Stranger things

[Nungali]

Blushwood nuts   *  , they are a strange thing ...  regarding cancer treatments . It's a Queensland rain forest tree .  Substances in it work on skin cancers . In animal trials , researchers were amazed at the results  and observed  effect within in moments , it attacks the tumour , causing a visible reaction within moments , within days it begins to die and shrivel and eventually drops off . Then a second substance in it  causes rapid healing of the site . 

 

'Up there' ( in Qld. rain forest )  is also the home of Australia's 'rain forest pygmy '   ( not like the African ones, we had our own version )  they didn't last long after colonisation , they either died or where removed from the rain forest and put in 'missions'  **    . One has to wonder what other natural rain forest medicines they knew about ?  

 

" “In most cases the single injection treatment caused the loss of viability of cancer cells within four hours, and ultimately destroyed the tumours.”

 

https://www.qimrberghofer.edu.au/media-releases/cancer-drug-destroys-tumours-in-pre-clinical-trials/

 

* 

 

 

**

 

another strange thing ; I have not looked up these guys for about  a year now . And now I find, according to AI and the Australian Museum, they never existed !  

 

Funny, because I met one ! 

 

Why now did they never exist ?   because scientists have debunked the idea that Australia was populated by pygmies  and then the current Aboriginals came here and wiped them out .  And that is the first time I have EVER heard this as well .  In all my studies they have been but one part of the Aboriginal population  and contemporary .   Who is writing this stuff  ?  

 

It seems similar to the taboo I have had placed on me because I have asked why are some Australian  Aboriginals black and some brown ?   I have gone against the correct political attitude  in even asking  ( however many Aboriginals  will talk about that  and offer explanations ) .  It comes from that part of society that wants to see them 'equal'  , will always do a 'acknowledgement of country ' before anything official, put a plaque on their town house saying they acknowledge  their property is  .......... (whatever tribe name ) , but would not pick up an Aboriginal hitch hiking  .... just happen to be looking the other way as they drive by . 

 

Thank goodness for John Safran ;

 

 

 

Edited February 17 by Nungali

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Nungali said:

Blushwood nuts   *  , they are a strange thing ...  regarding cancer treatments . It's a Queensland rain forest tree .  Substances in it work on skin cancers . In animal trials , researchers were amazed at the results  and observed  effect within in moments , it attacks the tumour , causing a visible reaction within moments , within days it begins to die and shrivel and eventually drops off . Then a second substance in it  causes rapid healing of the site . 

 

'Up there' ( in Qld. rain forest )  is also the home of Australia's 'rain forest pygmy '   ( not like the African ones, we had our own version )  they didn't last long after colonisation , they either died or where removed from the rain forest and put in 'missions'  **    . One has to wonder what other natural rain forest medicines they knew about ?  

 

" “In most cases the single injection treatment caused the loss of viability of cancer cells within four hours, and ultimately destroyed the tumours.”

 

https://www.qimrberghofer.edu.au/media-releases/cancer-drug-destroys-tumours-in-pre-clinical-trials/

 

* 

 

 

 

 

That's so cool.  And so sad, because don't know about Australia, but in the Amazon rain forest the majority of plants found there  haven't even been identified yet -- while they keep going extinct.  Some of our pharmaceutical substances that were derived from those identified, in the meantime, have revolutionized modern medicine whenever they found an inroad there.  Curare, without which modern general anesthesia doesn't happen and most major surgeries would be impossible.  Quinine, which globally turned around  malaria (synthetic versions, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are derived from it.)  Pilocarpine, which is prescribed for all cases of glaucoma.  To name a few.  And god only knows now many were never touched out of hubris (old wives' tales, snake oil, woo woo medicine is the common way to refer to those miracles of healing nature and native expertise spanning millennia.)  I used to gobble up books on ethnobotany.  Sometimes they made me cry.

 

 

               

[Taomeow]

China imported 12 million tons of coal from the US in 2024.  The coal was delivered on huge oil-burning ships.  China burned that coal to make energy to build solar panels.  The solar panels were then exported to the US and delivered on huge oil-burning ships. 

 

In 1992, a cargo ship container tumbled into the Pacific, dumping 28,000 bath toys, mostly rubber ducks, that were headed from China to the U.S..  Currents took them, and news reports said some have eventually reached Maine and other shores on the Atlantic. In the following years, they showed up all over the world, Seattle to Alaska to Hawaii and back to China and to the Arctic.  

