Getting Rid of Insects

Before you reach for the chemical-laden bug spray and store-bought insect repellents, there's a natural solution you can try—peppermint.

Insects hate peppermint. In fact, the stick bug uses a milky substance it can emit from behind its head that fills the air with the scent of peppermint. The bug uses this to fight off predators, as the scent is an unbearable irritant to most insects.

Using Peppermint Around the Home

If you have spiders, ants, mosquitoes and other bugs around your home, try using peppermint oil. The scent may also help keep mice away.

To get started, pick up some peppermint oil at your local health or grocery store. Look for 100-percent pure peppermint oil with no additives.


Next, try putting a little peppermint oil on a cotton ball and place the ball in an area where you often see insects, such as on a window sill or near a door. The scent should detour insects in the area. If this doesn't work, then try bug bombs for pest control.   READ MORE...

Lack of friends

 

2024 Election ISSUES

 One would think that the main issues of the 2024 Presidential election would be the following:

1. Inflation
2. Biden's Corruption
3. Trump's Legal Problems
4. Different Judicial Standards
5. A Politically Weaponized DOJ and FBI
6. Stagnant Economy
7. Weakened Military
8. Price of Gasoline
9. War on Fossil Fuels
10. Illegal Immigration
11. Crime and Violence
12. Illegal Drugs
13. Government Spending
14. BLM - CRT - WOKE
15. A Divided America

NOOOOOOOOO...

I doubt that any of these issues are really going to change the outcome of the voting public.

What I do think is going to be a crucial issue is ABORTION...

Believe it or not, women are going to use their influence, power, and numbers to make abortion the key issue in the 2024 election.

It does not matter if the Supreme Court ruled that abortion WAS NOT THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT...  a huge amount of women think that it should be the responsibility of the Federal Government and that the CONSTITUTION is WRONG.

The Constitution is wrong because it was written by a bunch of WHITE MALES who did not care what the females at that time were thinking or would be thinking in the future.

WHITE MALE SUPREMACY is the key here...

It has influence Blacks and Females in the decision making processes that influences their political voting.

Most media disregard females and their opinions but that is going to be a mistake in 2024...

Nobody gives a shit about anything else but what is in it for me.  

What do I want?

What do I think I deserve?

What should the Federal Government DO FOR ME?

The End of the Month of June

 This is the last day of the month of July.  Only 4 months out of the year have only 30 days: September, April, June, and November.  This does not make June any more special than the other months...  but, what's special about June is that it begins the summer, just as August ends the summer...  at least it did when I was a child.

June 30, 2023 has another significance for me and my wife and that is, this is the day that our house of 23 years is going up for sale.  It has been a good home and a home that I will be sad to leave but the wisdom of age is telling us that we are too old for this house and the stairs that we have to go up and down.

For the last 20 years, June has also been the month we go on vacation, usually spending a week down at Myrtle Beach...  although, at the very beginning of our life together, my wife and I used to drive to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  It was a 12 hour drive and compared to Myrtle Beach is desolate with vacationers.  We stopped going to the Outer Banks because we got caught in a RIP TIDE and no telling what might have happened if there had not been someone on a float who brought us both back to waist deep water.

June used to be the month where I would start mowing the lawn but for the last decade or more, I have had to start mowing in May.  We used a push mower until we realized we had saved enough money to buy a riding lawn mower.  Our first riding mower was cheap, did not last many years, but got the job done.  Then we purchased a Deere.

June, as a boy would be the month that my mother would finally buy me tennis shoes...  that had to last me the entire summer.  I remember getting tennis shoes and a pair of Levis jeans that I would put on and go outside and get the water hose and complete saturate them with water.  For the rest of the day, I would wear those jeans while they dried.  Once dried they fit my body perfectly.

June has a lot of memories for me, and I am sure that I will see another 15-20 of them.

His Last Message

 

Catalyst for LIFE

A new study suggests that the weathering of sulfate rocks, not increasing ocean phosphorus levels, was crucial to the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere, influencing the late evolution of animal life, and also indicates that potential for complex intelligent life on other planets might require longer incubation times.


A recent research study may have discovered a missing link that helps explain Earth’s uniquely oxygen-saturated atmosphere and the corresponding evolution of animal life on our planet.


The study, led by a Fellow of the Forrest Research Foundation at The University of Western Australia and recently published in the esteemed journal Nature, may hold the key to understanding why, for almost 90% of Earth’s history, oxygen levels remained too low for animals to breathe.


The first major evolutionary event of animal life occurred during an event dubbed the Shuram Excursion – between 570 and 550 million years ago – which is believed to represent a massive release of carbon dioxide and oxygen into the atmosphere and oceans as a result of increasing ocean phosphorus levels.


