Here and Now...What's Happening?

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Merry Christmas everyone

I was born in 1961.

Nobody had food allergies.

There were no TRANS kids.

I could ride public transportation without being set on fire.

I could go to school without getting jumped.

We played outside until the streetlights came on.

Cartoons didnt try to turn us gay.

Movies and TV shows didn't try to depress us about our lives.

Families didn't break up over politics.

You could say "Merry Christmas" without starting a war.

A man was a man, a woman was a woman, and nobody pretended otherwise.

Nobody lost their job or their home for merely stating biological facts.

We respected cops, teachers, and the flag.

Nobody was "offended" by EVERYTHING.

And if anybody WAS offended by anything, it was THEIR PERSONAL PROBLEM, not a national crisis.

Call me old-fashioned and outdated - but I really miss those days.

I'd give anything to go back to BEFORE 24/7 cable news, social media doom-scrolling, and algorithm rage machines.

Because tech turned families into enemies, politics into war, and every keyboard warrior into a lie-spreading narcissist.

So Santa, if you're following me:

All I want for Christmas is a global time machine.

So we can get back to the glorious days of real community, actual news, personal responsibility - AND SANITY.

https://x.com/SirBylHolte/status/2003790400734040299

*

[ThePythonicCow]

Quoting Mark, with a little edit, for "back in the day ..."

Posted by Mark (Star Mariner) (here)
Merry Christmas everyone

We played outside until the street star lights came on.

[meeradas]

Drones used sensibly (for a change):

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lcYYl5FqTlQ

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
hese were the simplest rural farmers, just as poor if not poorer than anyone in the US 1930s Depression. When I see these folks usually, they're dressed in drab but practical working clothes that often look like they've not been washed in a month. None of them had a car, or else they'd not be walking, taking the risk of everything being ruined if there was a sudden heavy shower of rain. It was impressive and heartwarming to see.

These are honest country folk (and there are many hundreds of thousands of those in Ecuador) who might have a few cows, sheep and chickens, and grow their own veggies to sell for a few $$ in small stalls by the road. They live in small ramshackle houses that sometimes look just like small barns fit for animals, but they're healthy and happy and just work as hard as they can without complaint. Some of those are local to me here, and I see them often. They're good people.

