August 1 to August 7, 2021

Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, August 1, 2021
through
Saturday, August 7, 2021

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It’s Saturday, August 6, 2021
Welcome to the 1,182nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
Serial Killer Elizabeth Balthory

The original portrait of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory from 1585 is lost (spirited away in the 1990s). However, this is a fairly contemporary copy of that original, probably painted in the late 16th century. She was 25 when the original portrait -- the only known image of her -- was painted.

Unknown author - [1]; Copy of an old portrait

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2.0 Commentary
Support for Right to Vote. If you’re looking for the right to vote, you won’t find it in the United States Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
We need additional legislation to ensure our right to vote. We must prevent rogue politicians from trying to undermine America’s foundation to stay in power.

Three cheers for the warmer weather foreseen for the next few days. It’ll finally feel like summer.

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3.0 Reading and Writing
I am reading The Underground Railroad. It’s terrific.

My manuscript is composed of Five Parts, each with several sections.
I am working on Part One, section three.
Part One deals with the protagonist’s recovery from a forced heroin addiction, preparing for her reintegration into society.
In Section 1 our heroine decides to cold-turkey withdraw form her forced heroin addiction. In section two, we see some of the physical torments she goes through.
in Section Three she’s introduced to Italian coffee, a socially accepted addiction.

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint; but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations; and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity. Both have the specific genius of the fictionist and the common sympathies of human feeling and thought in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and shrewder than the philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and shrewder than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock and Mr Tite Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader: they have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading thought or inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk the spoiling of his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are alike forced to borrow motives for the more strenuous actions of their personages from the common stockpot of melodramatic plots; so that Hamlet has to be stimulated by the prejudices of a policeman and Macbeth by the cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens, without the excuse of having to manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt his crew down the stream of his monthly parts by mechanical devices which I leave you to describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage of Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam families so inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois. The truth is, the world was to Shakespear a great "stage of fools" on which he was utterly bewildered. He could see no sort of sense in living at all; and Dickens saved himself from the despair of the dream in The Chimes by taking the world for granted and busying himself with its details. Neither of them could do anything with a serious positive character: they could place a human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but when the moment came for making it live and move, they found, unless it made them laugh, that they had a puppet on their hands, and had to invent some artificial external stimulus to make it work.”
~George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman

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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192

Got a lot of messages about Andrew Cuomo, mostly in favor of hanging him out to dry.

Blog meister responds: My own view is that he’s got a right to defend himself. The video he released in his own defense is substantial enough to provide his counsel with grounds for a defense. He’s hoping to come away with the best deal possible for himself, not going to prison one of those deals.
Whether the video will sustain him against civil and impeachments proceedings is less likely.

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Katherine doesn’t eat red meat so I took advantage of her absence and had lamb chops and steamed vegetables for dinner.
A lovely meal.

Braving the rain, a decent-sized crowd gathered to watch the outdoor performance of The Tempest on the Boston Common.

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7.0 Blog Meister’s Pictures with Captions
The Tempest on the Common

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11.0 Thumbnail
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed (7 August 1560 – 21 August 1614) was a Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer from the family of Báthory, who owned land in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary, Slovakia and Romania).

Báthory has been labeled by Guinness World Records as the most prolific female murderer, though the number of her victims is debated. Báthory and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and women between 1590 and 1610.
The highest number of victims cited during Báthory's trial was 650 but this number comes from the claim by a servant girl named Susannah that Jakab Szilvássy, Báthory's court official, had seen the figure in one of Báthory's private books. The book was never revealed and Szilvássy never mentioned it in his testimony. Despite the evidence against Báthory, her family's importance protected her from a death sentence. She was imprisoned in December 1610 within Castle of Csejte, in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia).

The stories of Báthory's sadistic serial murders are verified by the testimony of more than 300 witnesses and survivors as well as physical evidence and the presence of horribly mutilated dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest.
Stories describing Báthory's vampiric tendencies, such as the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, were generally recorded years after her death, and are considered unreliable. Her story quickly became part of national folklore, and her infamy persists to this day.
Some insist she inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), though there is no evidence to support this hypothesis.
Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include The Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.

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It’s Friday, August 5, 2021
Welcome to the 1,181st consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
Vlad the Impaler

Anonymous -
http://neuramagazine.com/dracula-triennale-di-milano/ image

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2.0 Commentary
Loved Biden’s remark to Texas and Florida governors – they, who are resisting masking and vaccinations; they, whose two states are responsible for 33% of all new covid cases:
If you’re not going to help, at least “get out of the way.”

