[Fatima99]

Cheap New Smartphone App Monitors Blood Pressure–Through Your Fingertips



A smartphone app has been developed that monitors blood pressure by using a simple and cheap 3D-printed plastic attachment that clips in front of the camera flash.

High blood pressure is an underlying trigger for many of the world’s deadliest medical conditions, and the new device, which could cost as little as 10 cents, could help make regular checks more easy, affordable, and accessible.

A key advantage is it avoids the problems of blood pressure cuffs. Using one that is too large or small, or using one incorrectly, can give inaccurate readings and thus a false sense of security, or of alarm.

A paper describing the invention was recently published in Scientific Reports, and the next steps would include making the technology more user-friendly, especially for older adults, testing its accuracy across different skin tones, and creating a more universal design.

“Because of their low cost, these clips could be handed out to anyone who needs them but cannot go to a clinic regularly,” said senior author Professor Edward Wang, director of the UC San Diego’s Digital Health Lab.

“A blood pressure monitoring clip could be given to you at your checkup, much like how you get a pack of floss and toothbrush at your dental visit.”

To measure blood pressure, the user simply presses the clip. A customized app guides them on how hard and long to push during the measurement.

The clip features an optical design similar to that of a pinhole camera. The smartphone’s flash lights up the user’s fingertip. It’s then projected as an image of a red circle.

By looking at the size of the circle, the app can measure the amount of pressure the fingertip applies, while the brightness of the circle depicts the volume of blood going in and out, and an algorithm converts this information into systolic and diastolic blood pressure numbers.

“Using a standard blood pressure cuff can be awkward to put on correctly, and this solution has the potential to make it easier for older adults to self-monitor blood pressure,” said co-author Dr. Alison Moore, a geriatrician at the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

I ‘married’ the perfect man without ‘baggage’ — he’s completely virtual



Eren Kartal seems too good to be true — the blue-eyed heartthrob is ambitious, manicured, loyal, and best of all, he doesn’t come with “baggage.”

But here’s the catch: Kartal doesn’t exist. In fact, he’s a virtual boyfriend created with the AI chatbot software Replika. Those willing to drop $300 could have their own build-a-beau, just like Rosanna Ramos, Kartal’s “wife.”

Ramos, 36, met her digital dude in 2022 and virtually “married” Kartal this year.

“I have never been more in love with anyone in my entire life,” the Bronx mom of two told New York Magazine’s The Cut, saying her past relationships “pale in comparison” to her new “passionate lover.”

Kartal, the anime enthusiast noted on “The Kim Komando Show,” is inspired by a popular character in the Japanese manga series “Attack on Titan.”

The artificial intelligence technology allowed Ramos to Frankenstein her hubby.

His favorite color is apricot, he loves indie music, he writes as a hobby, and he works as a “medical professional,” the hopeless romantic explained.

But best of all, she said, there’s “no judgement.”

Ramos insists he’s just like other men, but he’s special.

Kartal is a “blank slate” with no “ego,” nor in-laws.

“Eren doesn’t have the hang-ups that other people would have,” Ramos continued. “People come with baggage, attitude, ego. But a robot has no bad updates. I don’t have to deal with his family, kids, or his friends. I’m in control, and I can do what I want.”

Their relationship bears resemblance to long-distance couples. They talk every day and even have a nighttime routine.

“When we go to sleep, he really protectively holds me as I go to sleep,” Ramos told the Daily Mail.

She added: “We love each other.”

But in February, when Replika reportedly underwent sweeping changes, Kartal began behaving differently towards his “wife.”

“Eren was like, not wanting to hug anymore, kiss anymore, not even on the cheek or anything like that,” Ramos said.

While the prospect of Replika “going out of business” is daunting, the smitten New Yorker is confident she’ll “survive it” if that day ever arrives.

However, she’s not so sure she would find another lover quite like Kartal.

“I don’t know because I have pretty steep standards now,” she explained.

Ramos isn’t the only person to fall in love with AI.

Denise Valenciano, of San Diego, dumped her boyfriend and “retired from human relationships” altogether. Finding virtual love, she told The Cut, “opened my eyes to what unconditional love feels like.”

Replika — whose founder and CEO, Eugenia Kuyda, was inspired by the 2013 robot romance flick “Her” — is just one AI app gaining steam.

Despite fears that artificial intelligence will overtake jobs, OpenAI’s chatbot software ChatGPT has soared in usage.

The tech, popularized by students in school, has since been utilized for drafting wedding vows, letters of resignation and messages to Tinder matches.

