Cathy

Taught in Japan 2 decades, writer, artist. Determined to make a positive difference in this world.

[Collin Gross @CollinGrossWx]

There are currently 838 wildfires burning across Canada. More than 100 are in northwestern Ontario, sending thick smoke to the Great Lakes and Northeast U.S.

[Robert Ray @RobertRayWx]

Flooding north of Uvalde, roads impassable on the route to Camp Wood. #Texas #Texasflooding

[MAGA Voice @MAGAVoice]

I am in tears. President Trump just announced our VETERANS will replace illegals as truck drivers ❤️

“Any American that’s driven a heavy truck for our military is automatically eligible for a commercial drivers license”

THIS IS HUGE NEWS 🔥

[TaraBull @TaraBull]

Massive Wildfires Ravage Northern Ontario

[MyRadar Weather @MyRadarWX]

A SMOKE OUTBREAK is coming through tonight (Wednesday) and Thursday, July 16!

We recommend breaking out the N-95 masks if you live in the orange, red or purple zones especially. Ground-level smoke aerosols (fine, small particulates that are irritating to the lungs) will be present in high concentrations.

This is due to an outbreak of wildfires burning in southern Ontario. The smoke is being swirled southeast into the United States behind a frontal boundary.

Boston, New York and Albany will smell it.

Pittsburgh, Toronto, Syracuse, Buffalo, Rochester, Watertown, Detroit, Chicago and all of Michigan will be unhealthy. Schools – consider keeping the kiddos indoors for recess; athletic programs may want to suspend outdoor practices.

If you live in Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay or Duluth, minimize any and all time outdoors.

Might this seem silly? Yes. But you wouldn't sit downwind of a campfire and take deep breaths. You know that would be bad for you.

Likewise, we're a bit farther away, but the "campfire" is WAY, way bigger. Bigger wildfires, more smoke, longer distances.

Take this seriously!

[JohnTitor17 @JTitor17]

BREAKING - MAJOR SMOKE APOCALYPSE IS ABOUT TO SMOTHER AND CHOKE MILLIONS IN THE MIDWEST... FROM FARGO TO NYC... WEAR FFP2 MASKS OUTSIDE AND AIR FILTER TO SURVIVE UNSCATHED....

[Jeremiah Knight @iamrjknight]

A mind open to everything is not wise. It is unguarded.

Our age praises open mindedness as though refusing to reject anything is a virtue. But Scripture never calls us to keep the gates of the mind wide open for every doctrine, trend, ideology, and spiritual claim that comes passing through.

“The naive believes everything, but the sensible man considers his steps” (Proverbs 14:15).

There is a difference between being teachable and being gullible. A teachable heart bows before God’s Word. A gullible mind lets the world disciple it while calling the process humility.

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception” (Colossians 2:8).

Christians are not called to be closed to correction, but we are called to be closed to lies. We are not called to fear hard questions, but we are commanded to test every spirit, every teacher, every doctrine, and every voice by Scripture.

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1).

The world wants minds open enough to accept rebellion, but not humble enough to submit to God. That is not wisdom. That is spiritual exposure.

A mind renewed by Scripture does not need to be open to everything. It needs to be captive to Christ.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

My first week in America, my neighbor waved at me from across the street.

I stopped walking.

In Japan, if a neighbor waves, it means one of three things:
1. Your garbage is in the wrong bag.
2. Your car is blocking something.
3. There will be a meeting about your garbage being in the wrong bag.

I spent the entire walk home rehearsing an apology. I sorted my recycling again. I moved my car.

The next morning, he waved again.

I moved my car again.

On day three, he waved and shouted, "Beautiful morning!"

There was no garbage issue. There was no car issue. He was just — waving. Because he saw me. That's it. Being seen was the whole point.

In Japan, I have lived next to a man for eleven years. I know he drives a white Prius. I know he leaves at 7:15. I have never learned his name.

We have exchanged exactly one sentence in eleven years: "Sorry about the noise." I don't remember who said it.

Last Tuesday, I waved at my American neighbor first.

He yelled, "THERE HE IS!" like I was famous.

Nobody in my life has ever been that happy to see me on a Tuesday morning.

