I can only listen to so much KLOVE before I grow bored of it. So in running deliveries in perfect sandal weather Las Vegas in the past few days, a song kept on popping up on smooth Jazz 91.5 FM while I was driving around. I loved it immediately and now it is stuck in my head.

I take an interest in the Las Vegas music scene. The top two of my favorite bands (The Killers and Imagine Dragons) both are local born and bred. Elvis is buried in Graceland but he had a heavy presence here too.

As a side note I think the Las Vegas Jazz scene could become the next big musical thing. It’s nascent right now and this little radio station literally plays out of Tap N Ash on Fridays and Saturday nights in what sounds a lot like a drunk karaoke night in Ohio. They give away tickets to see some musician to the ninth caller and kindly remind people that if they didn’t get through the first time, they should call again. I suppose this implies that there haven’t been nine callers. It’s that type of radio station. I love it.

I searched YouTube that night for the lyrics to this song that was stuck in my head. Let them drink let them smoke let them sin. Let them alone. Nothing popped up that was even remotely relevant. I mean this song is playing on a radio station right?

I listened for the song again. It played and I put in more lyrics from it. The motel off of highway nine…Leave them alone. I searched Google as well. Nothing. Nada.

I listened for the song again. This time afterwards the dj GAVE THE NAME OF THE BAND! Okay so it’s the Blue Smoke Band. It’s a local Las Vegas (Henderson) band. Surely I can find this song now, right?

Nope.

Instead my top result on YouTube popped up as Sia’s newest single. Now I like Sia as she’s probably my favorite female artist so I listened to it. It’s darned catchy!

Also Taylor Swift, even for Taylor Swift, is becoming insanely prolific as an artist. The YouTube algorythym led me to 5 or 6 of her new 2026 releases. I wondered after watching two of them if poor Tay Tay is having some sort of pre midlife crisis. The videos always showed her looking as an insanely best most attractive version of herself. But they also kept on repeating the same scenes which seemed cobbled together in a, shall we say, artificial matter.

It’s all AI. Obviously there are enough audio and video clips of Taylor Swift to create whatever music you want to with her. This may well include a new hit single.

But my question is why a very talented Las Vegas band with an excellent new 2026 single has 28 likes on Facebook for their music while AI generated slop on YouTube is getting millions of eyeballs. Now the Blue Smoke Band could be utilizing AI themselves for all I know, but if they are they’ve done a good job of getting past my filter. After a lengthy Internet search I was able to find the name of the Blue Smoke Band’s song stuck in my head: Letom.

I was able to find an Apple Streaming service that had the song but that would require a subscription. I suppose I’ll have to wait for it to play on the radio again.

Should I go back to recording the song on a tape recorder like in the old Luddite days?

It reminds me of the Hollywood music scene, where genuinely talented artists grinded away on an open mic in the corner of a crowded bar. Meanwhile Taylor Swift will never have to make another song again. At this point 10,000 new hit songs can be generated by AI agents in her name today alone.

Perhaps the AI has unburdened us all from the creative spark, but the music talks of a soul it doesn’t have. At best it’s a copy of somebody else’s hard work, reformulated in new ways. Or am I being too picky?

Are we Human or are we Dancer indeed…

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We had a fun time on the Fremont Street Experience on the Las Vegas strip, as should be evident from the picture above of Mary and Elon. Now I can’t remember any hotels or casinos in the area with the names Menet, Mernic, or Baze Cance. Mary and Elon also look radically different from my recollection.

Let me see if I can find a real picture of them from that night. I like this one. Young Elon, being four, can’t read what those clothes say. But the words along with those in the background celebrating America’s 250th year appear to be in English (and also presumably in the USA). This would date the picture as January of 2026 (coats would not be necessary in warmer months) with Freemont Street Experience also written on the upstairs dining area.

Can you tell which one of these images was AI generated?

Here’s a real picture of Mary and Elon.

Golden Gate Casino is in the background. If memory serves me that’s the oldest one in all of Las Vegas. But wait maybe substack’s AI image generator just needs better prompts to get a good picture of Mary and Elon on the Freemont Street Experience!

It doesn’t really look like them. Also where is Sater and Remantsm? EEMEACT? I don’t recall any casinos with those names. Also why does the Mom have devil’s horn hair?

I guess I’ll have to stick with my own pictures from that night.

The kids aren’t looking perfect in those images. Maybe I can generate a good AI picture of my daughters with a different prompt.

It’s interesting and slightly pedo adjacent that a prompt for a 19 year old and 12 year old girl on Fremont Street generated all images of a young man with a girl (all pairs were white). None were images of two girls, or sisters, or anything else. Sometimes I love finding out the embedded assumptions built into these generators by using somewhat open ended prompts. Really though Crinect? arHrasr? Cistieet?

I think I’m going to have to stick with my own pictures, thanks. I guess you’ll just have to believe me when I say that these below are not AI generated. The weather has been lovely for wintry mid January. This picture was taken of our backyard thermometer yesterday:

Here’s Eliza with her one remaining chicken Basil. Or is it Basel?

I hadn’t taken a picture with my Uncle Scott in some time.

