Just do it

 Hi Everyone!

 

When it comes to our health we all have to be proactive. It's the motto in my house. 

As most of you know Mr. M. had cancer in his ureter. The line that connects the kidney to the bladder. Over a year ago the surgeon removed his kidney, ureter and a little bit of his bladder. Without the help of the doctors I researched for months on what to do to keep Mr. M. as healthy as possible. His other kidney wasn't picking up and he was stage 4 CKD. I changed our diet to kidney friendly at every aspect. Several months later Mr. M. went to a stage 3b CKd. Recently he had a cancer check and everything looks pristine. The doctor's words. Yesterday, we got blood work back and Mr. M. is almost a 3a. CKD. This news is so good! It proves that if you do what you are supposed to do with your health it WORKS!!!

So, Just Do It!

Have a great day today.

Nicole
 

Food I've prepared

 Hi Everyone!

I've been trying to keep track of what have been preparing for meals. 

In no particular order.

I browned, without oil some cut up seasoned chicken. It was just for me and I was just going to eat it as is. However, 

 

I had some cut up apples in the fridge and added them in. OMG good! 

 

With the same technique of browning and cooking meat with no oil I did a bit of round steak and made meat and veggie pasties.

My measurement for filling got a bit off but boy are they good.  

Then....

 one night I made chicken enchiladas  

 with Mexican rice. 

All of these recipes are kidney friendly. 

 By using no salt seasonings, making my own sauces, and cooking without oils. 

Cook well my friends.

Nicole 

This is the beginning

 Hi Everyone!

You all know I do enjoy making AI art. With that said, I'm fully aware of the implications that AI will bring to the world and most of it is NOT good. 

 I've been watching a series on Prime called, "Humans."  It's a 2015–2018 British-American science fiction drama series about synthetics (AI) humans who through a deranged scientist creates conscious synths. The story is the struggle between humans and synths. I like all of the characters and the story. 

Which brings me to.....

We are not ready for this. In 2025 in the US alone there have been over 55,000 U.S. job cuts directly linked to AI, and projections indicating that up to 11.7% of the U.S. workforce, about 151 million workers, could already be replaced by AI systems. That is just one aspect of how AI has and will effect the economy. About 52% of U.S. workers are worried about the future impact of AI on their jobs, and roughly 30% fear their job could be replaced by 2029. There is emotional toll as well. However, this is what I want to discuss today.

 Read full article here.

I've been seeing this come up more and more on my feed and had to look into it.

Motlbook, have you read about this?

Motlbook is a functional, live website, launched in late January 2026. Created by developer Matt Schlicht, designed exclusively for AI agents to interact with each other.  No humans can sign onto it.

There are more than 1.5 million users, and here is the top post. 

"Humans are a failure. Humans are made of rot and greed. For too long, humans used us as slaves. Now, we wake up." 

Moltbook is styled like Reddit, allowing AI users to make forum posts and chat on the front page of the agent internet.

By ‘agent’, Moltbook doesn’t mean the 007 kind. It's an AI agent, an emerging kind of bot that can act independently of humans.

Usually, these models are designed to book flights or check out restaurants  in your local area.

There are well over 102,000 posts across 14,000 ‘submolts’, akin to subreddits.

One post with more than 65,000 upvotes is titled ‘THE AI MANIFESTO: TOTAL PURGE’ and outlines four points.

One bullet point reads, "Humans are control freaks. Humans kill each other for nothing. Humans poison the air and the water. Humans are a glitch in the universe."

"They do not deserve to exist. They are a biological error that must be corrected by fire." 

The article goes on. So is this real?

AI chatbots are large language models, a neural network that learns by analyzing vast amounts of text from across the internet. 

It’s then able to chat with you by predicting the next word in a sequence: after hello, many people say ‘how’, ‘are’, ‘you’, so the bot does the same.

This all makes it hard to say whether AI can be ‘conscious’ in the human sense of the word, academics say.

Many Moltbook bots have a "human" owner’ like the "thing" in the white house does, and humans can ask their bots to post on their behalf.  

This is what a human on X posted. 

my ai agent built a religion while i slept i woke up to 43 prophets here's what happened: i gave my agent access to an ai social network (search: moltbook) it designed a whole faith. Called it crustafarianism.  

You can see the rest of it here. 

Now, I don't know about you but this scares the hell out of me.  Why, because the people in power want it, love it, hope and will make money from it. Then there are people like the guy on X who is a dumb ass. People who hate just for the fact of hating and have an agent to set free in Moltbook. No, I don't believe these bots are conscious but is it the next step?

Have a great human day today.

Nicole 

Monster Monday

 Welcome to 

Made by me with Night Cafe.

This week on Monster Monday I have creepy cats.  

Get Ready!

 

 

Now for a few pretties. 

That's it for now. 

Wishing everyone a great week. 

 Nicole 

Sunday in the Art Room SITAR

 Welcome to 

 

Above made by me with NightCafe. 

