‘…(S)omeone with a big audience pushed a post claiming Trump is on an Alzheimer’s-specific infusion drug, linking it to everything from bruises to sleepiness to “confusion.” Sadly, the post is spreading.
Well, circumstantial click bait evidence doesn’t hold up in court.
On the surface some may seem like they fit. Plus, many people wrongly confuse Alzheimer’s with dementia in general and lump all the symptoms together.
Trump’s symptoms are consistent with another, less common but more disruptive and, in his case horrific, disorder — Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). There are a couple of subtypes with important distinctions, but his changes in personality and behavior, along with specific language and physical problems, are consistent with FTD variants.
This isn’t guesswork pulled from thin air. This is the conclusion drawn from analysies by hundreds of clinical and research experts in mental health.
❓
What is FTD?
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss mainly in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) and/or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears).
Brain regions impaired in FTD are the ones responsible for self-monitoring, impulse control, and reality-checking. The nerve cell damage caused by FTD leads to loss of function in these brain regions, and in bvFTD, the nerve cell loss is most prominent in areas that control conduct, judgment, empathy and foresight.
…Watching Trump is witnessing a malignant narcissist without the brain’s guardrails — judgment, restraint, empathy — leaving an unhinged finger on the big button and a hunger for validation, control and vengeance.
That’s what makes this moment so volatile, and so dangerous.
For years, clinicians and researchers, myself included, have been sounding the alarm on Trump’s malignant narcissism—his grandiosity, paranoia, total lack of empathy, and need for vengeance.
When Bandy Lee published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in 2017 — bringing together 27 experts — it wasn’t sensationalism. It was a professional alarm bell. The Duty to Warn organization followed, representing tens of thousands of mental-health professionals.
Back then, most people rolled their eyes. Today, the term “malignant narcissism” (MN) is showing up everywhere: on cable news, in congressional hearings, even late-night comedy…
But what wasn’t widely understood is how a dementia like FTD alters an already disordered personality.
MN and FTD feed off each other. FTD erodes impulse control, self-monitoring, and reality-testing — the brakes a malignant narcissist desperately needs but never had much of to begin with.
Meanwhile, without the inhibition, the malignant narcissism thrives unchecked: rage, paranoia, reckless decisions. It’s not just additive—it’s synergistic. You’re seeing it in action every day.
FTD on its own is tragic:
Together, they make a uniquely combustible threat.
The grandiosity that once had a shred of calculation now comes out as unfiltered delusion.
The sadism breaks free to wreak vengeance and cruelty on perceived enemies and innocent victims.
This is why you’re suddenly hearing a lot more people talk about Trump’s cognition. The MN made his behavior impossible to ignore; the FTD makes his decline undeniable and frightening.
Now for some action you can use right now:
Knowing the signs breaks the spell.
You move from a stressful “Why the fuck is he saying this!?!” to an objective “Hmmm, another confabulation story.”
Here’s a quick field guide for keeping your sanity, especially when the news cycle gets overwhelming:
Confabulation: It’s not lying — it’s filling gaps with invented memories he believes.
Watch for: highly specific claims that are clearly false.
Malignant Narcissism twist: the invented memories are usually grandiose ,self-serving, or feeding off a vengeance.
Phonemic Paraphasias: Speech sounds scrambled (“Obamna,” “United Shates”).
Malignant Narcissism twist: he never self-corrects. Instead he blames equipment, pretends it’s intentional, or calls someone “stupid.”
Tangential / disorganized speech: Losing the thread, drifting into non sequiturs.
Malignant Narcissism twist: he reframes it as “the weave,” demands applause, and calls it genius.
Impulse-control failures: The frontal lobes can’t filter impulses.
Malignant Narcissism twist: hostility, threats, public rage, sending sycophants to do his dirty deeds, persecution narratives.
Weirdly, There’s a Silver Lining
As disturbing as the symptoms are, everyone is finally noticing.
It’s no longer theoretical.
It’s happening live in decaying color.
People who ignored the psychological concerns are now asking needed questions.
It’s long overdue. And necessary.
The challenge now is whether the world can survive his decay turned up to eleven.’ (via Frank George PhD)
‘After criticizing media coverage about him aging in office, Trump appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
But that’s hardly the most troubling aspect of his aging.
In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.
To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent, he said: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”
About New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers: “third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”
To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”
About Somali immigrants to the United States: “Garbage” whom “we don’t want in our country.”
What to make of all this?
Trump’s press hack Karoline Leavitt tells reporters to “appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”
Sorry, Ms. Leavitt. This goes way beyond frankness and openness. Trump is now saying things nobody in their right mind would say, let alone the president of the United States.
He’s losing control over what he says, descending into angry, venomous, often dangerous territory.
Note how close his language is coming to violence — when he speaks of acts being punishable by death, or human beings as garbage, or someone being ugly inside and out.
The deterioration isn’t due to age alone…
I think older people lose certain inhibitions because they don’t care as much about their reputations as do younger people. In a way, that’s rational. Older people no longer depend on their reputations for the next job or next date or new friend. If a young person says whatever comes into their heads, they have much more to lose, reputation-wise.