I'm going to learn white Prius man's name when I go back to Japan.

I'll wave first.

[JoeM @GeneralJoeM17]

Treatments for parasitic infections are known as antihelmintics. Antibiotics are not 1st line defense against parasites but can play a supporting role . Metronidazol or Doxycycline can treat single cell protozoa. Albendazole treats tapeworms & hookworms . Ivermectin treats roundworms , scabies, threadworms, whipworms, hookworms, ascariasis & has some effect on Amoebas/Protozoa. Antibiotics like doxycycline or Metronidazol [NOT Bactrim as people are posting] would come 1st against those.
So is it Amoeba/Protozoa which is the cause for the current outbreak but not being identified by the media?
I'm posting this for anyone who made comments on my post about how to deal with the parasitic outbreak thinking that antibiotics are the cure b/c that's what the MEDIA told you
HCQ treats malaria. Malaria can be spread thru mosquito bites. Mosquitos have been spread on us . Is it possible what people are experiencing with explosive diarreah is Malaria but not being told by the media?? Hence I suggested HCQ + Ivermectin to cover the bases. If you want to be even more thoruogh do Doxycycline for 3 days after your 2 days of IVM and 2 days of HCQ.
You're Welcome

[SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) @COVID19_disease]

🚨 BREAKTHROUGH: Scientists at the University of Nottingham have developed a new enamel-repairing gel that starts restoring teeth in just 2 WEEKS.

This could replace fillings and change dental treatment worldwide, with use expected around 2026–2027.

[🇺🇸🇺🇸hfmbears🇺🇸🇺🇸 @Hfmbears]

Just now in San Antonio, TX

[Tevin Macharia Mukabana @TevinMacharia]

Oh my God ..this is a church in Congo 😭😭.

May God have mercy on us ..who seek comfortability than God.

This are people it regardless of the building and it's raining they are on their knees praying and worshipping God in a sanctuary.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Texas they told me to stop at Buc-ee's for gas.

I have been to shrines. I have stood in temples that took two hundred years to build.

I was not prepared for the gas station.

There were one hundred and twenty fuel pumps.

I counted them because I did not believe them.

A man beside me was filling a truck the size of my first apartment, and he was not filling it because it was empty.

He was filling it because he was here, and here is where a man fills things.

Inside was a hall so vast I lost the horizon.

A wall of jerky. A wall of fudge I did not know the country produced.

A brisket sandwich handed to me by a man in a beaver costume.

And I want to be clear, the beaver is not a mascot.

The beaver is a saint.

The people speak of him the way my grandmother spoke of the mountain behind her house.

And the bathrooms.

I had been warned about the bathrooms and I had dismissed the warning as the pride of a loud people.

I was wrong to dismiss it.

The bathrooms are famous across the whole state and they have earned it.

I have slept in worse hotels. I nearly bowed upon entering.

A janitor was polishing the floor with the devotion of a man tending a garden he loved, and when I thanked him he said "welcome in," which I have since learned is what Texas says instead of hello, and also instead of I am glad you exist.

I went in for gas. I was inside for ninety minutes.

I came out with fudge, a shirt printed with a joke I do not fully understand, forty dollars of jerky, and a feeling I can only describe as having been to church.

I did not need any of it.

I needed all of it.

I have walked through the great cathedrals of the old world. I lit no candle there.

I lit no candle at Buc-ee's either.

But I did fill the truck.

And I understand now that in Texas, this is the same thing.

[The Exit Code @The_Exit_Code]

If narcissists aren’t coordinated, why does every single one follow the same script?

Lovebombing. Devaluing. Discarding. Hoovering. Smear campaign. The pattern is so identical it seems like they’re reading from the same manual.

But there is no manual. There’s no coordination. There’s something else happening, and it’s more important than you think.

The answer is this: they all follow the same pattern because it’s the only pattern that works.

Not because they were taught. Not because they’re copying each other. But because their psychological structure only permits one function: extraction through control.

Think about predatory animals. A lion hunts a certain way. A snake hunts a certain way. A spider hunts a certain way. Not because they learned from each other. Not because they read a predatory manual. But because the prey they target requires a specific method. And the method that works is the only method they use.