My sweater says Tony Packo’s and for the first time yesterday here in Las Vegas somebody recognized it. “Tony Packo’s?” A man said as I was picking up an order in Chipotle. “Are you from Toledo?”

“Yes.”

“I went to University of Toledo.”

“I graduated from BGSU.” I responded back. “You’re the first person to notice my sweater.” Nobody yet has commented on my Esan Fest t shirt from Thailand.

“There aren’t too many of us out here.”

I have noticed the deluge of AI video slop on YouTube. I’m starting to wonder when some enterprising company will start promoting their brand in these videos. One for example featured an impossibly fat black woman, with her cart piled to the top with groceries, yelling at staff that she needed her food. I zoomed in on the food boxes. Weewonkers? What in the heck are those? You’d think Jimmy Dean sausages would want some product placement. It’s just randomly jumbled letters made to go for Pavlov’s dog emotional buttons.

Remarkably you can get the exact same AI type of videos of fat poor white women (with unusually nice teeth) in MAGA hats who are also worried about food. They usually have a methamphetamine thin white “husband” in the background, outfitted in a stained wife beater tank top, with several children running around weirdly large trailers who are frequently in diapers and also deformed.

Now of course I could personalize the AI. I could feed it all of my best pictures and make sure that it designs a super avatar of me, where I look like me but always at my youngest, thinnest, hottest version and with perfect teeth in every picture. I understand that this could be memetic. But who am I?

That just sounds like anesthetic for the soul. If you pretend you’re never going to die I’m not sure how well you can really live. Why bother with the hard work of real improvement in this life when you can just be fed the winningest representations in the cloud?

Substack does seem to be getting a lot of AI written content. My dead giveaway is that reading it always makes me feel sleepy. It doesn’t connect the same way.

I consider using AI to write as a form of plagiarism unless it is cited as AI.

Gavin’s Newsletter

Poll Of The Month: Is it ethical for people to use LLMs (generative "A.I.") for writing articles and books, putting their name as the author and not disclosing they use AI to generate the text?

This is something I have been pondering recently quite a bit as we currently have a tidal wave of generative A.I. dependent writers publishing material here on Substack (and all over the internet) prolifically…

Read more

4 months ago · 17 likes · 28 comments · Gavin Mounsey

The bigger problem is that there is no consensus on what is truth anymore. Take the latest Supreme Court case regarding what is a woman or a man. Childbirth should be an Olympic sport, just to make this distinction obvious and beyond the “scientists.”

So any writing generated will become an echo chamber with no ability to evolve the conversation. That ability relies solely on your own God given creative power.

I’ll pass thanks.

It’s a mystery how Max has been getting up to the table

That’s Tigerbel’s cat dish! Also we have way to much mail on the table.

We should have the perfect house and the perfect pictures of everyone and everything. My writing should be vague, professional and totally in no way controversial to anyone. Aren’t we all perfect people? Isn’t this how we get there?

I’ll take the real world every time…God Bless

Buy me a ko-fi

Due to the natural high acid contents of tomatoes (though we do add extra acid) they seemed like a perfect choice for water bath canning. Many canning websites make the process sound hopelessly complex in an effort usually to sell you more supplies. It is not. Fruits or vegetables with either a naturally high acid content, which includes peaches, plums, berries, cherries and apples, or those in which the acid content is raised through adding apple cider vinegar or sometimes lemon or lime juice to the mix, can usually be safely canned by simply boiling water above the tops of the sealed jars for 40 minutes to an hour.

Common sense should rule the process. If something smells off or is leaking don’t eat it or use it. Trust your instincts over labels.

Through a combination of purchases from yard sales, estate sales, a local thrift store and some fresh canning lids from a grocery store we were able to procure 10 quart and pint ball mason jars with tops for about $12. Jasmine tried her luck at making some pasta sauce using fresh herbs from the garden including basil, mint and rosemary along with a few teaspoons of apple cider vinegar. Headspace was left at the top as pictured.

Unfortunately they did not have a stock pot deep enough to cover over the tops of the jars as would normally be the case. Without that we just boiled our mason jars in this.

The strawberry preserves seemed to seal due to the lesser jar size. Unfortunately the one I used for pickles broke when I tried to add cool water to the already boiling mix to keep the water level high. These are lessons that need to be learned (or re remembered) the hard way sometimes.

The pasta sauce didn’t fully seal but we used it all for spaghetti and other things over the next several days. It was a bit thin and watery and we should have added corn starch. It was simply fresh pureed tomatoes, diced garlic cloves, fresh basil, mint and rosemary, salt, pepper and one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar sauteed first before pouring into the jar.

There’s many ways to test if a jar is sealed, usually I just make sure it is concave with no air bubbles. If in doubt use that first and refrigerate. If your preserves have been in the pantry for a long time and either smell bad, have obvious mold or have leaked or exploded don’t use them either.

You can boil the water over a fire if you have a proper rack to put above it.

We were able to eventually buy a pressure canner from an estate sale for $5, which is what is claimed to be needed for lower acidic vegetables and meats. I am not sure the seal on the inside was still fully intact but it has to be far better than the one a friend bought off Amazon where the pot literally exploded on her first time using it.