To test the theory, researchers used a newly developed tool to track the abundance of phosphorus in the oceans hundreds of millions of years ago, recorded in six locations in Australia, China, Mexico, and the US.


The data and Earth chemistry model revealed increasing ocean phosphorus levels could not have explained the rise of oxygen. The effect was only replicated by the model when large quantities of sulfate rock were weathered, releasing sulfate into the oceans to produce vast amounts of oxygen.  READ MORE...

Cycle

 

Holding On

In 1967, I purchased (with the help of my parents) a brand new Plymouth Barracuda convertible - candy apple red with a 383 and a four-speed gear shift. There were no other racing-type parts ordered for the vehicle, mainly because I did not have the money.  After 200,000 miles I had the engine rebuilt, repainted with the original pigment color, and installed a new top with a glass back window.  After 25 years of ownership, I put on antique license plates and sold the car a few years later because I needed the money.

In 1987, I got involved with the Total Quality Management program in the USA (it actually started in TN at Tennessee Eastman) and in1990 I relocated to TN to manage the second Center for Quality and Productivity Management in the state.  I was involved with that program until 2010 and had collected over 20 file boxes of notebooks and manuals that had been given to me to help prepare my TQM classes or that had been acquired at workshops.  In 2015, I threw away all those boxes into the local landfill because the home in which I was living was running out of space.

In 2023, my wife and I decided to downsize from a two level house with stairs to a single level house with no stairs.  Our yard size reduced from one acre to just a couple of strips of mowing on all four sides or 3 hours of yard work down to less than an hour.  In order to move into our downsized house, we had to throw away all items that we had not used or worn in the last five years.   We both threw away half our clothes and filled Habitat for Humanity's Truck almost 3 times.

The point is that no one really needs all the stuff they collect nor do they need all the clothes that they have purchased presumably because of work.  It is also apparent that all the photographs and memories that we hang onto are rather pointless as well.  From my standpoint, I had never looked back at the photos I kept from my first marriage that ended in 1993.  Over 25 years of memories that were never looked at.

We HOLD ONTO stuff for a variety of reasons but in the end, none of those items, none of those memories, none of the money that was saved, can you take with you when you die.

SO WHAT'S THE POINT?

Lava

 

Driven to Extinction Will be our Fault

Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind and Dario Amodei of Anthropic have all supported the statement.

The Centre for AI Safety website suggests a number of possible disaster scenarios:

AIs could be weaponised - for example, drug-discovery tools could be used to build chemical weapons

AI-generated misinformation could destabilise society and "undermine collective decision-making"

The power of AI could become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, enabling "regimes to enforce narrow values through pervasive surveillance and oppressive censorship"

Enfeeblement, where humans become dependent on AI "similar to the scenario portrayed in the film Wall-E"

Dr Geoffrey Hinton, who issued an earlier warning about risks from super-intelligent AI, has also supported the Centre for AI Safety's call.

Yoshua Bengio, professor of computer science at the university of Montreal, also signed.

Dr Hinton, Prof Bengio and NYU Professor Yann LeCun are often described as the "godfathers of AI" for their groundbreaking work in the field - for which they jointly won the 2018 Turing Award, which recognises outstanding contributions in computer science.

But Prof LeCun, who also works at Meta, has said these apocalyptic warnings are overblown tweeting that "the most common reaction by AI researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming".     READ MORE...

Sidewalk Drumming

 

I Enjoy Cooking - Especially Soups

When my wife and I retired in 2015, she told me that she was no longer going to cook except for maybe a meal at Thanksgiving and a meal at Christmas.  I was fine with that and started cooking all my food.

I had never really cooked anything except pancakes, waffles, and hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill.  So, it was a new experience for me that I enjoyed as long as I did not have to follow a recipe and as long as I was willing to eat everything I cooked, no matter how bad.

So far, I have not been able to eat only one dish that I made and cannot remember what they was other than it tasted horrible.

When I cook, I make large amounts so that I will have a meal for 5 days or more.  Unless it is really good, 3 days is as long as I want to go with that same meal, so I freeze the last two days to eat later.  I am trying to reduce the amount I make to only 2-3 servings.

While I have cooked almost everything, for some reason I really like soups.  And not those soups that are watery but soups that are thick like chowders, potato soup and/or split pea soup.

I always start with onions, bell peppers, garlic, celery, and mushrooms that I cook in a couple tablespoons of olive oil.  After they have cooked to the point of almost burning, I pour in 1 cup of water or broth.  I let that cook for about 10 minutes on a high temperature.  To that mixture, I might add diced potatoes, Limas, corn or squash/zucchini.