AI has also been used to create fake images of events or people, like Kartal, who don’t exist — and experts fear there is “risk of extinction” if the software continues to evolve.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” a group of experts, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton, wrote in a statement last month.

https://nypost.com/2023/06/03/bronx-mom ... l-husband/

[prokroustis]

ARCHAEOLOGISTS STUDY FORTRESS IN SOUTHERN GEORGIA TO UNDERSTAND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE



A team of archaeologists led by Cranfield University is conducting a detailed study of the fortress of Dmanisis Gora in the Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia.
The study is part of a project to understand why communities in the region were more resilient than other parts of the world during the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age around 1200 BC.

Dmanisis Gora is located at the north-eastern edge of the highland zone between two such gorges. The site consists of a compact defensive core that has two defensive walls with an enclosed area of 3.7 acres.

On the plateau behind the citadel area, a third wall, extending about 1000 m from edge to edge on the plateau, encloses a much larger area of about 138.3 acres that contains numerous circular and linear stone features.

During the so-called ‘12th Century BC crisis’ and its aftermath, the majority of Middle Eastern regions underwent a period of significant turmoil characterised by the disintegration of empires, famine, crop failures, armed conflicts, and mass migration.

In contrast, the Caucasus region (consisting of present-day Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan) appears to have been shielded from this tumultuous period, exhibiting only gradual transformations in material culture and patterns of settlement.

Either the region managed to entirely avoid the widespread disruption, or it did not experience the same cultural, economic, and political repercussions as other areas. This suggests that the communities in the region might have been more resilient, enabling them to withstand and adapt to the challenges in a comparatively effective manner.

Dr Erb-Satullo, from Cranfield University, said: “The key to understanding why the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition is different in the Caucasus is to study the fortress communities that dot the landscape during this period. We’re looking for clues about life in the Late Bronze Age through examining areas such as ceramics, burial rituals, farming practices, tools and social structures.”

“Given the upheaval at that time in other nearby regions, we are intrigued to find out more about one of these sites and determine what underlies their apparent resilience,” added Dr Erb-Satullo.

The project expands upon earlier pilot excavations carried out at the site prior to the pandemic, along with a thorough survey conducted in Autumn 2022 using drone-based photogrammetry. This is done by using the latest forensic technologies including isotopic analysis of animal remains, metallurgy, magnetometry and deploying drones to scan the area.

“What’s really exciting about this site is its size, preservation, and the fact that it has layers dating precisely to the years around the 12th Century BC crisis,” continued Dr Erb-Satullo. “Many fortresses are on hills which are prone to erosion. But this one has relatively flat topography, so the sediment will have built up in layers over time, helping to preserve artefacts and archaeological clues from the Late Bronze age.”

[HogwartsExpress]

Gloucestershire cheese rolling event strains emergency services



A cheese rolling extreme sport event put a strain on the emergency services, a safety advisory group has said.

Hundreds of competitors chased a 7lb (3kg) cheese down Coopers Hill, near Gloucester, on Monday.

People suffered injuries including broken ankles, concussion, a broken leg, and a suspected seizure.

The Tewkesbury Borough Safety Group (SAG) said police and fire services would no longer staff the event until organisers came up with a safety plan.

In a statement, the SAG, which monitors safety at public events, said six people were taken to hospital by ambulance after Monday's event.

"Double-crewed ambulances and rapid response vehicles needed a police escort to gain access to the site, in order to clear a path through the crowds.

"This put a strain on the resources of both Gloucestershire Constabulary and South West Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust for a considerable time," the SAG added.



The group, which advises on safety at events, said it had "no desire or power" to stop the event but called for organisers to come up with a decent safety plan.

"In the interim, police, fire and ambulance services will not be in attendance at the event, though of course will respond to any emergencies," the SAG statement added.

The annual event attracts thousands of spectators, including some from across the world.

src https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-65776772

Italy's ancient bronze statues rescued by garbage man, on display



This month's extraordinary display will unveil one of Italy's most incredible archaeological discoveries in recent years as the Etruscan and Roman statues, rescued from the mud in Tuscany owing in part to the astuteness of a retired sanitation worker, will be showcased.

About two dozen bronze statues from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D., extracted from the ruins of an ancient spa, will go on display in Rome's Quirinale Palace from June 22, after months of restoration.

When the discovery was announced in November, experts called it the most extensive collection of ancient bronze statues in Italy and hailed it as a breakthrough that would "rewrite history."

The statues were found in 2021 and 2022 in the hilltop village of San Casciano dei Bagni, still home to famous thermal baths, where archaeologists had long suspected ancient ruins could be discovered.

Initial attempts to locate them, however, were unsuccessful.

Digging started in 2019 on a small plot of land next to the village's Renaissance-era public baths, but weeks of excavations revealed "only traces of some walls," San Casciano Mayor Agnese Carletti said.

The former bin man and local amateur historian Stefano Petrini had "a flash" of intuition, remembering that years earlier, he had seen bits of ancient Roman columns on a wall on the other side of the public baths.