I have heard that boiling water for 3 hours or so and making sure to add apple cider vinegar is sufficient to safely seal even meats while canning, but I have not done so myself. My mother water bath cans every year and here are some examples of from peaches from our trees harvest in Las Vegas. We have canned plums left from two years before that have been safely opened and eaten. Of course refrigerate them after you break the seal.

Have you ever done any canning? Considering the quickly rising food prices, the slashing of government benefit programs and the approaching autumn harvest now is an excellent time to learn. It might become a necessity to know how to preserve food when it is in excess just as my grandparents and generations before them knew all so well how to do.

I didn’t can this moqua, but being that Jasmine is vegetarian I used it as a meat substitute of sorts in many dishes. It is absorbent, lacking in a distinctive strong flavor of its own and has a good texture. I made ceviche, fillings for sushi rolls, and used it in pasta recipes.

Random picture of me with my niece Maddie sticking her tongue out.

Do you have any harvest planned?

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The iterations of it are many and multiplying. Here’s one I could find. Figuring out what the “original” was is difficult.

I can say that on a war note, all is obviously not well in the Middle East. I’d read claims that the airport in Israel was bombed (not true, I think?). So I hopped on FlightAware to figure out what was going on with commercial flights.

Here’s two pictures literally from my phone looking at my laptop screen as of about 5 PM Pacific Standard Time (US) on this Friday June 20, 2025. This one is a more close up of Israel with Jordan to the right and Syria and Lebanon up North. The darker areas are over the (Red? Or Mediteranian?) Sea. The white represents borders between countries. In theory.

This is one zooming out to the broader area, with that marked in orange as Tehran, in Iran. As best I can tell there are no commercial flights going into or out of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Iran.

What do you think is going on here?

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They sometimes sell stewed pork intestine with lemongrass, chili and cilantro at the Nai Yang market. I think my husband makes the best version of it and has cooked it himself many times over the years. For whatever reason he wanted me to be the chef this time. You want to boil it for a long time with a mix of savory and strong spices. Even without refrigeration we have safely reheated it even one or two days later with the ingredients blending so that it often tastes even better. The end result should be salty, savory, spicy and sour.

Here’s some of my ingredients: garlic, one shallot, small peppers, Kaffir leaves, ginger, tamarind paste and a tomato.

The organs were rinsed very thoroughly in water and cut into small sections. I added eight cups of water, a lot of salt, aroy-d (basically chicken bullion) kafir lime leaves, garlic cloves, tamarind paste, peppers, cilantro, ginger, shallots and lime juice. Then the mix was boiled over a fire for a few hours and served over rice.

I thought it came out great but Ka did not seem as thrilled with my cooking. Here was his alternative suggestion. Please make sure and open the can so the heat can escape.

As a health update my headaches have been slowly but surely fading away. There has not been a magic bullet fix but I do notice that being very mindful of everything I consume helps (even though I have focused on cooked from scratch close to nature meals for decades). Things that have not helped at all is various vitamins and supplements I tried. Reducing caffeine consumption seems to have helped. Drinking mineral water seems to help. The biggest thing that helps is reducing exposure to EMF. I am sure that the headaches are related to electromagnetic exposure. But how do you get away from it when the modern world is saturated in it?

Perhaps my mitochondria in my brain are not producing enough oxygen, perhaps due to some 60 gHZ wifi. The headaches seem worse around airports, in large cities and around schools. They probably would also be bad around hospitals as those places also have all of these endless WiFi connections. Despite that I have had a very difficult time getting any Internet to actually work.

I noticed that on flying to Kuala Lumpur and back to Phuket on Saturday and Sunday. My headache which had largely been gone for the past two or three days began bothering me in Phuket Airport.

On landing in Malaysia after walking off the plane towards immigration I suddenly was racked with these teeth chattering chills. I was also extremely thirsty and noticed that oddly the airport in Kuala Lumpur does not have any drinking fountains or any type of water dispensers. My headache turned back into this throbbing with every beat of my heart type of ache in the back of my head that it has been at the worst times. I woke up with a sore throat and painful throbbing. It’s finally coming down to much less noticeable levels today back in Phuket.

And for any Thailand expats out there, as a warning, they are pushing on this evisa stuff. They have warned me that this will be my last entry on visa exempt. It’s been tricky for me despite having a Thai husband because of our lack of a proper address. But my sense was that they are cracking down. One poor lady was sent out of the country while I was waiting in immigration.

Getting back to my odd craving for internal organs, could cholesterol be the reason for that?

I’ll pass on the canned fish for now. There’s probably some heavy metals magnifying the electromagnetic pulses. That’s just my best guess…

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People passing on trucks and at the side of the road splash everyone with water, with some also smearing white powder on people’s faces. Keep your phone, passport and any other documents which you are carrying in waterproof plastic to keep them safe.

We ventured out for it. There’s a lot of ladies with (squirt) guns and a few ladyboys too!

It was a perfect weather day for it.