Hate the idea of going back to masks.
Love the idea of mandated vaccinations whether by businesses or the government. Especially like the idea of proof of vaccinations to patronize restaurants and gyms, as per NYC. A variety of such mandates will bring the vaccinated rate to 80%.

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3.0 Reading and Writing
I am reading The Underground Railroad. It’s terrific.

My manuscript is composed of Five Parts, each with several sections.
I am working on Part One, section three.
Part One deals with the protagonist’s recovery from a forced heroin addiction, preparing for her reintegration into society.
In Section 1 our heroine decides to cold-turkey withdraw from her forced heroin addiction. In Section 2, we see some of the physical torments she goes through. In Section 3, Diana (our heroine) discovers a welcome addiction: Italian coffee.

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“At the end of the play, the shrew is tamed (...).
All good fun.
Under the guise of comedy, the most horrible acts are perpetrated on a woman.
It's a nightmare, because the sexism is so completely accepted - It is simply "the way it is". Nowhere is it questioned.”
~Tina Packer,
Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays

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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192

Yesterday we got some corroborating testimony on the quality of the teenager TV series, The Wild.
We also got a lecture on following our doctors’ advice.

Blog-meister responds: Happy to have so many thinkers reading these posts.

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Monday night, daughter Katherine and I had salmon with Bistro Butter: a slab of butter into which one mashed a variety of ingredients, none of which stand out; all of which harmonize into a tasty garnish to the fish.
The ingredients: fresh herbs, anchovy paste, butter, of course, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, mustard, curry, paprika, garlic, and shallots.

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7.0 Blog Meister’s Pictures with Captions
Musicians are a welcome addition to the Public Garden. I always add a dollar to their hats to encourage their return.

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The character of Count Dracula from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, has remained popular over the years, and many films have used the Count as a villain, while others have named him in their titles, such as Dracula's Daughter, The Brides of Dracula, and Dracula's Dog. Dracula has enjoyed enormous popularity since its publication and has spawned an extraordinary vampire subculture in the second half of the 20th century. More than 200 films have been made that feature Count Dracula, a number second only to Sherlock Holmes. At the center of this subculture is the legend of Transylvania, which has become almost synonymous with vampires.

Most adaptations do not include all the major characters from the novel. The Count is usually present, and Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dr. Seward, Professor Van Helsing, and Renfield usually appear as well. The characters of Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra are occasionally combined into a single female role. Jonathan Harker and Renfield are also sometimes reversed or combined. Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood are often omitted or, occasionally, combined into one character.

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It’s Thursday, August 4, 2021
Welcome to the 1,180th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
Old, the movie

See Tucker Johnson’s review in #11.0 Thumbnail  Scroll down

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2.0 Commentary
So Monday morning (yesterday’s post) I was subject to a couple of hours of problems balancing. I called my medical group and they strongly insisted I come in for a check up. The appointment was for 2.30pm.
At 12.00pm I had lunch (a nice salad) and took a half-hour’s nap. Woke up feeling great. And sorry I had called.
But I showed up for my appointment and the NP (nurse practitioner) took me through some quick tests, none of which indicated anything wrong with me. She then wanted to do something a little more elaborate, but I had had enough and told her I would pass. I have my annual coming up next month and my doctor can decide then. Point being, right now, feeling like I overreacted and didn’t want ot devote anymore of my time to testing.
It’s Tuesday morning and I feel fine.

The idea of a new media ecosystem that's nonprofit and publicly funded is gaining traction as a way to shift the power dynamics in today's information wars, Axios' Kim Hart writes in her "Tech Agenda" column.

A new policy paper from the German Marshall Fund proposes a revamp of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to fund not just broadcast stations, but a wide range of digital platforms and potential content producers — including independent journalists, local governments, nonprofits and educational institutions.

The goal is to increase the diversity of local civic information, leaning on institutions like libraries and colleges that communities trust.

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“IN ENGLISH, words of Latin origin tend to carry overtones of intellectual, moral and aesthetic “classiness"—overtones which are not carried, as a rule, by their Anglo-Saxon equivalents. “Maternal,” for instance, means the same as “motherly,” “intoxicated” as “drunk”—
but with what subtly important shades of difference!
And when Shakespeare needed a name for a comic character, it was Sir Toby Belch that he chose, not Cavalier Tobias Eructation.”
~Aldous Huxley,
The Perennial Philosophy

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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192

In a conversation with my son Dom, he reminded me that long-cooking a Gravy and then refrigerating it for serving the next day produces a more delicious meal.

BlogMeister Responds: I plan on adopting that method the next time I make it.