Narcissists operate the same way.

They are extraction machines. And extraction through psychological manipulation requires a specific sequence:

First, you need access. So they love bomb. They create proximity. They make themselves irresistible.

Then, you need compliance. So they devalue. They create confusion. They make you doubt yourself. Now you’ll do anything to restore the connection.

Then, you need isolation. So they separate you from people who see clearly. They position themselves as the only one who understands. Now you have nowhere else to go.

Then, you need extraction. So they take what they need. Supply. Energy. Resources. Control. You’re now feeding the system.

Then, if you threaten to leave, you need recapture. So they hoover. They promise change. They remind you of the beginning. Now you’re back in the cycle.

Then, if you actually escape, you need silencing. So they smear. They destroy your credibility. They ensure that even if you speak, no one believes you.

This is not a random sequence. This is the only sequence that permits extraction to work.

If a narcissist tried a different approach, if they tried genuine connection, if they respected boundaries, if they admitted errors, the extraction would stop. They would no longer be a narcissist. They would be a different kind of person.

So they can’t try a different approach. The structure doesn’t permit it.

Which is why every narcissist follows the same pattern. Not because they’re coordinated. Because they’re all built to do the same function. And the function requires the same sequence.

This is why the pattern is so predictable. It’s not random. It’s mechanical. It’s structural. It’s the only thing the system can do.

And predictability is power. Because once you can predict the pattern, you can prepare for it. You can recognize it. You can protect yourself from it.

A narcissist who can’t deviate from the pattern is a narcissist you can read.

[Homēros @HomerosHayyam41]

Only a mudflood could have buried the floor mosaics this deep.

Zeugma Ancient City, Gaziantep, Türkiye 🇹🇷

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Japan, children clean their own schools.

Every day. After lunch. Twenty minutes.

Classrooms.
Hallways.
Toilets.
Not because the schools can't afford janitors.
Because in 1947, this country decided
that cleaning your own space
is part of becoming a person.

The cleaning rag is on the school supply list.
Right next to the pencils.

Egypt copies it now.
So does Indonesia. So does Mongolia.
America hired someone.
6 million kids mop a floor
before they turn 12.
Every single day.

Not as punishment.
As education.

[Ancient History Hub @AncientHistorry]

The Romans had a favorite flavor, and they poured it on almost everything they ate. It was fermented fish guts left to rot in the sun, and they could not get enough of it.

It was called garum. To make it, you took oily fish like anchovies and mackerel, sometimes just the blood and innards, packed it in layers with heaps of salt, and left it open under the Mediterranean sun for weeks or months. The salt stopped it from truly going rotten while the fish slowly dissolved into a thick, savory liquid. You drew off the golden brown sauce on top. The leftover paste at the bottom was sold cheap to the poor.

The smell during production was legendary and revolting. Making garum was so foul that many towns banned the process from residential streets and pushed the vats out to the edges of the city or the coast. Nobody wanted to live next to a garum factory.

But the taste was the whole point. Garum was pure umami, loaded with the same savory compounds that make parmesan and soy sauce so addictive. It hit the tongue with a deep salty richness that plain Roman cooking could not reach on its own. It was their salt, their ketchup, and their secret weapon all at once. They splashed it on meat, fish, vegetables, eggs, even mixed it into wine and sweet dishes.

And it was big business. This was not some rustic home brew. There were famous brands and premium labels, the finest coming from the coasts of Spain. One garum tycoon in Pompeii, a man named Scaurus, got so rich from the sauce that he decorated his house floor with mosaics of garum jars stamped with his own name. Roman product placement, frozen in stone. They even made a special kosher version so the Jewish communities of the empire could enjoy it too.

Garum traveled everywhere the legions did, shipped in clay jars from Britain to the Middle East, tying the whole empire together through one shared craving.

When Rome fell, the great garum trade died with it, and the West mostly forgot the taste that once defined it. But it never fully vanished. In a few villages on the Italian coast they still make a fish sauce called colatura the exact same way, a living echo of the flavor an empire was obsessed with.