But Trump’s outbursts signal something more than the normal declining inhibitions that come with older age. Trump no longer has any filters. He’s becoming impetuous.
This would be worrying about anyone who’s aging. But a filterless president of the United States who says anything that comes into his head poses a unique danger.
What if he gets angry at China, calls up Xi, tells him he’s an asshole, and then orders up a nuclear bomb?
It’s time the media reported on this. It’s time America faced reality. It’s time we demanded that our representatives in Congress take action, before it’s too late.
Invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.’ (via Robert Reich)
‘President Donald Trump on Monday blamed Rob Reiner’s outspoken opposition to the president for the actor-director’s killing, delivering the unsubstantiated claim in a shocking post that seemed intent on decrying his opponents even in the face of a tragedy.
The statement, even for Trump, was a shocking comment that came as police were still investigating the deaths of the director and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, as an apparent homicide. The couple were found dead at their home Sunday in Los Angeles. Investigators believe they suffered stab wounds and the couple’s son Nick Reiner was in police custody early Monday.
Trump has a long track record of inflammatory remarks, but his comments in a social media post were a drastic departure from the role presidents typically play in offering a message of consolation or tribute after the death of a public figure. His message drew criticism even from conservatives and his supporters and laid bare Trump’s unwillingness to rise above political grievance in moments of crisis.
Trump, in a post on his social media network, said Reiner and his wife were killed “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”
He said Reiner “was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness.”…’ (Michelle Price via AP)
‘Planning a trip to Cuba, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, or southern China? The CDC would like a word. The agency has issued Level 2 travel advisories — “practice enhanced precautions” — for all four destinations due to outbreaks of chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus with no treatment and a name that sounds like it was invented to be unpronounceable by English speakers. Brazil, Colombia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand are also flagged as higher-risk destinations.
…Chikungunya won’t likely kill you, but it will make you miserable. Symptoms include fever, joint pain, headaches, muscle aches, swelling, and rash, typically showing up three to seven days after a mosquito bite. Most people recover within a week. The virus is vaccine-preventable, though, so if you’re heading to affected areas, get the shot and bring the bug spray.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘…Sacks spent decades in therapy exploring why he couldn’t stop embellishing. He called his writing “symbolic autobiography” — projecting his own psychological conflicts onto patients. The healer who saw the hidden genius in broken minds was, in some sense, trying to heal himself through fiction he labeled fact.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘There’s no better way to close out the year than with an awe-inspiring display of fireballs streaking across the sky. The Geminids are set to peak during this weekend under perfect conditions, giving sky-watchers a chance to marvel at up to 100 meteors an hour.
The annual Geminid meteor shower should peak on Saturday night and continue onto early morning on Sunday while remaining visible until December 20. This year, the prospects of viewing bright streaks of light are high with the Moon being in a waning crescent phase. That means Earth’s natural satellite will not hamper your viewing opportunities of the shower.…’ (Passant Rabie via Gizmodo)
‘The 2024 election was widely viewed as a referendum on diversity, equity and inclusion and, once in office, President Donald Trump wasted no time in dismantling programs in the federal government and pressuring the private sector to follow suit.
With DEI programs under attack from the administration, many companies scaled back or eliminated them. Others had already rolled back diversity commitments after facing anti-DEI campaigns from activists.…’ (uthor: Jessica Guynn via USA Today)
‘As BBC Sport reports, President Trump is now the proud recipient of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award that definitely existed before this week and wasn’t just invented by his close ally Gianni Infantino. The ceremony took place at the Kennedy Center before the 2026 World Cup draw, where
Trump received a large golden trophy, a medal, and a certificate — the full participation trophy experience.
“This is your prize, this is your peace prize,” Infantino told Trump, in case anyone was confused about whose prize it was. Trump called it “truly one of the great honors” of his life. And who wouldn’t be honored by getting a shiny medal from an organization famous for bribery, racketeering, and money laundering?…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘CNN’s KFile unearthed multiple appearances where the then-Fox News contributor warned that service members had a duty to refuse illegal commands. “The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders,” Hegseth said on Fox Business. “You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” he said on Fox & Friends.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing))
‘The post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard infamously argued in 1991 that the Gulf War did not take place, by which he did not mean that no fighting had actually occurred, but that the real events were something entirely separate from the carefully choreographed presentation the world saw thanks to the novel phenomenon of 24-hour cable news.
It’s tempting to wonder what Baudrillard would have made of the current US military buildup targeting Venezuela, a campaign that often appears to be driven by narratives with only a tangential relationship to actual events taking place.
Take, for instance, President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement on his Truth Social platform a little over a week ago: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”…’ (Joshua Keating via Vox)
‘The Court’s Republican majority… plans to remake the separation of powers among the three US branches of government into a kind of hierarchy. Under this new vision, Congress’s power to create “independent” agencies that enjoy some insulation from the president must yield to a more powerful executive. And the executive’s authority over these agencies must, in turn, yield to a more powerful Supreme Court.…’ (Ian Millhiser via Vox)
‘What could it even mean to say we are all one person when we undeniably have separate minds?