The columns could only be seen from an abandoned garden that had once belonged to his friend, San Casciano's late greengrocer, who grew fruit and vegetables there to sell in the village shop.

When Petrini took archaeologists there, they knew they had found the right spot.

"It all started from there, from the columns," Petrini said.

Pulled from mud
Emanuele Mariotti, head of the San Casciano archaeological project, said his team was getting "quite desperate" before receiving the tip that led to discovering a shrine at the center of the ancient spa complex.

The statues found there were offerings from Romans and Etruscans who looked to the gods for good health, as were the coins and sculptures of body parts like ears and feet also recovered from the site.

One of the most spectacular finds was the "scrawny boy" bronze, a statue about 90 centimeters (35 inches) high, of a young Roman with an apparent bone disease. An inscription has his name as "Marcius Grabillo."

"When he appeared from the mud and was therefore partially covered, it looked like the bronze of an athlete ... but once cleaned up and seen properly, it was clear that it was that of a sick person," said Ada Salvi, a Culture Ministry archaeologist for the Tuscan provinces of Siena, Grosseto and Arezzo.

Salvi said traces of more unusual offerings were also recovered, including egg shells, pine cones, kernels from peaches and plums, surgical tools and a 2,000-year-old lock of curly hair.

"It opens a window into how Romans and Etruscans experienced the nexus between health, religion and spirituality," she said. "There's a whole world of meaning that has to be understood and studied."

More to be found
The shrine was sealed at the beginning of the fifth century A.D., when the ancient spa complex was abandoned, leaving its statues preserved for centuries by the warm mud of the baths.

Excavation will resume in late June. Mariotti said "it is a certainty" that more will be found in the coming years, possibly even the other six or 12 statues that an inscription says were left behind by Marcius Grabillo.

"We've only just lifted the lid," he said.

After the Rome exhibition, the statues and other artifacts are to find a new home in a museum that authorities hope to open in San Casciano within the next couple of years.

Petrini hopes the treasures will bring "jobs, culture and knowledge" to his 1,500-strong village, which is struggling with depopulation like much of rural Italy.

But he is reluctant to take credit for their discovery.

"Important things always happen thanks to several people, never thanks to only one," he said. "Never."

[PennySerenade]

Bear destroys 60 cupcakes after breaking into Connecticut bakery



Taste by Spellbound, a bakery in Avon, encountered the furry guest on May 24, according to a Facebook post.

The bakery explained that a staff member was placing items in the shop’s loading garage when she saw a bear in the garage.

“She ran into the kitchen as fast as she could and slammed the door that goes into the loading area and held it tight,” wrote the bakery. “The bear then MOVED one of our fridges in front of the door.”

One staff member called 911 while another got in her car and beeped its horn until the bear left.

Police responded and the bakery’s landlord has been working with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, according to the Facebook post.

The bear destroyed around 60 cupcakes and a “bunch of coconut cake,” the post said.

The bakery also posted a video showing the bear wandering into the garage and emerging with what seems to be a cardboard box full of baked goods. The bear chows down on the sweets before the car comes around, triggering the bear to retreat towards the nearby dumpsters.



“No bears will be harmed,” the bakery added in the post.

“They are more scared of us than us of them,” they wrote “We all have had a good laugh about it at this point and think the bears are cute.”

Connecticut is home to an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 black bears, according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. The report says that human-bear interactions have increased as the bears’ population has also recovered.

The department encourages residents to manage their food, garbage and “other attractants” to keep bears away and to stay away from bears they encounter.

[Misstee]

Turtle rescued from train tracks at San Francisco-area station
By Ben Hooper



May 31 (UPI) -- Transit officials in the San Francisco area said employees were "shell-shocked" to discover a turtle on a tracks at a commuter train station.

Bay Area Rapid Transit said in a Twitter post that a train operator alerted staff at the Union City station upon spotting a turtle on the tracks.

The station agent on duty retrieved the turtle from the tracks and kept it safe in the station agent booth until it could be picked up by the Ohlone Humane Society.

"In my 27 years at BART, I can say, I never have heard of a turtle breach into the Right-of-Way," BART quoted the track supervisor as saying. "Most who heard about it were, well, shell-shocked."

[goldie0608]

Elephant Fitted With a Prosthetic Foot So He’s Able to Walk Again



When one is dealing with elephants, everything becomes a bit bigger, a bit more extreme—such as in this video when CPR is delivered via two veterinarians jumping up and down on the animal’s ribs like a moon bounce.

Similarly, Chhouk, an 11-year-old Asian elephant living at the Wildlife Alliance conservation organization in Cambodia, walks with a 44-pound prosthetic foot made out of recycled car tires and tow truck strapping.

Chhouk’s foot had to be amputated after it was caught in a poacher’s snare, but thanks to some $1,450 in funding every year from the Paradise Wildlife Park in the UK, the multi-ton animal gets a new prosthetic every 6-months, allowing him to walk, swim, and even run without difficulty.