 

Pop quiz: how do you think the two stories are connected?

 

 

Here they are in Chicago River

 

 

 

Edited February 26 by Taomeow

[old3bob]

7 hours ago, Taomeow said:

China imported 12 million tons of coal from the US in 2024.  The coal was delivered on huge oil-burning ships.  China burned that coal to make energy to build solar panels.  The solar panels were then exported to the US and delivered on huge oil-burning ships. 

 

In 1992, a cargo ship container tumbled into the Pacific, dumping 28,000 bath toys, mostly rubber ducks, that were headed from China to the U.S..  Currents took them, and news reports said some have eventually reached Maine and other shores on the Atlantic. In the following years, they showed up all over the world, Seattle to Alaska to Hawaii and back to China and to the Arctic.  

 

Pop quiz: how do you think the two stories are connected?

 

 

Here they are in Chicago River

 

 

 

Forever rubber duckies   (like forever man-made compounds)

Edited February 26 by old3bob

[Taomeow]

 

.

Edited March 7 by Taomeow

[Sanity Check]

On 2/25/2025 at 7:43 PM, Taomeow said:

 

Pop quiz: how do you think the two stories are connected?

 

 

 

Plastic is made from oil.

 

Plastic waste can also be heated to produce fumes which can be processed back into hydrocarbon fuels.

 

 

[Taomeow]

11 hours ago, Sanity Check said:

 

 

Plastic is made from oil.

 

Plastic waste can also be heated to produce fumes which can be processed back into hydrocarbon fuels.

 

 

 

 Interesting idea!  The ducks would be fuming though if you told them.

 

What I had in mind was something else though.  I was thinking of three things two of which I will reveal here:

 

1. The ducks traveled all around the world -- in a huge group of like-minded individuals each of whom looks like a duck and quacks like a duck -- on ocean currents that made their routes pre-destined and inevitable.  If they could think, perhaps each of them would come up with this idea that they're exercising their free will and choosing to join the group of like-minded peers and move in the same direction toward (or away from) the same coordinates.  All freedom-loving ducks go toward ___ and away from ___!  This is progress.  This is equality.  This is duckmocarcy.  But in reality not a single individual one of them nor all of them as a group have any control of the ocean currents that carry them -- nor awareness of their existence.  And yet those currents, the most powerful of them happening under the surface, are the sole determinant of where they are going.

 

2. And those same ducks carried by the currents which they have zero control over clearly demonstrate that any phenomena taking place on this planet that is mostly water follow the same patterns, be those patterns pollution or epidemics or mass formation psychoses or fake solutions to real problems.  Everything ultimately goes everywhere.  And in the universe that is mostly dao, our oceans are but a drop -- if that.  Not a single duck can "save the planet," or save the whole group of ducks, or an individual duck, or itself without knowing the flow.  And the only way to know the flow is to be the flow.  So our separation from nature ("dao patterns itself on nature/on itself") is a guaranteed dead end.  Welcome to rubber duckhood, humanity. 

 

Also sprach Taomeow.   

[silent thunder]

@Taomeow  thank you for sharing here.

 

[old3bob]

 

Painting gremlins: If you have ever done much painting, more so on the inside your home, then sooner or later the painting gremlins will get you almost no matter how careful you are with brush, roller and drop-cloth.  How do you tell, by an unexpected drop of paint left here or there.  Btw. if you are really on top of your game you will catch a drop or drops before they dry but that is not so easy with latex paint that tends to dry very quickly.  Anyway 99.9% of such drops can be caught and cleaned up by a careful painter but the gremlins will almost guarantee that least .01% get by... which will probably be thoroughly and pointedly pointed out by your spouse... 

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, old3bob said:

 

Painting gremlins: If you have ever done much painting, more so on the inside your home, then sooner or later the painting gremlins will get you almost no matter how careful you are with brush, roller and drop-cloth.  How do you tell, by an unexpected drop of paint left here or there.  Btw. if you are really on top of your game you will catch a drop or drops before they dry but that is not so easy with latex paint that tends to dry very quickly.  Anyway 99.9% of such drops can be caught and cleaned up by a careful painter but the gremlins will almost guarantee that least .01% get by... which will probably be thoroughly and pointedly pointed out by your spouse... 

 

I've painted only sporadically so I haven't attracted them, but calligraphy gremlins definitely chomp on ink brushes and calligraphy pens.  They like pricey Japanese ones.  

