew. Due to underfunding research has been slow. Scientists have known about them since at least the 1980s.

Alcanivorax borkumensis stays dormant until an oil spill happens then multiplies very quickly to feast and clean, then goes dormant again.

When scientists screw up there's mistrust. When they discover something beneficial it barely makes it into the news, especially when there's no money to be made.

Which reminds me of the start up biotech theranos (recommend looking it up). The device never existed. I thought it was ridiculous scifi. How can investors be so stupid? The scientists that worked there were silenced through NDAs. Well if you scam and screw the Waltons and Rupert Murdoch out of a billion...

Smart watches are similar. I had to laugh when a blogger wrote that she wears hers while knitting because it measures the kinetics of sitting on a couch as exercise.

When corporations do it it's fine in the public eye, but when a scientist makes an unintentional mistake. The public questions why it's being funded. Sometimes it's important to debunk and only public funding can achieve that.

The recent example was a very good study by a team whose hypothesis was that Vit D supplements may protect against the big C. After 10 years no correlation was found. Basically it doesn't. It does have other benefits. The researchers name is JoAnnManson.

Added after a question in comments:

Bacteria who eat plastic where discovered only a decade ago. I could be wrong but seem to recall an article about designer bacteria. Basically man-made. The problem is containment. We use polymers in everything. How would we stop them or use them to eat plastic bags/trash only? 

Dust, Mars, the Universe and scifi

 For the past week anytime I am outside, I end up with a fine layer of dust on my forehead. There's no mention of it in the media so I'm not sure but suspect it's from the wildfires and lack of rain to settle it on the ground.

I was thinking of Mars. I've always been for mining there. It's rich in iron, hence the red color many other metals and there is no unicellular life. It has been a goal of missions for decades. There is a race. Whichever country gets there first has the rights to the area. Big planet so I'm not too concerned.

We've never brought any dust back. Martian dust is called regolith and apparently finer than baby powder. Aaaaand the problems begin. It's electrostatic so clings to everything. On top of it it's toxic. Damn. Full of heavy metals and carcinogenic.

We have this on earth too but in that environment extraction will be even more difficult.

Terraforming is impossible. Not enough co2. No atmosphere and no magnetosphere to protect from solar radiation. At best thousands of years away. I don't know why a certain tech bro claimed otherwise. 

It'll be a good base to explore the rest of our solar system. The scientists who work in that field never had the ambition to terraform it because it's impossible. 

Anyone asking why bother? Why do anything? Invent cars? Invent planes?

It also made me think of a bad scifi movie. Brad pitt and Tommy Lee Jones in ad Astra. There are no aliens in the universe. Dumb. 

Interstellar was good but again the idea that there are no habitable planets (that we can reach), astronauts go nuts (unlikely) and the future is non corporeal.

I prefer star treks more positive outlook.

I love scifi. Bit I'm sick and tired of the constant dystopian view of our future and the excuse that otherwise the movie would be boring. It's an imbalanced view of the world. There are perfectly good movies and series that are thrillers with a positive outcome. I think it's lazy repetitive script writing.

Silo is very popular right now. No intention of watching the what if of humanity in a post apocalyptic bunker. Project hail mary was a hit not only because the story was good but because people needed a positive story.

All of this has a negative impact on the work that scientist actually do and accomplish. Blaming them for bad decisions politicians and corporations make and sowing mistrust about scientific research.

Movie reviews

 A few recent watches and movie reviews with no spoilers. Hopefully.

-Geostorm

Neat idea. Excellent cgi. Action flick that is a lot of fun.

-Spiderman new one (I've stopped keeping track of the mcu universe)

This one is quite good. All about the value of friendship.

-Masters of the Universe

Why? 

-Coherence (2013) scifi

Surprisingly good low budget. Goes to show you what a good story and good acting can do. Highly recommend but do not read what it's about. The whole thing is wth is going on?

-Automata 2014

Banderas. Robot become sentient and humanize while humans dehumanize. I just saved you two hours.

Spider Noir mini series

Nicola cage as an aging spiderman. A lot of film noir originality. We watched in color but black and white also an option. Recommend.

Dr strange and the multiverse

Enjoyable.

Havent watched any avatar beyond the first. Any good?

Sisyphean thoughts

 There is no point talking about pointlessness. I also knew that this would happen. The exhaustion of reading and listening to what is going on in the world. Knowing about it in theory doesn't change the practice. We're in a collective funk. I'm trying hard not to let it affect me but it's easier said than done.

I'm not used to it. I'm used to being content and positive. I wake up in a decent mood and over the course of the day people will drag me down. I cannot talk about personal issues in public (everything with spouse is fine) but in part it's the chronic doom and gloom of people I interact with.

The term is "emotional contagion" although it doesn't quite fit. Two wars climate change the chronic sensationalism of governments...

I've been trying to take my mind off things with mindless movies or series but everything in fantasy and scifi follows similar storylines; none are uplifting, across the marvel universe, spiderman, strange new worlds startrek characters are not resolving much, they're too dark for me right now and it's the same supervillain is trying to destroy the universe or other universe while characters come and go. Can I just settle down with a fun crew? I need entertainment not a reflection of reality in space.

I was waiting for something that bureaucrats are supposed to resolve and it's back to hounding them. Yes. This part is worse for everyone.

A friend had a meltdown and I had to pull back. Strangers are telling me their tragedies when im not asking then leave once they're done venting.

Something was supposed to get done by today and wasn't. People are indifferent and thoughtless.

And the cognitivally dissonant thoughts of considering how much I have to deal with now including health issues I regret looking after my father. I would do it again, so those thoughts make little sense.

A little while back an acquaintance told me she's going on a cote d'azure Mediterranean trip with her family so I recommended some places to visit. Before my brain could tell my mouth to STFU, I overshared that I am living vicariously because until everything heals I can't travel.

She brought her travels to me and brought back a few trinkets. (There are some identifying things on it so I'll only post a little of it)

I was so speechless that i realized that after the unbearable sadism i encountered while caregiving, i had detached and numbed down. I had forgotten what a rak (random act of kindness) was and how to thank someone for it.

 It's gaudy, and i love it. It serves as a reminder that while society is descending into infinite greed, people like this are out there. Her gifts do not change my situation, but neither does everyone else's drama.

I have to remind myself of that.