{"id":6972,"date":"2025-08-07T04:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/babbling-uncertainty\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T04:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T11:09:08","slug":"babbling-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/babbling-uncertainty\/","title":{"rendered":"Babbling uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m getting a terracotta brown sugar bear.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t have to be a bear. I&#8217;ve seen discs featuring some really detailed and good looking artwork.<\/p>\n<p>But basically you put a piece of terracotta in with your brown sugar to keep the brown sugar from clumping.<\/p>\n<p>If stored correctly, sugar pretty much doesn&#8217;t go bad. So as long as you recharge your brown sugar bear, you can bake with your brown sugar for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>Baking powder expires because it&#8217;s been all mixed together.<\/p>\n<p>Liquid, pre-mixed electrolytes expire and you want to pay close attention to those expiration dates. Some of the electrolytes, as they breakdown, become substances that aren&#8217;t just no longer beneficial, but that are harmful.<\/p>\n<p>If I was forced to eat expired food or use expired medication, I would rather have it become less powerful or even inert than to deal with any negative effects.<\/p>\n<p>There are so many things they never taught us. Everyday evolving knowledge that isn&#8217;t making it&#8217;s way to the general public, so whole bunches of people don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re surprised to find out the rabies vaccine is no longer 12 painful shots straight across your stomach, you might want to catch up with the science of things.<\/p>\n<p>If you didn&#8217;t know that lilies were deadly poison to cats, you might want to catch up with some common animal knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>If you didn&#8217;t know&#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>dogs can&#8217;t eat grapes&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>the firmness of tofu is decided by how much water is squeezed out through pressing&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>prions can&#8217;t be killed by cooking meat&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>slugs have alien-looking blue genitalia&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>people eat starfish&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>locusts are a kosher food&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>you can buy raw milk but you should boil it before drinking it&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>pouring gasoline or other flammable liquids on a fire can result in the fire going into the container you&#8217;re holding&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>a lot of the music and the fashion for oversized clothes in the 90s was a result of the hyper sexualization of the 80s&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>potassium chloride is a substitute for salt because your body needs chloride, the sodium is what&#8217;s unhealthy in excess&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>you can use grafting to make a tree of many fruits&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>you can make a tomato-potato plant (aka ketchup and fries plant) at home&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>you can eat dandelion greens and use the flower petals to make wine&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>mushrooms exposed to UV light can provide vitamin D, which is necessary for the body to absorb calcium&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s always new stuff to learn, and I think that&#8217;s a good thing. It means more of life&#8217;s mysteries are being solved.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s like when someone makes a big deal about crime like &quot;They caught fifty sex offenders!&quot; And I&#8217;m thinking &quot;Thank God they got those perverts off the street.&quot; Because the good news is that they caught them! There were fifty sex offenders running around, acting neighborly, being unnoticed. Good thing they were caught. Catch some more.<\/p>\n<p>There are always going to be mysteries of the universe waiting to be answered. And the best thing is when those answers also help people to be better, smarter, healthier, nicer, kinder human beings.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s like, once we leave school that&#8217;s it. Anything else we want to learn, we have to learn on our own. And if we don&#8217;t know that something interesting is happening in a particular field, we can just miss it because it&#8217;s not a part of our day-to-day lives.<\/p>\n<p>As far as I know, there is no cure for polio. People stopped dying from it so much not because medicines were produced to defeat it, but because someone invented the iron lung, which was used to keep people alive.<\/p>\n<p>There is no real cure for rabies. Once you start showing symptoms, that&#8217;s pretty much it.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;But there were those handful of kids that have been saved from rabies over the years!&quot;&#8211;Yeah. A <em>HANDFUL<\/em> out of how many people that have died from rabies throughout history? And of that handful of children saved, only one managed to escape serious brain damage from the virus.<\/p>\n<p>Rabies is not a joke. You want to get the prophylactic <em>before<\/em> symptoms start showing.<\/p>\n<p>And I firmly believe that the rabies vaccine should be provided free of charge to anyone that needs it.<\/p>\n<p>Had a brush with a bat? Rabies vaccine. Got bit by a raccoon? Rabies vaccine.<\/p>\n<p>There are some diseases that you don&#8217;t wait until it shows its evil head. You stop it before it can gain a foothold. And you sidestep it with a vaccine if there&#8217;s one available.<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s crazy how they decided that COVID is like a cold. It&#8217;s here to stay and it&#8217;s going to have its seasons and&#8230; It was brand new. It&#8217;s killed millions of people and caused permanent damage to many more. It&#8217;s constantly mutating and coming back strong each time. They&#8217;ve decided not to make free vaccines for it anymore. And they&#8217;ve defunded mRNA research.<\/p>\n<p>I honestly think people should be wearing masks and they should continue to wear them throughout the uncertain future.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re better off social distancing as much as possible when it comes to strangers and people that regularly come into contact with lots of people. At the very least, you don&#8217;t want to breathe in their breath or have them spread specks of saliva onto your food and drink.<\/p>\n<p>A social distance of three to six feet? Why not. Eating at outdoor tables? Okay. Wiping your nose and washing your hands with soap? People should be doing that anyway.<\/p>\n<p>There are some terrible people out there tasting the joys of unlimited power, which basically means being giant assholes that everyone comes to hate.