- Making ‘Food Out Of Thin Air’ - Article from 2024 about a Finnish company exploring an idea that's been around since the 1960s - using microbes to convert waste into edible proteins. You can search "solar foods finland" and see that the company has grown since this article - they were really onto something! Although, I think the trade name "Solein" sounds a little too close to "Soylent Green."
- Be My Eyes - "Be My Eyes connects people who are blind or have low vision with volunteers and companies worldwide through live video and artificial intelligence." This sounds like a really neat way to help people. This app connects you with a blind/low vision person who needs your eyesight. I was reading through the stories and the reasons people need help range from confirming what color a piece of clothing is, to figuring out instructions to descale a washing machine and one person couldn't find her cat in her apartment and had someone be her eyes while she searched for the kitty (who was found!).
- The Vintage News - I think this may be on its way to becoming a dead site as it hasn't been updated since April of last year. However, that's kind of ok because it's all about vintage news anyway. The stories may be old but it looks like there's lots of rabbit-holing that can be done here. Some topics covered are news stories, history, pop culture, vintage Hollywood and mysteries.
Last weekend I donated blood for the very first time! This is something I've been wanting to do for a while but, because I lived in Europe in the early 90s, I was on a Mad Cow restriction. American blood services lifted that restriction in 2022 but it's taken me that long to go find a blood drive and donate. It was fairly quick and easy and I can donate again in March.
In my state, the general public is allowed to comment electronically on bills brought up in the state legislature. We can indicate whether we approve or disapprove and we can even leave a comment that becomes part of the public record. We were told that news organizations will look at the for/against numbers when writing about a particular bill or sometimes the governor will also look at it to determine public sentiment. This whole system is called RTS - Request to Speak. It was originally put in place to help lobbyists but there were no restrictions put on who can actually use it so now several civic organizations offer up training to the public. I had my training this past week, got my account set up and am ready to start commenting on bills when the legislature comes into session this week. We have a lot of MAGA, completely ridiculous legislators who promote the most awful things so I expect to be doing a lot of commenting. Just another little something I can do that makes me feel a little less helpless and overwhelmed with everything.
You all know I collect links to interesting stuff because I post a few of them at the top of the blog post every week. Well, I collect way more than I post and I am currently drowning in links so, until I get through the backlog, I will be adding a new section to the blog, Link Lagniappe. What the hell is lagniappe, you ask? It's a word from French-speaking Louisiana based on a Spanish term, la ñapa, which is taken from a Quechua word, yapa, which means "something added." source It's just a little extra something given for free.
Listening
Some podcasts I've listened to this week:
Reading
You may or may not know that I love fairytales and one of my favorite things to read is a spin on a fairytale. I finished Silver & Hemlock by T. Kingfisher in less than a week and it was SO GOOD! Slightly creepy retelling of Snow White and now I'll be giving my mirrors at home side eye for a little bit.
I've now started reading Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile by Julia Fox. Most of what I know about Katherine is from her later years with Henry VIII. The one thing I knew about Juana was that she toted around her husband's corpse and was known to be mad. Apparently that was just a bunch of scandalous lies! She was never realistically expected to ever be in a position to gain the throne of Castile but through a series of unfortunate deaths in her family she should have become the ruler of Castile, in her own right as her mother Isabel was. However, first her father-in-law, then her husband and then even her own son conspired against her (and apparently sometimes against each other) and she was kept imprisoned for 55 years. Here's an interesting article explaining it all. I haven't gotten that far in the book yet - right now Katherine has just made it to England and is going through her wedding celebrations with Prince Arthur. Juana has married Philippe and this is such a sexually charged union - like, they are really into one another - the churchmen have told them to simmer down.
Watching
I've watched through episode 5 of Stranger Things. I'm enjoying it so far but I'm distressed at Dustin and Steve not getting along. They need to make up! On the other hand, I do like the guidance that Robin is giving Will.
I started watching the 3rd season of Royal Flying Doctor Service and kind of hating myself for it because I really want to watch it but season 3 is the last one! I don't even think they've been confirmed for a season 4.
And I remembered I still have a few episodes left of Crusade and watched episode 11, The Needs of Earth, which featured a side story with some funky alien pron in it. Never in my life would I have expected a (trying to be) sexy pak'ma'ra.
I also finally got back to my Godzilla journey and watched Destroy All Monsters, which was surprisingly good! The miniatures effects were excellent, we had a decent-looking Godzilla and, even though Minilla was in it, he wasn't overly annoying. I'm working on the write-up for the Godzilla page.
Link Lagniappe
- New Caledonia imposed a 50-year ban on deep-sea mining across its entire maritime zone
- The key to safer neighborhoods - the taco stand.
- one of the DOGE team members involved in gutting our government. Not sure how I feel about this post which details his time in that department - he seemed to want to do good (?) by coding a new UX for filing veteran disability claims but he also does not seem at all regretful that his actions also led to so many unnecessary and possibly illegal employee terminations. The term "banality of evil" comes to mind.
- The woman in this story became an evolutionary scientist because she used to not believe in evolution. Interesting story on how her beliefs changed.
- The 89 Percent Project "is a year-long global media collaboration aimed at highlighting the fact that the vast majority of people in the world care about climate change and want their governments to do something about it."
- Trying to find out what the lives of girls were like in ancient Egypt.
- sweet story about the slowly developing friendship between a woodworker and a feral cat.
- Bluesky post from a college professor and how she encourages reading stamina by giving her students different reading scenarios to do and reflect on (read by candlelight, read a chapter aloud to someone, read with a sketchpad and draw characters, scenes or another element from the story).
- the death of 24 hour america - why nothing stays open late "In this video essay, we will talk about the loss of late night businesses in the USA and the slow death of the 24 hour city and the effect it has had on society and culture through criminalizing existing at night. (YouTube link)
- Beer from Victorian Arctic expedition to be opened
When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.