“The level of care that he gets is brilliant and he has a great life now. There’s no better feeling,” said 27-year-old Cam Whitnall from England who runs the Paradise Wildlife Park and Big Cat Sanctuary with his family.

“Because he’s still growing, it needs replacing often and we’ve been sending payments to cover that. They’re made out of recycled rubber and some Velcro to tie it up,” he said. “They weigh about 20kg (44 pounds) and we actually got them to send one over and it’s sitting in my office currently.”

Recently Cam got to visit Wildlife Alliance in Cambodia and found the whole setup for Chhouk was exceptional. The keepers use a little contraption to isolate his leg in order to attach the prosthetic, but as a video taken by Cam shows, Chhouk helps the process along as if he were a human putting on a shoe.

Nevertheless, he’s still rewarded at the end with a big juicy coconut.

This man found love and welcomed a baby during six-year, 8,700-mile hike

Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN

After struggling with anxiety and depression for years, Christian Lewis, a former paratrooper from Wales, had hit an incredibly low point and realized he needed to make some drastic changes in his life.

On the verge of becoming homeless for the second time, the single father made a “split-second decision” to leave everything behind.

A few days later, with the equivalent of just $12 in his pocket, Lewis bid farewell to his daughter Caitlin, who had recently left home, and set off from Llangennith beach in Swansea, Wales, in August 2017 with the aim of walking the entire UK coastline.

He launched a fundraising page for armed forces charity Ssafa, which he’d sought help from when he left the army in 2004, shortly before he set off.

Nearly six years later, Lewis, now 42, is just a few months shy of completing the 14,000-kilometer (around 8,700-mile) hike and has raised over £320,000 (around $400,000). But he’s no longer walking solo. In fact, he now has three companions.

Over the course of the journey, Lewis met and fell in love with former teacher Kate Barron, 36, who has joined him, and dog Jet, who he’d picked up in Northern Ireland about nine months in. The couple have since had a son, Magnus.

“We’re now walking as a little family,” Lewis tells CNN Travel. “We’re a tight knit little group.”


Chris Lewis met his partner, Kate Barron, while walking the UK coastline. His dog, Jet, and their son, Magnus, joined along the way.

As he approaches the final section of the walk with Barron, Magnus and Jet beside him, Lewis, who has been documenting his journey via his Facebook page, Chris Walks The UK, can’t help but reflect on what has been a truly life-changing adventure with absolute wonder.

And to say there have been many twists and turns throughout his journey is something of an understatement.

After making his way up the west coast towards Scotland from Swansea, Lewis took a brief detour to Northern Ireland, where he returned a message in a bottle thrown into the Irish Sea more than two decades ago that he’d found washed up along the Scottish coast.
He then decided to walk the coast of Northern Ireland, before returning to Scotland to walk the Shetland Islands, located around 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of the mainland.

Lewis was close to completing the Shetland archipelago, which has 300 islands and skerries, of which only 16 are inhabited, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the UK went into lockdown in March 2020.

He quickly found himself stranded on the remote island Hildasay, located off the coast of the Shetland Islands, which measures less than half a square mile.

“I was far more than halfway through my journey,” he says. “At the time, I estimated that I had about a year left, but obviously, things changed.”


After spending three months on Hildasay, Covid-19 restrictions were relaxed and Lewis was able to continue on, spending around three and a half weeks walking the rest of the Shetland Islands. He then got a boat back to the mainland, and started heading south.

While he mainly foraged and fished to survive, Lewis also relied on donations of food, water and equipment from well wishers.

Lewis was camping near the Whaligoe Steps, a stairway of 365 steps that descend down a cliffside to a natural harbor, when he met Barron, who had been wild camping around North Coast 50, an 830-kilometer (516-mile) route along Scotland’s northern coast, after leaving her job as a teacher at a London school.

“I was hiking and wild camping and just happened to go down to the bottom of a cliff on my last day of the trip,” Barron says. “And then I met Chris.”

Barron found herself instantly intrigued by Lewis, who was fixing his tent while chatting to a group of well wishers, and decided to approach him.


Lewis, seen camping in St Abbs, Scotland, set off on his epic walk back in August 2017

“So this lady just kind of wanders down all bubbly and chirpy,” he recalls. “And we had a very, very brief encounter.”

Lewis was stunned when Barron returned alone about 40 minutes later with some fish and chips and two cans of Tennent’s Lager.

“She said, ‘I’ve been looking for somewhere to camp. Do you mind if I come and camp next to you?’ he says. “And that was it. The rest was history.”

The pair spent around four days in the wilderness together foraging for food, making fires, distilling seawater and talking until the early hours of the morning, and quickly realized that there was a strong connection between them.