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Sunday was the traditional day when the entire North End neighborhood made The Gravy.
So it was fitting that I enjoyed a Gravy dinner this past Sunday.
It was delicious.

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7.0 Blog Meister’s Pictures with Captions
Go to Pictures/Camera Roll
Select a picture and rename it
Copy it and paste copy to Onedrive/aPhotos for Blog

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11.0 Thumbnail/Movie Review, Old, reviewed by Tucker Johnson

At this point M. Night Shyamalan has made a film in just about every genre. He’s made sci-fi films, ghost stories, comic book movies, and even period dramas. No matter the genre though, he dedicates a good amount of time to one of the most primal human feelings: fear. His desire to include fear in whatever form becomes one of the grounding forces in his films which are often otherwise fantastical. It’s one of the biggest reasons he was able to begin his career with so many wildly different stories but kept finding massive audiences. He came on the scene with his first big feature The Sixth Sense and for a few films afterward (Unbreakable, and Signs) was someone who really couldn’t be missed at the box office. A new film by M. Night Shyamalan was an event and as long as critics had good things to say, audiences rushed to see what the enigmatic storyteller thought up next. He built his early career on films that while their stories were good their legends grew around twist endings and for many years, they became a trademark in his work. So, when the twists faded into the background or remained but challenged the audience so began the wider world’s turn on him as an artist. Shyamalan’s work has a lot more to say than the twists that made his films box office bonanza’s. They all tell complex stories with rich characters and lived in relationships. With every entry though, so too comes fear because fear is what he knows as an artist and it is what we know as human beings.  In M. Night Shyamalan’s latest work, the aptly titled Old, the director returns to a familiar fear: What happens when a parent fails to protect their child? Since The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan has populated his idiosyncratic universe of anxiety with parents who fail to parent, mentors who fail to instruct, and doctors who fail to cure. Across his filmography, characters find themselves facing extraordinary situations because a person of authority falls short. 

It makes sense that Shyamalan would focus so heavily on parenting. He became a father in 1996, three years before becoming Hollywood’s golden child himself. Now a father of three, Shymalan has turned his productions into a family affair. His second child, Ishana, has directed and written for his Apple TV+ series Servant and was a second unit director on Old; Saleka, his oldest, wrote and performed songs for both Servant and Old. His kids, the director says, were there from the beginning of Old. “It came from a book that Ishana and my other daughters gave me for Father’s Day,” he said of the film’s source material, Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters’ graphic novel Sandcastle. “This book gave me the opportunity to work through things like my parents’ getting older, and how I have a photo of Ishana on my lap during Unbreakable and now she’s standing next to me on set. That’s what the movie is about.” Although this might have been a recent revelation, it’s something that’s been on his mind throughout his career. 

Shyamalan’s work almost always begins with a parent, guardian, or person of authority being overpowered, disarmed, or incapacitated. For example, The Sixth Sense follows Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis), a child psychologist, shot by a patient who accuses Crowe of failing to cure him. 2002’s Signs sees lapsed priest Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) abandoning his flock after the death of his wife. The trend continues through 2017’s Split, where Kevin Wendall Crumb (James McAvoy) kidnaps three girls after knocking out one of their fathers. Time and again, Shyamalan creates his dread and tension by removing any chance of protection. 

The director mines this dynamic for no less than three tense set pieces across multiple movies involving a child pulling a gun on a guardian. This happens in The Sixth Sense’s opening scene, where Crowe faces his patient, and in both Unbreakable and Split. Children often serve as reminders of mortality for Shyamalan characters, and when those children wield firearms, their power becomes an active threat. In Shyamalan’s universe, parents and guardians fixate on protecting children, but can they protect themselves from their children? 

It expands past the traditional setup of child and parent. In many of his movies, the parents’ failures lead children to seek out (and be failed by) other guardians. Split and Glass create networks of failed protection and guidance, from Kevin Wendall Crumb’s hierarchy of personalities that protect him from the trauma of his abusive childhood to Dr. Staple (Sarah Paulson) imprisoning and gaslighting Crumb, Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson), and David Dunn (Bruce Willis). 

Paternalism isn’t the solution for Shyamalan. He frequently depicts parents and guardians that endanger their kids. This theme is present throughout his work: David Dunn admits to neglecting his son, The Village’s Edward Walker (William Hurt) and the Elders create a faux old-timey town to isolate their children from the violence of the modern world, Split’s Uncle John (Brad William Henke) abuses his niece (Anya Taylor-Joy) on a family hunting trip. In one of The Sixth Sense’s most upsetting sequences, a woman poisons her daughter in a disturbing depiction of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Amid supernatural occurrences, Shyamalan taps into real, everyday horror, depicting these crimes as otherworldly in their cruelty and as common as a cold. 

