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The man must be cursing his relatives, because he’s not even the one who took the test.

Authorities were able to match DNA recovered from the crime scene to relatives of James Clanton. Clanton, now 62, committed the rape & murder in January of 1980.

To confirm the match, investigators followed Clanton, who was working as a truck driver, and took a sample of his DNA from a mug at a bar. This story alone could be a series book, seen from the eyes of the investigator. Each book could be a different crime. It would be set in space, or another planet, so the current laws wouldn’t apply and less research would be involved. Plus, space toys.

The only problem is the lack of quality from at-home genetic testing kits. This is why the investigators had to go through the trouble of confirming the man’s DNA before they could make the arrest. One woman, who thought she was 25% Italian, was told she was in fact 25% Middle Eastern instead. Then, in a follow-up report, 23andMe determined she was, in fact, Italian. 

The problem? Her grandmother died refusing to believe the test, and in the end was correct.

My own experience with 23andMe was positive. The report came back and was able to pinpoint where my family was from in El Salvador within a few dozen miles. I was fascinated but also understand that a lot of the data they work with is self-reported. All these companies do is make the matches. So it’s easy to see how, without enough data, there can be discrepancies in results. Even with enough data, there are outliers that need to be accounted for and for these companies to make such sweeping generalizations has its downfalls.Taking it back into the story development realm, this lack of consistency could actually be a good way to provide plot twists within each investigation. Also, the main character could be forced to deal with their own inaccurate results, OR all the evidence could point to them and an entire book could deal with them clearing their name. 

In London, “fatbergs” form when fat, oil, and grease combine with products which don’t flow freely, like wet wipes, and create massive blockages in the sewer.

Two separate fatbergs, one over 60 tons and another over 30 tons, were recently cleared by engineers with power tools and by hand. 

Imagine that: descending into the London sewers to clear a massive fat block. Hope they pay those people well!

In a related story, a man swam across the Great Pacific Garbage patch. It took him 80 days to get through the vortex where human waste collects. He encountered everything from trash cans to laundry baskets, plastic bags and children's toys, not to mention the tons of microplastics throughout the water.

Microplastics are formed by the continued fragmentation of pieces of plastic. Since they don’t degrade they keep getting smaller and smaller, creating a layer about five meters below the surface. The swimmer, Ben Lacomte, described the microplastics like looking down on a snowy sky.

These two stories got me thinking about the lengths humans have to go to in order to clean up their own mess. Any of the people who come into contact with these sorts of human-made problems risk their health. What if they came into contact with a new sort of disease or infection? This could be the beginning of a plague.

Or, in a more sci-fi approach, there could be a massive state-sponsored initiative to create humans which live in these type of conditions and are tasked with cleaning them. Wall-E meets genetic engineering. Throw in one who has the urge to see the world above the surface and there could be a good story in the consequences of their emergence.

OR, this could turn into a horror story. This same individual finds out he was created to clean up for the above-surface humans, so he decides to get his revenge. Taking them down into the sewers he knows and taking them out one by one. A common story but with a unique origin story, rooted in current problems.

The 59 year old woman was going to work early in the morning when a the herd of hogs attacked and killed her on the short walk between her car and the front door.

Feral hog attacks are rare but highlight a growing problem: the destruction of the ecosystem by the invasive species. Their ability to eat anything and to reproduce rapidly combine to create massive disruption, causing over a billion dollars in damage annually.

The hunting of feral hogs is legal year-round in Texas, and a popular way to hunt involves shooting the animals with semiautomatic weapons from a helicopter. It’s believed that people are aiding the spread of the invasive species to create new hunting opportunities in both southern and northern states alike.

Massive animals have been killed. One has been over 800 pounds, and there are records of one over 1,000.

Pigs were originally brought over by European settlers but the current most threatening species are a cross between those pigs and Eurasian boars which were brought over a few decades ago.

Feral hogs are also susceptible to African swine fever, which has resulted in the culling of millions of domestic pigs worldwide. A legitimate fear is that the feral animals will contract the disease and spread it to American pig populations. It isn’t able to transmit to humans but could create serious problems for the domestic meat market.

An interesting story thread I would want to follow would be if these animals did contract the virus and created a pig-free market in the United States. Goodbye bacon, carnitas… as the most widely consumed meat in the world, a catastrophic pig disease could have far reaching consequences. Another less-known use of pigs is their ability to host human cells on their cell matrix, which leads to all sorts of transplantable organs and tissues. 

The story would follow how the damage to the pig population affects the medical community, and the struggle of a surgeon who wants to help and resorts to murdering other animals/humans in an effort to save those who can’t afford the more expensive procedures. Think Robin Hood meets Dexter.

The research is ongoing, but signs are promising.