[liminal_luke]

On 25/2/2025 at 9:43 PM, Taomeow said:

 

Pop quiz: how do you think the two stories are connected?

 

 

I´ll give it a go.  People buy solar panels thinking that they´re doing their part to "save the planet" by "going green."  Of course it´s not true because a lot of oil was used in the manufacture and transport of those solar panels.  Customers think they are getting one thing -- an opportunity to connect with nature and do good for the climate --  but they are being deceived.  It´s a fake do-gooder purchase.  Just like a rubber duck isn´t really a duck.  We buy them to get some sort of three-steps removed connection with nature but they don´t work; we´re deceived.  

 

We live in a world where real environmental action is replaced by confusing fake actions and real ducks are replaced by rubber ones.

 

It´s sad but also oddly reassuring.  If people are wrong about solar panels and rubber duckies maybe they´re  also wrong about the imminent demise of our duckmocracy. I hope so.

[Apech]

49 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

 

I´ll give it a go.  People buy solar panels thinking that they´re doing their part to "save the planet" by "going green."  Of course it´s not true because a lot of oil was used in the manufacture and transport of those solar panels.  Customers think they are getting one thing -- an opportunity to connect with nature and do good for the climate --  but they are being deceived.  It´s a fake do-gooder purchase.  Just like a rubber duck isn´t really a duck.  We buy them to get some sort of three-steps removed connection with nature but they don´t work; we´re deceived.  

 

We live in a world where real environmental action is replaced by confusing fake actions and real ducks are replaced by rubber ones.

 

It´s sad but also oddly reassuring.  If people are wrong about solar panels and rubber duckies maybe they´re  also wrong about the imminent demise of our duckmocracy. I hope so.

I have a solar panel - which makes me sad but oddly reassured

 

I think I’ll get another one 😃

[Lairg]

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

People buy solar panels thinking that they´re doing their part to "save the planet" by "going green."  Of course it´s not true because a lot of oil was used in the manufacture and transport of those solar panels

 

In about 1904 the first announcement was made that oil was running out.  These days to keep the prices up the producers agree to restrict production.   Meanwhile emptied oil fields are closed down and often magically recharge over 20 years.  Who could believe such a situation?

 

When I was a kid I was taught the oil was from the bodies of dinosaurs.  How many dinosaurs does it take to make a tanker of oil?   These days I am not sure anyone bothers to say how oil occurs - apart from Thomas Gold

 

https://archive.org/details/the-deep-hot-biosphere-thomas-gold

 

As for Carbon Dioxide, it is food used by plants.  Imagine how big the plants would be if the CO2 levels were as high as in geological times.   Hunger would be eliminated but there might be rather large animals.

 

 

 

 

 

As some aliens sources have said:  Everything you know is wrong.

 

Who benefits from this situation?

 

 

 

 

Edited March 12 by Lairg

[Taomeow]

2 hours ago, Apech said:

I have a solar panel - which makes me sad but oddly reassured

 

I think I’ll get another one 😃

 

I have a solar charger for my phone.  Which makes me a prepper.  

 

Wouldn't work in Finland.  But I don't live in Finland.  Which makes me sad but oddly reassured.  

[Taomeow]

Tens of thousands of acres of the Amazon rainforest have been demolished to build the road for the climate summit in Brazil.  The most prominent and influential attendees will all arrive in private jets.       

[Sherman Krebbs]

14 hours ago, Taomeow said:

I have a solar charger for my phone.  Which makes me a prepper.  

 

Wouldn't work in Finland.  But I don't live in Finland.  Which makes me sad but oddly reassured.  

 

I live in Finland -- it would work great in the summer.  In the winter just buy a hanging plant light, and put the solar panel under there...  viola 

[Taomeow]

7 hours ago, Sherman Krebbs said:

 

I live in Finland -- it would work great in the summer.  In the winter just buy a hanging plant light, and put the solar panel under there...  viola 

 

No voila I'm afraid.  The whole point of a solar powered charger is to have a way to charge my phone when the electrical grid is down.  Whether it's winter in a solar-powered home in Finland, hot days of summer in CA when everybody runs air conditioning and the (overworked and inefficient) power supply gets knocked out, a hostile hacker attack on the grid, or a Carrington event (which managed to do damage even in 1859 and might end civilization as we know it should it happen again today), the hanging plant light that needs electric power to work won't work.  Absent any such events, I just plug my phone in an outlet.    

