Me fishing bass in Mexico … a couple 😀 of years ago.
There are many software options for upscaling.
The better the original, the better the upscaled version.
I used one that was a FREE website in March 2025 — if you upscaled only 1 photo at a time up to a maximum of 400%.
😀
Happy April Fools.
Lisa Simpson is interim President — as Vance is still wandering around Greenland.
My favourite LIVE music video of all time.
LOVE the style of guitarist Angus Young.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Fantastic non-fiction.
One of those books that makes science entertaining. It reminded me of The Body by Bill Bryson. That book made 1st year Anatomy interesting.
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us is a 2022 book by Ed Yong that really impressed.
MOST interesting to me was the mystery behind how all kinds of creatures can migrate so accurately. In 2025 we can still barely grasp how that is possible. It might be partially visual. Birds might SEE something in the direction of flight.
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us.
We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats.
We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision.
We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.
Humans have better vision than any other mammal — but far inferior to birds of prey, some of which can spot a moving rat at 1 mile distance.
Evolution is amazing.
Trial and error over millions of years works.
Ed Yong is a British-American science journalist and author. Born in Malaysia.
In 2021, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ed Yong reads his own audio book. Amazon.
The Lions of Lucerne is a 2002 spy novel by Brad Thor.
Thor’s first novel with the character of Scot Harvath, an ex-Navy SEAL and current U.S. Secret Service agent, The Lions of Lucerne relates how Harvath survives an attack which leaves 30 of his fellow agents dead and the president of the United States kidnapped. Harvath then begins a search for those responsible and attempts to rescue the president.
Spy novel?
I’d call this a thriller. And I don’t like thrillers.
Thrillers are where one hero saves the world. No attempt at anything remotely realistic. Think Tom Clancy
Publishers Weekly wrote “it’s hard to get past the novel’s many graceless shortcomings, clichéd language […], cartoonish scenes and a protagonist whose superhero character desperately needs fleshing out.”
I did enjoy some scenes set in Europe. But that’s about it.
Today Thor is some kind of political junkie. He announced his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2020 election.
I will read no more Thor.
This is the 3rd book I’ve tried by Korelitz.
I got through The Plot. But quit The Sequel at 60%. Quit The Latecomer at 50%.
Good writing. Critics love Korelitz. But — for me — the storytelling is WAY too slow. Nothing happens page after page.
Here’s one of those good reviews.
The sequel to bestselling thriller The Plot takes the wife of the first novel’s protagonist and throws her into a satisfyingly twisty, literary satire
A MAGA NAZI owns Twitter now. He deliberately posts misinformation and disinformation.
Twitter is now too immoral and dangerous for me.
So far, I like Bluesky much better. For one thing, it embeds correctly in this website.
RickMcCharles.com is my Bluesky handle.
Here’s my attempt to embed a public Facebook post on this site.
And here’s Instagram.
As a big fan of all things Reacher, the 3rd season was disappointing.
Too much shoot-em-up. Not enough Reacher using his brawn and brains to defeat the bad guys.
In fact, Reacher isn’t up to his usual self-confidence in this one.
Paulie, played by Olivier Richters, a 7’2″ bodybuilder known as “The Dutch Giant” is impressive, however.
Final fight scene is EPIC Reacher.
Neagley, my second favourite character, makes an appearance. That was appreciated.
I’m hoping season 4 goes back to a more traditional Reacher story. Wandering America. Stumbling into a situation.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
In historically Conservative Calgary Centre, I’ll be voting LIBERAL.
Voting against the Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre.
Elections are often a choice between who’s least bad, and PP would be terrible in defending Canada against attacks by Trump. PP has no academic nor business credibility. He’s not well known outside MAGA USA who support him. His policies have been Trump-lite for years.
I’m quite sure he’d be a lightweight in international matters. Trump and his appointees would try to walk all over him.
So far, PP has refused to get top-secret clearance so officials with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) could share intelligence on foreign interference with him.
I’ll be voting for Mark Carney. Various roles at Goldman Sachs. Governor of the Bank of Canada. Governor of the Bank of England. United Nations (UN) special envoy for climate action and finance. Well known and respected as an economist.
He could have run for the Conservative Party leadership, legitimately. In 2012, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked Carney—who was then governor of the Bank of Canada—if he would join the Conservative government as minister of finance.
He completed the 2015 London Marathon in 3 hours, 31 minutes.
Carney’s wife EVEN has better credentials than PP for Prime Minister. 😀 Fox has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and a master’s degree in agricultural economics from the University of Oxford and an MA in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.
Actually, my current Conservative MP in Calgary Centre, Greg McLean, is very good. I won’t be disappointed if he is reelected. A loyal opposition is an important part of our Westminster-style parliamentary democracy.
I wrote to tell him I had to vote against PP. No reply. 😀
Vancouver Island, where my Mom lives, will elect either NDP or Conservative representatives in 2025.
I’d vote to reelect Gord Johns of the NDP. Seems to me he’s been doing a terrific job.
A good psychological thriller.
The writing of Never Lie, I found, simplistic. Similar to McFadden’s other books.
But the plot and (somewhat predictable) twists kept me going.
It tells the story of a married couple, Tricia and Ethan, who are stranded in a house in upstate New York because of a snowstorm.
The house belonged to renowned psychiatrist Dr. Adrienne Hale, who went missing three years prior.
When Tricia discovers a room of secret tape recordings in Adrienne’s house and starts listening to them, the truth about Adrienne’s murder is revealed, as are secrets about Tricia’s and Ethan’s own murderous pasts. …
Never Lie is told via two alternating points of view, shifting back and forth between the voices of Patricia Lawton, first introduced only as “Tricia,” and Dr. Adrienne Hale. Tricia’s voice narrates the present, while Adrienne’s voice narrates the past. …
Rick McCharles 