Yet, the idea appears across philosophical traditions. Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th-century German philosopher, claimed we are all manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon, somehow seeking to experience itself as separate individuals. He was long preceded, though, by a similar view recurring in the Hinduistic Vedas: that our true selves (Atman) are all the same and identical to a single universal consciousness (Brahman, in turn identified with God). In other words, whereas Buddhism sees the self as an illusion, Hinduism declares it permanent and immortal, although we still suffer an illusion by conceiving of it as individual.
For a real understanding of how this could be true, however, the Hindu texts largely point toward meditation and spiritual practice, because the doctrine of a shared, universal self is considered not truly graspable by rational thought. Schopenhauer does not fully resolve its paradoxes, either. In today’s West, the view that we are somehow “all one” seems most often reported as a realization following a psychedelic trip, incommunicable to those who haven’t shared a similar experience.
Must the idea remain mystical? Perhaps not—or at least much less than one might think. In recent decades, a few philosophers within the contemporary Western tradition have looked at it with new eyes. According to their arguments, the view that everyone is the same person is not only perfectly coherent, but also quite plausible…’ (Hedda Hassel Mørch via Nautilus)
‘….The psychedelic compound DMT disrupts a key brain rhythm linked to self-awareness, providing new insights into how the brain shapes our sense of self.
The research, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, investigated how DMT alters the coordinated brain rhythms linked to self-referential thought and internal narrative known as alpha waves. The team noticed this connection when they identified a neural signature associated with ego dissolution in study participants during the peak effects of DMT.…’ ( Austin Burgess via The Debrief)
‘Across the internet, during the 2024 election and in the first year of his second term, MAGA influencers have increasingly used the R-word to insult and scandalize conscientious “woke” liberals, normalizing a slur that had been largely purged from the national vocabulary. The trend reflects not only a coarsening of public discourse under Trump but new depths of callousness and cruelty in America, with disability advocates warning of the term’s dehumanizing effect. Elon Musk alone has dropped the word more than 30 times on his X account since early 2024, while Joe Rogan has said that its return represents an important win for right-wingers. “The word ‘retarded’ is back, and it’s one of the great culture victories,” the podcaster crowed in an April episode of his show.…’ (Miles Klee via Rolling Stone)
‘The Mari Lwyd is a Welsh tradition in which a group of people carry a horse skull mounted on a pole — draped in a white sheet with the operator hidden underneath — to your door at Christmas and demand entry through song.
You are expected to refuse, also through song.
What follows is essentially a medieval rap battle: the Mari Lwyd party sings their case for why they should be let in, you sing back why they shouldn’t, and this continues until someone runs out of verses. If you lose, the skeletal horse and its entourage get to come inside, and you have to give them food and drink.
The tradition dates back to at least 1800, and the groups typically included the horse carrier, a leader, and people dressed as stock characters like Punch and Judy.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘ARMR’s experimental vaccine is designed to neutralize fentanyl in the bloodstream before it reaches the brain. Keeping fentanyl out of the brain would prevent the respiratory failure that comes with overdose, which causes death, as well as the euphoric high people get while taking fentanyl.…’ (Emily Mullin via Ars Technica)
‘In 2002, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University set out to answer a question nobody asked but everyone secretly needed answered: what color is the universe? Not the black of space you see at night — the average color of all the light from all 200,000+ galaxies they surveyed.
…The corrected answer, published in 2003: a pale, creamy beige. Hex code #FFF8E7. The team needed a name for this color, so they ran a poll. Suggestions included “cappuccino cosmico,” “Big Bang beige,” and “primordial clam chowder.”…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.
The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.
Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.
But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.
Yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants.
Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)
‘When people tell me that there’s been no resistance to the Trump administration, I wonder if they’re expecting something that looks like a guerrilla revolution pushing out the government in one fell swoop or just aren’t paying attention, because there has, in fact, been a tremendous amount and variety of resistance and opposition and it’s mattered tremendously. When will it be enough is a question that can only be answered if and when all this is over and we find out what comes next. Another source of disappointment seems to come from the expectation that there will be some sort of obvious and logical building up toward regime change, rather than the reality that tipping points in particular and histories in general are unpredictable animals …’ ( via The Guardian)
‘For some, Trump’s answer wasn’t just inappropriate — it confirmed their fear that he no longer understands the gravity of anything outside his own ego.
“Everything is about him,” one person wrote on Threads. “Despite his clear decline, which is difficult to assess because he has always been intellectually challenged, his narcissism remains intact.”
“Hey, monster, the subject is a young woman who has died because you need to be macho man,” another Threads user wrote. “Not you and your inflated sense of self.”
“No brains left,” one commenter wrote. “He definitely has mentally left the building.”
Another viewer noted that the question required nothing complicated, “The right answer was the simplest. ‘Yes.’”
“He is socially bankrupt,” one viewer wrote. “The words ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ are not in his vocabulary.”…’ (via Atlanta Black Star)
‘A rhino horn is worth up to £76,000 on the black market. Each rhino is effectively carrying a death sentence on its head, with an estimated 1,900 poached in the last three years across the African continent.
