"Pharyngula - Various Treatments"
Micron 05 Archival Ink Pen
Talens Art Sketchbook
ProCreate
Snapseed
BrushStroke Pro
Stackables
iColorama
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"Pharyngula - Various Treatments"
Micron 05 Archival Ink Pen
Talens Art Sketchbook
ProCreate
Snapseed
BrushStroke Pro
Stackables
iColorama
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"Tugboat Meridian Up On The 'Ways - February 24th"
Snapseed
I first spotted her up on the 'ways on February 24th. She had most of her tire-bumpers removed and the work on spiffing up her hull was underway. She looked her age (she was built in 1971) with lots of dents and corrosion.. hallmarks of a hard working tug.. Yesterday I was up at Gloucester Marine Railways and she was still up on the 'ways but looking a whole lot better. Her hull was patched where needed, a fresh coat of paint had been applied along with new sacrificial zinc anodes on her hull. Her many tire-bumpers had been re-hung. Under her stern were two new gleaming propellers.. She looked like a boat that was almost ready to get back at it..
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"Tug Meridian - Post-Spiffing 3/16/24"
Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
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"Rocky Neck Houses From The Steps"
Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
Brushstroke Pro
iColorama
The vantage point, from below on a stairway, the blue sky, the telephone lines, the color of the houses themselves, and their styles, combine to create a scene reminiscent of Hopper's paintings of Gloucester. ~ |
"Rocky Neck Jizo"
Canon G7x Mark II
Snapseed
May you be peaceful.
May you be happy.
May you be safe.
May you awaken to the light of your true nature.
May you be free.
~
Saint Joan - My Spirit Animal
(Not my image - but definitely 100% my sentiment)
Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward Magalie Lenoir,# Fuschia Serre,# Lauriane Cantin, and Serge H. Ahmed * Bernhard Baune, Academic Editor Background: Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Today overconsumption of diets rich in sugars contributes together with other factors to drive the current obesity epidemic. Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of sweet taste and is often compared to drug addiction. Though there are many biological commonalities between sweetened diets and drugs of abuse, the addictive potential of the former relative to the latter is currently unknown. Methodology / Principal Findings: Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin. The preference for saccharin was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar. Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction. Conclusions: Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction. ~ |