Cooking with gas

News blues

Let’s hear it for genetics – the kind allow some people resistance from infection, from HIV to coronavirus >> 
Then there’s the opposite news: how quickly other people are infected after exposure to BA.5.
A new study reveals the average time it takes between infection and symptoms for recent COVID variants — and it's pretty fast >> 

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On culture, not war
Covid-19 lockdown and resultant health cautions shut down South Africa’s iconic and world-renowned Comrades Marathon. After two years with no race – the only other time was during World War II, from 1941 to 1945 - the grueling ultramarathon resumed this year. And, the story of this year’s winner is a winner: South Africa’s Tete Dijana, who works as a security guard, won the men’s leg of the race.
Read the uplifting story >> 
For more on the Comrades Marathon, read post “Something these is doesn’t love a wall” 

The Lincoln Project:
We, the People  (1:37 mins)
Poser  (0:28 mins)
Kansas  (0:40 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Let them eat cake? (Backstory)
As prices rise beyond the ability of many British families to pay – thank you, Brexit! – too many British children don’t have enough to eat.
This due, partly, to the extreme rise in the price of natural gas and electricity.
Russians, meanwhile, at a time when it has sharply cut natural gas deliveries to the European Union, gets rid of its excess natural gas by flaring large volumes into the atmosphere near the Finnish border.
Humans! What to say?

Analysts from Rystad, an energy consultancy based in Norway, described [this action] as an environmental disaster and estimated the amount of gas being burned off into the atmosphere was equivalent to about 0.5% of daily EU needs.
…
Rystad analysts wrote: "Exact flaring volumes levels are hard to quantify but are believed to be at levels of around 4.34 million cubic meters per day. This equates to 1.6 billion cubic meters (bcm) on an annualized basis and is equal to around 0.5% of the EU's gas demand needs."
…
Professor Esa Vakkilainen at the LUT University, Lappeenranta, said Gazprom may have been burning as much as 1,000 euros worth of gas per hour for the past two months, while flaring was damaging the atmosphere.
"So this is also a big environmental problem, especially for the North Pole area where this soot has definitely an effect on global warming," he said.

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Mary, a model for future mesothelioma suffers (yes, unfortunately, right now, people, unbeknownst to them, have this fatally toxic environmental disease) has weaned herself off the oxycodone drug. She was unusually fatigued her first day off the drug, but quickly regrouped. Yesterday she was in the kitchen cooking up an experimental mashed potato crust veggie pie, potato cakes (for aloo tikki and chana masala), and bolognaise sauce for spaghetti. All this to freeze for quickie meals once she begins chemo in just 16 days. (We’re optimistic she’ll want to eat during that time.)
Mary reports feeling “pretty good,” as if she can “feel her chest again – and that “the boxy feeling” in her chest "lessens each day.”
The other good news? Mary emailed her surgeon photos of her healing scars (one about 15 inches long, the other that, post-surgery, accommodated four draining tubes – about 6 inches long) and asked when she might start swimming again. 

She’d asked the same question some time back and he’d said, “in about six weeks.”
At the end of her sixth week, she repeated the question. This time he said, “go for it.”
The new bathing suit she ordered arrived yesterday. Unlike her trim Speedo, this one has shorts and a long-sleeved shirt.
“I want to avoid as much as possible the initial shock of cold to my now-vulnerable system. A wet suit likely wouldn’t give me my desired range of motion for swimming. Not sure how this suit will work out. I’ll probably quickly lose my shorts but it’s worth a try.”
I agree: definitely worth a try.
So far, today is typically foggy. Once the fog burns off, we’ll approach the pool.

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SF Bay Area:
Sunrise: 6:37am
Sunset: 7:42pm

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:17am
Sunset: 5:43pm