[Sherman Krebbs]

8 hours ago, Taomeow said:

No voila I'm afraid.  The whole point of a solar powered charger is to have a way to charge my phone when the electrical grid is down.  Whether it's winter in a solar-powered home in Finland, hot days of summer in CA when everybody runs air conditioning and the (overworked and inefficient) power supply gets knocked out, a hostile hacker attack on the grid, or a Carrington event (which managed to do damage even in 1859 and might end civilization as we know it should it happen again today), the hanging plant light that needs electric power to work won't work.  Absent any such events, I just plug my phone in an outlet.    

 

Perhaps my sarcasm was too subtle?  :  )   Maybe you need to question your need for a phone and electricity in the first place.  If you want to get off the grid entirely, what you need is lots of wood.  Fire is amazing. It can cook your food and give you warmth.  It is also infinitely pleasing to watch as the flames twist and dance, much more pleasant than staring cross-eyed at an RGB LCD display (I have a theory that, with smartphones, human eyes will gradually evolve to get closer and closer together, until they eventually merge into a malformed cycloptic mass).   You will also need food and water.  I am not sure if you are envisioning something apocalyptic, but if not, you might invest in some chickens and a chicken coop. Otherwise, you might invest in a rifle and stock up on LOTS of ammunition.  Finding clean drinking water will also be a challenge (more challenging that you would think).  Culinary water is a vastly under appreciated convenience, much more so than electricity.  Best to try to locate by some kind of spring, but don't tell anyone where it is, else you might end up using up all your ammunition.    I am afraid that charging your smartphone may be the least of your worries in such a situation.  

[old3bob]

 

one can also get little hand cranked generators.  Btw. I have a small radio that has a tiny generator and crank built right into it, it also has a USB power out port that will charge devices as long as you crank away....

 

[old3bob]

 

Will someone please get this lady a hair net or help her with pony tails,  everyone on the space station must be getting infiltrated with her hair?!

 

 

[Taomeow]

5 hours ago, Sherman Krebbs said:

 

Perhaps my sarcasm was too subtle?  :  )   Maybe you need to question your need for a phone and electricity in the first place.  If you want to get off the grid entirely, what you need is lots of wood.  Fire is amazing. It can cook your food and give you warmth.  It is also infinitely pleasing to watch as the flames twist and dance, much more pleasant than staring cross-eyed at an RGB LCD display (I have a theory that, with smartphones, human eyes will gradually evolve to get closer and closer together, until they eventually merge into a malformed cycloptic mass).   You will also need food and water.  I am not sure if you are envisioning something apocalyptic, but if not, you might invest in some chickens and a chicken coop. Otherwise, you might invest in a rifle and stock up on LOTS of ammunition.  Finding clean drinking water will also be a challenge (more challenging that you would think).  Culinary water is a vastly under appreciated convenience, much more so than electricity.  Best to try to locate by some kind of spring, but don't tell anyone where it is, else you might end up using up all your ammunition.    I am afraid that charging your smartphone may be the least of your worries in such a situation.  

 

You are yet to discover the level of un-seriousness Taomeow, Liminal Luke, and (especially) Apech can introduce into a thread. 

If I wanted to talk about apocalyptic prepping, I would certainly dedicate a different thread to the subject and then guard it like a hawk against (especially) Apech. 

  

No, I'm not a "real" prepper ready to live off the grid but neither am I unrealistic or unexperienced with what it entails.  The best prep is accurate information and (of paramount importance) the ability to assess and process it in a clear-headed way instead of pegging new information into one's pre-existing pet biases.  The rest depends on one's personal circumstances and resources (in the broadest sense).   

 

 

[Apech]

I got through the Younger Dryas with just a zippo lighter and a Swiss Army knife.

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, Apech said:

I got through the Younger Dryas with just a zippo lighter and a Swiss Army knife.

 

When I was 3, I used to play wrestle with a real polar bear's hide complete with the head and teeth and paws and claws.  

 

Spoiler

True story.  A relative who was a pediatrician once saved a polar explorer's kid from something serious, and later he brought her that polar bear's hide as a present.  It span the size of the living-room.  The eyes were made of glass, everything else was real.  

 

[old3bob]

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Edited March 15 by old3bob

[Nungali]

On 3/14/2025 at 2:39 AM, Sherman Krebbs said:

 

I live in Finland -- it would work great in the summer.  In the winter just buy a hanging plant light, and put the solar panel under there...  viola 

 

That seems the long way around .....  go straight from plant to light ;