Rain & Brain

Grumble. It's raining here at 7:15 a.m.
After a long, warm, and too-dry autumn, we're having a cold and rainy November (started on Halloween, sadly for trick-or-treaters).

I am not happy that rain is forecast for tomorrow morning, when I go staff the coffee tent in the park by the polling place.
It'll be jolly in its way though--Minnesotans like to pride themselves on being hardy.
Must bundle up...

Good thing so many people have done Early Voting, since the cold and rain might put them off otherwise.

(I just got a flash of missing Auntie Vi--almost every morning we emailed--often about the weather.)
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Our Future President Kamala Harris shopping at Penzey's Spices:

Update on Penzey's closing tomorrow (Election Day)--they say online:

"Tomorrow’s election will determine what our future holds like no election in our lifetimes. Tomorrow Penzeys will be closed for a paid day off to make it easier for our people to vote..."

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Uuuummm, what else?
Oh--I was disappointed to re-watch The Fisher King last night--(dir. Terry Gilliam, starring Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Mercedes Ruehl).
I hadn't much liked it when it came out  in 1991, but saw the DVD from the Criterion Collection at the library, and thought maybe it'd improve on rewatching.

In fact, it was worse.
So many plot holes, way too long (137 minutes), unbelievable psychology (even granting that it's myth)---and creepy about men and women.
When the Robin Williams character tells the woman he's in love with (Amanda Plummer) that he'd been stalking her, she tears up, thinking it's romantic.

There're a couple tributes to THRIFT LIFE though.
"You find some pretty wonderful things in the trash."
When Jeff Bridges is departing, RW wants him to stay but settles for inviting him to return sometime:
"Come back. We'll rummage."
Love that. It sounded improvised to me...

I never liked Robin Williams's humor though. I found him frenetic, not funny, and he made me nervous. "What is wrong with that person?"
I was sad when he died though.  He was only sixty-three. My age.
I just looked up his death by suicide:
an autopsy revealed he had--not depression, but--Lewy body dementia, a truly horrible brain disease.
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"Brain, brain, what is brain?" (--Star Trek)

Re Alzheimer's--a different kind of dementia--have you seen the link with eating sugar?
"A higher intake of ... sugar is associated with increased dementia risk in older adults." --via NLM
And:
"This relationship is so strong that some have called Alzheimer's 'diabetes of the brain' or 'type 3 diabetes (T3D)'."

That ^ report was from 2020. I never heard it till now that I'm looking more into sugar. I mean, I knew sugar was bad for overall health, but I didn't know it affected brain health.

Scary stuff.
It bothers me that a lot of this is known to science, but not publicized.
LIKE TOBACCO.
Sugary crap should be marked with health warnings like cigarettes.

I knew a lot of it, and I had a hell of a time changing my habits. Having cheap---or free! (at work)--sugar available everywhere in friendly packaging doesn't help.
Well, I'm not saying anything new--even to me--but it does shock me to look at the sugar situation with fresh eyes, just recently.

I started to look at it again because I was thinking about Ozempic and how much MONEY is involved in people being sick from food.
I'd been horrified to read that the food industry is worried about Ozempic--not because it might harm bodies but because it might harm their profits.
Talk about sick...

Btw, the Economist says glp-1 receptor agonists--the class of drugs that includes Ozempic--are looking to have far-reaching excellent affects:

"It is early days yet, but glp-1 receptor agonists have all the makings of one of the most successful classes of drugs in history.
Every day seems to bring more exciting news. First the drugs tackled diabetes. Then, with just an injection a week, they took on obesity.
Now they are being found to treat cardiovascular and kidney disease, and are being tested for Alzheimer’s and addiction.

As they become cheaper and easier to use, they promise to dramatically improve the lives of more than a billion people—with profound consequences for industry, the economy and society."

I worked with people with Alzheimer's, and if there's a drug to prevent or reverse it, I am 1000% all for it.
Celebrities using it to be thin... not so much. But that's the world we live in.

Eh, there's always something. Marz loves to quote Captain Kirk:
"Death, destruction, disease, horror..."
Auntie Vi always used to sign off,
"Enjoy life!"

Enjoy your day anyway, everybody!