And when they do wash their clothes, they do so in the local rivers. This is a common, customary thing. Subsistence farmers can't afford things like washing machines.

~~~

I posted the above, about how so many simple Ecuadorian people don't have washing machines, 18 months ago. At last I got a good photo of a local family washing their clothes in the river near my house. They were there all afternoon in the sun, three generations enjoying a nice Christmas picnic together, accompanied by their dog.

(I downsized the high-res photo to fit the page. Open it in a new tab to see the entire scene in more detail)

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

https://x.com/atensnut/status/2004729042738839740

[Tintin]

I've just watched a fascinating segment on an auction programme and was fascinated with this: a book published in 1698 that discussed the likelihood of alien life. It sold at auction for £3,400 (>= $4,000 in today's money).

Write up here via the BBC published May 2022:

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...e%20Worlds%22.

Rare book predicting alien life discovered in Cotswolds



The book, published in 1698, was found at a free antique valuation event in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, by books valuer Jim Spencer.

Inside, author Christiaan Huygens explores his fascination with the potential existence of extra-terrestrial beings.

Mr Spencer said its contents seemed "almost comical".

The book, lengthily entitled The Celestial World Discover'd: Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets, Huygens questions why God would have created other planets "just to be looked" upon from Earth.



He concludes that aliens must have hands and feet like humans because of their "convenience", writing: "What could we invent or imagine that could be so exactly accommodated to all the design'd uses as the Hands are? Shall we give them an Elephant's Proboscis."

He also suggests that "celestial beings" must have feet "[unless] they have found out the art of flying in some of those Worlds".

The writer believed aliens enjoyed astronomy and observation, sailed boats and listened to music but also suffered misfortunes, wars, afflictions and poverty "because that's what leads us to invention and progress".



The book is considered such a rare find that it will have a guide price of £2,000-£3,000 when it goes to auction in July.

Mr Spencer said: "It's fascinating to think who turned these pages in 1698, what they must've felt when reading these descriptions of life on Jupiter or Saturn before gazing up at the night sky."

He said the antique book's content seemed "almost comical", but was informed by scientific reasoning of the time.

"And who knows how our own thoughts on these matters will appear to people looking back in 324 years," he added.



The book valuer said flicking through the pages gave a "curious feeling" due to its subject matter belonging to the future or science fiction, "yet the writer is speaking to us from the past".

"I found myself realising that we've since explored not only more of space, but more of our own planet."

He said the author ruled out the possibility of much larger animals than those currently existing on Earth because it was written before humans knew about dinosaurs.

"I think the subject matter is so compelling because it makes us chuckle at what they didn't know, while staring up at the heavens and realising it's still a mystery," Mr Spencer said.

[Tintin]

Economist 2026 cover: same old mess, different year I guess....

[Mike]

found myself in the ER in the middle of the night a few nights ago with a kidney stone. that was pretty surreal. aside from my first kidney stone, maybe the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my life.

i know some people with serious kidney issues pass these with regularity, so I won't feel too sorry for myself. but damn that was brutal

[onevoice]

Posted by Mike (here)
found myself in the ER in the middle of the night a few nights ago with a kidney stone. that was pretty surreal. aside from my first kidney stone, maybe the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my life.

i know some people with serious kidney issues pass these with regularity, so I won't feel too sorry for myself. but damn that was brutal

I had to go to an ER many years ago for a kidney stone issue many years ago. It was definitely a painful experience. But not nearly as painful as when a bile duct got obstructed - I spent 11 days in the hospital while two surgeons eventually removed my gallbladder back in 2016.

Anyway the last time I had kidney stone issue, a Nephrologist prescribed Potassium Citrate to prevent them in the future. I've been taking two Potassium Citrate pills everyday since and I no longer had problems with kidney stones. Most common type of kidney stone is calcium oxalate. This usually happens when one eats many food that contain oxalates. Oxalates are found in many food such as:

• Spinach: 755 mg per ½ cup.
• Firm tofu: 235 mg per 3-ounce serving.
• Soy milk: 336 mg per 1 cup.
• Potatoes: 97 mg per serving.
• Beets: 152 mg per 1 cup.
• Raspberries: 48 mg per 1 cup.
• Navy beans: 76 mg per ½ cup.
• Almonds: 122 mg per 1 ounce.

Other kidney stone types are:

• Uric acid stones
• Struvite stones
• Cystine stones

[Mike]

Posted by onevoice (here)

Posted by Mike (here)
found myself in the ER in the middle of the night a few nights ago with a kidney stone. that was pretty surreal. aside from my first kidney stone, maybe the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my life.

i know some people with serious kidney issues pass these with regularity, so I won't feel too sorry for myself. but damn that was brutal

I had to go to an ER many years ago for a kidney stone issue many years ago. It was definitely a painful experience. But not nearly as painful as when a bile duct got obstructed - I spent 11 days in the hospital while two surgeons eventually removed my gallbladder back in 2016.

Anyway the last time I had kidney stone issue, a Nephrologist prescribed Potassium Citrate to prevent them in the future. I've been taking two Potassium Citrate pills everyday since and I no longer had problems with kidney stones. Most common type of kidney stone is calcium oxalate. This usually happens when one eats many food that contain oxalates. Oxalates are found in many food such as:

• Spinach: 755 mg per ½ cup.
• Firm tofu: 235 mg per 3-ounce serving.
• Soy milk: 336 mg per 1 cup.
• Potatoes: 97 mg per serving.
• Beets: 152 mg per 1 cup.
• Raspberries: 48 mg per 1 cup.
• Navy beans: 76 mg per ½ cup.
• Almonds: 122 mg per 1 ounce.

Other kidney stone types are:

• Uric acid stones
• Struvite stones
• Cystine stones

Thanks for all the info!