The campsite was full for the occassion

Although we were encouraged to visit Wat Nai Yang it was very quiet inside by that point. We weren’t able to light the candle and three incense for our prayer because our lighter was wet. It’s the thought that counts I suppose…

The minimart on the restaurant/minimart is now open…

We had a good time but Ka looks like a ghost in this picture. I hope that is not foreshadowing…

HAve you ever been to Thailand during Songkran? It’s definitely a day to leave your laptop at home…

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That’s mind blowing to me for a song I had never heard of or encountered until several hours ago on this Christmas day. My younger daughter introduced me to it, by saying “Mom I think you’ll like this song.”

Disclaimer for the graphic language and the 0 to 100 mph cadence. But this is an unmistakably memorable and catchy tune that I think is iconic for a new generation that is coming to age.

I’m more amazed that I never had this one on my radar until this Christmas day. Even with music it seems sometimes I fall into the digital ghetto of what I know or what the algorithm thinks I like. This is despite the fact that I sometimes search out new music, which I am rarely impressed by.

What do you think?

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Despite my first husband Oh’s constant ribbing of his brother about his supposed closet gayness, Ka had told me a different story.

“Gen? I not gay. I love the woman.” He told me. “Do you have any single friends? I like farang woman same you.”

On my laptop I showed him pictures of several different women on Facebook. These were friends I knew in the USA who I thought were single at the time. Ka didn’t like the first few.

“Farang women they very fat!” He exclaimed. Considering my brother in law’s 5 foot 3 inch stature, I thought he was being extremely picky. Eventually I came to the facebook profile of my actress friend in LA. She was, as actresses usually are, quite pretty and not fat.

“She very beautiful!” He exclaimed. “Can you talking to her about me?”

I sent my actress friend a quick message saying that my brother in law thought she was cute. Ka sent her a friend request through his Facebook page. SHE ACCEPTED THE FRIEND REQUEST! I repeat SHE ACCEPTED KA’S FRIEND REQUEST! Let’s get those two married off right away.

For the next few days I didn’t think I’d hear the end of it as Ka poured through my actress friend’s photos, videos and Facebook posts. I was staying at the Pai Yang house in a bungalow next door with my daughter and husband as we waited for Oh’s visa to come to the USA to clear. All I heard was about how beautiful she was.

“Well you should message her or something!” I finally exclaimed. “Stop telling us about it and talk to her!”

Ka was too shy for that. I messaged my actress friend again, this time by saying that Ka really would like to get to know her.

The actress messaged back explaining that she was getting a lot of attention from Asian men. She told me that a Chinese businessman was offering her $10,000 to marry her so that he could make a visa to come to the United States. She wanted to know what Ka’s offer was.

I relayed this message to my brother in law. “I have one baht. In my heart.” He told me.

This was hopeless. “Maybe you should try finding a Thai lady instead. Like somebody you work with or something.” I explained to him.

Ka was working at Phuket International airport as a baggage handler around the time. Not too long afterwards he did seem to notice some woman he was working with. She was pretty and smart and funny and…on and on he went again.

“Talk to her!” Me and my husband Oh started exclaiming in unison.

“My brother he very crazy like this.” Oh told me. “He have this whole story in his head but he don’t speak.” It was odd as I used to have those dialogues in my head when I had been younger too. I’d say this, and then he would say that and then I would say this other thing and then he would say this other thing and…

“Ka you can’t have a conversation that is one sided. You have to talk to HER. Not tell us about her or think you know what she is going to say. I don’t know what she is going to say. You don’t either. Maybe she says yes, maybe she says no. But you have to talk to her to even get started.”

After some weeks Ka worked up the courage to ask this Thai lady at his work whether she was interested in him. She told him she already had a boyfriend.

“Okay good start!” Oh tried to cheer his brother up that night. “Now you do again! You find another woman you like and you ask again! You find another woman you like and you ask again! Again! Again!”

“I agree with Oh.” I told him. “There’s plenty of other women out there.”

Ka was devastated. For the next few days he did not go to work at his job at Phuket Airport. He told us he was sick. Then he told me “The Airport job finished. They not have any work. It is past high season.” It was getting into May which is past the high season in Phuket. But I suspect that Ka was so heartbroken over the rejection that he no longer wanted to show his face at work there.

I’m not in a position to judge people, as I didn’t come into my relationship as anything close to a virgin either. But I still found this documentary on Lily Phillips, an OnlyFans porn star who completed a challenge to sleep with 100 men in one day, extremely depressing and fascinating all at once. My props go to the film crew for giving her intimate space to do her thing while not sexualizing her at all. Even when she flounces around trying on sexy lingerie in anticipation for the event they block her image out. It is clear that this is just a business transaction reduced to its most basic core elements.

But if I had been interviewing her I would have asked her if she had ever loved somebody. I would have wanted to know if she ever felt coerced into sex. Many women who are victims of rape and sexual abuse go through periods of extreme sexual promiscuity. This is often their way of reclaiming power by making their consent the most important thing.

But how do you find love this way? Does she just have a great sexual chemistry with partner number 85 that day and they decide to take it further, whereupon perhaps she’d find out he was born three hours before she was or something? Or is it that there is no hope for any of those men, as they are coming in from the wrong angle? Does a relationship have to be built up away from the porn star context altogether, where perhaps some sexual tension is allowed to build even for her by a man who leverages his celibacy and refuses to debauch her? These are questions I don’t have answers to.

