From Chef Andre`s:

A difficult anniversary—and a moment to remember Ukraine by José Andrés

Supporting recovery efforts with the Longer Tables Fund Read on Substack

Today is a day that I’m thinking about the people of Ukraine. It’s been a special place to me over the last few years, where I’ve spent over 100 days on the ground, as the team from World Central Kitchen has worked to keep communities fed since the Russian invasion in 2022.

This week marks three years since the invasion…and the beginning of our work there, so I hope we can all take a moment to remember.

Over these three years, we’ve learned so much about resilience, about innovation, about community—the Ukrainian people have been an incredible example to the world for how to live bravely in the shadow of war, in constant fear of losing their homes, their farms, their lives.

I’m proud of the part that WCK has played in the country, with leaders like Yuliya Stefanyuk, our Ukrainian Response Director. Yuliya has been with WCK from the beginning, first working to coordinate meal production in Lviv, then expanding operations across the country. She’s played a critical role to establish our food distribution networks, secure partnerships, and to make sure that meals are reaching people in need, even in the hardest-hit areas.

And I’m also proud to share that through the Longer Tables Fund, I am continuing to support some amazing organizations and people in Ukraine, to keep recovery efforts moving forward.

You might not have heard me talking about the Longer Tables Fund yet, but it’s one of the things I’m most excited about these days. (No relation to our Longer Tables newsletter here, though it’s a good name, right?) I launched it in 2022—powered by the Bezos Courage and Civility Award that I was honored to receive in 2021—to support people and organizations who believe, like I do, that food has the potential to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems.

Its goal is to make change in three areas: local food systems, where we are aiming to transform the way humanity is producing, accessing, and consuming food; education, where we are hoping to inspire the next generation of food leaders; and (re)building communities, where we are using the power of food to help people build resilience after times of crisis.

In Ukraine, we’re supporting a few amazing organizations doing incredible work to help the nation and its people respond, recover, and rebuild. I want to tell you a little about them—and I hope you’re inspired too.

SaveUA

I’m really excited to announce that the Longer Tables Fund is now supporting the work of SaveUA. Representing thousands of Ukrainian farmers, SaveUA is an organization made to help the country’s agricultural system build resilience to the shocks of war. Ukraine historically has been one of the most important breadbaskets in the region, growing grain for Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s energy grid is in crisis due to the ongoing war, leaving many communities without reliable access to power.

We’re helping SaveUA purchase generators for dairy farmers on the front lines. These generators are more than just a source of electricity…they’re a lifeline. They will power milking equipment and refrigeration systems, ensuring that farmers can continue their work, sustain their communities, and feed their people even in the face of unimaginable challenges. This isn’t just about keeping the lights on—it’s about standing with the people of Ukraine as they seek to protect their land, their livelihoods, and their food supply.

Superhumans

The next organization is doing some incredible work for the people of Ukraine who have been physically injured by the war. Over the last three years, thousands of Ukrainians have lost limbs due to mines and shelling, and with mines buried across a huge amount of the country, there will be many, many more people who will require prosthetics and medical support in the years to come.

Superhumans is a rehabilitation center that provides prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, rehabilitation, and psychological support—free of charge. The Longer Tables Fund has supported medical staff at Superhumans by helping invest in advanced surgical and 3D laboratory equipment, which will let the Superhumans team expand their services to include complex facial reconstruction procedures.

I love this project because prosthetics and reconstructive surgery lets people transform trauma into resilience, empowering a new generation of survivors—truly making them superhuman.

Save Ukraine

The third organization that the Longer Tables Fund is supporting is called Save Ukraine, an NGO focused on rescuing Ukrainian children that were deported to Russia at the beginning of the war and over the last three years. It’s important work that offers a lifeline to families affected by these deportations, which horribly tear into the heart of communities around the country.

Save Ukraine’s three-pronged approach—to rescue, to restore, and to rebuild—ensures that every child regains the safety, stability, and care needed to thrive.

We are supporting their Community Center and Bomb Shelter in Irpin, one of the cities that I visited in 2022 after it was liberated from Russian occupation. The center will provide comprehensive services for children with disabilities and their families and give them tools to rebuild their lives.

My friends—I think you will agree with me that this work is super important to the rebuilding of a strong Ukraine. I’m proud to support it in the small way we can, especially as we pass such a difficult moment of commemorating three years of war. Since the beginning, World Central Kitchen has been on the front lines, making sure communities are fed. Now, the Longer Tables Fund is the newest step in continuing to build longer tables – creating a community where no one is left behind, where survivors are empowered, and where resilience is born from the hardest of circumstances. With these new projects, I know that the people of Ukraine will continue to be supported today, tomorrow, and for years to come.

Take care of yourselves this week, and please keep Ukraine in your thoughts.

Work To Do, Indeed, And A Great Week In Which To Do It!

The Week Ahead (Activism)

Peace & Justice History for 2/17

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february17

Two For Science On Sunday

Fully recyclable solar cells – just add water

February 14, 2025 Richard Musgrove

Swedish researchers have invented a fully-recyclable perovskite solar cell that may provide a solution to the growing problem of solar panel waste.

