February, 2026:
- Sorry for being quiet for awhile. I’ve had some significant health problems that have slowed me down, and a few major non-writing projects to pursue, like finding a new car to replace our 25-year-old Toyota 4Runner, and replacing the dead air conditioner in our smaller garage, which is also my workshop and ham shack. Summer is acumin in, and the garage is a mess from my having to clear space around the dead unit so a handyman can remove it and install a new one. I would have called the handyman who installed it, but alas, he died a couple of years ago.
- Being a long-time cheese fan, I was pleased to see this piece of research, which associates higher dairy fat intake with lower incidence of Alzheimer’s. Read the whole thing: The article has a long list of limitations in the data upon which the study was based, meaning it may not be as predictive as originally stated.
- If you haven’t already bookmarked space.com’s Space Calendar, get on it. The site has listings for most launches, including China’s (maybe) but mostly launches from the US and other western nations. Carol and I have seen a fair number of SpaceX launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, and this is where we find most of the up-and-launchers.
- The Chichon volcano in southern Mexico killed over 2,000 people back in 1982, and buried whole towns under pyroclastic flows. The top blew off a la Mt. St. Helens, leaving an immense crater with a small lake at the bottom, and seismologists assumed it would be quiet for awhile. Well, “awhile” may be over, as the lake is picking up more volcanic sulfides and chlorides, with CO2 bubbles coming up from the lake’s bottom.
- YouTube is now blocking background play on a lot of mostly mobile browsers. Background play still works on Brave under Windows. I don’t listen to music on my phone, so I’m not sure if blocking background play is also happening on desktop OSes.
- It occurred to me recently, in these years of wildly active solar phenomena, that snow is the price we pay for auroras. Sigh. But no, I’ll take a warm climate any day of the week. I’ll only want to see snow again as a tourist.