The ultimate irony here is that I knew what gave me the stones last time and I made the same exact mistake this time.

Last time I was grinding up egg shells and putting the powder into a smoothie because i'd read somewhere that it might reverse and prevent cavities and stuff like that. I'm as certain as I can be that this is what gave me the stones, because they arrived a very short time after I began that idiotic routine.

This most recent time I got the stones for the same reason but thru a different route sorta. I bought dental gum, which has all sorts of good stuff in it for enamel health and so on, one of them being egg shell. I hadn't forgotten what egg shell did to me last time, but this time I thought it would be different because I'm a f#cking moron.

So...never again. I'm glad you mentioned that about spinach. Because I'm gonna reduce my consumption of that a little.

[norman]

Posted by Tintin (here)
Economist 2026 cover: same old mess, different year I guess....

Or just amping up their power of intention. by getting us to absorb it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by Mike (here)
Last time I was grinding up egg shells and putting the powder into a smoothie because i'd read somewhere that it might reverse and prevent cavities and stuff like that. I'm as certain as I can be that this is what gave me the stones, because they arrived a very short time after I began that idiotic routine.

Hare (well, cow) brained speculation: Perhaps the calcium in the egg shells and dental gum was binding to oxalates already in your body, creating an inert, but sometimes sharp, crystal that can cause pain on the way out.

This video, that I just noticed a couple of days ago, goes into oxalates, their sources, how they create a wide variety of ailments and painful symptoms, and how to avoid and detox from them.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WEF_yEt1eCY

I have never had kidney or gall stones ... perhaps my lifetime consumption of high amounts of dairy products helps there ... if one eats oxalates with calcium, those two will typically bind in the digestive track and be pooped out quickly, without any consequence. But if one lets too many oxalates into the rest of the body, getting them back out without painful consequences along the way can be a challenge.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

In November 1962, a young German factory worker named Heinz Stücke made a decision that would quietly rewrite the rest of his life.



He hated his job. Every morning before dawn, he dragged himself onto a train bound for the tool-making factory where his days dissolved into repetition. The work numbed him. The routine suffocated him. The small town of Hövelhof felt smaller every year.

So one day, Heinz did something most people only imagine and then dismiss as impossible. He quit.

He climbed onto a simple three-speed bicycle, packed almost nothing, and pedalled away from everything he knew -- with no sponsors, no safety net, and no real plan. His goal was modest: see Europe. Maybe make it to Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics.

He reached Tokyo in 1971. Seven years late.

By then, Heinz had learned something that changed everything: he didn't want to stop.

Every border crossing revealed another country he wanted to understand. Every stranger who offered food, a place to sleep, or simple conversation reinforced a growing belief -- that the world was far kinder than the headlines suggested.

So he kept pedalling.

Days became months. Months stretched into years. Years quietly turned into decades.

He rode through scorching deserts and whiteout snowstorms. Across war zones and into peaceful villages. Over mountain passes and along coastlines that seemed to have no end.

His bicycle was stolen six times and recovered every time. It was welded back together sixteen times. He survived being hit by a truck in Chile, shot in the foot in Zambia, and beaten by soldiers in Egypt. Still, he never quit.

To survive, he took photographs, more than 100,000 of them. He created handmade booklets and postcards, selling them to strangers who often became friends.

"I trust everybody," he once said. "Because if you didn't, you just wouldn't go around the world."

In 1995, Guinness World Records recognized Heinz Stücke as having travelled more widely by bicycle than anyone in history. The record didn't matter much to him.

What mattered was what he learned -- again and again, village by village, country by country: people everywhere share the same hopes, the same kindness, the same longing to be seen.

The world looks divided from a distance. Heinz experienced a united one.

After 50 years, 648,000 kilometres, and 196 countries, he finally returned to Hövelhof -- the town he had left half a century earlier.

Today, at 85, he lives quietly in a modest apartment. His legendary bicycle rests in a museum nearby.

When asked if he has any regrets, his answer never changes. None.

He saw the world exactly as he dreamed. He lived entirely on his own terms. And without speeches or slogans, he proved something most of us forget:

The biggest walls we face aren’t on any map.

They're the fears, doubts, and excuses we build inside our own minds.

Heinz Stücke didn't just ride around the world. He showed us that the road is always open. To anyone brave enough to take the first pedal stroke.

---------------------------


https://x.com/fopminui/status/2008319459786997880

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

In 1978, Soviet geologists discovered a family living in complete isolation deep in Siberia. The Lykovs had fled Stalin's persecution in 1936 and, for four decades, survived without any human contact, technology, or knowledge that World War II had even happened.



The group of Soviet geologists surveying the remote Sayan Mountains of Siberia stumbled upon a wooden hut that seemed abandoned. To their astonishment, it was inhabited, by the Lykov family, who had been living in total isolation since the 1930s.

Karp Lykov, a devout Old Believer, had fled with his wife and two children in 1936 to escape Stalin's religious persecution. Deep in the taiga, over 150 miles from the nearest settlement, the family built a life entirely disconnected from the modern world. They grew rye and potatoes, made clothes from hemp, and lived without metal tools or contact with outsiders.

When discovered by accident in 1978, two more children had been born in the wilderness; neither had ever seen a stranger or even tasted bread. The Lykovs' isolation lasted for 42 years.

When the geologists told the family that humans had landed on the Moon, they were astonished, unaware that World War II or the Space Race had ever occurred.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family