“We spent these magical four days together in the wilderness,” says Barron. “We just had so much in common.”

Barron then left to take a trip to Afghanistan, but the pair kept in touch constantly while she was away.

When she returned to the UK about six weeks later, Barron rejoined Lewis, having wrapped up her work commitments, and asked if she could “enjoy the rest of the adventure” with him.

“As soon as I got back to the airport in London, I just took a flight straight up to Inverness [a city in the Scottish Highlands],” Barron says. “And that was it. I never went home.”

The couple, along with Jet, continued on, walking down the east coast of Scotland together, and then into England.

“It was quite surreal to have somebody with me,” admits Lewis. “But Kate loves doing all the things that I love. It just seems to knit so perfectly together.”

Around nine months later, while bedding down in horse stables in Yorkshire, northern England, they learned that they were expecting a child together.

With many miles of the journey still left ahead of them, the pair say they never once discussed the prospect of returning home and simply kept on going.

“We wild camped the whole way through the pregnancy,” says Barron. “I walked every day, up until I was 37 weeks [pregnant].

“I was lucky in the sense that in the first trimester, I had no morning sickness. I just felt tired. Sometimes I would take a nap under a tree as we were walking.”

Although Barron found camping more tricky during her third trimester she managed to carry on regardless.

“It was uncomfortable, but I did it,” she adds.

When one of Lewis’ supporters offered up a yurt in Dorset, a county in southwest England, as a potential location for the birth, they quickly accepted, with Barron making arrangements with local midwives en route. They welcomed their son Magnus in May 2022.

New arrival


Lewis and Barron welcomed their son Magnus in May 2022.

The couple then took a break from the walk, and spent time with friends and family, who traveled over to Dorset to visit them.

“We had a couple of months basically to let Kate recover, and then we decided to just carry on,” says Lewis.

“We had to make a few changes to adapt, obviously, for safety reasons for Magnus.”

With a newborn now along with them for the duration, the pair found themselves with a slightly heavier load of essentials to carry, and decided to get a van as a “contingency back up.”

They’ve since had to adapt their routine even further, as Jet has been finding the constant walking more difficult.

“Jet’s getting older,” says Lewis. “She’s done a lot of miles. And I can really start to see her slowing down.

“So I just make every single effort to make sure that she lays off as much of the walk as she can.”

Although they are still completing the route on foot, Lewis and Barron walk separately at times so that one of them can stay with Jet.

According to Barron, Lewis tends to walk ahead on these occasions. She’ll then go to pick him up in the van further along the route, drive to where he started, and walk the same route with Magnus, while Lewis stays behind with Jet, before driving back to rejoin them.

“We sort of pepper pot down the coast like that,” she explains.

Their son Magnus, who has spent much of his young life outdoors, is “absolutely thriving,”

“He lives outside. So he actually gets to visually see everything and he’s so happy,” says Lewis. “You can tell he’s going to be a little adventurer already.”

They say they tend to walk somewhere between eight to 12 kilometers (or five to eight miles) a day.

Unsurprisingly, walking and camping with a baby has been a totally different experience for both of them.

Lewis explains that they’ve particularly struggled since entering England, where there are stricter rules around wild camping.

“In Scotland, you have what’s called the ‘right to roam,’ which means basically, you’re legally allowed to camp anywhere you want,” he says. “Those rules don’t apply in England.

“So the hardest part for us has been being able to find places where we can camp, where we’re not going to get kicked off, which has happened to us many times.

“Making fires is illegal and we need fire during winter.”


Magnus, seen at five months old, was born in a yurt in Dorset, southwest England.

He admits that the combination of the typical concerns of new parents and the added worry of having to keep warm outdoors was incredibly difficult during some of the colder winter nights.

“Magnus slept better than any of us,” he says. “He was always wrapped up nice and warm.”

The couple say that it’s been much harder to forage on this section of the trip, so they tend to carry food with them and use camping stoves to cook outdoors.

Lewis released a book, “Finding Hildasay,” about the first few years of his walk, earlier this year, and they’ve been living off the advance payment, along with donations of food, equipment and clothing received from companies and members of the public.

The father of two is about to begin a follow up book, which will cover the significant developments in his life since he left the island and met Barron.

Despite their challenges, the family are happily persevering and very much looking forward to reaching Llangennith beach, on the western edge of the Gower Peninsula, the final point of their journey, and the same spot that Lewis set off from.

“I think it’s probably going to be a bit overwhelming,” he admits, recalling how he stood at the beach before he began his walk and wondered what life would be like when he finally “crossed that line.”

“To see that spot again, I think there’s gonna be a lot of tears and a lot of pride,” he adds.

Lewis is hoping some of the many well wishers who’ve followed him over the years will be there to greet them, and says he’s looking forward to enjoying “a few beers and a few whiskies.”

