the happy couple: Carrie and Boris

Carrie Symonds and Boris Johnson, in the garden at Number 10 after their wedding on May 29*

Marina Wheeler (!w2) – Boris Johnson’s second wife, mother of four of his children – has written a book:




2021-05-31T16:20−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 31, 2021
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red pill

image source: dictionary.com screenshot*

from a Caitlin Johnstone article:*
If you think it was a big red pill to realize that the media's narratives about the world are nothing like real life, wait til you realize that the same is true of your own narratives about your own life.

if it was worth it – even though it hurt – to realize the world is not as it is thought or said to be, keep going till you realize nor are you as you are thought or said to be

“things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise” / lankavatara sutra (!gb, !tw)


2021-05-28T10:40−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 28, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*


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William Shatner – interviewed by Hadley Freeman


Hadley Freeman:
Is this actually Shatner or a celebrity lookalike? You look amazing for 90, Bill, I say cautiously.

…

“Ha! Well, I don’t have any secret potions. It must be genetic. I ride a lot of horses and I’m into the bewilderment of the world, so I open my heart and head into the curiosity of how things work,” he says.

I’m not sure if “the bewilderment of the world” is an ingredient Olay can bottle, but it certainly works for Shatner. That, and horses.*
“the bewilderment of the world” sounds like an echo of Mary Oliver’s “be astonished”*


2021-05-26T15:00−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 26, 2021
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book interview with controversial former bishop / August 2020

“A myth is not an event that happened. It’s something that happens all the time.” —Richard Holloway, at 22:09

interview begins at 2:57

!a Stories We Tell Ourselves by Richard Holloway (!w2)* / subtitle: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe


2021-05-25T09:30−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 25, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

MacDiarmid: Caledonian antisyzygy (!cd) [an-tee-SIZ-uh-jee] / the joining together of opposites

Scottish Episcopal Church (!w2) / Richard Holloway became a former bishop when he could no longer express beliefs he was expected to

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pinned tweet by Michael Geist, professor and expert in internet and e-commerce law

see also: michaelgeist.ca


2021-05-22T10:20−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 22, 2021
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lose 35 lbs in 3–5 months to cure type 2 diabetes (Roy Taylor)

see Roy Taylor, scientist (!w2) … and tweeted, linked article, archived*

from the article by Donna Ferguson:
Taylor’s “Newcastle” weight loss program is a clinically proven method of reversing early type 2 diabetes and his approach is currently being rolled out to people with the condition by the NHS. It involves cutting your calorie intake to 700-800 calories a day. In the book he explains how the people in his program who managed to do this – typically by consuming only slimming meal shakes and non-starchy vegetables, plus one cup of tea or coffee each day with skimmed milk – lost a life-changing amount of weight in just eight weeks. And how you can do the same, safely, at home.

In other words it is a book that has all the hallmarks of becoming a massive bestseller. But Taylor himself will not make a penny from it. He is donating 100% of his proceeds from the book to the charity Diabetes UK, which is “only logical,” he tells me, because they funded his original 2011 study. “That was so far sighted of them,” he says. “They supported research that I know the experts thought was outlandish.” He says just one person at the research committee meeting spoke up for his proposal and convinced the others by saying: “It might sound crazy, but if he’s right, it would be really important.”

Taylor decided to write the book because, even though most diabetes experts in the UK have now accepted that his rapid weight loss program works, many doctors in Europe and the USA remain unconvinced. “It’s not easy to get new ideas accepted in medicine. So it will be a while before this gets into the textbooks and generations of doctors are taught about it.”*


2021-05-16T10:00−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 16, 2021
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the eVinci™ micro reactor may be the first SMR deployed in Canada

video from Westinghouse Nuclear web page*

sourced from PDF of a 2019 article on the same website:
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” This statement, attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest minds in creative, practical inventions in human history, embodies the guiding principles of the  Westinghouse eVinci™ micro reactor design. The eVinci design is based on demonstrated technology that can revolutionize how remote locations access clean, reliable energy.

In codevelopment arrangements with national laboratories, design partners, and utilities, Westinghouse is developing the eVinci micro reactor to serve remote residential, industrial, and military energy consumers who are not connected to a national grid. The eVinci micro reactor employs a nuclear battery concept as the energy generator. It is being designed to deliver combined heat and power from 200 kWe to 5 MWe from a compact monolithic core surrounded by additional fission product barriers and fully enclosed in a protective canister that can be transported by road, rail, and sea.

Westinghouse and the associated team are aiming to complete the design, testing, analysis, and licensing to build a demonstration unit by 2022, test by 2023, and have the eVinci ready for commercial deployment by 2025. Aggressive as this schedule is, Westinghouse believes it has the right strategy, skill set, and lessons learned from previous experience in deploying first-of-a-kind nuclear technology to meet these targets.*
 “nuclear battery concept” – the canister fits inside a standard shipping container swapped out every 3+ years:



2021-05-12T16:26−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 12, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

nuclear* / results of site-specific search for this term


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media bias: how it is

It’s not that Jeff Bezos emails Washington Post reporters saying, “Promote US wars!”  It’s that only reporters who support imperialism see their articles published and their careers rise. As Noam Chomsky famously said in an interview with Andrew Marr in 1996, “If you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.”*



It’s always easier to flow with power than to flow against it. Entire societal infrastructures have been built to ensure that this is the case. Any effort which helps the powerful will be elevated and amplified, while any effort which inconveniences them falls into an empty void.*


2021-05-11T14:12−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 11, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

the asterisk above the video links to an earlier post on Noam Chomsky in the 1990s, the Overton window, and the five filters;
the next asterisk, below the video, links to a recent piece by Caitlin Johnstone – the source for this lightly edited excerpt



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space junk to hit anytime now

image from CBC news item*

quote from an astrophysicist in that news item:
It’s just considered bad practice to throw large pieces of metal from the sky.
—Jonathan McDowell (!w2)*



2021-05-08T09:36−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 8, 2021
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untended Indigenous forest gardens continue to thrive

the Ts'msyen forest garden in northwestern BC – documented in a groundbreaking new study by Simon Fraser University / image from National Post article

from the National Post, May 4, 2021:
Along Canada’s northwest coast, ancient Indigenous forest gardens – untended for more than 150 years – continue to thrive. Ts’msyen and Coast Salish peoples once planted and cared for plots of native fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and medicinal plants and roots along the north and south Pacific coast, a new Simon Fraser University study finds.

Forest gardening is a common method of food cultivation and agroforestry in Indigenous communities around the world, especially in tropical regions. But the findings published in Ecology and Society mark the first time these lush, open, orchard-like plots have been studied in North America.*

• • •

“It’s striking to see how different forest gardens were from the surrounding forest, even after more than a century,” Jesse Miller, study co-author, ecologist and lecturer at Stanford University, told Science.

A neighbouring swath of conifer forest, which had been logged decades ago and allowed to regenerate naturally, contained only a fraction of the number of species.*

the record shows humans can not only let biodiversity flourish, they can help it flourish


2021-05-06T14:23−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 6, 2021
*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*
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