This will slow cook for 3-4 hours until the soupy consistency is thick.

Sometimes, I will cook a variety of vegetables until they are soft (including potatoes) and then blend them up with a submersible blender.  At this point any kind of meat can be added:  chicken, hamburger, ground turkey, beef, hot dogs, etc.

Most every soup I make, I will either add rice, noodles, or potatoes.  Long grain rice, to me, is the best and I use Basmati.

Freerunning

 

Ark Motors Microcar

A London-based EV start-up Ark has launched an electric microcar called the Ark Zero that costs £5995. British media tout it as “the UK’s most affordable electric car.”

The start-up Ark Motors, about which there is virtually no information online, has attracted a lot of attention in the British press with their city get-around, Ark Zero. The microcar designed for cities has a range of just over 50 miles (around 80 kilometres).

The Ark Zero microcar has a top speed of 28 mph (45 km/h), which means the vehicle is not meant for the motorway. With only a 3-horsepower- (2.2-kilowatt) battery, the ArkZero has an energy consumption around the scale of two and three-wheelers. The city vehicle has enough room for “two people and a dog,” as numerous news sites quote from the company—one in front and one behind with the dog.

The tiny electric car measures 98.4 inches (250 cm) in length, 47.3 in (120 cm) in width, and 64 in (1,62 cm) in height, and has a 67.7-inch (172 cm) wheelbase. Among the British media, the consensus seems to be that the light electric vehicle is competition for the Citroen Ami, though smaller, less expensive electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular in energy-strapped Europe. For example, Italian car-sharing provider Enjoy recently announced it is adding 100 electric microcars XEV Yoyo model from the Italian start-up XEV with a range of around 150 kilometres and a speed limited to 80 km/h. Renault’s Mobilize also offers microcars, among others.  READ MORE...

Mom and Child

 

I love My Coffee

 I am a coffee drinker.  Not sure when I actually started drinking coffee and I don't remember drinking coffee in high school, so it must have been college.

I remember cutting class to go to the cafe across the street from the campus and have coffee with friends and talk philosophy.  Today, it would be politics but back then it was philosophy, existence, our purpose here on earth, and where did we come from?

None of those issues was ever fully resolved but we did consume a lot of coffee.  It was always regular.  I increase my coffee consumption in the military, especially when we went to sea and I volunteered for the 11pm to 7am shift in the communications shack.

I remember toasting several pieces of bread and putting peanut butter and strawberry jelly on them and taking them up to the communication shack with me, making a new pot of coffee as soon as I got there.  I was the only one on duty.

Returning to college and I slowed down on my coffee drinking as it was only in the mornings before class when I would go to Hardees or McDonalds for coffee (and free refills) for 60-90 minutes to write poetry.

After college, coffee was a prerequisite desire in order to be accepted into management.  At this point I am still drinking regular.  Around the age of 50, I cut back on my coffee drinking because I thought it my help my health and switched to decaf.

At the age of 60, I was turned on to Starbuck's Vanilla Cappuccinos, drinking them as often as I could which was not very often because of their expense.  I cannot remember if it was me or my wife that found sugar free cappuccino mix online and from the time of my first order, I was hooked.

Twelve bags last me 12 weeks and I don't really care how expensive they are because I am not stopping.  I buy McCafe coffee pods from SAMS in a box of 100 and use 12 ounces of water.  Then 3 tablespoons of my cappuccino mix and I am good to go.

My coffee drinking has gone from drinking regular coffee all day to drinking 1-2 cups of decaf coffee in the mornings.  Maybe a cup at night but there is no coffee, just 8 ounces of water and about 6 tablespoons of cappuccino mix.

Happy

 

Matter Transformation

Physicists at the RHIC are studying phase changes in nuclear matter from gold ion collisions to identify a critical point in these transformations. Their research, involving recreating and examining the transition of quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter present after the Big Bang, suggests that fluctuations in the formation of lightweight nuclei could indicate this critical point. Certain data deviations hint at potential fluctuations, but further research is required to confirm a discovery.

Analysis of lightweight nuclei emerging from gold ion collisions offers insight into primordial matter phase changes.

Physicists analyzing data from gold ion smashups at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, are searching for evidence that nails down a so-called critical point in the way nuclear matter changes from one phase to another.

New findings from members of RHIC’s STAR Collaboration published in the journal Physical Review Letters hint that calculations predicting how many lightweight nuclei should emerge from collisions could help mark that spot on the roadmap of nuclear phase changes. 

Proof of a critical point—a point where there’s a change in the way nuclear matter transforms from one phase to another—is key to answering fundamental questions about the makeup of our universe.  READ MORE...

Using ChatGPT

 

Bruce Lee