Lily herself seems as clueless as anyone about how to find a mate. But her next project involves breaking the world record (who was counting this one before?) by sleeping with 1000 men in a day. All of the magic and mystery of creation seems to be lost.

I’ll take what I have, thanks.

This is a Thai language music video that Ka likes which I finally found on YouTube. I don’t think it requires too much translation.

To each their own. If you’re looking for God though, I don’t think he’ll be found at the bottom of that bottle…

Buye me a ko-fi

As some background regarding this I have been coming to Nai Yang Beach on a regular basis since 2012 or so. I am currently living there in a tent at the campsite and have been since July. There’s a particular spot on the beach near the public bathroom and shower area that we frequent most commonly. You can swim in this area but it is adjacent to the coral reef upon which this was turned into a national park in 1982. I would assume that there are geologic surveys showing coral cover at least dating back to then.

The coral reef had been growing and expanding steadily over the years and several months ago I specifically posted regarding this.

It had choked off the swimming area on the beach and was steadily growing northward towards the Phuket International airport. I mused about all of the sea urchins in the water and wanted to go out on the reef on the next low tide and collect and possibly even try to eat some.

Except there hasn’t been a low tide ever since then.

When I first noticed this in mid to late November or so I wrote it off as bad luck. I just must be going to the beach consistently at high tide. The coral reef must still be there, safely buried under several feet of water. But then I started noticing the coral island was disappearing too.

See now the coral island has been consistently visible even at high tide since at least 2012 to me. The island had expanded so much that in recent years it had become a coral peninsula where you could walk out on it without ever touching water even at high tide. I did so with my daughter several times in 2021 and 2022 and took many pictures of it as Nai Yang Beach was the only place I could safely go facemask free during Covid lunacy. I most commonly came here then on sunny beautiful beach weather days especially during the dry season which runs from December through April.

So this disappearing coral island thing is not a high tide or a seasonal phenomena. It’s subtle enough that a casual beachgoer of this area might not notice it. Or they would simply shake their head and think it’s high tide or something as I did at first.

So I checked the Phuket tide charts. Now the tides are affected by the moon which, during both its new moon and its full moon phases cause greater pulls on the Earth, causing both lower lows and higher highs on the seashore. The first thing I noticed in trying to piece this together was that the variation in the tides seemed to be less than it was before. The second thing I noticed was that in trying to dig through the data from the last several months, most of it seemed to be scrubbed. The third thing I noticed was that some of the tide times did not make sense, whereas before they used to roughly correspond with what I saw physically.

I was able to eventually find a Phuket marina which seemed to keep more accurate tide charts of the last several months. I noticed that yes, the tides were higher than before, but also that they had less variation between the low and the high tide regardless of the moon. This corresponds with what I am visually seeing on the ground. So those potentially delicious sea urchin are buried underneath the waves, then?

Well that requires a deeper dive. Literally. Obviously I needed to suit up and check this out myself. Also behind me used to be a coral island and a very vibrant Coral reef. It’s practically all waves now.

Hubs had lovingly made breakfast over the fire and I took a picture of the don’t walk on it coral reef warning sign which I know I have a picture from before. So I ventured out.

The long story short version of this is that I could not find any living coral anywhere anymore in this area. Visibility into the water was very limited due to all of the pounding sand and rocks. There seems to be a sand break which a few surfers were taking advantage of. Nai Yang Beach was never a surfers beach as it is too flat and does not make good waves. I swam out to the bend where the channel and the boats were kept and a rip tide tried to grab me. I had seen enough.

The coral reef is gone. Like really gone and not just buried under water. All that is left is a lot of dead coral.

Literally nothing is too outlandish of an explanation for this. Did the aliens take the reef into their mother ship for investigation? Did a targeted EMP blast and government weapons test take the coral reef out? Did the coral reef decide to die in protest to the ongoing jab and war genocide happening currently?

There could be simple and natural explanations for this. Perhaps the ever growing coral reef blocked itself in in a way that changed the tides in the bay. Perhaps there is a cyclical event happening based on the positions of the moon and stars in the sky that explains this die off. Those are totally on the table too, but in those cases I would expect the die off to be gradual. I’m starting to think that all of the above is the correct answer here.

Something happened around mid October which destroyed this vibrant area. Based on the ocean’s cleanup effort that I’m seeing, I suspect that the coral reef died suddenly. Of something.

This is part one of what will be a deeper dive. I’m sounding the alarm on this. Something is very very off.

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This song has been going through my head again for the last few days:

I guess this is my warning shot. What’s in a name, really?

Speaking of changing the timeline. This is one of my favorite songs and my greatest wish for my older daughter:

I hope you dance indeed…

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The Phuket Vegetarian Festival began yesterday, which kicks off at the new moon of the ninth lunar month and spans nine days. Legend is that this event began when some Chinese Hokkien descendants fell ill in Phuket during a cholera epidemic in 1825 and, not knowing the cause of their illnesses, engaged in some intense cleansing rituals to appease God. They were cured of their afflictions and the rituals caught on.