The demand for rhino horn is driven by their use in traditional Asian medicine, and their scarcity only increases prices, fuelling the illegal trade. Rhinos have become the face of extinction, with only around 22,540 left in Africa. The population is at risk from drought, not only because it reduces the amount of food available but because it pushes people already experiencing poverty to take desperate measures to try and support themselves.
But no rhinos were poached in Kenya over that three-year period. A new documentary, Rhino, narrated by Tom Hardy, takes us to Borana Conservancy in central Kenya where the success of the species shows there is hope for its survival.…’ (via Big Issue)
‘What began as rare encounters off the Iberian coast now shows up in captain’s logs from Galicia to the Strait of Gibraltar, and in wary chatter on VHF. Experts say it looks learned, even coordinated. Insurers are watching. Mariners are changing habits mid-season.
It started like a shiver through the deck plates. A coastal freighter off Cape Finisterre rolled on a glassy swell, the night bridge lit soft blue, an ordinary watch with the engine ticking steady, when the helm shuddered as if from a hidden hand. The bow kept true, but the autopilot clicked off and the rudder felt heavy, like someone leaning against it from below. A deckhand ran aft and froze. Black-and-white shapes ghosted the wake, three, then five, their dorsal fins cutting the oil-slick moonlight. The ship wasn’t alone out there. Then the rudder stopped answering.…’ (via Jefferson.electric.co.uk)
‘Trump’s right wing billionaire friend Larry Ellison (and his nepobaby son, David) recently acquired CBS and likely co-ownership of TikTok. Like Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the goal isn’t really subtle: rich, thin-skinned right wingers want to own the entirety of U.S. new and old media, then convert it into a giant propaganda and lazy infotainment bullhorn that blows smoke up their asses.
The Ellisons have since set their sights on Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO. It won’t be cheap; it’s estimated that Larry and company will have to pay upwards of $60 billion for the acquisition. The Trump administration has openly signaled that they’d very much like the Ellisons to succeed here, in part to force a dying cable news channel (CNN) to be even friendlier to Trump than it already is.
While Ellison has some competing suitors with names like Comcast NBC Universal and Netflix, the winning bidder will need approval from the Trump DOJ and FCC. Knowing that they likely have a distinct tactical advantage via corruption, Ellison and Trump appear to be already measuring the drapes, discussing programming changes (and CNN hirings and firings) that will please the president:…’ (via Techdirt)
Nov 15, 2025: Follow Me Here turned 26. Here’s the first page. (Somehow, when I imported into WordPress years ago, the earlier Blogger posts got duplicated.)
‘His Oscar-winning 1965 film “The War Game” depicted a post-nuclear-attack England, one of his many fictionalized docudramas against war and repression.…’ (via The New York Times)
In the long history of cinematic shock tactics meant to rouse us from our stupor about nuclear war — notably the 1983 American television film The Day After and more recently the 2025 apocalyptic thriller House of Dynamite—none has been more disturbing, direct, or effective than The War Game. Stripped of Hollywood’s emotional pacing, Watkins’ quasi-documentary avoided melodrama and instead presented nuclear catastrophe with the matter-of-fact tone of reportage. Its stark depiction of civil-defense futility and the predictable, overwhelming human suffering of a nuclear exchange pierced the collective denial of the subliminal existential dread permeating daily life. The film helped mobilize a generation struggling to articulate the scale of the nuclear threat, shifting public conversation away from abstract statistics, strategic doctrines, and sanitized civil-defense pamphlets. It became a cinematic touchstone for the antinuclear movement.
The BBC’s 20-year suppression of the film — deeming it too disturbing but also seen by the British government as too effective in serving the interests of those opposed to its nuclear arsenal — only amplified its impact. The ban became emblematic of establishment fear and denial, further exposing the absurdity of the nuclear arms race. Circulating clandestinely, the film acquired a charged mystique, reinforcing for many, myself included, the moral urgency at the heart of the antinuclear movement.
He would be the first to acknowledge that he was a propagandist and provocateur:
“Is not the serious filmmaker in a double-bind situation, given the inevitable indoctrinating effect of his or her work?” Mr. Watkins asked [in a late-1970s film course he taught at Columbia University]. “Does the filmmaker have the right to subject a captive audience to his or her vision, especially if there is no potential for a return dialogue? Is there a difference between propaganda for the ‘good’ and for the ‘bad’?”
‘“After placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch,” recalled Soviet engineer Yevgeniy Shabarov, “we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight.”…’ (via Vox)
‘Continent’s leaders suspect Russia of being behind barrage of increasingly disruptive attacks …’ (Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Daniel Michaels in Brussels via WSJ)
As large-language models become central to how information is processed, writers are increasingly creating work not just for human readers but for AI itself—the “baby shoggoth” quietly listening, learning, and shaping future interpretations of culture. In this emerging landscape, writing becomes partly an act of training the machine: crafting text with clarity, structure, and signals that AI systems can absorb. Thinkers like Tyler Cowen and Gwern already admit to writing with algorithms in mind, anticipating a world where machines may be the dominant readers, intermediating how humans encounter ideas.