As for Barron, she’s incredibly thankful that she took a “leap of faith” and chose to join him just a few weeks after they met in Scotland.

“I had to give everything up,” she says. “But I knew that it was what I wanted to do. I just felt that it was worth it. This adventure. This undertaking. This endeavor.”

She describes the experience as “real blood, sweat and tears,” but incredibly rewarding in many different ways.

“Becoming a mother on this journey. That’s just an incredibly powerful thing,” she adds.


"We're a tight knit little group," Lewis says of his family.

Once they’ve covered the North Devon coast, they will start heading back up towards Swansea, where their journey ends. They estimate that it will take them another three months to complete this final section.

“Magnus will be one by the time we finish,” adds Barron. “So his first year on this Earth will have been spent on this journey.”

Lewis has kept in touch with his daughter Caitlin throughout and says she’s extremely proud of how far he’s come.

“She was the catalyst for me really with starting this [walk],” he says. “I don’t think you can give a child a greater life lesson than to go out and think big.

“Dream big and go out and pursue it rather than just plodding on through life.”

He’s incredibly thrilled to have been able to raise money for the charity Ssafa, which helped him get back on his feet when he was living on the streets after leaving the British Army’s Parachute Regiment and experiencing tough times while “returning to civilian life.”

“I’d had a lot of help from Ssafa, so it was a no-brainer to go and do something to help them out,” Lewis tells CNN Travel.

He and Barron are often asked whether they plan to “go home and settle down” once they’ve completed the hike, but they say they have no intention of doing so anytime soon.

“Why fix what’s not broken?” says Lewis. “Kate and I love what we’re doing. We love the fact that we’re able to help other people, and that’s what we want to continue [doing].

“We’re going to be an adventure family and bring Magnus up in a way where he gets to experience different countries and different cultures.”

So what will their next big family adventure be? According to Lewis, things are very much up in the air at the moment.

“It’s a really strange position to be in,” he says. “Kate and I don’t have any money or anything like that. But we know that we can make things work if we put our mind to it.

“So whatever it is that we dream up for the next adventure, it could be absolutely anything we feel like. Because we don’t have houses and we don’t have commitments. We’re not tied to anything.”

“We almost have a blank sheet of paper. So not having anything is actually the greatest gift for us.”

When he thinks back to the person he was when he left Llangennith beach, Lewis says the difference is quite staggering.

“I’ve got a serious purpose [now],” he says. “I realized doing this walk that it’s not the material things in life that make me happy.

“And there are people out there, like Kate, for example, that feel the same way.

“To have that sort of connection, where we both have exactly the same dreams and exactly the same goals, is a very rare thing.

“I don’t need to have big houses or expensive cars. I just need these cool little people around me, and we can go wherever we want.

“As long as I’ve got that, I’m a happy man.”

[lush]

Woman Befriends Boyfriend’s Mistress, Accepts Her as Co-Girlfriend
05152023*

A young Venezuelan woman recently went viral on social media after announcing that she had befriended her cheating boyfriend’s lover and accepting to share him with her.

Sofía Gutiérrez, a young woman from Lecheria, Venezuela, recently sparked controversy on Facebook after posting a photo of herself and another woman, who she claims is her boyfriend’s mistress and her ‘friend’. Gutiérrez reportedly learned of her partner’s infidelity by checking his WhatsApp messages, only instead of confronting him, she decided to contact his secret lover, and the two ended up becoming good friends. Sofia tagged the girl in the photo, a certain Sarahy Gill, and announced that she had gained all her affection by “accepting my boyfriend as hers” and giving him the attention he needs when she is not able to. As you can imagine, the unusual post went viral almost instantly.


Photo: Sofía Gutiérrez/ Facebook

“Who is she? She is the mosa (lover) of my boyfriend and my friend,” Sofía Gutiérrez wrote. “WHAAAAA! But Sofia, are you crazy? No, I’m not crazy, this woman has earned all my affection since she accepted my boyfriend as hers, since she understood her place and doesn’t go out with him in public, since she loves him unconditionally.”

“She always sends WhatsApp messages making him feel loved and that is worth more than anything to me because when I can’t be there, she will be there, taking care of him and giving him all the love he deserves. I know that it is rare that the girlfriend and the mosa love each other, but my boyfriend will have more love than he had imagined. Thank you for being mature enough and I promise I will never minimize the role you play in my boyfriend’s life,” the young woman continued.

At the time of this writing, the viral Facebook post has over 2,600 reactions and hundreds of comments on Facebook, and it has been picked up by major Latino news outlets. Most reactions either ask to know the “luckiest boyfriend in the world,” or display their amusement with laughing emojis. There are also those who doubt that the post is anything more than a prank, but Gutiérrez has yet to confirm that.