Old finds Shyamalan, once again, dealing with parents and kids. Taking place at a seaside getaway straight out of The Twilight Zone, Old sees Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps) watch helplessly as their children grow up before their eyes in a matter of hours. Although Shyamalan’s previous works explored what happens when someone fails in their professional or personal duties, Old looks at an impossible villain: time itself. Time isn’t a failing that can be reversed. Instead, the characters must recognize that a parent cannot always be there for their children, especially after death. Still, Shyamalan digs into another horrible fact of life: that the curse of mortality is hereditary, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It is when Prisca accepts the mortality of herself and her children that she can let go. 

Parenting is the great anxiety that Shyamalan can’t shake. His characters’ helplessness as they watch their young grow and change in directions that they can’t control often results in their demise. In Old, there’s simply nothing they can do to slow the passage of time. It turns out that the ultimate “Shyamalan twist” is that every one of his characters will eventually die, and there’s nothing their parents can do about it. From movie to movie, Shyamalan’s parental concerns shift. One minute, he’s using children as harbingers of death, and in the next, guides to salvation. Yet he remains fixated on the limits of parenting, builds worlds where protectors are helpless and the innocent are vulnerable. For a director with a knack for supernatural frights, the everyday concerns of parenting may be the scariest of all. 

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It’s Wednesday, August 3, 2021
Welcome to the 1,179th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
The Big Five Personality Traits

Anna Tunikova for peats.de and wikipedia - https://peats.de/article/big-five-die-personlichkeit-in-funf-dimensionen
big five peats.de eng

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2.0 Commentary
Exciting news if you call losing your sense of balance exciting.
Perhaps when it happens to someone else.
Not lost, but impaired more like it.
Stumbling around, holding on to a piece of furniture to make sure I don’t fall.
Unusual but not unknown.
This time lasting for a couple of hours before I called my medicals.
On a call back interview she asked me to come in.
It may be a ‘benign horizontal…”.
I’m not good at remembering, especially medical phrases.
Well, I’m not terribly concerned.
Anything that starts with the word benign can’t be all bad.
At least it provides some fodder for the post.

It may be my issues with sleep.
I had four consecutive excellent sleeping nights followed by one pitiable (two hours) night and one poor (four hours) night. Last night got me back on track: a full six hours.
Despite the good night’s sleep, today I felt wasted.
perhaps the extreme fatigue contributed to my dizziness.

Cause for elation, this piece I read yesterday:
“…at ZipRecruiter, the number of job postings on the site that are advertising $15 an hour has more than doubled since 2019.

What we're watching: Mathieu Stevenson, the CEO of Snagajob, a site for hourly workers, says a handful of restaurant chains are going so far as to offer retirement plans.

The $15 an hour debate," Stevenson said, "is essentially being resolved through market forces."

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3.0 Reading and Writing
My bout with dizziness led me to do my work very slowly and I am writing this post in my café slot when, the blog being completed in the morning, I would be writing my manuscript. Oh, well. Can’t look forward to doing it tonight: it’s time for my session at Planet Fitness. Thanks to a therapeutic nap I feel fine.

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“What’s in a name?‘ asks Shakespeare.
‘The love of the one calling it.‘ replies a lover.”
~Radhika Mundra

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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192

My friend Gary B, founder of Echobatix, developer of assistive technology for the blind, Deafblind, and low vision communities, asks opinions on the most and least easily navigated cities. NYC and its grid seems to top the most easily navigated, the jury being out on the least navigable, although Boston has received at least a single vote.

Blog meister responds: I voted for NYC as most easily navigated city and did not vote on the most difficult.

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Saturday night I had a delicious Chicken Soup.
I made a stock of 5lbs of chicken drumsticks which I cooked for hours, extracting every bit of flavor from the bones and meat. These drumsticks I discarded.
I poached a separate batch of chicken drumsticks with the vegetables just until everything was cooked. I added 2TB tomato paste, fresh parsley and dried thyme and tarragon, salt and freshly-ground pepper.

Some additional chicken flavor enhanced the stock but the chicken itself retained a good deal of flavor.
Served the soup with baby shell pasta. The soup was great.

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11.0 Thumbnail
Personality is defined as the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors. While there is no generally agreed upon definition of personality, most theories focus on motivation and psychological interactions with one's environment.

Five-factor inventory

Many factor analyses found what is called the Big Five, which are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (or emotional stability). These components are generally stable over time, and about half of the variance appears to be attributable to a person's genetics rather than the effects of one's environment.

1. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual curiosity, and challenging authority (psychological liberalism). A great deal of psychometric research has demonstrated that these facets or qualities are significantly correlated. Thus, openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of a set of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.

2. Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly. They exhibit a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; they display planned rather than spontaneous behavior; and they are generally dependable. It is manifested in characteristic behaviors such as being neat, and systematic; also including such elements as carefulness, thoroughness, and deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting).

3. The traits of extraversion (or extroversion and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms introversion and extraversion were introduced into psychology by Carl Jung, although both the popular understanding and current psychological usage vary. Extraversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behavior, whereas introversion is manifested in more reflective and reserved behavior. Jung defined introversion as an "attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents", and extraversion as "an attitude-type characterized by concentration of interest on the external object".
Extraversion and introversion are typically viewed as a single continuum, so to be high in one necessitates being low in the other. Jung provides a different perspective and suggests that everyone has both an extraverted side and an introverted side, with one being more dominant than the other. Virtually all comprehensive models of personality include these concepts in various forms.

4. Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five major dimensions of personality structure, reflecting individual differences in cooperation and social harmony.

People who score high on this dimension are empathetic and altruistic, while a low agreeableness score relates to selfish behavior and a lack of empathy. Those who score very low on agreeableness show signs of dark triad behavior such as manipulation and competing with others rather than cooperating.

Agreeableness is a superordinate trait, meaning that it is a grouping of personality sub-traits that cluster together statistically. The lower-level traits, or facets, grouped under agreeableness are: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness.

5. In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. For example, in the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. They are described as often being self-conscious and shy, and tending to have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.

People with high scores on the neuroticism index are thought to be at risk of developing common mental disorders (mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders have been studied), and the sorts of symptoms traditionally referred to as "neuroses".

Neuroticism is a trait in many models within personality theory, but there is significant disagreement on its definition. It is sometimes defined as a tendency for quick arousal when stimulated and slow relaxation from arousal, especially with regard to negative emotional arousal. Another definition focuses on emotional instability and negativity or maladjustment, in contrast to emotional stability and positivity, or good adjustment. It has also been defined in terms of lack of self-control, poor ability to manage psychological stress, and a tendency to complain.

Various personality tests produce numerical scores, and these scores are mapped onto the concept of "neuroticism" in various ways, which has created some confusion in the scientific literature, especially with regard to sub-traits or "facets".

Individuals who score low in neuroticism tend to be more emotionally stable and less reactive to stress. They tend to be calm, even-tempered, and less likely to feel tense or rattled. Although they are low in negative emotion, they are not necessarily high on positive emotion. Being high in scores of positive emotion is generally an element of the independent trait of extraversion. Neurotic extraverts, for example, would experience high levels of both positive and negative emotional states, a kind of "emotional roller coaster"

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It’s Tuesday, August 3, 2021
Welcome to the 1,178th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
The Wilds, TV Series

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2.0 Commentary
Katherine, my daughter, will be staying with me until the end of August when she begins her adulthood, moving into her apartment in NYC with boyfriend William.
It will be a busy month for her and I will help by being responsive to her needs.
She’s continuing her internship; she’s teaching yoga at Core Power; and she’s socializing.

This Saturday my nephews and nieces are throwing their annual Cousins’ Party.
I am invited and am looking forward to meeting up with the crew. They are expecting twenty to thirty people. Vaccinations are mandatory.

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3.0 Reading and Writing
I am reading The Underground Railroad. It’s terrific. I’m also watching the Underground Railroad limited episode series. It’s well done.

My manuscript is composed of Five Parts, each with several sections.
I am working on Part One, sections one and two.
Part One Section One deals with the protagonist’s decision to enter recovery from a forced heroin addiction. Section Two deals with her physical withdrawal trials.
I am working on developing my characters, introducing the storylines, checking the chronology of events.
To accomplish this, I’ll use a split screen comparing the text on one side to the checklist on the other. Making changes to one side or the other becomes quick and easy.

I’ll finish these two sections this week and send the pages out to my beta readers for comment.
While I’m waiting for their responses, I’ll start on Section Three.
If being a Beta Reader is appealing to you, just email me @ domcapossela@hotmail.com
No skills necessary, just an interest in reading and a desire to help a writer.

I tuned into The Wilds TV Series to learn more about teenaged women (Lots of characters in my manuscript are teenagers.) and found myself really liking it.

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“It was sort of like the way
writers had long been pillaging all the good phrases from Shakespeare plays
for the titles of their novels,
so the only phrases still available meant nothing.
Soon, Emmett thought, people would be writing novels called Enter, Guard.”

