July 2021

New Cocktail Lounge Has Haunted Mansion Theme

This new haunted manor themed cocktail lounge gives me wanderlust for a road trip! Raven's Manor offers food, drinks and the spooky haunted manor decor you might expect from any sort of themed bar, but it also serves up an entire experience. Have you ever been to a lounge where you don a lab coat? You can purchase one of these tailored experiences to make your visit especially memorable!

A Serval in Bed

Servals are gorgeous creatures. I'd love to see one of these majestic wild cats, but I don't think I'd like waking up to one very much. That's what happened to an Atlanta woman whose husband got out of bed, let the dog out and somehow let a wild cat into their house. She woke up to the cat in bed with her!

80s Ambient Noise

As a big lover of ambient mixers and finding music to suit my many moods, I fell head over heels for this 80s Synthwave and Retro Electro Music playlist on YouTube recently. It has all of the synthesizers you'd expect; all you need is your own montage (and Aqua Net). It's such a fun list to work to and there's not a lot of talking; most of it is just instrumental so you can listen while you do paperwork, write, whatever.

Weird Animal Caught On Film

Weird animal sightings are so fun because you never know if it's going to just be some weird adaptation or variation of an existing animal--or something a WHOLE lot more interesting! A new species? Alien life? OK, maybe not that last one, but you never know. This photo of a strange animal near St. Francisville has a lot of people speculating... Take a look at the image and see what you think it might be.

Animal Consciousness

Do you look at animals an wonder just how intelligent and self-aware they might be? For years, I've told people to respect dogs because they have the mentality of a two-year old human, but I think they're probably even more aware than that. The fact that dogs, cats, dolphins, octopuses and many other creatures not only learn through play like we do but also enjoy it as a recreational activity has to be proof that many more creatures than we think are more conscious than we know... right?

Fun Halloween Finds

By this time of year I'm so ready for fall and all of its glory. The fact that I live in an old house without central air and with an abundance of spiders may help explain why! So when I heard that it's now JASON so it's Halloween season--JASON meaning the first letter of each month from July through November!--I knew that I could be shameless in my love of Halloween stuff hitting the shelves at any time.

The Best Light Ice Cream

Last week we discussed how ice cream really isn't as bad as it's made out to be, but that doesn't mean plenty of people with specific dietary needs don't need to be mindful of the kinds they ingest. My own needs mean that I need to avoid sugar-laden ice cream as much as possible, but I don't like too much artificial sweetness. So what does that leave me with?

Boarding School Unmarked Graves Tip Of Colonial Iceberg

It's always sobering when you realize the freakiest, most heinous acts on this planet are done by the hands of humans themselves, and that the trauma of those actions continues today. Only a handful of native boarding schools have been examined and more than 1,500 children have been found buried, covered up by the church and the government. There will surely be so many more found as more schools are examined.

Biden Says Rules Are Rules

People were all over Twitter with the hashtag #ThankBiden recently, thanking the president for... being a basic decent human being. It's really awesome that he's updated our language and diversity representation, for sure, but without policy, it's not as meaningful--and without the change we desperately need, he's just another paternalistic man in charge telling us to stop wanting so much. Healthcare, college debt, climate change, racial justice... he's made micromovements in these areas but we need sweeping changes to really save lives.

Nuclear Reactors 919 - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Upgrading Abbot Reactor System

     An eighty-five megawatt Abbot cogeneration plant is located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). They are planning on using an Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. (USNC) Micro Modular Reactor (MMR) Energy System to partly re-power the Abbot plant.

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