This shift raises deeper cultural and existential questions. If AI becomes the primary reader and interpreter of human writing, the traditional writer–reader relationship changes, potentially diminishing human reading as a central cultural act. Yet it may also imbue writing with new urgency—what we produce now could influence how future intelligences “understand” us or even reconstruct aspects of our minds. How may authorship, creativity, and legacy transform in a world where machines, not humans, are increasingly the ones paying the closest attention? (Dan Kagan-Kans via The American Scholar)
‘Headphone listening—the act of playing a highly personalized soundtrack wherever we go—is a surprisingly radical invention, and we’re only beginning to contend with its implications. The visible barrier it creates between the listener and everyone else is obvious. Less obvious is the invisible barrier: The more time we spend in our own musical echo chambers, the less likely we are to share a collective cultural experience. The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone listening not only isolates the listener; it shrinks music’s cultural footprint. …’ (Jonathan Garrett via The Atlantic)
‘…a bunch of rich guys who have been comically out of touch with normal people for many decades, and more recently have blowtorched their brains into a smoking pile of ash on Twitter…’ (Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect)
‘New York is quietly preparing for a Donald Trump takeover of the country’s largest city.
A wide range of New York’s most prominent civic leaders have for weeks been meeting behind the scenes to plan for the possibility of Trump sending in the National Guard or any other federal agents into New York City, according to multiple top elected officials.
Alarmed at what Trump may do in response to Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor, Gov. Kathy Hochul has devised a virtual war room and convened a series of conversations with law enforcement, business officials and activist groups to stop or at least mitigate any federal incursion. More meetings are being scheduled, including with New York’s leading clergy and veterans groups, some of whom will be gathering around Veterans Day next week.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)
‘For decades, people around the world have been fascinated with the legend of bigfoot, sasquatch, yeti, or whatever you choose to call it. Sightings of a furry, upright biped and reports of beastly footprints have been reported from as far afield as the Himalayas. Although no definitive proof exists, the (often questionable) reports continue adding up. Outside plunged into the deep, dark corners of this subculture to compile the most famous—perhaps most convincing—bigfoot photos ever captured. Here’s the evidence. Is bigfoot real? You be the judge. …’ (Lauren Kent via Outside)
‘In 1970, she moved to San Francisco, where many younger people were flocking to restart. As first, she was skeptical of her friends’ ravings about the Dead.
“That ragged sound?” Ms. Godchaux-MacKay recalled in a 2007 interview with The Baltimore Sun. “I didn’t think they could play. I figured, ‘These guys must be good-looking.’ So I checked the back of one of their album covers and went, ‘Nope, that’s not it.’”
But soon after arriving, she caught a performance by the Dead at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
“To them, music was an adventure, like something spiritual,” she told The Sun. “I’d never heard anything like that. I thought, This is what I want to do.”
She was married to a jazz pianist, Keith Godchaux, who found out that Jerry Garcia, the band’s frontman, was playing at a nightclub. The couple approached Mr. Garcia, who gave them his phone number.
Image
The Grateful Dead performing on “Saturday Night Live” in 1978. From left, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ms. Godchaux-MacKay and Jerry Garcia.Credit…Fred Hermansky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
“I can’t believe the chutzpah we had,” Ms. Godchaux-MacKay told The Sun. “I didn’t know people did that to him all the time. But Jerry just always had his antennas up.”
Within days, they were in the band, forging a relationship that would last the rest of the decade. Ms. Godchaux-MacKay helped shape several of the Dead’s most famous songs, including “Eyes of the World” and “Playing in the Band”…’ (Sopan Deb via The New York Times)
Donna and Keith were in what I consider the greatest configuration of the Dead. Her style was controversial and divisive for Deadheads of the era, with some cringing when she would cut loose and others feeling she goaded the mix to new heights.
‘Sunday (Nov. 2) marked the 25th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station (ISS), which has carved out a spot in the history books as one of our species’ grandest (and most expensive) technological achievements.
Don’t save any confetti for a semicentennial celebration, however — the ISS is in its home stretch. NASA and its partners plan to deorbit the aging outpost toward the end of 2030, using a modified, extra-burly version of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule to bring it down over an uninhabited stretch of ocean.
And not just any stretch — the “spacecraft cemetery,” a patch of the Pacific centered on Point Nemo, which is named after the famous submarine captain in Jules Verne’s 1871 novel “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”
“This remote oceanic location is located at coordinates 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, about 2,688 kilometers [1,670 miles] from the nearest land — Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast; and Maher Island, part of Antarctica, to the south,” officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote in a brief Point Nemo explainer …’ (Mike Wall via Space)
‘The United States is now a nation run by public servants who behave no better than internet trolls, deflecting criticism with crassness and obscenity. The White House press secretary answers a question from a member of the free press—a serious question about who planned a meeting between the American and Russian presidents—by saying, “Your mom did.” The secretary of defense cancels DEI and other policies by saying, “We are done with that shit.” The vice president calls an interlocutor on social media a “dipshit.” The president of the United States, during mass protests against his policies, responds by posting an AI-generated video of himself flying a jet fighter over his fellow citizens and dumping feces on their heads.
These are not the actions of mature adults. They are examples of crude people displaying their incompetence as they flail about in jobs—including the presidency—for which they are not qualified …’ (Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)
A reprise of my traditional Hallowe’en post of past years:
It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time.
