What the zipper seal now?

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It had been a long day, and I was tired. My eyes were tired.
But I did a proper double take at the instructions on the top of this food package.

I’m not sure quite why I was supposed to FLICK the zipper seal before attempting to open it, but I’m glad that I checked on exactly what I was supposed to be doing before I tried either of the options I thought I might have read.

Today has been another long day, with Lightroom doing its best to make things worse. More crashes than a particularly bad driving school. Not its usual behaviour to be fair, but very, very frustrating.

I’m going to have to get my hat out

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It was back in March that I told you that I wanted a MAGA hat. And I immediately also told you that it wasn’t that sort of MAGA hat that I wanted. Because no-one in their right mind wants to be associated with the Orange Shitler and his cult members.

I wanted to get this MAGA hat, designed by Greenland activist Aannguaq Reimer-Johansen:

I’m not a hugely political person, but long story short, I went and got that MAGA hat made, complete with Greenland flag and MAGA-style font.

Yes, seriously. Here it is on the bar.

But it seemed like rubbish timing, because rather soon after that, all the furore around Greenland thankfully died down and then disappeared completely.

Until now.

Yes. That wholly unwanted, wholly unwarranted US attention is back:

Denmark’s foreign minister has summoned the top US diplomat in Copenhagen, following a report that American citizens have been conducting covert operations in Greenland.
Denmark’s public broadcaster DR quoted sources as saying the aim was to infiltrate Greenland’s society and promote its secession from Denmark to the US, although it was unable to clarify who the men were working for.
Danish intelligence warned Greenland was being targeted by “various kinds of influence campaigns”.

That sounds like an approach that Donald might have learned from Vladimir.

Colour me shocked.

Danish Radio’s report on Wednesday gave details of a visit by one American to Greenland’s capital Nuuk, saying he was seeking to compile a list of Greenlanders who backed US attempts to take over the island. The aim would be to try to recruit them for a secession movement.

Given the strength of feeling during JD Vance’s curtailed visit back in March, it’s unlikely that the list would be very long. But that also means that it might not take much time to draw up.

No wonder the Danish Foreign Minister wants to nip this in the bud.

The only good things that can come out of this are a) further international disgust at the US and the Mango Mussolini’s accelerating imperialist policies, and b) the revived relevance of my MAGA hat.

Looks like I’m going to be sporting my red headgear once more, raising awareness of the issues faced by our neighbours in the top left corner of the Atlantic Ocean.

MAGAA: Make America Go Away. Again.

(almost) A microbiologist’s dream

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And I am being quite serious about this.

There are a few things that bugs and diseases are named after. The boring ones are the medical ones – just basically what the disease does to you or how it works. Tuberculosis gets its name from the bacterium that causes it, which in turn gets its name from the tubercules that it produces. Dull.

Then there are the ones named after places or events. I quite like the idea of those. Lyme disease is named after the town in Connecticut where it was first identified. Legionella – the causal agent of Legionnaire’s Disease – was named because it caused an outbreak at an American Legion conference in Philadelphia (incidentally in 1976 – just a year after Lyme Disease was named – woohoo mid-70s North East USA).

But if you want longevity in the microbiological world, you need a bug or disease named after you. There are loads of bugs that are named after people – the people are usually being the ones that discovered the bug. I used to work in an office next to Professor Sir Anthony Epstein, of Epstein-Barr virus fame. I guess that the name Epstein will live on in another context now (sadly still involving kissing teenagers), but that’s not the virologist’s fault.

Everyone who ever works with that bug will know that it is named after you: always. So it is a bit of a dream to have a microbe named after you in that way. If you’re a microbiologist.

But then there are the eponymous diseases. And while you might also gain fame and longevity from having one of those named after you, it’s generally not a good thing, no matter how you try to spin it.

Yeah. There’s not much good that can come out of that sort of diagnosis.

So, no thanks. I’ll happily settle for the “he discovered it” route, rather than the “we’ve never seen this set of symptoms in a human before” one.

It’s probably ok

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You can’t judge a book by it’s cover (you can’t judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover), but you can look at a headline and think… hang on a second…

Hang on a second…

Nuclear Wasps were so far down my “Things We Need To Be Worried About” List for 2025 that they didn’t even make Page 3. And I think that’s a clear sign of just how horrific a state the planet is in, given that they’d definitely be in the Top 20 in most other years.

Apparently – “apparently” – it’s nothing to worry about:

The report said that the nest was on a post near a tank used to store nuclear waste and that it “was probing 100,000 dpm/100 cm2 beta/gamma.” This contamination level “is greater than 10 times the total contamination values” listed in federal regulations for areas that require contamination posting and monitoring, the report said. Still, it concluded that the radioactivity of the nest was considered to be from “onsite legacy radioactive contamination not related to a loss of contamination control.”

But you can’t help but think that no contaminated wasp nests would surely be a better situation for us to be in.

I mean, whatever next? Radioactive Shrimps?

Oh. Oh dear.

Keeping A Lighthouse

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You know me. I like lighthouses.
There are many (or more) posts on the blog which refer to lighthouses.
Ones in the UK, the IOM, in SA, in France, even one in Germany.

And so I was delighted to stumble across a new Youtube Channel by a lighthouse maintenance engineer, called Keeping A Lighthouse. All the information that you could ever want about his job… er… keeping a lighthouse running, and a chance to see the inside working bits that you never usually get to see.

Described as:

A personal view of looking after lighthouses around the UK and the Channel Islands. My main aim is to give people an insight into the work that we carry out in order to keep the Aids to Navigation working but also to hopefully inspire others to get into a similar line of work.

it does get a bit technical and nerdy, but that’s really no big deal, because again, no matter the subject, to find someone that is passionate about their job and who wants to share that passion is always a real bonus, and Scott is certainly that sort of person.

Uploads are a bit sporadic, but they do happen and they’re really interesting when they do.

To accompany the channel, there’s an Instagram account as well with loads of good stuff.

Go and give it a watch and a follow.