Cancer cells work by proliferating the growth of cells until tumors grow. These cells then invade healthy tissues, which leads to the various types of cancer.

There is a belief that the cells are able to “sense” each other, which allows them to come together to form the tumor. This “sensing” occurs via mechanical forces, meaning a lack of gravity could determine whether the cells can effectively communicate each other.

This is the basis behind ongoing experiments. Already, cancer cells placed in a microgravity environment (centrifuge) have been found to be unable to coagulate and therefore no tumors were able to grow. This was without drugs.

The next step is to send the experiment to space. No humans with cancer would go, it would simply be the cells. Scientists on the ground would monitor the growth of the cells.

The hope is to use microgravity in conjunction with modern drugs to produce better cancer-fighting treatments.

First story idea that comes to mind is a small-town resident, older, with an entire family, who somehow wins a trip to the International Space Station for treatment. Her cure could launch her into fame and the story could tell how fame, fortune, and an extended life aren’t exactly the future that would lead to the most fulfillment, with the recipient of the treatment dying alone after losing their relationship with family. With a juxtaposition of their life before and life after the cure this could be a cautionary tale for lottery winners.

Or, it could be a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory situation, where the ISS has all sorts of unique rooms and experiences which show the purity of spirit and at the end it’s deemed the person will be given a new, experimental cure.

In ancient Greek mythology, a chimera is a monster made up of different parts of different animals: a lion’s body, goat’s head, and snake’s tail.

In genetics, a chimera is a single organism with multiple genetic characteristics. This means that multiple sets of parents can have one offspring made from two fertilized eggs.

In China, scientists have created pigs infused with monkey cells. The monkey stem cells were introduced into fertilized pig embryos which were then implanted into sows. Out of four thousand embryos which undertook the procedure, ten were born. Of these ten, two were born with monkey cells present in their tissues scattered throughout multiple organs. All ten piglets died shortly after being born.

The scientists hope to get to the point where they can grow human organs inside pigs for transplantation. The first step would be to get monkey organs to grow inside the pigs which could be kept alive until the organs are needed.

Anyone familiar with Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake series would recognize this chimera. Pigoons, in her speculative fiction series, have human brains, and Mo’Hairs are sheep which are used to grow human hair.

Human chimera’s exist as well. A man who received a bone marrow transplant found out his DNA had changed to that of the German donor. 

Bringing this into the realm of story, there are a lot of different avenues possible with this kind of technology. There could be an eccentric billionaire, an Elon Musk type character, who funded the growth of his own “backup organs.” Combined with cloning technology, there could be an army of his/her own self, similar to the clone army in Star Wars. A series could be written about their attempts to colonize different planets, using SpaceX as a model.

This also brings to mind a James Bond movie “Die Another Day” with Pierce Brosnan. In the movie the main character changes his facial appearance to continue his plans to take over the world. With the ability to change DNA to that of another person, a transformation to another human would allow the antoganist the ability to escape capture. This could set up an entire series, with the hero never able to tell for certain that the true bad guy has been caught.

A third idea would be to have the scientist who fully develops the technology on the run, with a Jason Bourne type character brought into the fray for their protection.

The Dresden Codex is one of only four existing examples of Mayan writing. Other examples of the civilization’s writing were all destroyed by the Spanish during their conquest of the New World.

Bishop Diego de Landa, in an effort to convert the Mayan people to Christianity, publicly burned most of their books and artifacts in 1562. This was his attempt at eliminating idol worship. In order to view the books he had to gain their trust before destroying their culture.

The Dresden Codex has accurate tables outlining the movement of Venus through the night sky as well as predictions for lunar eclipses. Fascinating, considering this was before they had access to telescopes.

Mayan writing took centuries to decode because it’s a combination of phonetic and symbolic writing. Approx. four hundred years after the burning of the majority of their books, a Russian researcher was able to read the Dresden Codex using notes from de Landa (at least he left a record of how to read a language he effectively destroyed).

In addition to describing Venus and the moon, the Dresden Codex also describes the Mayan 260-day calendar.

The ideas for this story have resonated the deepest with me. I envision a dual narrative taking place in two times, one in 1562 and culminating with the book burning and another narrative taking place in modern times, in which a descendant of de Landa suffers for, then somehow makes up for, the damage his ancestor caused. 

The modern-day ancestory could could suffer through tortured dreams, through getting caught in a fire as a child, then at the end his final act could be to run into a fire to save the modern-day ancestor of the scribe de Landa tricked all those years ago. Or to save an authors books. Or it could come out that a missing example of Mayan writing, a fifth Codex, exists and outlines all of his story. That when he finally decodes this fifth example, through a long process, he finds out he’s de Landa’s descendant and must atone for his sins by jumping into a fire which is burning recycled books, long out of print. 