Although the festival is best known for its fire walkers and those hosting all manner of strange face and body piercings many including myself engage in it as a vegetarian cleanse. Adherents are supposed to wear all white in the temples, not eat any meat or consume any alcohol and refrain from sexual activity during the cleanse. I cheat quite a bit but I still enjoy the festivities and the excellent vegan cuisine. Yesterday we went to Wat Nai Yang to see the festivities.

These yellow flags are used to denote areas of worship during the nine day event.

Any restaurant with the yellow flags and triangles is serving vegetarian/vegan food during the event. I do not know of any which include either eggs or milk products, so it would be vegan. The traditional recipes are very delicious and in many cases indistinguishable from meat based choices. My favorites are the spring rolls and certain vegetarian curries.

We made an offering at Wat Nai Yang. I came back later and noticed that both candles were still burning down, though one did have to be realit from the other.

Getting our new fortune at the temple.

Unfortunately dietary trends have become highly politicized and spill over into personal dietary choices which I do not think should be judged. At one point vegetarianism was all of the rage, with many people concerned about animal welfare and the ravages of factory farming. Then somehow veganism got tied into a backlash over eating cricket burgers (how are those vegan?) and the holier than thou attitude of certain influencers in the movement. So now vegans are categorized as always being some type of blue haired feminist far left quintuple jabbed Covidiot, and none of us want ot be those things, now do we? Suddenly the all meat diet is all of the rage!

Some days ago I was was watching one of these all meat all of the time videos which was making out like eating vegetables was a vast conspiracy to make people impotent and sick. My mind immediately sprang to tennis player Novak Djovich. I admire him for his principled stance in refusing the Covid jabs of course, even to the point of missing career milestones such as the Australian Open. His recent Olympic gold medal cements him as the GOAT, the Greatest Player of All Time, in tennis.

So what does the GOAT eat in a day? It is insane in retrospect that somebody who is so principled and meticulous about what goes into his body through his diet was being required to inject an unknown substance in order to play tennis. Djovich is extremely low key about his diet as he does not want it to be a political issue. In going through his testing and his discovery of his gluten and sugar intolerance, I could not help but think that Sasha Latypova is absolutely correct regarding vaccines being a vector for creating low grade allergic reactions to things we eat. Yes, far more pesticides are sprayed on our food, just as they are poisoning the air and water. But all of those jabs are producing the biggest payoff in the form of harming our health.

For those who don’t know, Novak Djovich is vegan. Always go with your n of 1 regarding what goes into your body and forget the trends.

That brings me to the CAMP RAT study, an observational cohort regarding the diet of woodland rats nearby a campsite as observed in Phuket, Thailand, during July to October of 2024. Seriously the rats are always getting into our food supplies. They’ve chewed through cardboard and styrofoam boxes and climbed up trees and walls to get to things we’ve tried to keep out of their reach. The National Park doesn’t technically allow pets even though a few good mousing cats would be extremely valuable to us. A Russian man who was staying in the camp tried to adopt an adorable little black kitten he named Prince, but unfortunately the park staff told him no and the kitten was taken out to stay with a family nearby.

The Camp rats eat some obvious things like rice either dried or cooked and they’ve nipped through the plastic on more than a few bags of Raman and bread. They love fried chicken brought from the market along with cheese (unsurprising there). They have bitten through several tomatos and cucumbers but have thus far not disturbed eggplant, limes, garlic cloves, onions or hot peppers. They also have not bothered with alcohol (even sweetened drinks), tobacco, marijuana, coffee or kratom leaves.

One surprising thing they eat, however, is soap. This is even odder because toiletries are kept in a seperate location from food items. The first time I found a half eaten bar of soap I didn’t even know what I was looking at. I just thought my husband had maybe tried to clean a serrated knife or something. Then it happened a few more times and I noticed bite marks on the bag of toiletries too. Yes, the rats eat bars of soap of at least three different varieties.

Another odd thing that these obviously very clean, church going, alcohol tobacco and marijuana abstaining rats seem to eat is plastic. I found a long discarded empty bottle of cooking oil behind something which was almost entirely eaten. They chew through water bottles all of the time and have nipped at plastic containers for fish sauce, seasoning and vinegar enough times that I now buy those items in glass bottles.

The point of this is that although microplastics, pesticides and other poisonings are probably affecting us and those in the animal kingdom, the CAMP RATS seem to be procreating and flourishing enough to make food storage a hassle. I’m pretty sure the rodents haven’t been vaccinated for a darned thing, however.

I consider my CAMP RATS Study to be much more useful and far less cruel than say, drilling as hole into the rats skulls and injecting rabid dog saliva, say. What possible useful results did these mad scientists get from their animal studies? It was probably some useful information about the best ways to really poison people.

I wish you all good health no matter what you are eating. My advice is to savor the food, whatever it is…

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Creed Speech

Sunday Sundries: Thailand Flood Edition

When the government says…

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2 years ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Nicholas Creed

I find it fascinating that just 2-3 weeks ago there was massive news coverage of flooding in Phuket, including a facebook page to mark myself as safe from it. Yes, it has been raining for pretty much the past month straight, to the point where I can really only think of one sunny day during that time where I don’t recall any rain at all. This one, however, is worse looking than the downpour 2 or so weeks ago, in that a lot more is flooded.