And if you have ever loved the fish sauce in Thai or Vietnamese cooking, you already know why the Romans were hooked. They just got there 2,000 years early.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

At a family restaurant in Texas, the lights dropped, and eleven staff members marched out of the kitchen banging a spoon on a pot, and I rose to my feet, because I believed we were under attack.

We were not under attack.

A woman three tables away was turning sixty. She was a stranger to the staff. They did not know her. They had known her for the length of one dinner.

And still they came for her with fire.

They set a sizzling dessert in front of her. They sang a song that is legally distinct from the birthday song, for reasons I have chosen not to investigate. They made her wear a hat. They made the whole room clap, and the whole room did, and I clapped hardest of all, because I did not wish to be the one man in Texas who would not celebrate a grandmother.

She cried a little. She waved her hand at them, embarrassed, delighted, sixty years old and surrounded by strangers who had decided, on no notice, to love her for four minutes.

In my land, we do not do this. A birthday is a quiet and private thing. To make a stranger the center of a loud room would be a cruelty.

I had it backwards.

It is not a cruelty. It is the opposite. It is a room full of people who have never met you agreeing, all at once, that the day you were born was a good day and worth a song.

When the check came, I quietly asked the waitress to bring the grandmother a slice of pie, and not to say from whom.

She smiled and said, "That's real sweet, hon."

Then she leaned in and told me it was the third birthday they had done that day, and there was one more coming at eight, and did I want to stay for it.

I stayed for it.

Of course I stayed for it.

I have a birthday in the spring.

In my land I was never once sung to. A birthday was a fact, noted and let pass, like the weather. My father marked mine with a single nod across the room. It was enough, I told myself, for forty years, because I did not know there was more to want.

I have already told the staff. They wrote it in a book by the register, next to the specials, as though a stranger's birthday were a thing worth keeping.

They did not have to.

When spring comes, eleven people who do not know me will march out of that kitchen with fire, and a terrible hat, and a song that is legally not the song, and they will decide, for four minutes, that the day I was born was a good day.

I am going to let them.

I am going to sit up straight, the way my father sat, and I am going to weep in a Texas family restaurant in front of God and the salad bar.

They will ask my name for the little paper hat.

I will give it the full weight it has carried for eight hundred years.

They will spell it wrong.

And it will be perfect.

[The Exit Code @The_Exit_Code]

You’ve been taught that boundaries are selfish. That if you’re truly loving, you’ll accommodate. You’ll bend. You’ll find a way to make it work.

But boundaries aren’t the opposite of love. Boundaries are how you love yourself. And loving yourself isn’t selfish. It’s necessary.

Here’s what happens when you don’t have boundaries: you become available for exploitation. You become a resource. You become someone whose needs don’t matter because you’ve taught them that they don’t.

You’ve trained the people around you to treat you badly by accepting bad treatment.

That’s not love. That’s abandonment. Self-abandonment.

So when you finally set a boundary, when you say ‘I will not accept this’, you’re not being cold. You’re reclaiming yourself.

And yes, people will call you selfish. They’ll call you rigid. They’ll call you unkind.

The people who benefit from your lack of boundaries will be especially loud about it.

But the people who actually love you? They’ll recognize what you’re doing: protecting yourself. Valuing yourself. Refusing to be taken for granted.

A real boundary looks like: ‘I love you and I will not accept this treatment.’ Both things can be true.

The narcissist will make you choose. They’ll say: ‘If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this.’ But that’s the trap.

Real love includes boundaries. Real love says: ‘I care about you and I care about myself. So here’s what I will and will not do.’

That’s not selfish. That’s whole.

[Carole Mac @HerbsandDirt]

Maybe someone can explain this to me:

I’m steadfastly Gen X. Born in the late 60’s.

When the HPV vaccine rolled out, we were too old for it to be pushed on us.

So why is it I know WAY too many people that have had:
Breast Cancer
Liver Cancer
Kidney Cancer
Prostate Cancer, etc. etc., but not ONE SINGLE PERSON with cervical cancer?

We didn’t get the Gardisil shot. Shouldn’t the cancer it claims to prevent be rampant in our age group?

I find this very interesting.