(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Tidbits [1] ['Citizen Earth'] Date: 2026-07-30 Kept passing through this sign as I head into my town from the freeway: National Night Out, 7-9, August 4. Curious and so I checked out AI to find out more. National Night Out is happening on the first Tueesday of August in towns across the country. In my town, we’ll be having a big block party where residents can connect with others, talk with police officers, and find ways to strengthen public safety partnerships. Sounds like a great way to meet some neighbors! How to Predict the Weather in Our Era of Freakish Storms I’ve been caught in a handful of unpredicted storms — squalls, we’ve always called them — when the formerly scrutable world, within minutes, turns lawless. Water shoots upward and sideways. The wind transforms into a solid, high-speed object. Harbors and bays I’ve navigated for years morph so violently that it’s like being trapped inside the psyche of a raging planet. Since my first squall encounter, in my early teens, I’ve been on wary alert whenever getting into a boat. The weather report. The blue sky. The safe harbor. My own judgment. Whom, or what, should I trust? Another Symptom of Growing Isolation We’re speaking fewer works than we did 20 years ago. While once people visited coffee to socialize over a cup of coffee, today we use apps to order our Starbucks. This new way of obtaining java is part of why, according to a recent study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, people now are talking less and less. For the study, the psychologists Valeria Pfeifer, of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Matthias Mehl, of the University of Arizona, analyzed data from thousands of participants in the United States, Mexico, Australia, and Europe. The subjects carried around a device that randomly recorded sound bites of their speech throughout the day. In 2005, when the studies began, the average number of words that each participant spoke in a day was 16,632; in 2019, when the research concluded, the average was 11,900. Each year, the participants spoke about 338 fewer words a day than they did in the previous year, amounting to a decline of about 28 percent over the entire time period. Tips to spot, treat & prevent tick bites & Lyme disease There are 90 species of ticks in the United States, and fortunately, most are harmless. However, some tick bites can cause allergic reactions, muscular pain, or tickborne diseases like Rocky Mountain spotted fever or Lyme disease. Gravity key evidence univese is a simulation The most modern formulation of this existential thought exercise is the simulation hypothesis. It suggests that what we perceive as reality is actually a hyper-realistic, uber-sophisticated simulation designed by beings that are far more advanced than us—in unfathomable ways. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom first put this idea into words back in 2003, and since then, the hypothesis has gathered attention from some of the greatest scholars alive. However, there’s a wide chasm between philosophy and proven science, and to prove such a controversial hypothesis, you need to build a bridge of evidence. The best way to ripen avocados: in a paper bag with a ripe banana You’ve likely heard of this method before. Bananas are known to release ethylene, a gas that causes other produce to ripen faster. Placing one in a paper bag with an avocado helps to trap that gas while also providing some breathability, which prevents moisture buildup from spoiling the fruit. For my testing, I used two paper bags, each containing one ripe banana and one avocado. Scientists sunk a cow into the South China Sea.https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/marine-animals/pacific-sleep-shark-predation-south-china-sea Then a gigantic animal appeared The video was recorded as part of a study, published in the journal Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Research, exploring how large animals feed in deep-sea environments. To investigate the subject, researchers lowered a cow carcass to a depth of 1,629m, south-east of Hainan Island. They placed a camera at the site and waited. It was then that they filmed the Pacific sleeper sharks. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/30/800075777/community/kitchen-table-kibitzing-national-night-out/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/