You may have seen the advertisements running on television lately from law firms encouraging people to contact them about the link between the weed-killer Paraquat* and Parkinson’s Disease**. For decades, the Big Chemical corporation Syngenta, who manufactured and got wealthy from Paraquat, has been dealing with the public concerns that long-term exposure to the chemical may be a cause of the incurable brain ailment known as Parkinson’s Disease. Public concerns about the toxic chemical go back as far as the 1970’s when pot-smokers had occasional warnings to avoid inhaling or ingesting certain strains of marijuana that had been surreptitiously growing near agricultural fields where farmers had sprayed Paraquat. As it turns out, it wasn’t just farmers and pot-smokers who were concerned about the toxic chemical. The Swiss chemical giant Syngenta themselves also had concerns about the link between Paraquat and Parkinson’s Disease–but they were keeping those fears to themselves.
A new scientific study has found that high levels of toxic PFAS* discharged from an industrial plant into the Cape Fear River in North Carolina has contaminated the water and is the likely culprit for making alligators sick with autoimmune disorders that appear similar to human diseases like lupus.
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Study overview
The new study compared Cape Fear alligators with a cohort from Lake Waccamaw in a neighboring watershed not subjected to direct PFAS pollution. Researchers found that alligators living near the industrial plant that is dumping PFAS into the water have extremely high levels of PFAS compounds and markers of immune disease in their blood.
Additionally, the expressions of interferon-alpha responsive genes in the Cape Fear River alligators were 400 times higher than those alligators in the control group from Lake Waccamaw. (Alligators further from the industrial plant showed lower levels of PFAS and lower expressions of interferon…
Funeral service is expectedly sad and a gloomy affair, but this grandmother had the most unique way of lightening the mood.
While gag gifts are quite common for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions, Jo Marie Perryman, who passed away on October 12 at age 81 in Breckenridge, Texas, left everyone in stitches after revealing her final gift to the family at her funeral service.
Her granddaughter Gracie Perryman posted the hysterical gift on Twitter and immediately spread laughter over the internet.YouTube
Jo Marie had arranged for people at her funeral to be given an unusual gift – a Ouija board! – complete with a humorous comment.
Gracie’s post shows a photo of the small Ouija board stuck on one side of a card. The other side has her grandmother’s hilarious message: “Let’s keep in touch!”
It was a cheeky way for her to remind attendees at her funeral that she really wasn’t all that far away. The gift included a picture of Jo Marie sticking her tongue out and giving the finger.
Gracie wrote alongside the photo, “Received this at my grandma’s funeral. What an icon.”YouTube
In August, Jo Marie informed her network on Facebook that “everyone will be gifted their very own Ouija board” at her funeral.
Despite the announcement, Grace was surprised when her grandmother fulfilled her promise. She recalled thinking, “What on Earth is this?” while opening the gift at the funeral. Suddenly there was laughter in the room as 30 to 40 people opened their gifts as well.
A Ouija board, which is also known as a spirit board or talking board, is a flat board that has the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words “yes” or “no”, and other symbols and graphics.
People can supposedly communicate with the dead during a séance with a Ouija board, by moving a planchette to spell out messages.Gracie Perryman | Twitter
This was certainly an unexpected but truly comical gift to receive a funeral. Jo Marie’s own obituary was a testament to her joking nature.
It stated, “She had a quick wit and a clever sense of humor, which kept everyone who knew her on their toes. lt was rare to win a battle of wits with her.”
Jo Marie loved spending time with her family, and was known for being compassionate and understanding. She enjoyed crafting, sewing, and reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels.
She was famed for her chicken enchiladas, burritos, fried chicken, and Christmas candies. She also loved playing video games and could even win against her children.
Posted on Twitter October 19, the photo has now generated over 722,000 likes and triggered multiple reactions.
One wrote, “This is amazing… I am going to do this when I die in honor of your badass grandma! May she rest in peace!”
Another user remarked, “I am so sorry for your loss. However, this is the stuff of LEGENDS! And now, you have it to look at whenever you feel down.”
Another added, “I’m so sorry for your loss. My first reaction is that your grandma had a wonderful sense of humor, and her wanting to bring some light to the heaviness of grief is so sweet.”
Some even shared their own experience after losing someone they loved, “The last time I got to talk to my best friend, before ovarian cancer took her, I asked her to send me a postcard from her next adventure. I get little signs every once and awhile. It’s a nice thing so this just make the messaging easier.”
Someone even shared a photo of what was given to them during a departed loved one’s service.Twitter
The beloved grandmother is survived by three children, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, and other family members who loved her dearly and miss her already.
Another legendary grandmother ensured that her funeral would be a time of celebration by setting the ground rules in a TikTok video.
In the video, Lillian Droniak, 92, instructed her family to not cry too much and embarrass themselves. Better yet, she asked everyone to take shots and even get drunk at her funeral!
Lillian kept her humor to the end, saying, “I joke about death because it will happen to all of us, as scary as that is,” and we “might as well laugh about it.”
These grandmothers are unbelievably funny and literally had the last laugh! Their last messages and instructions show that we shouldn’t let death seize our sense of humor.
They show how much they love their family, and how important is if for them to make their funerals and final moments a time for family and friends to bond and share their love for one another.
The article has been updated with a statement from GE Renewable Energy.
Adrijana Buljan
One of the wind turbines at Arklow Bank, Ireland’s first and so far only offshore wind farm, has caught fire after it was presumably struck by lightning amid severe weather with thunderstorms that hit the area, according to Irish RTE.
The 25.2 MW Arklow Bank, commissioned in 2004, was co-developed by SSE and GE Energy as Arklow Bank Phase 1, a demonstrator project to prove the opportunity that offshore wind energy could represent for Ireland.
The wind farm, located off the coast of Arklow, Co. Wicklow, comprises seven 3 MW wind turbines and is owned and operated by GE Energy under a sublease to the foreshore lease.
The unit that caught fire was first showing visible fire and was engulfed in heavy smoke, according to multiple social media posts.
Sadly one of the offshore wind turbines off the Arklow coast appears to have been struck by lightning with smoke billowing from it. pic.twitter.com/bCrOxHraGr
“An offshore wind turbine event has been reported on October 19th, 2022, at the Arklow Bank Offshore Windfarm located in the Irish Sea. There were no injuries. The Coast Guard has been notified”, a GE Renewable Energy spokesperson said in a statement.
“Once weather conditions permit and we can access the site safely, we will start working to determine the root cause of this event.”
A 3.6MW wind turbine off the Irish coast was struck by lightning and bursts into flames on October 20, 2022
SSE Renewables is also developing the next phase of the Arklow Bank project which was initially planned to have a capacity of 520 MW.
However, following the transfer of Arklow Bank Wind Park Phase 2 to the Maritime Area Planning (MAP) process in March 2022, the project was revised to substantially increase the power generation output from the site to up to 800 MW.
With the transfer of the Phase 2 project to the new consenting regime, SSE also plans to have the new, 800 MW offshore wind farm built by 2028, instead of the originally planned 2025.
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "...truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity--it is simply true and that is the end of it" - Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” - Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
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