All renewable technologies have a life span — with solar panels it’s 25 to 30 years — which means our solar waste pile is rapidly becoming mountainous. Just 17 % of solar panel components were recycled in Australia in 2023, specifically the aluminium frames and junction boxes. The remaining 83% (glass, silicon and polymer back sheeting) was shuttled out to landfill. Other countries do better; France’s ROSI was an early starter in what could be a $2b market by 2050.

Linköping University researchersmay have a solution — fully recyclable perovskite solar cells.

These cells are also flexible, transparent and inexpensive — who needs aluminium frames when your PVs are stuck to your windows?

Low res — *Professor Feng Gao with postdocs Xun Xiao and Niansheng Xu at Linköping University (Image Thor Balkhed)*

“There is currently no efficient technology to deal with the waste of silicon panels. That’s why old solar panels end up in the landfill,” says coauthor, Xun Xiao, at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University (LiU).

“Huge mountains of electronic waste that you can’t do anything with.”

Perovskites used in photovoltaic solar cells are ‘metal-halide perovskites’ — made from organic ions, metals and halogens. Such cells’ active layers are much thinner and cheaper than those of conventional silicon PV and show efficiencies of more than 26%, comparable with silicon PVs (20% – 22%).

But perovskite PVs are not yet produced at scale.

Recyclability is the key.

“We need to take recycling into consideration when developing emerging solar cell technologies,” says Professor Feng Gao, also at IFM at LiU and a co-author. “If we don’t know how to recycle them, maybe we shouldn’t put them on the market at all.”

(Snip-MORE, and they can recycle them!)

Pressing pause: how a unique insect survives Antarctica

February 14, 2025 Ariel Marcy

The inhospitable Antarctic Peninsula hosts only one native insect, and scientists from Japan have just identified an unprecedented combination of adaptations that allow it to thrive in the extreme cold.

The Antarctic midge is a tiny, flightless insect that lives most of its two-year life as a larva, the grub-like stage that follows the egg stage. (Complete metamorphosis in insects includes egg, larva, pupa, and adult stages).

Two insects, adult flightless antarctic midges on ice. — Adult Antarctic midges. Credit: Yuta Shimizu / Osaka Metropolitan University.

How these larvae overwinter in Antarctica could have implications for cryopreservation technology but, perhaps more pressingly, better understanding of the species’ response to climate change. Previous researchers have suggested that the Antarctic midge be developed as a model organism for survival in extreme and fluctuating temperatures.

The Japanese research team led by Shin Goto of Osaka Metropolitan University studied the unique midge after developing a specialised rearing method, which took them six years to establish.

The team then tracked the growth and physiology of the midge larvae through their natural lifecycle. In a first for science, they documented two distinct forms of dormancy used as seasonal survival adaptations.

In general, dormancy is a state of inactivity, suspended development and reduced metabolism, but insect scientists distinguish between two types: quiescence and diapause.

In the first winter, the Antarctic midge larvae adapted via quiescence, a form of dormancy triggered by external conditions, such as cold temperatures. This means all the midge larvae go dormant at the same time. Quiescence ends when the temperature rises.

(Snip-MORE; it’s fascinating and worth the click. Also not long.)

What kept me busy today.

So today I started out by posting a bunch of memes because I couldn’t sleep. Good and great. Then I went for a nap in the morning totally worn out. However my husband had determined to keep going with the sink pipe break under the house repair. However when I got up and seen how far he had come to removing the stuff in the room with the idea to redo the flooring / put in a new toilet. I had to hit him with my idea of remodeling the bathroom.

See that hallway bathroom was added as first as a toilet and sink, and had its access from the kitchen. But we needed the kitchen access door space for cupboards in our new kitchen so we moved the doorway to the hallway. But when James moved in he needed a place to shower and as he worked nights and coming in late in the evening to shower often got awkward. He would interrupt Ron and I being romantic … is a nice way to put it. I did not care, I had been in the US Army where if there were three people in a room it was understood that guys were going to have sex and we just pretended not to see or hear. James said he was OK with that. But my husband was freaking out. The third time it happened while we were in the throes of passion nude on our bed and James knocked on the door … Ron had enough.

He carved a large portion of our own bedroom master bathroom we had planned to use for a large shower to put a shower in the hallway bathroom. He then built our own much smaller bathroom shower in the space left. Now that James has been gone for years Ron simply has been too tired to deal with changing anything. The leak of the sink gave me the opportunity.

Ron has been in the middle stage of finishing the Florida Room I am moving out to so we can have a spare bedroom where my pink palace office is. Due to the kitchen sink leak I still plan to post on but it is not yet finished as you can see. See that one I really wanted to do a video on with the new program I spent so much money buying. It will show if it really was worth the money to buy and use. However I have to say even without using it I had an issue and the company stepped in and solved it along with a decade’s old one. So they seem a rock solid company.