<\/p>\n<p>They are trying to dismantle the world for some reason. It&#8217;s a mixture of apocalypse cultists and dudes that believe we&#8217;re in the Matrix and the only way out is to shut it all down. Either way, we&#8217;re dealing with a bunch of people dead-set on oppressing the poors and killing the planet.<\/p>\n<p>The only ones who can look out for us are ourselves and each other.<\/p>\n<p>Reuse what can be reused. Recycle what can be recycled. Create a disaster preparedness kit. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Vote in elections. Survive.<\/p>\n<p>We are not alone as long as we have each other.<\/p>\n<p>Read more books. Write more stories. Draw more art. Down with AI.<\/p>\n<p>~Harper Kingsley<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/paypal.me\/harperkingsley\">https:\/\/paypal.me\/harperkingsley<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/harperkingsley\">https:\/\/patreon.com\/harperkingsley<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ko-fi.com\/harperwck\">https:\/\/ko-fi.com\/harperwck<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amazon.com\/shop\/harperkingsley0\">https:\/\/amazon.com\/shop\/harperkingsley0<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.harperkingsley.net\/blog\">https:\/\/www.harperkingsley.net\/blog<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/kimichee.com\">https:\/\/kimichee.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/HarperKingsley\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/HarperKingsley<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/harperkingsley.bsky.social\">https:\/\/harperkingsley.bsky.social<\/a>.<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smashwords.com\/profile\/view\/HarperKingsley\">https:\/\/www.smashwords.com\/profile\/view\/HarperKingsley<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m getting a terracotta brown sugar bear. It doesn&#8217;t have to be a bear. I&#8217;ve seen discs featuring some really detailed and good looking artwork. But basically you put a piece of terracotta in with your brown sugar to keep the brown sugar from clumping. If stored correctly, sugar pretty much doesn&#8217;t go bad. So&hellip;<\/p>\n <a href=\"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/babbling-uncertainty\/\" title=\"Babbling uncertainty\" class=\"entry-more-link\"><span>Read More<\/span> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Babbling uncertainty<\/span><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"Layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-harperkingsley0-0","post-6972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pPoL-1Os","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6824,"url":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/commonsense\/","url_meta":{"origin":6972,"position":0},"title":"commonsense","author":"Harper Kingsley","date":"November 7, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I can't help thinking that there is some commonsense knowledge that should be so well well-known that it becomes a regular part of pop culture. It should find its way into movies, books, television, coloring books, everywhere. Things like... how to properly dispose of batteries how to dispose of used\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5603,"url":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/cheap-food-instant-oatmeal-rotisserie-chicken\/","url_meta":{"origin":6972,"position":1},"title":"Cheap Food: Instant oatmeal; Rotisserie chicken","author":"Harper Kingsley","date":"August 13, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"CHEAP FOOD pt 2 I guess I'm a very simple person. I want my food to be food, and I don't need a lot of the extras that some people want. Like, eating shaved gold just seems like a ludicrous waste of money and gold to me. Instant Oatmeal I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;food&quot;","block_context":{"text":"food","link":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/category\/food\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7021,"url":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/frugal-foods\/","url_meta":{"origin":6972,"position":2},"title":"Frugal foods","author":"Harper Kingsley","date":"October 20, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I know everyone is feeling the pinch, so here's few things that I like that are really cheap but also tasty: Fruit iced milk A nice healthy treat is blueberry iced milk. Put some frozen blueberries in some milk and let the frozen blueberries freeze the milk. Voila. Tasty inexpensive\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/frugal-foods\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5223,"url":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/the-damaging-myth-of-cancel-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":6972,"position":3},"title":"THE DAMAGING MYTH OF &#8220;CANCEL CULTURE&#8221;","author":"Harper Kingsley","date":"December 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"To me, the term \"cancel culture\" is a weapon of the unencumbered mind. It is the last ditch \"Well you're wrong\" defense of someone that's purposely keeping themselves ignorant. It's the anti-Woke. \"You want me to realize that my actions have further consequences than me simply eating a burger?\" Yeah,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mailed&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mailed","link":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/category\/kindled\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7034,"url":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/thinking-about-making-donuts\/","url_meta":{"origin":6972,"position":4},"title":"Thinking about making donuts","author":"Harper Kingsley","date":"November 14, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I made some congee for the first time. I remember my mom feeding me something like it as a toddler, and even then I didn't like it. The flavor of the rice is made different. Like, I can eat a bowl of white rice. I can eat a bowl of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/thinking-about-making-donuts\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4179,"url":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/prompt-069\/","url_meta":{"origin":6972,"position":5},"title":"Prompt: 069. teddy bear","author":"Harper Kingsley","date":"March 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Prompt: 069. teddy bear 1. The four-year-old wailed with all of the despair of someone that had lost a lifelong friend. Clutched in sweaty hands was the decapitated head of a teddy bear that was missing one plastic eye. A. The four-year-old wailed with all of the despair of someone\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Prompts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Prompts","link":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/category\/prompts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harperkingsley.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}