We are moated in right now, which is a way of saying that although we are in a high covered area in a not in use restaurant, the flood waters are on all sides surrounding us. Most paths are under at least 1-2 feet of water. To illustrate here is the west facing view of the beach. As you might notice the seating outside is under water:

Here is the South view, where water is creeping up into the restaurant. It’s well beyond the South parking lot now:

Here is the north view looking towards the airport. This is supposed to be a parking lot and the lower level camping area:

Now the East side heading towards the bathroom is the best, as that only has perhaps six inches of standing water and the bathrooms themselves are elevated enough to be plenty okay. That’s how we’ve been walking out:

There still are remarkably a few hardy campers not under the cover of the restaurant. They’ve got their stuff on the highest area close to the administrative offices with plenty of tarp both above and below. The last heavy rains washed us out of that area, not because of the downpour per say but because the high wind took our tarp out and the lightning scares me:

That said we got a new three campers last night in a married couple with their one year old baby boy. They got flooded out of their home and are welcome to stay as long as they need to. But I do hope the rain will stop soon.

So is it climate change? I find it interesting that this time, which is worse than the flooding in Phuket 2 weeks ago, it is getting downplayed. Did the funding get cut off for some emergency funds to the higher ups? Is it now about everybody taking care of their own?

I don’t think it’s climate change, at least not in any man made overpopulation versus HAARP sense of the word. Tropical storms and typhoons happen and September is statistically the rainiest month in Phuket during the monsoon season. As is they say the 193 mm recorded is completely on average for the month. I’m still wondering where their measuring station is…on top of what area under a cover?

What I can say for sure is that despite all of the rainy weather the Adaman Sea has not budged one inch overall. The ocean always gives me solace like that. And the symphony of frogs is near deafening at night. As do the crickets and the birds and other creatures. It’s like a symphony:

How is the weather where you are?

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Some of you may have an idea of a coral reef as some type of lush underwater garden. To me from up top the shallow pools look more like the surface of the moon with patches of water.

There’s sea creatures to see, but most also look alien and uninviting. Like this young starfish crawling along and whatever that weird glow in the dark string thing is:

There are signs posted regarding this:

I am not sure who in their right mind would attempt to swim at low tide, although many Thai people go out on the corals, some to gather clams and crabs from the tide pools. Despite all of this human intervention the coral reef area has definitely expanded since I was out at low tide perhaps three years ago. There used to be a swimming area even in the summer rainy season but it is all red flags now.

There’s lots of new growth coral:

I love the double heart shape of this formation

A tiny crab

Unfortunately my husband was trying to grab for a crab that scurried below an underwater rock. I told him not to reach his hand in there. “Something bite me!” He exclaimed. He had jagged one inch lacerations on two of his fingers. I tried to see what might have done it and…what the heck is that black and white thing?

So on to Google I went. Here’s a better picture of the creature in question, called a moray eel:

It’s not venomous but does have very sharp jagged teeth and is a known risk to divers in tropical areas. Don’t reach under rocks! Ka insisted he was fine and stayed on the water despite bleeding from his bite marks. We’ve bandaged it and treated it with soap and hydrogen peroxide and thus far it looks okay.

Ka tried to warn me not to touch this little fish we saw in the water, which he proceeded to poke with a coral. The pufferfish puffed up all right. I hope the little guy is okay afterwards.

Between the sea urchins, the eel bite, the crab pinches and the other strange creepy crawlies I wouldn’t say that swimming in this area is advised. That said I’m happy to see that the coral reef is expanding. Both polar bear declines and the supposed disappearance of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia were two climate change alarmist poster children who did not age well.

I’m happy when I see natural things ebb and flow in a way that makes mankind’s efforts to rule, or manage, or save the world look like digging a sand pit to the oceans waves. The sunset was quite beautiful:

This morning some people were riding horseback on the beach.

I’m happy if the powers that shouldn’t be don’t manage to kill the world, despite their best attempts to do so. Unfortunately they’re starting to do a bang up job of killing people.

It’s good to make peace with being part of the natural world…

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In May and early June at the start of the rainy season the tractors come and dig the pits, or paddies, and the rice is planted. These are designed to be lower lying but flat areas as the young crop needs a lot of water. This looks like a perfect season as there has been rain especially a few downpours at night. The fields are neither disastrously underwater nor are they dry. God seems to be providing the water in the natural way of things with no climate change that I can see.

The rice is harvested in November or so in waves and left in the sun to dry as that is going into the dry season. I have read that the fields can technically be planted twice per year on a with a May-November December-May rotation, but that is not done on our land. The dry winter season crop would require outside irrigation and the family seems to do pretty good natural soil regeneration practices. The field is left fallow during the dry winter months though cattle and water buffalo are able to graze on it, which I suspect strengthens the positive feedback loop.

It all seems to work out quite well without a lot of outside inputs or let’s grow oranges in Alaska or soybeans in Africa type of thinking. Trying to fit square pegs in round holes with corporate agriculture and debt cycles, increasing input costs and patented seed stocks has not worked out well for the small farmers.

This cute little piglet was following us, but then he got shy when we took the video of him

One thing they don’t seem to be as sophisticated at is USDA inspections and irrational top down edicts. The people look healthier for it.