So remember that Ron is now this year 70 and I am very disabled but I am willing to help him all I can. But during the attempt to fix the sink leak Ron struggled to get his legs to bed around the pipes and to get himself around the tight spaces. Turns out he has not got the flexibility he once had. Well damn it I knew that from our bedtime and the rest of our life. His is a muscle bound 70 year old man who has lost all flexibility.

So while we had everything removed except the shower I spend a lot of time convincing him that hey, if we shifted this there and that here and did this … we could have the bathroom of our dreams we originally planned on. Took a while. About two hours until he came back to me and said enthusiastically … YES, that is a great idea. But Scottie the work and effort. He told me he remembered how it was so hard for him and I to force that current shower into the room and twist it to the point it would fall into where it needed to be. I was not so disabled then and he was much younger.

I said yes I remember but also this is different. See it is only us living here, no one needs to access the bathroom or shower yet. Plus we don’t have to use any existing spaces. We can remove the walls around the current shower and just work on it as we move forward. We can even cut this shower into pieces and get a new one to put in there as it was a simple cheap 36 by 36 shower anyway. Once he realized that he was all for it. He even was online looking at extra tall elongated bowl toilets. I may regret this, I created a monster. LOL. So below are the pictures of the bathroom and I am going to bed. Love everyone and thanks for following the blog. This saga of remodeling is only beginnings. Hugs

Now all that need to be done is plan out where to put each item and run the needed piping. Hugs

Weathered: It’s Way Worse …

Weathered: It’s Way Worse …

I have been ill so all I could do is mostly save stuff, post news from my bed, and watch videos, one after another. Most of what I watched I did not remember. This one I had watched and liked, and saved to the video computer. I am so glad I did. As I rewatched the video I began to realize how vast and immediate the impacts are to us right now. The entire things regions are known for will have to shift. In the now wetter areas that business and housing take up the majority will have to give way to growing food crops if we want to eat. Sadly meat consumption will have be drastically cut until ways to mitigate the damage food animals do at all levels of production. Plus these methods of water reclamation and returning water back to the aquifers. Love it. Thanks to Ten Bears for posting it. Hugs.

This is so much how I feel after being sick for a few days

I can’t brain today, I have the dumb

Here’s An Important Resource!

Jekyll and Hide-n-Seek

Hells bells and tortious shells as I once heard the curse.

*** Posting from me will be sparse or disjointed as will me responding to comments. More on that later ***

I had everything set up to answer all the comments I have saved. I have like 70 open tabs of all the comments I really want to read and address. I know a few have said never feel like you need to respond to me, but I really like to. I don’t have the ability to get out and see many people is because I am disabled, so I love interacting with people online. Maybe I get the community / personal interaction to them people who interact with other people get.

I also had cued up 8 tabs from Male Survivor I was trying to read and respond to. Understand that reading and responding to those posts are very draining to me. But before I could get to much of that, Ron wanted to take a walk before he went to his doctor’s appointment.

Please notice the change of color. I am very tired as I write this and Ron is cooking the supper we worked on during this crisis. But I need to get this written and eat then I fall into bed exhausted.

For weeks or months I have been telling my wonderful husband I smelt sewer shit smell. He kept telling me it was the wind on the air vent for the toilets. But it got worse and worse. So he said turn on the vent fans and see it will go away. But then it did not. I kept telling him there was a leak under the house. He was telling me I was just being reactionary … sound familiar, just what the republicans accuse the democrats of being. Turned out I was correct.

So today after he got home from his doctor’s appointment, he walked into the house a said wow this place smells like shit. I replied I kept telling you that. It did not go over well. But I convinced him to take up our bathroom floor which has a trap door to the underneath of the house. When he did that he came to me and admitted he was very, very wrong. We had a large pool of sewage under our home. Oh fuck, fuck. It appears one of our toilets has been dumping all its waste on to the ground. But worse the break was not under our second bathroom toilet. It was between the bathrooms. He would have to take up both bathrooms to fix it. Oh be still my racing heart.

I spend the entire afternoon showing him how if he had to rip up everything to fix the sewage leak, I had long been wanting a change to both bathrooms. See the second bathroom was added as only a sink and toilet but when James moved back in he needed a bathroom shower so he did not come into our room to get a shower … sometimes in the middle of us having sex. I did not mind, and James said it did not bother him, but Ron being old school was mortified. So he carved a large chunk out of our bathroom to put a shower in the “guest” bathroom.

So I have chafed about that intrusion preventing me from having the bathroom I wanted in my own bedroom. But it has been years since James moved out. I have told Ron we could have a much better bigger shower and the rest … as I have been telling him for years. But now that he has to rip it all out anyway … he suddenly seen the light. So I spent the last part of the time I have awake showing him my vision of the two bathrooms and helping him do the measurements to show I was correct. He agreed with me and that is the plan moving forward. Then he shut down. And so will I. I am going to bed. If I post it will be hit or miss or reply to comments it will be even more sporadic than what I already do. Trust me to put the comment in an open tab backed up by my computer program. I will some year get to them. Best wishes, Hugs, and lots of love. Scottie