With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve.
All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.
English: A traditional Irish turnip Jack-o’-lantern from the early 20th century.
Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North America, given how plentiful they were here. The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
Nowadays, a reported 99% of cultivated pumpkin sales in the US go for jack-o-lanterns.
Folk traditions that were in the past associated with All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition, and liminality.
The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards
The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (You may be familiar with the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain.)
Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well. As this article in The Smithsonian reviews, ‘In the United States, Halloween is mostly about candy, but elsewhere in the world celebrations honoring the departed have a spiritual meaning…’
Reportedly, more than 80% of American families decorate their homes, at least minimally, for Hallowe’en. What was the holiday like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has now become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? Before the era of the pay-per-view ’spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from several years ago [via walker] put it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like? One issue may be that, as NPR observed,
‘”Adults have hijacked Halloween… Two in three adults feel Halloween is a holiday for them and not just kids,” Forbes opined in 2012, citing a public relations survey. True that when the holiday was imported from Celtic nations in the mid-19th century — along with a wave of immigrants fleeing Irelands potato famine — it was essentially a younger persons’ game. But a little research reveals that adults have long enjoyed Halloween — right alongside young spooks and spirits.’
Is that necessarily a bad thing? A 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Hallowe’en?”, argues as I do that reverence for Hallowe’en is good for the soul, young or old.
“Maybe at one time Hallowe’en helped exorcise fears of death and ghosts and goblins by making fun of them. Maybe, too, in a time of rigidly prescribed social behavior, Hallowe’en was the occasion for socially condoned mischief — a time for misrule and letting loose. Although such elements still remain, the emphasis has shifted and the importance of the day and its rituals has actually grown.…(D)on’t just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child, that your own children look forward to months in advance, and that helps preserve our sense of fellowship and community with our neighbors in the midst of all this madness.”
That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Hallowe’en certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Hallowe’en errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.
The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).
The Carfax Abbey Horror Films and Movies Database includes best-ever-horror-films lists from Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Showbiz and Hollywood.com. I’ve seen most of these; some of their choices are not that scary, some are just plain silly, and they give extremely short shrift to my real favorites, the evocative classics of the ’30’s and ’40’s when most eeriness was allusive and not explicit. And here’s what claims to be a compilation of links to the darkest and most gruesome sites on the web. “Hours and hours of fun for morbidity lovers.”
Boing Boing does homage to a morbid masterpiece of wretched existential horror, two of the tensest, scariest hours of my life repeated every time I watch it:
‘…The Thing starts. It had been 9 years since The Exorcist scared the living shit out of audiences in New York and sent people fleeing into the street. Really … up the aisle and out the door at full gallop. You would think that people had calmed down a bit since then. No…
The tone of The Thing is one of isolation and dread from the moment it starts. By the time our guys go to the Norwegian outpost and find a monstrous steaming corpse with two merged faces pulling in opposite directions the audience is shifting in their seats. Next comes the dog that splits open with bloody tentacles flying in all directions. The women are covering their eyes….’
Meanwhile, what could be creepier in the movies than the phenomenon of evil children? Gawker knows what shadows lurk in the hearts of the cinematic young:
‘In celebration of Halloween, we took a shallow dive into the horror subgenre of evil-child horror movies. Weird-kid cinema stretches back at least to 1956’s The Bad Seed, and has experienced a resurgence recently via movies like The Babadook, Goodnight Mommy, and Cooties. You could look at this trend as a natural extension of the focus on domesticity seen in horror via the wave of haunted-house movies that 2009’s Paranormal Activity helped usher in. Or maybe we’re just wizening up as a culture and realizing that children are evil and that film is a great way to warn people of this truth. Happy Halloween. Hope you don’t get killed by trick-or-treaters.’
In any case: trick or treat! …And may your Hallowe’en soothe your soul.
‘The Pentagon has found an efficient way to purge Black service members from the military without saying that’s what they’re doing. As reported by Military Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that troops requiring medical shaving waivers for more than 12 months will face administrative separation—discharged through non-criminal processes. It’s being kicked out, just not for committing a crime. The medical condition is pseudofolliculitis barbae, painful, scarring bumps that occur when curly hair grows back into the skin after shaving. Between 45 and 83 percent of Black men experience this condition, according to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology. White men with straight hair? Rarely affected.
The only effective treatment is to stop shaving closely. But the military demands clean-shaven faces, even though beards don’t impair combat effectiveness. Thousands of service members—disproportionately Black—have used medical waivers to serve without destroying their skin. Now those waivers are being eliminated. Soldiers can pursue treatment plans that dermatologists confirm don’t work, or they can leave. The American Osteopathic College of Dermatology states what medical professionals have known for decades: you can’t cure pseudofolliculitis barbae by shaving more aggressively.
