Thoughts On A Sunday

It was quite evident Memorial Day weekend had arrived, signified by one specific thing – heavy traffic. There was a lot of heavy traffic starting yesterday morning around 8am. It kept getting heavier all day, shopping center parking lots were full as people stocked up with weekend victuals, and there was a line of vehicles at our town docks waiting to launch their boats. The local farm stand was busy as was a recently rebuilt gas station/convenience store/deli/Dunkin’ Donuts which just reopened on Thursday.

We’ve already seen a little drama in our town when it was found that one of the piers at our town docks needed repairs, its condition requiring closing off one end of the affected pier before folks started showing up to launch their boats yesterday morning. Not a good way to start the boating season!

And then there’s this:

The concert at our local outdoor venue this evening is being headlined by the Beach Boys.

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I never liked tattoos, and particularly on women. These days it seems so many women are getting tattooed, and not with just ankle tats or so-called ‘tramp stamps’. Some have even gone so far as to get their faces adorned with ink, usually the last place they have room for ink.

Now, other than for aesthetic reasons, they and tattooed men may have another reason to regret getting inked:

A possible link between tattoos and lymphoma.

Our knowledge regarding the long-term health effects of tattoos is currently poor, and there is not a lot of research within this area. Now a research group at Lund University has investigated the association between tattoos and lymphoma.

The new study, published in eClinicalMedicine, suggests that tattoos could be a risk factor for cancer in the lymphatic system, or lymphoma. However, the researchers underline the need for more research on the topic.

"We have identified people diagnosed with lymphoma via population registers. These individuals were then matched with a control group of the same sex and age, but without lymphoma. The study participants answered a questionnaire about lifestyle factors to determine whether they were tattooed or not," says Christel Nielsen, the researcher at Lund University who led the study.

In total, the entire study included 11,905 people. Of these, 2,938 people had lymphoma when they were between 20 and 60 years old. Among them, 1,398 people answered the questionnaire, while the number of participants in the control group was 4,193. In the group with lymphoma, 21% were tattooed (289 individuals), while 18% were tattooed in the control group without a lymphoma diagnosis (735 individuals).

"After taking into account other relevant factors, such as smoking and age, we found that the risk of developing lymphoma was 21% higher among those who were tattooed. It is important to remember that lymphoma is a rare disease and that our results apply at the group level. The results now need to be verified and investigated further in other studies and such research is ongoing," says Nielsen.

Yet another reason to avoid getting tattooed. But then there are a lot of substances that people expose themselves to that are detrimental to their health. That they might get sick and die sometime down the road due to such exposure doesn’t stop them.

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As bad as the electrical grid is becoming, it appears California is well ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to its shrinking capacity and stability.

While PG&E certainly bears culpability for its deferred maintenance and negligence in improving transmission lines, the lion’s share of the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the state itself, which has crafted a regulatory framework that prioritizes renewables at the expense of reliability. By neglecting nuclear, hydroelectric, and gas-powered plants, California has effectively sacrificed its energy stability on the altar of green energy ideology.

It is time for California’s leaders to wake up from their green energy fantasy and refocus their efforts on restoring reliable sources like dams, nuclear facilities, and gas plants. This reckless green energy experiment has only served to drive prices skyward, squander taxpayer dollars, and leave consumers in the dark —literally and figuratively. It is time to put pragmatism ahead of ideology and prioritize affordability and reliability in our energy policy for the betterment of all Californians.

That so many of the Climate Change Cultists would like to see this applied across the country is disturbing on many levels. Of course the faithful think they won’t be expected to suffer the inconveniences of an unreliable electrical grid show us just how delusional they are.

Better that we start deploying nuclear and rebuild the electrical distribution system to increase its capacity and to make it more robust and less vulnerable to coronal mass ejections, EMP, and particularly hackers. (One thing I don’t understand is why any part of our electrical grid is connected to the Internet in any way, shape or form. It should be an isolated standalone system.)

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Uh oh, this doesn’t sound good.

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From the “Just When I Thought They Couldn’t Get Stupider” Department comes this latest bit of nonsense.

It appears that biscuits and gravy are now “rayciss” and offensive.

It appears that in the days of ‘woke’ and DEI everything is racist and offensive. These idiots need to grow the eff up and realize that the people claiming all this crap are delusional, hate you, and are the actual racists in the room.

It is time to devoutly ignore them, or better yet, ridicule them as they so richly deserve. Sometimes it’s the only way to get their attention.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk have arrived in droves, there are a lot of boats on the lake, and the day to remember our honored dead arrives tomorrow.