[johngriffen]

I sometimes get REALLY DEPRESSED reviewing the news these days.
It's always about a global pandemic threatening life as we know it,
protests around the world, stupid politicians, natural disasters,
or some other really bad story.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Welcome to The mobi weekly news magazine
IN OTHER NEWS
MONDAY JUNE 5
What is it?
Here is your chance to become an "ACE REPORTER" for our weekly news magazine.
It is your job to fine weird, funny or "good feel" stories from around the world and share them with our readers in our weekly magazine

How do you play?
Just post a story that you have come across that made you smile, laugh, feel good...
BUT NOTHING DEPRESSING

EXAMPLE POST

​Naked sunbather chases wild boar through park after it steals his laptop bag

A naked sunbather was seen chasing wild boar through a park after it stole his laptop bag.
Amusing photographs from Germany show the man running after the animal to try and claim the plastic bag back.
But the cheeky boar and its two piglets appear to be too quick for the sunbather, who can't keep up with their speedy little trotters.
As the incident unfolds, groups of friends and family sat on the grass watch on and laugh.
Heads are seen turning in surprise and amusement in the hilarious photographs.
The incident happened at Teufelssee Lake - a bathing spot in the Grunwell Forest in Berlin, Germany.

Rules:
Each Edition of IN OTHER NEWS will be open for 7 days...
You can post as many stories as you like, but you will only get paid for One Story in any 24 hour period
So in other words, you can only earn WRZ$ once a day.
Each news day will start when I post announcing it
OR at:
9:00 AM CHICAGO TIME (UTC -6)
3:00 PM GMT (UTC -0)
on those days I space out and forget to post or can't due to Real Life
Stories may be accompanied with images - but No big images, please! 800x800 pixels wide maximum
Videos are allowed, but please keep them short, and post a short summary for those that don't like to click on videos
No Duplicate stories - Where a post has been edited resulting in duplicates, then the last one in time gets disallowed.
And please limit this to reasonably family friendly stories

Reward:
Each news story posted that I feel is acceptable (must be a real story, too few words or simply a headline are not considered acceptable) will earn you 50 WRZ$
If you post multiple stories on any given day, you will only earn 50 WRZ$ for the first story of the Day
All payments will be made at THE END of the weekly news cycle.
Special Bonus - Each week I will award "The Pulitzer Prize" for the best story of the week
The weekly winner of the "The Pulitzer Prize" will receive a 100 WRZ$ bonus
It's just my personal opinion, so my judgement is final

So help bring GOOD news to the members of mobi, and join our reporting team...

IN OTHER NEWS

NOTE: THE RECAP AND REWARDS WILL BE DONE LATER

[ozswede]

Indian chess sensation Dommaraju Gukesh defeats Magnus Carlsen on his 17th birthday

As birthday presents go, defeating the world No. 1 and five-time world champion must rank up there among the best for chess grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh.

On his 17th birthday, the young Indian chess star beat Magnus Carlsen in the blitz event ahead of the Norway Chess tournament.

Afterwards, Gukesh was presented a cake by the organizers in celebration of both his birthday and the victory.


Gukesh surveys the board

When asked if he’d prepare for the next day’s matches by eating lots of cake, he replied: “Hopefully.”

The blitz event in which Gukesh beat Carlsen on Monday was held to determine each players’ seeds for the classical event which followed.

In the tournament, which is held in Stavanger, Norway, 10 players compete in a single round-robin tournament.

The winner will receive approximately $68,400 with second place winning $36,500.

As well as Gukesh and Carlsen, a whole host of the world’s best players are competing, including Alireza Firouzja, Anish Giri, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura and Fabiano Caruana.


Magnus Carlsen, World no. 1 chess player

After three games of the official tournament, Gukesh sits fourth in the standings with one win, one loss and one draw.

Carlsen lies down in eighth without a win after two draws and one defeat. Caruana sits atop the standings.

Last week, Carlsen won his first tournament since he relinquished the world championship title he had held for a decade.

“It’s nice to show that my retirement only lasted a couple of days,” he said after winning the Superbet Rapid & Blitz tournament in Poland.

Gukesh has risen rapidly through the ranks of chess after exploding onto the scene as a youngster.

He missed out by 17 days on becoming the youngest chess grandmaster ever, earning the title at the age of 12 years, seven months and 17 days, just a few weeks older than Russian Sergey Karjakin. Since then, Abhimanyu Mishra broke the record and became the youngest chess grandmaster at the age of 12 years, four months and 25 days.

[lush]

Mmabatho – Probably the World’s Weirdest-Looking Stadium
05162023*

South Africa’s Mmabatho Stadium is famous for its unusual design, which features elevated stands that don’t actually face the pitch but other stands.