But what jobs would we have left if we didn’t do all of that tinkering? The pay isn’t great on organic farming but the peace of mind is good to have:

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Say love at any rate…

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I’ve had some cavities that have been creeping up on the back of my upper front teeth for the last few years. It’s affected my smile and is at this point 100% a cosmetic dentistry thing. I probably will go into a dentist eventually, hopefully a good very basic one in either Mexico or Thailand, to get them looked at. I want to keep all of my teeth in their natural state for as long as possible, so no veneers, implants or other real expensive fake stuff. In the meantime I’ve been researching changing the Thailand bought tooth powder I was using to brush my teeth with something that stems the damage and possibly remineralizes my teeth.

A lot of trial and error has ensued. Tooth powers often contain baking soda and activated charcoal, both of which do have cleansing and whitening properties but seemed to be to abrasive and hurting the dentene in the long run.I read about gummies that might be able to change the bacterial flora in my mouth and help with remineralization. They were too expensive for me.

But for over a week I have been using a tooth powder I ground up myself which contains exactly two ingredients which seems to be doing wonders. Here are the two ingredients:

For those who don’t know these are dried out quail eggshells and dried out tangerine peels. I simply ground them together in a pok pok into a fine powder. I use quail eggshells, the raw eggs for which can be bought at many Asian food markets, because white chicken eggshells in the USA are usually bleached white and may contain other chemicals. This is for remineralization of teeth. The tangerine peels have whitening and breath freshining qualities, though they have to be very dried out to ground up properly.

That’s it. I just have been using this powder to brush my teeth with. I am already noticing results:

I just figured I’d share. Greetings from currently still in Las Vegas. The flowers are in full bloom (three rosebushes, oleander, globemallow, pomegranite) and I am pretty sure our front yard is winning the competition for the biggest forest in the desert:

Do you believe there are natural solutions to most health problems? I figure it’s worth a shot!

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I had been interested in Mayan prophecies about the end of the world as we know it being in 2012 or so. I can’t say that I grasped to any particular concept.

This song haunts me nonetheless:

Should we all start now? I think so!

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Did you ever get a song stuck in your head? This is mine for the last 36 hours…

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During the Covid lockdowns in Las Vegas during March-May of 2020 the only thing the girls could do to get out of the house was go on food deliveries with me. I enjoyed those times as many conversations opened up while driving around with them. I’m sure taking my girls out in this manner was against the God forsaken expert advice of the time. I worried more about my daughters’ psychological health being stuck at home. It was surreal to drive around the completely vacant Las Vegas Strip back then.

So last night I had a food pickup from the White Castle on Fremont Street. There was a loading unloading zone spot that I knew about but as I manuvered on 4th Street a security guard closed the gate right in front of me with me as the first car idling in line.

“We’ll be closed for about 15 minutes for the Fremont Street Experience.” The guard told us.

“Hey can I keep my car parked here and show my daughter it?” I asked. The guard said that would be fine. So we kept the car parked on 4th and I took this video.

I was able to pick up the food delivery and get back to the car just as the guard was opening the gate again. “Perfect timing.” She commented. “You got food too?”

“It’s not for me. It’s a delivery.” I said.

I’m not for John Crawford’s idea of a digital purdah for women, mostly becuse he seems to be conflating Instahoe fueled competition to build a use case for all females of all ages on the Internet. I’ve had the conversation with several mothers regarding whether it is appropriate to show your child’s face at all on online. It’s a hotly debated question but I tend to cherish the memories and like to share milestones as appropriate. It blows me away how fast they grow and evolve.

Beyond that photographs and videos emerge in other places, from the feeds of friends to school and ID pictures. Government agencies and the power the people inside them have been given, in my opinion, are a greater threat than a truely random Internet stalker. Beyond that I’ve argued if my children were ever to heaven forbid go missing I would think having recent photos and videos of them would draw greater attention and sympathy to the cause of finding them.

All of it is a deeply personal choice.

I’m glad I was able to make a memory yesterday…Cherish the ones you have..

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I’ve been trying to get my Alchemy of Forgiveness Part three together and have been thinking about it. My first husband Oh, who is dead, came to me in a dream a few hours ago. He tried to kidnap me and then Ka found him and he tried to kidnap us both. There’s serious unresolved issues on his part. I will make some concessions.

I went to the beer store shortly afterwards. I haven’t been drinking much with my nieces around me, but I wanted some beer to sleep. The black guy behind the counter, who I have never seen before, was funny for me. He had to buzz me in of course then he checked my ID.

“You’re 11 months older than me.” He told me.

“Well you look good for your age.” I told him back.

So the cashier starts telling me how his sister was born on February 18 and he was born on April 18 and everybody was born on the 18th. I smiled.

“You got a thing in your family for the 18th, huh? My husband was born three hours before me.”

“So on the same day, huh?” The cashier asked.

“Nope not at all. He was born on the 19th, but I was at 5:26 PM in Ohio and he was at like 2:00 AM in Thailand. So I guess he’s 3 hours or so before me even though I’m older.”

“Have a great night.” The cashier informed me before I left. I told him to do likewise.

Such is life…

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