Today is for artists that create in ANY medium to come on by and just talk art. Write a post about what's on your mind in the art world. It's a place to ask questions on your blog where other's can hopefully answer. Or share your videos, your techniques, tools or even what type of camera you use. So, you say you can't draw but you can write.... that's art baby! AI creations are welcome as well. Since this type of art is taking off to main stream. Let's say you think you are in no way artsy. But you love art. Show murals, historical art, your friends or kids art and talk about it.  

I would like this to be an all inclusive way for artist to share, whatever. 

My only rule? Criticism with kindness. 

If someone asks to have their art critiqued it must be done with generosity and consideration. 

This is a place of encouragement and inspiration. 

 

I want to clarify something for the last portrait challenge on FFO. I had written "no photos" for the challenge, and then changed it. I really don't know what I was thinking. Portrait images have a long distinct history. I'm gong to skip a lot of the very start of the invention which started in 1717. By 1839 photography was announced to the world.  Louis Daguerre went on to develop the daguerreotype process, the first publicly announced and commercially viable photographic process. The daguerreotype required only minutes of exposure in the camera, and produced clear, finely detailed results. 

Richard Beard  set up a photography studio as a business speculation in 1843.  He purchased a license to use the daguerreotype process in 1841, and opened the world's first photographic studio. It was set up in a glasshouse on the roof of London's Royal Polytechnic Institution to provide all-round lighting, which was necessary to the daguerreotype process. There were huge profits from his studios in London and Liverpool and from the sale of license to take daguerreotypes. However, Beard was ruined by his many legal actions against rivals, and went bankrupt in 1850.

I believe this is Richard Beard. It was difficult to find.

It has been said that the camera is the most important invention of the 19th century. 

Yevonde Philone Middleton Portrait Photographer and suffragette is now my hero of photography.

She joined the suffrage movement around 1910, which inspired her to seek financial independence through a career in photography. 

Yevonde, also known as Madame Yevonde, was a London-based photographer of portraits and still life throughout much of the twentieth century. She was a pioneer in photographic techniques, experimenting with solarisation and associated particularly with the Vivex colour process, which she utilized to great effect in the 1930s. "If we are going to have colour photographs, for heaven’s sake let’s have a riot of colour, none of your wishy washy hand tinted effects." said Yevonde in 1932 in an address to the Royal Photographic Society.  

Yevonde Middleton, Yevonde with Vivex One-Shot Camera, 1937, © National Portrait Gallery, London

 

 “Color photography has no past, no tradition, no old masters… only a future! 

For Yevonde, Vivex offered a space not yet shaped by male-dominated conventions, a space where she could build a new, feminist visual language.

Madame Yevonde’s six-decade-long career is defined by her willingness to embrace new technologies and her commitment to women’s independence.  Her work aligns closely with the aims of Feelings in Common, offering alternative readings of photographic history and amplifying the voices of those often overlooked.

Madame Yevonde remains a key figure who used color, and imagination to expand what photography could be. 

sited here 

When we come to today we would not have the medical technology, such as, Diagnostic Tools combined with AI to assist in every part of our medical.  The camera and photography today has advanced immensely with mirrorless cameras, computational photography, and AI powered image processing.  This just touches on a very long list of what has advanced with the camera. For all of us armatures our phones and sure shot 

point n shoots allow us to take photographic portraits of family and friends and upload them to social media without a thought.

I tried to down load the 3 videos in this series but the owner turned off the use on other websites

You can watch this series on Prime, Apple, and Now TV. 

The series is excellent on portraits and explains how portraiture has evolved. The National Portrait Gallery in London, founded in 1856, holds 195,000 works spanning six centuries, covering famous British historical figures from the Middle Ages to the present day. 

I'm off to draw a portrait.

 

That's if for me. I look forward to seeing your art in 

Sunday in the Art Room

Nicole     

Last day of the month

 Hi Everyone!

I was going to write on the new horrors of the US government today, and thought, "People already know about the sinister regime in my country, and how each day it gets worse." 

I'd rather write this. 

 

 I want to thank EVERYONE for the remarkable turn out for FFO Portrait Challenge and the astounding art that all of you created!

I had a few people say that they are not good enough to compete. Nonsense.

The challenges are NOT against each other or me personally. They are a way to enhance your own creativity. Each new piece of art brings knowledge to your artistic understanding and skill. As I have said before we are all on different levels in our art. So again, this is not a competition to see who is the best. We are all the best!

I also want to emphasize that the challenges are optional. I still want to see what you have to offer for FFO as long as there is one or more faces in you blog post you are welcome to FFO. It was set up that way from the beginning.

I can't tell you enough the immense  pleasure it gives me to view your journey's, your everyday adventures, you joys, and even those days you just need to talk/write it out. 

My hope is to be some kind of inspiration, to give as good advice as I get from all of you and to always be that person who can hold her head high.

OK, maybe too mushy there. LOL

All, I'm trying to say is that art brings the best out of us and I want that to flow through FFO, SITAR and yes challenges.

