Georeactor Blog

In the spirit of Topics I would read a deep dive on, some mysteries and random thoughts.

More global

Many people pointed out that Queen Elizabeth II died shortly after the customary meeting of new PM Liz Truss. Few Americans know that there is a video of Truss as a young politics nerd, advocating for the abolition of the monarchy. Then JD Vance had his meeting with Pope Francis, sparking many memes. Are world leaders always going through extreme strain in meetings, or only very old leaders? Is the risk heightened when leaders are traveling or obligated in a way that it's impossible to reschedule?

What are America's Stonehenge and Coral Castle? Are there 2–5 weird stone structures with national significance, or are there hundreds of these which are only regionally famous?
I just learned about shell grottos, which is a 1700s thing.

In 2021, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai posted about a longtime affair and assault by a retired politician. She disappeared, published a denial, and then was made to retire (her photo is in the sidebar of /r/tennis, and she came up in posts about the 2026 China Open). At the time, one Reddit comment claimed that this is a secret of several countries' international athletic / Olympic programs. This doesn't seem to be a widely-known conspiracy theory, like reports that totalitarian countries punish their athletes for losing, or that Yao Ming's parents' marriage was arranged by the state. I'm not sure what to think about it and its ability to, despite its baselessness, stick in my brain.

When I was young I read a biography of Sergei Korolev, a Soviet rocket scientist who developed Sputnik. After release from a gulag in eastern Siberia, he was walking along on the verge of starvation and hypothermia. He found a loaf of bread which was still warm and saved his life. The easier read is this was a hallucination and he ate dirt or something, but he clearly believed in it enough to tell the story and make an impression on others. It's strange to think that the Universe or a random farmer gave him a second shot at life.
I'm usually against this sort of thing, but a similar "Great Energy" was a frequent motivation for Joe in his autobiographical comics about enduring and recovering from a 'last resort' teen reform camp https://elan.school

Murdaugh murder case - I don't think that they found enough time in between the cell phone video and driving data for Murdaugh to clean up and hide his gun and clothing? They proved that Murdaugh was on video at the location just before the murders, contrary to his timeline, so I was convinced of guilt. Maybe the prosecutors believed that he had an accomplice, but is that ever going to be explained?

In any Reddit conversation about Mormons, people will share urban legends about 'soaking'. These stories went viral on TikTok in fall 2021. The Wikipedia page was also created in 2021 (warning: illustrated since 2023) and most links are from that time period. Soaking stories were well-known and dismissed by ex-Mormon Reddit back in 2011.
Like other viral misinformation, there is a sort of priming. Because these stories already spread among Mormons and Utahns, that helped outsiders 'confirm' that it was real. It's stupid that people now attach it to everything, especially when the members and ex-Mormons in popular media clearly have a different complex thing going on.

More personal unexplained

In Colorado years ago, I was having trouble drying my clothes in a hotel, and decided to finish the job later that day at an Airbnb house. The host warned me about his wife reacting to scented dryer sheets. I was living out of a suitcase and had never heard of a dryer sheet, so I was unbothered. I got dinner, and when I came in, the host had opened up the machine and 'caught' me using a scented dryer sheet. I was very tired and just said maybe it came from the hotel, but it's not mine? Maybe the guy was tired of hosting Airbnb, or lately I'm wondering if he was a creep?

At one office, a coworker told us that her uncle was a police officer who worked undercover as a homeless person at (major tourist location). I've heard that this is a real thing, but she provided two details that made it questionable: that he came up to them on a school trip, and that he occasionally texted the family to warn them not to come into the city.

One time my mom was out of town, and my dad took us all to a Mexican restaurant. The waitress gave us waters and then abandoned us… to the point that my dad had us walk out. When we got home, the house was full of smoke. Some furniture stacked in the basement fell onto a furnace (?).

My mom had a hometown classmate with a first + last name very similar to what my mom's married name would be. My parents made some naming choices (for example: a dog named Nietzsche) which just get weirder as I'm older.

When I hiked in and out of Kalaupapa, I had to call 911 for a hiker. On the tour he had some odd behaviors and conversations (e.g. telling everyone it would be easier hiking up the ridge). In the end he wouldn't budge and was telling me about his phobias. The mule team recognized that he was in trouble and got him out. Did he fly to Molokai by himself? It didn't seem like a simple mistake or episode, like hitting his head.
Once I was waiting to board a plane and a well-dressed woman was… making no-filter comments to everyone around her? I thought she was with someone, but that person became uncomfortable and their attention drifted to other people.

At the Boston children's museum / computer museum, our class could chat with Eliza, and after other kids tried stuff, I wanted to push it to see if it would talk about death (AI safety pioneer, lol). The next day at school the teacher told us that someone had typed something inappropriate. Then someone asked me about it, and I still didn't know this was about my chat.
So many memories like that from this teacher. Overall I think that she meant well, but she would call home about things which weren't disruptive or hurtful, just letting my mom know that I was being weird.

My Airbnb hosts in Mandalay were Westerners who ran a school, and when I mentioned I didn't finish college, they said that their kids wouldn't bother with college?
Similarly - many years ago I was helping people at Chicago Civic Hack Night and a young guy making a flu shot app told me that he'd never gotten one. He said that his parents were both doctors?

I wrote a whole thing about a couple of weird interactions with strangers and erased it. Basically sometimes when I meet or am just minding my business, a person gets fully activated in disliking me, and it would be great for me to say that they are mean to everyone all the time, but I can't know if it's the case.

Solved, I guess

Back when I lived in New Hampshire, I was inside talking to my mom when there was an instantaneous flash of white light (I don't remember shadows or my eyes hurting, just dropping 1–2 frames). We both acknowledged it, but it was so strange neither of us probed it. Now I'd guess it was a meteor hitting above us, and with today's NASA / Twitter / IDK services we might have been able to find out more? Or we got some weird radiation.

I bought haw flakes and they're similar to what I had in Bagan, but I don't know if it's the same. My Burmese friends didn't recognize them.