~Meg Wolitzer
The Female Persuasion

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Plans have changed so many times today until ultimately
I found myself eating dinner home, alone.

So I changed the menu to a dry-aged rib eye steak.
After a slow-roast and broil/sear, it was a knockout.

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7.0 Blog Meister’s Pictures with Captions

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11.0 Thumbnail
The Wilds is an American drama streaming television series created by Sarah Streicher for Amazon Prime Video.
The series centers around a group of teenage girls who are left stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash, but are unaware they are the subjects of a social experiment.

The ensemble cast features Sophia Ali, Reign Edwards, Shannon Berry, Jenna Clause, Mia Healey, Helena Howard, Erana James, Sarah Pidgeon, David Sullivan, Troy Winbush, and Rachel Griffiths.
The first season was released on Amazon Prime Video on December 11, 2020 and received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the performances, writing, and plot. In December 2020, the series was renewed for a second season.

A group of teenage girls from different backgrounds—Fatin Jadmani, Dot Campbell, Martha Blackburn, Rachel Reid, Shelby Goodkind, Nora Reid, Toni Shalifoe, and Leah Rilke—are on an airplane when it crashes into the ocean while en route to Hawaii for the Dawn of Eve program, a young women's empowerment retreat.
They survive the crash and find themselves stranded on a deserted island. As the girls work to survive as castaways and learn about each other, they are unaware that they are subjects of a social experiment; the plane crash was staged and their stranding orchestrated by Gretchen Klein, the head of the Dawn of Eve program.
The girls' adventures on the island are intercut with flashback scenes about their lives before the crash, and flashforward scenes where two men claiming to be FBI agents interview the survivors after their supposed rescue.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series received an approval rating of 92% based on 25 critic reviews, with an average rating of 7.32/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "An addictive thriller that also captures the complex lives of teenage girls, The Wilds is worth getting lost in." Metacritic gave the series a weighted average score of 76 out of 100 based on 11 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly gave the series a B+ and wrote, "Here, the mystery isn't so much why these girls are on the island as how being there will change them—and I, for one, want to go back." Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times gave the series 3.5 out of 4 stars and said, "What's so impressive about The Wilds is how creator Sarah Streicher and the deeply talented young cast members immerse us in this world so quickly and create an almost instant interest and empathy for these eight teenage girls."

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It’s Monday, August 2, 2021
Welcome to the 1,177th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
Coprinellus micaceus

Holger Krisp - Own work
Mica Cap, Shiny Cap or Glistening Inky Cap, Coprinellus micaceus, Family: Psathyrellaceae, Location: Germany, Erbach, Ringingen

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2.0 Commentary
In the past ten days I’ve slept very well for eight of them. Last night I did not, waking @ 2.30am and unable to get back to sleep. So I rested for an hour longer on my comfortable recliner and then, at 3.30am started my day with coffee and half a donut. I normally also eat a soft-boiled egg but I delayed that until 8.00am to help me continue my fast until noon.

I love chicken drumsticks. This week, Bell and Evans chicken drumsticks, normally $3.99 @ Whole Foods are on sale for .99 cents a pound, .89 if you are a Prime member.
I bought 7lbs and made a stock. After simmering the pot long enough so that no flavor remained in the chicken, I discarded that chicken. I bought 5lbs more and simmered them in the stock just until cooked and removed them. When the chicken cooled, I removed the meat from the bones and cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces.  Then, to the enriched stock I added salt, thyme, and tarragon; fresh parsley and tomato paste, and 4oz each of celery, carrots, and onions, and simmered the pot for thirty minutes, after which I added the cut up chicken and 4oz of zucchini and turned off the burner: the chicken didn’t need any more cooking and the zucchini will easily cook in the residual heat of the pot. Then I bought three pounds more of the drumsticks, slow-roasted these and then broiled them to a lovely color. They will stay in the refrigerator until someone plucks them and microwaves them hot. They are delicious.
So that’s 15lbs of chicken for $13.55, not bad.

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3.0 Reading and Writing
I am reading The Underground Railroad. It’s terrific. Monday we have our first discussion group on it. The first 96 pages will be up for conversation.

My manuscript is composed of Five Parts, each with several sections.
I am working on Part One, sections one and two.
Part One deals with the protagonist’s recovery from a forced heroin addiction, preparing for her reintegration into society.

Today I developed tools to help me scrutinize my characters, the storylines, and the chronology of events.

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“I believe in love at first sight, But I also believe in evolution.
Love at first sight is real love, but it's an infant love.
As love matures, we meet again and again, and discover new parts of our partners for the first time.
I'd like to think that Rosalind and Orlando will cycle back to meet each other for the rest of their lives.”

