Living with Kryptonite

2025-11-04

Rescuing a Dolphin

In 2009, famous Italian freediver Enzo Maiorca was diving with his daughter Rossana near the coast of Syracuse when something truly special happened.

As he was going deeper into the water, Enzo suddenly felt a soft tap on his back. When he turned around, he saw a dolphin—not there to play, but clearly asking for help.

The dolphin swam down, and Enzo followed. About 15 meters below the surface, they found another dolphin stuck in an old fishing net. Without wasting a moment, Enzo called to his daughter for a knife and carefully cut the net to free the dolphin.

As soon as it was free, the dolphin made a sound Enzo later described as “almost like a human cry.”

When they all reached the surface, Enzo and Rossana saw that the dolphin was a pregnant female—and just moments later, she gave birth right there in the open sea.

The male dolphin circled around them, then gently came up to Enzo, touched his cheek with its nose—like a soft kiss—and then swam away with his new little family.

Later, Enzo shared his thoughts:
“Until people learn to respect and communicate with the natural world, they’ll never truly understand their place on this planet.”

A strong reminder that nature has a voice—if we’re willing to listen.
Credit to the original source.

This reminds me of a piece I read about a whale that grabbed a diver and took him to the surface. The diver wasn't in any kind of trouble, but my take is that the whale saw the trail of bubbles going up and reckoned that that was no good for any mammal, normally, without scuba technology, and rushed in to help.

2025-10-30

10 Relationship Killers

2025-10-26

Sorprensa Atomica al Rio Ruidoso

Very, very sad. In July 1945, a group of 13-year-old girls went camping in America. They swam in a river in Ruidoso, New Mexico. The girl in front of the photo is named Barbara Kent. What none of the girls knew was that nearby, the U.S. military was testing a nuclear bomb as part of the Manhattan Project.

Barbara later spoke about what happened that day:
“We were all just shocked… then suddenly, there was a big cloud above us and strange lights in the sky,” she remembered. “It even hurt our eyes to look up. The whole sky looked strange, like the sun came out all at once, but really bright.”

A few hours later, white flakes started to fall from the sky. The girls were excited. They thought it was snow. They put on their swimsuits and went back to the river to play. “We grabbed the white stuff and put it on our faces,” Barbara said. “But instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. We just thought it was hot because it was summer. We were only 13.”

But those flakes were radioactive dust—fallout from the nuclear bomb test. It had exploded at 5:29 a.m. on top of a 100-foot tower, about 40 miles away in the Jornada del Muerto valley. The site had been chosen because people thought it was far from where anyone lived. But thousands of people actually lived nearby—some only 12 miles away. No one warned them. No one was told to leave before or after the test, even though the fallout kept falling for days.

Every single girl in that photo got cancer. All of them died before they turned 30, except Barbara. She lived longer, but she also had cancer more than once. People often remember the horrible effect of the bombs dropped on Japan, but many forget what it cost those living near the first tests in the U.S.

One man, Dapo Michaels, was fascinated by science and worked on the project. He didn’t understand the full impact at the time. But once he did, it haunted him. He felt deep guilt and couldn’t forgive himself. He became mentally unwell and had to live in a hospital. He died there a few years later.

The same thing happened in Maralinga, Australia. Many Aboriginal people likely died from cancer caused by nuclear tests, but no one kept track, and we may never know how many.