This post is literally a stream of consciousness dump, so I apologize. Looks like there’s a research trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in my future.

The James Bond movies are well-known for featuring unique sports cars in each of their movies, beefed up with advanced tech by the quartermaster of the British Secret Service, Q. The Spy Who Loved Me, released in 1977 and featuring Roger Moore, had an iconic 1976 Lotus Espirit capable of transforming into a submarine. After production of the movie wrapped, the car disappeared.

Until, in 1989, a couple found the vehicle in a storage unit they won in a blind auction (an auction where buyer and seller don’t know the contents of the unit). They paid $100 for the car.

It didn’t take long for the couple, who hadn’t seen a bond movie, to find out the car was unique. 

Flash forward to 2013, the couple put the car up for auction. None other than Elon Musk placed the winning bid, spending almost $1 million for the iconic vehicle.

While this could provide enough fodder for any story, I think this could be beefed up to create a story I’d want to write. What if, instead of a car, the couple found evidence of a famous murder? Or murderer? What if the contents of a storage unit led an amateur sleuth down the path of the true identity of Jack the Ripper? A wealthy entrepreneur could pay for the information, or back the hunt, providing the funds for the truth to be discovered. Then, at the end, it could come out that the wealthy backed is in fact related to the murderer and tries to kill the detective and bury the truth.

Alternatively, and much more in the “Dan Brown “vein of stories, the contents of the abandoned storage unit could be an ancient relic, prompting an Indiana Jones type story to unfold. 

This also reminds me of The Silence of the Lambs, how a severed head was found in Hannibal Lecter’s storage unit. This could lead the purchaser of the unit down a path of twists and turns which ultimately lead to either a serial killer OR an evil corporation. 

In Mexico, the stretch of road is 2.5 miles long and was made using 1.7 tons of recycled pastic. 

The plastic was a constituent of modified asphalt. The aim of the project is to solve the problem of what to do with plastic waste, instead of letting it accumulate in the ocean. 

For some reason, the modified aspahlt reminded me of another advance in tech: a super-slick coating for toilets that reduces the amount of water required to flush. 

The synthetic coating is applied with two spray treatments and could help drought-stricken areas deal with a lack of potable water.

Now, getting into the story ideas, this really does pave the way for all sorts of technological advances around sustainability. If someone can think about it, it can be invented. There’s a reason forward thinking companies work with sci-fi writers to consult with them about what the future might bring.

Getting meta, there could be a story about a sci-fi writer who comes up with all sorts of strategies/technologies that help save the planet, backed by a large corporation who develops these ideas and releases them into the world, seeming to care about saving the planet. The twist could come about when it’s discovered the corporation/leader of the corporation has used the accumulated goodwill to release an AI which places environmental protection above all else. This could turn into a classic AI overlord situation, with humans seen as the number one threat to the environment. Terminator, anyone?

Or, the sci-fi writer could be from the future and is merely pointing humanity in the direction they were already headed, accelerating the process. Another agent comes from the future and tells the writer that the world has become worse off because humans never appreciated the imporatnce of the interventions and therefore found ways to continue to destroy the environment, taking it beyond repair. At the end the writer would have to go back and try again.

The headline says it all, and is terrifying in and of itself for all us dog-owners out there. 

The 63 year old man in Germany was given a rare infection from his dogs affection.

The bacteria, commonly found in the mouths of cats and dogs, isn’t usually passed along without a bite.

The infection began with flu-like symptoms. It continued to get worse until he died in the hospital from multiple organ failure.

Pet-owners who suffer from aggressive flu-like symptoms are urged to consult their doctors. This coming right before the flu-season, when everyone is encouraged to receive their flu shots.

Two story ideas come to mind after reading this article. The first is a widespread panic brought about by the advice to monitor flu-like symptoms. If this bacteria began spreading to humans with regularity during another flu outbreak doctors could have trouble controlling the resultant panic. This could be a collapse of society type-story, one in which cats and dogs are villified, which would create a dangerous atmosphere for those hoping to save their furry friends.

The second story scenario, and they might be able to work in concert, is a world in which the bacteria spreads from dog/cat to humans with much more frequency and results in a physical deformity, like blindness. The panic and breakdown of order could still be a factor but it this story would be much more like Birdbox, the popular netflix movie. I’d choose another affliction besides blindness, but exploring the world where everyone suffers from such the problem could create some interesting consequences. For one, it could be the onset of severe asthma, causing whoever’s heartrate becomes elevated to pass out from lack of oxygen. 

The chances of being given an infection from a pet is rare, but the possibility could lead to some interesting stories.

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The Hysteria of Bodalís + The Return of the Operator

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