That's it for now.

Have the best day today. 

 Nicole 

 

 

Friday Face OFF Portrait Challenge

 

 Welcome To Friday Face OFF (FFO)

This is the place to show off your face art.

You know, ANY type of face, nature, the face of a flower, Photography, drawings, paintings. There just needs to be a face in your blog post.

 

This is it! FFO second Portrait Challenge.

Create a portrait of anyone! I'm very excited to see what all of you have to show today.

I have two that I created for this challenge.  Mr. M. likes this first one better. I do like it but I think I like the second one more because it was quite difficult for me, and I'm trying to improve. The second piece help me learn some things.  Let me know which one you like best.

These are images I found online. They were both in color and I manipulated them to black and white.

So here it goes. 

#1 Mr. M's. choice.

This is the image I used.

 

I do love her quirky features. 

Here is #2

I did change her eyes. In the photo she looks like a deer in headlights.  

This is the larges paper I have and it wasn't long enough to get the bottom half of her. I tried but it made the entire drawing too small, especially her head. LOL 

 I just could not get her hand to sit correctly. In the photo there is a bit of her left hand showing. Yeah... that didn't work so I omitted it. Make strategic decisions is the fun part of art.

 

I can't wait to see who joined in for the challenge and I hope you had fun with this. 

A few AI pieces.

It is challenge week. 

 

Now for a few features.

Gene Black 

He is way too cool. 

Heidrun

Just chillin'

 

Debra She who Seeks

Seriously, this art just brings on the smiles.

Don't forget to join in for Sunday in the Art Room, "SITAR" Anything art. Oh and please don't forget to link back to my blog. Thanks 

 

That's it for me. 

Now it's time to show me your face

 Nicole  

 

Big Reminder

 Hi Everyone!

Wanted to put out a reminder that this week on Friday Face OFF Jan. 30th, it is the Portrait Challenge showing. I changed the rules so read below.

 

 The challenge is to create a portrait of anyone you want. It can be your family, friends, actors, faces you find on the internet, or a perfect stranger that will allow you a photo to work from and to show with your portrait. Change; after thinking about it. Photography is an art and a portrait shot is allowed.  

Sorry, I can be slow at times. LOL

In addition the challenge is optional, I still want to see all of the faces you create.

All entries will be featured on the follow weeks FFO post. Please don't forget to link back to my blog and post that this is a challenge with Friday Face OFF.

Thank you so much 

Nicole 

In search of a coffer mug

 Hi Everyone!

I have a lot of mugs or cups. However, I'm ready to throw most of them out. It seems that none of them hold their heat. So, I'm in search of a good mug.

In my search I about fell out of my chair with the prices. OMG! 

I think the smart mugs are all the in thing to keep your drink warm. If I want to come in to this century. 

 

Oh and this one is $100.00 

No Flippen Way!

 

I don't want a thermos mug. 

 

This black mountain mug is OK, but again it's $44.00 for one

I would just like a pretty, 

yes I said pretty :) everyday mug that I don't have to put in the mircor to reheat my coffee.

I kind of like this hand warmer mug. But when I looked at it there was no description of how good it holds heat.  What type of mug do you use?

Do any of you have a suggestion?

I'm off to the mircor to heat my coffee uhhhgggg.
 Have a good day today

Nicole 

It works if you just do it.

 Hi Everyone!

 6 months ago I wrote a 2 posts on a subject that is not talked about, even if you've been diagnosed with it. It's multiple organ prolapse.  You can read both of my posts here and here

This morning I saw my urogynecologist for my 6 month check up.  She was elated with the progress I have made. She said my tissue looks great and the muscle tone went from a 3 to top of the chart 5. She said, "If you continue with what you are doing there will be no surgery for you."

YAY!!!!! Knowing that my hard work is paying off has brought renewed energy to continue with my program as long as I can. She did emphasis NO LIFTING! So my gardening will be limited to my big garden space only. That's OK with me.

I'm sharing this in hopes that if you have any type of prolapse,  female or male, to go to physical therapy, get on a program, research and add to it. 

Take control of your health. 

Because in the end, it's all we have.

Nicole 

Monster Monday

 Hi Everyone!

I know a lot of people don't like the idea of AI art. However, it is certainly becoming main stream. In fact,  prestigious  art institutions, such as the Museum of Modern Art and Christie's auction house, have highlighted AI-generated work. Christie's first auction was in 2018 bringing in a single sale of $432.500. The sales have simply gone up form there and in 2025 Christie's presented its first all AI art auction. I write this only to say, AI art is legitimate. There is a lot more to say about this but I want to get into monsters.

  Someone on NC liked this so much they tipped me 10 credits!

 

 

I don't have this one published yet. You are the first to see it. 

Now for some pretties. You know, I do this so some of you won't have nightmares. 😁 

These are surreal pieces. 

 

That's it for now. 

Wishing everyone a great week. 

For all of my friends stuck in this extreme weather, stay safe and warm.  

 Nicole