~Jillian Keenan
Sex with Shakespeare: Here's Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love

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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192

From our dear friend, Kali P:

NERDS ALWAYS GET THE GIRL! They are the best!

Blog meister responds: I’m on your side, my dear.

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday night Katherine and I had Veal Cacciatore.
I experimented adding roasted eggplant to the recipe.
The eggplant, predictably, drank up all of the juices leaving the presentation dry and dull.
It tasted well enough but visually was a little off-putting.

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7.0 Blog Meister’s Pictures with Captions
Crowds at Aquarium are back

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Coprinellus micaceus is a common species of fungus in the family Psathyrellaceae with a cosmopolitan distribution. The fruit bodies of the saprobe typically grow in clusters on or near rotting hardwood tree stumps or underground tree roots. Depending on their stage of development, the tawny-brown mushroom caps may range in shape from oval to bell-shaped to convex, and reach diameters up to 1.2 in. The caps, marked with fine radial or linear grooves that extend nearly to the center, rest atop whitish stems up to 4 in long. In young specimens, the entire cap surface is coated with a fine layer of reflective mica-like cells that provide the inspiration for both the mushroom's species name and the common names mica cap, shiny cap, and glistening inky cap. Although small and with thin flesh, the mushrooms are usually bountiful, as they typically grow in dense clusters. A few hours after collection, the gills will begin to slowly dissolve into a black, inky, spore-laden liquid—an enzymatic process called autodigestion or deliquescence. The fruit bodies are edible before the gills blacken and dissolve, and cooking will stop the autodigestion process.

The microscopic characteristics and cytogenetics of C. micaceus are well known, and it has been used frequently as a model organism to study cell division and meiosis in Basidiomycetes. Chemical analysis of the fruit bodies has revealed the presence of antibacterial and enzyme-inhibiting compounds. Formerly known as Coprinus micaceus, the species was transferred to Coprinellus in 2001 as phylogenetic analyses provided the impetus for a reorganization of the many species formerly grouped together in the genus Coprinus. Based on external appearance, C. micaceus is virtually indistinguishable from C. truncorum, and it has been suggested that many reported collections of the former may be of the latter.

Coprinellus micaceus is an edible species, and cooking inactivates the enzymes that cause autodigestion or deliquescence—a process that can begin as soon as one hour after collection. It is considered ideal for omelettes, and as a flavor for sauces, although it is "a very delicate species easily spoiled by overcooking". The flavor is so delicate that it is easy to overpower and hide with almost anything. The fungus also appeals to fruit flies of the genus Drosophila, who frequently use the fruit bodies as hosts for larvae production.

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It’s Sunday, August 1, 2021
Welcome to the 1,176th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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1.0 Lead Picture
Circadian Clock

Overview of biological circadian clock in humans.
Biological clock affects the daily rhythm of many physiological processes.
This diagram depicts the circadian patterns typical of someone who rises early in morning, eats lunch around noon, and sleeps at night (10 p.m.).
Although circadian rhythms tend to be synchronized with cycles of light and dark, other factors - such as ambient temperature, meal times, stress and exercise - can influence the timing as well.

NoNameGYassineMrabetTalk
fixed by Addicted04 -
The work was done with Inkscape by YassineMrabet. Informations were provided from "The Body Clock Guide to Better Health" by Michael Smolensky and Lynne Lamberg; Henry Holt and Company, Publishers (2000). Landscape was sampled from Open Clip Art Library (Ryan, Public domain). Vitruvian Man and the clock were sampled from Image:P human body.svg (GNU licence) and Image:Nuvola apps clock.png, respectively.

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2.0 Commentary
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern where you cycle between periods of eating and fasting. It does not say anything about which foods to eat, but rather when you should eat them. There are several different intermittent fasting methods, all of which split the day or week into eating periods and fasting periods. My own rhythm is a variation of 16/8: 16 hours of no food and 8 hours of eating.
The 16/8 is pretty easy if you have a satisfying dinner say, at 6.00pm.
So you finish at 7pm and at 7am, you’re already 12 hours into the fast. The recommended diet calls for us to extend this fat until noon. At this point your body has digested the last food you ate and is burning fat, therein the weight loss.

This diet uses our circadian rhythm, the 24-hour internal clock that runs in the background of our brain and cycles between sleepiness and alertness at regular intervals, aka as our sleep/wake cycle.

I deviate from the 16/8 by taking a very small sweet roll and a soft-boiled egg when I wake, about 5.30am. Then I continue my fast until noon. I ate the small but satisfying breakfast because I wasn’t functioning well without eating something.
This modification is working for me. After eight weeks I have lost eight of the unwanted ten pounds I’ve gained over the last three years; and I have no doubt that I will shortly lose the last two.