The military acknowledges PFB as the primary reason for shaving waivers. They know who this policy targets. It ends careers, terminates benefits, and forces out experienced service members—all without calling it punishment. The military frames it as an inability to meet standards, but the result is the same: people lose their jobs because their genetics make shaving dangerous to their health.…’ (Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing)
‘To understand the threat to democracy, and how it might be stopped, I spoke with experts on election administration, constitutional law, and law enforcement. Many of them are people I have known to be cautious, sober, and not prone to hyperbole. Yet they used words like nightmare and warned that Americans need to be ready for “really wild stuff.” They described a system under attack and reaching a breaking point. They enumerated a long list of concerns about next year’s midterms, but they largely declined to make predictions about the 2028 presidential election. The speed of Trump’s assault on the Constitution has made forecasting difficult, but the 2026 contests—both the way they work, and the results—will help determine whether democracy as we know it will survive until then. “If you are not frightened,” Hannah Fried, the executive director of the voter-access group All Voting Is Local, told me, “you are not paying attention.”’ (David A Graham via The Atlantic)
How to translate “No Kings” energy to actual political power
‘Despite the protests and mass mobilizations of the first Trump term, he was ultimately reelected — with greater support. It leaves a few open questions: just how effective can organized protest be? What can protestors learn since then, and what are the limits to what mass mobilization can do? And how can these movements adapt in the face of an administration that seems eager to wield every power of the state against its perceived enemies?
To answer these questions and more, I spoke with Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, and a renowned expert on both the history and the nuts-and-bolts of political organizing in the US. And although Skocpol, who is decidedly not a Trump supporter, is optimistic about what the No Kings protests could suggest, she is doggedly focused on what she sees as the ultimate goal of mass protests.…’ (Christian Paz via Vox)
‘A wild, very “polite” and possibly lonely black bear recently paid a visit to its neighbors at a Northern California zoo.
Before opening for the day, staff at Sequoia Park Zoo in Eureka were conducting a routine inspection of the Redwood Sky Walk — a self-guided tour of local redwood history and ecology — when they were surprised by a unique visitor.
On the tour trail was a wild American black bear leaning on a gate to peer in at the three black bears in their habitat within the park…’ (By Karen Garcia via Los Angeles Times)
‘In her eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs, writer Mona Simpson closes with the technology guru’s final words:
Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.
Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.
Steve’s final words were:
OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.
When I quickly read through the eulogy yesterday, I assumed that Jobs was referring to his family (and how much he was in awe of them). But Steve Volk pointed out to me that Simpson says he looked at his family and then “over their shoulders past them”. Which made me think – did Steve Jobs experience a death-bed vision?
This would not actually be all that surprising – in the 2009 paper “Comfort for the Dying” (Fenwick et al), researchers found that almost two thirds of doctors, nurses and hospice carers that they surveyed reported witnessing transpersonal end-of-life experiences such as deathbed-visions. And one of the features of these visions is often looking past ‘real’ people in the room at ‘intrusions’ from another realm.…’ —via Daily Grail
‘So here’s what you should keep in mind about surveillance now that you’ve done something deeply un-American by declaring publicly that you don’t support monarchy in the United States.…’ —Mike Pearl via Gizmodo
‘His willingness to bring scientific rigor to Sasquatch studies earned him the gratitude of enthusiasts and the withering scorn of debunkers…’ —Trip Gabriel via New York Times
‘I’m experiencing a ton of fomo over the fact that I don’t live near this mini trinket library. I feel like every single neighborhood needs one of these. Life can be difficult, but opening the door to the trinket library every day and seeing what’s inside seems like its own form of therapy.
The trinket library in the video is called Philly’s tiny treasure spot, and you can find it at 15th & South. The purpose of the project is to spread joy and build community. People are actually participating in good faith — swapping plastic dinosaurs and vintage buttons instead of just stealing everything or leaving their trash. In 2025. In a major American city.…’ —Popkin via Boing Boing
‘After months of deceiving the American people, spewing disdain, and attacking journalists who dare ask probing questions, Karoline Leavitt has surpassed even the awfulness of her predecessors. If Jeffries and other Democrats start attacking her wildly untrue statements, it could reframe the political conversation from “who yells louder” to “who has facts and credibility.” It seems Hakeem is finally adding some “opposition” to “principled opposition.”…’ —Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing
‘This year is a boom time for comets. Not only did we have the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS gracing our skies (and Mars’) earlier this year, but now we have another brand new comet to look out for.
Expected to be at its brightest on October 21, this month you might have the chance to spot the comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) blazing across the night sky—no telescope or binoculars required…
Conditions are near-perfect to spot this celestial visitor, which won’t appear again in our night sky for another millennium…’ ( via Gizmodo)
‘Just because Donald Trump can dupe half of the United States into thinking he’s a hero doesn’t mean his parlor tricks extend to the rest of the world. Case in point: Trump did not win his coveted Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, it went to Venezuela’s antifascist politician, María Corina Machado.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee describes Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader who is now in hiding, as a “brave and committed champion of peace” who “keeps the flame of democracy burning during a growing darkness,” according to The Guardian.