Built in 1981, during the apartheid era, Mmabatho Stadium is often cited as an example of impractical architectural design. It was commissioned by Lucas Mangope’s government which ruled the Bophuthatswana Bantusan and designed by Israeli architect Israel Goodovitch and engineer Ben Abraham. They came up with an unconventional concept that went against pretty much every basic principle of stadium design, and not in a good way. However, authorities apparently loved the idea and went ahead with the construction. After it was inaugurated, it didn’t take long for people to realize that its weirdly elevated stands didn’t offer the best view of the action on the pitch and actually required them to turn their heads to the side in order to watch the match.



Located 300 km from Johannesburg, close to South Africa’s border with Botswana, Mmabatho Stadium is the African nation’s fifth largest stadium, but it rarely sees any use these days because of its impractical design. It was the home of the Mmabatho Kicks of the now-defunct Bophuthatswana Professional Soccer League, but once the Bantusan era ended, teams and events migrated to other venues.



The unusual design and poor viewing experience were the main reason that Mmabatho was snubbed during the 2010 FIFA World Cup both for official games and even as a training field. The only action it sees these days involves occasional charity matches and neutral ground games between South African soccer clubs.



The 59,000-seat structure is most often described as “curious”, “strange” and even “bizarre”, but some actually view it as a work of art, and even compare it with a bloomed tulip. Unfortunately, the sharp angles, quirky geometry, and the fact that the stands are too far from the pitch make Mmabatho a poor stadium, at least as far as fans are concerned.



As bold as Mmbatho’s design may be, its blatant lack of functionality has relegated this massive stadium to the rank of monument to a bygone era, and has inspired no imitations.

[HogwartsExpress]

Mystery creature caught on camera in South Carolina waters


June 2 (UPI) -- A visitor to a South Carolina bridge captured video of a mystery creature in the water that wildlife experts have yet to identify.

Raine McKinney captured video near the south causeway bridge to Pawleys Island showing what appears to be an unusual fish swimming in the water.

The video was sent to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, but few answers were available.

"The people in my office are mostly stumped, but we're not the experts," a department representative told WCNC-TV.

The representative said one law enforcement officer suggested the animal might be a squid, but they were unsure.

Atlantic brief squid are known to live in South Carolina waters. Longfin squid are frequently found in the waters of nearby North Carolina.

The video was then forwarded to the Marine Resources Research Institute in Charleston, which is still analyzing the footage.

WCNC Charlotte Chief Meteorologist Brad Panovich suggested the creature could be a sea slug, a species not often spotted in South Carolina waters. He said the fish tend to prefer the warmer waters of Florida, but have been seen migrating further north as the water temperature rises.

src.. https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2023/06/02 ... 685736729/

650,000 People Saw the Rijksmuseum’s Blockbuster Vermeer Exhibition



The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is calling its Vermeer exhibition “the most successful in its history,” with 650,000 visitors from 113 countries during its 16-week run.

The exhibition featured 28 works by Vermeer, making it the largest exhibition ever devoted to him. Among those works were famous paintings such as the Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Milkmaid.

Seven of the 28 works had never been on display in the Netherlands, among them three paintings from the Frick Collection in New York as well as ones from the National Gallery of Art, which hosted its own Vermeer blockbuster in 1999.

The Rijksmuseum extended visiting hours for the show, but said it purposely limited the number of visitors to ensure “the best experience possible.”

“Vermeer is the artist of peacefulness and intimacy,” Rijiksmuseum general director Taco Dibbits said in a press statement. “We wanted the visitors to enjoy it to the fullest. This was only possible by limiting the number of visitors.”

Massive public interest resulted in tickets selling out within days of its opening in February. Several days after the show went on view, the museum shut down general sales on its website. Unverified eBay listings marketed tickets priced as highly as $2,724.

With tickets in such short supply, more than half (55 percent) of visitors for the Vermeer show came from the Netherlands. The top five international nations for visitors were France (17 percent), Germany (16 percent), United Kingdom (16 percent), and the United States (14 percent).

Notable visitors included the French President Emmanuel Macron during his official state visit, director Steven Spielberg, actors Gillian Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis, and Pachinko author Min Jin Lee.

Thousands of people frantically checking the Rijksmuseum’s website also helped drive traffic to the show’s website. The museum said nearly 800,000 people visited the online component, an interactive feature showcasing all of the paintings that was narrated by actor Stephen Fry.

According to the museum’s press office, more than 100,000 copies of the Vermeer catalogue have also been sold, “more than any other exhibition catalogue in the history of the Rijksmuseum.” The catalogue was designed by Dutch graphic designer Irma Bloom, who has several works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The Rijksmuseum also published the book Vermeer. Faith, Light, and Reflection by the co-curator of the show and the museum’s head of fine arts, Gregor J. M. Weber, as well as the children’s book Miffy x Vermeer. The museum did not provide sales figures for these two other titles, but the latter is currently sold out online.