I have tinkered with tens and tens of diets to stop that unwanted weight-gain and have finally found an eating rhythm that suits my personal lifestyle. It permits me a nice salad at lunch with lettuces, beets, bell peppers, scallions/red onions, a protein like egg salad or tuna salad, and half of an adult portion of a rich dessert.
At dinner I have either half a bottle of wine or two 1.5oz drinks. And I never leave the table hungry. Of course, I don’t groan with overeating, either. The only other thing I eat is a low-calorie popsicle.

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3.0 Reading and Writing
I’m reading The Underground Railroad. It’s terrific.

My manuscript is composed of Five Parts, each with several sections.
I am working on Part One, sections one and two.
Part One deals with the protagonist’s recovery from a forced heroin addiction, preparing for her reintegration into society.

I finished writing in the changes to my manuscript that my editor suggested. I accept about 70% of the changes in one form or another.
Today

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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“The things about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent...
he speaks the unspeakable.
He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words,
into something we can understand.
He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.”
~M.L. Rio
If We Were Villains

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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday night I had the last of the roast duck.
Lovely.
I made a stock of the carcass, reduced to a flavor intensity worthy of a duck sauce, and added it to my three-cup container of duck sauce. I added less than I used with the duck dinners. Next time I make it I’ll eat some of the duck without any sauce. It’s great that way as well.
I di render a good deal of fat which I added to my tub of duck fat, also in the freezer.

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7.0 Blog Meister’s Pictures with Captions
Ekua Holmes’ Man and Boy
She liked to use everyday scenes, in this case two men, perhaps father and son, to show the beauty of life.

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Intermittent fasting, also known as intermittent energy restriction, is an umbrella term for various meal timing schedules that cycle between voluntary fasting (or reduced calorie intake) and non-fasting over a given period.
Methods of intermittent fasting include alternate-day fasting (ADF), periodic fasting, and daily time-restricted feeding.
A type of periodic fasting known as the 5:2 diet was popularized in the UK and Australia by Michael Mosley around 2012.

Intermittent fasting may have similar effects to a calorie-restriction diet, and has been studied in the 21st century as a practice to possibly reduce the risk of diet-related diseases, such as metabolic syndrome.
A 2019 review concluded that intermittent fasting may help with obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and inflammation.

Intermittent fasting has been criticized as a fad.
The science concerning intermittent fasting is contested. The American Heart Association stated in 2017 that intermittent fasting may produce weight loss, reduce insulin resistance, and lower the risk of cardiometabolic diseases, although its long-term sustainability is unknown.
The US National Institute on Aging stated in 2018 that there is insufficient evidence to recommend intermittent fasting, and encourages speaking to one's healthcare provider about the benefits and risks before making any significant changes to one's eating pattern.

Fasting exists in various religious practices, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, and Judaism.

Intermittent fasting plays upon our circadian rhythm.

To be called circadian, a biological rhythm must meet these three general criteria

1.     The rhythm has an endogenous free-running period that lasts approximately 24 hours. The rhythm persists in constant conditions, (i.e., constant darkness) with a period of about 24 hours. The period of the rhythm in constant conditions is called the free-running period and is denoted by the Greek letter τ (tau). The rationale for this criterion is to distinguish circadian rhythms from simple responses to daily external cues. A rhythm cannot be said to be endogenous unless it has been tested and persists in conditions without external periodic input. In diurnal animals (active during daylight hours), in general τ is slightly greater than 24 hours, whereas, in nocturnal animals (active at night), in general τ is shorter than 24 hours.

2.     The rhythms are entrainable. The rhythm can be reset by exposure to external stimuli (such as light and heat), a process called entrainment. The external stimulus used to entrain a rhythm is called the Zeitgeber, or "time giver". Travel across time zones illustrates the ability of the human biological clock to adjust to the local time; a person will usually experience jet lag before entrainment of their circadian clock has brought it into sync with local time.

3.     The rhythms exhibit temperature compensation. In other words, they maintain circadian periodicity over a range of physiological temperatures. Many organisms live at a broad range of temperatures, and differences in thermal energy will affect the kinetics of all molecular processes in their cell(s). In order to keep track of time, the organism's circadian clock must maintain roughly a 24-hour periodicity despite the changing kinetics, a property known as temperature compensation. The Q10 temperature coefficient is a measure of this compensating effect. If the Q10 coefficient remains approximately 1 as temperature increases, the rhythm is considered to be temperature-compensated.

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