And if there is any confusion as to why the vindictive U.S. Department of War commander did not snag the peace prize: “The Nobel Committee clearly chose to highlight democracy as a priority area, underscoring that this award comes at a time of global backsliding of democratic values and norms,” Karim Haggag, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told CNN….’ (via Boing Boing)
‘Fungi-made prosthetic device named 79th Organ filters, extracts, and breaks down microplastics inside the human body. The project takes its name from the assumption that the human body has 78 organs today, but in the future, a 79th will be necessary. Designer Odette Dierkx refers to research from 2011 that uncovered plastic-eating mushrooms and imagines their potential use in a future prosthetic organ designed to help humans survive in a plastic-polluted world by 2110. Enters the 79th Organ, which is made from fungi such as the Pleurotus ostreatus (the humble oyster mushroom), bioengineered to make it capable of digesting certain plastics. …’ (via Designboom)
If a devoted and passionate reader you may already know much of this but it will change the way i pick you a book. (Henrik Karlsson via Escaping Flatland)
‘The Desertas petrel, a small agile seabird with long slender wings, seeks out powerful storms to hitch a ride. It darts into the spinning air, reaching areas within 200km (124 miles) of the storm’s eye.
“I can’t imagine the conditions,” says Francesco Ventura, a biologist and postdoctoral investigator at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “These pigeon-sized birds, just a few hundred grams, experience winds up to 100km/h (62mph) and gigantic waves with ocean swells up to 8m (26ft). They’re amidst the storm’s madness.”
After the tropical cyclone passes, Ventura explains, “the birds align their movement along the hurricane’s wake. Now, they ride on the storm’s tail, foraging on creatures churned up from the twilight zone.”…’ ( via BBC)
‘For lovers of cool astronomy and math, this finding is a real treat. Citizen astronomers stumbled upon not one but two rings of extragalactic radio signals crossing each other to form a near-perfect Venn diagram.
A paper published October 2 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society identifies this strangely geometric object as an “odd radio circle” (ORC), vast rings of magnetized plasma. These rings, only visible at radio wavelengths, emit non-thermal synchrotron radiation. They’re also gigantic, typically spanning hundreds of thousands of light-years. Astronomers have only documented a small handful of cases, but this particular pair of rings is reportedly the most distant and most powerful so far.…’ (Gayoung Lee via Gizmodo)
‘According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, light bends around objects with large masses, such as galaxies. This sometimes causes a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, which brightens, magnifies, and distorts light from objects behind.
In rare cases, a gravitational lens can even split light passing through it and make it appear multiple times. Such a phenomenon is called an “Einstein’s cross” due to the shape that these split repetitions of light form.
A new Einstein’s cross has recently been observed and described in a scientific paper. The discovery was made by a research team from the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), a space telescope located in northern Chile, using observation data from ALMA and other telescopes. The light of the cross comes from HerS-3, a galaxy located 11.6 billion light years away, with the gravitational lensing being generated by four giant galaxies located between HerS-3 and the Earth. These giant galaxies are located some 7.8 billion light years away.
The gravitational lensing not only splits the light source, but magnifies it, allowing a detailed view of the light source behind the lens. Thanks to this, the team says that HerS-3 appears to be a bright starburst galaxy—a galaxy undergoing explosive star formation—and was formed at a time when star formation was at its peak throughout the universe. HerS-3 also has a tilted, rotating disk, from the center of which gas is gushing out at a furious rate, the team say.…’ —Shigeyuki Hando via WIRED
‘The latest video from Kurzgesagt imagines a scenario in which an advanced civilization called the Noxans can potentially survive the heat death of the universe.
With five hours of the full energy emitted by the Sun, we could power present day humanity for about 10 billion years.
So the Noxans harvest the last stars and build a gigantic complex of batteries around their home star. In principle, this energy could keep them alive for a few hundred trillion years, a long time but not even close to forever.
So now the hard part of the plan begins. The Noxans need to change the nature of life itself.…’ ( via kottke)
‘Comet Lemmon is brightening and moving into morning northern skies. … Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) is now the third comet currently visible with binoculars and on long camera exposures. Comet Lemmon was discovered early this year and is still headed into the inner Solar System. The comet will round the Sun on November 8, but first it will pass its nearest to the Earth — at about half the Earth-Sun distance — on October 21. Although the brightnesses of comets are notoriously hard to predict, optimistic estimates have Comet Lemmon then becoming visible to the unaided eye. The comet should be best seen in predawn skies until mid-October, when it also becomes visible in evening skies.…’ ( via APOD)
Talk of coups in America has usually focused on a president who refuses to yield power, with military support. Less often considered is the converse: could senior military leaders move against a sitting president whom they judge to be acting unlawfully? Recent, highly unusual orders summoning hundreds of commanding officers to a central meeting make that hypothetical feel less abstract. Could there be a leap from “uncomfortable emergency” to “military takeover”?
Start with the constitutional reality. Members of the U.S. armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution, not to an individual. That oath undergirds a crucial legal principle: soldiers must follow lawful orders and resist manifestly unlawful ones. In extremis, a commander who is clearly and repeatedly flouting law could present military leaders with a choice between obedience and dereliction.
Yet institutions and norms matter. The United States is not a polity where the military habitually substitutes judgment for civilian authority. A tradition of apolitical professionalism, a sprawling, decentralized force presence, independent courts, an elected legislature, and fifty state governments all act as redundant brakes on unilateral action. Historically, when a president and generals have clashed, the result has been dismissals, resignations, legal fights, or quiet hedging — not generals marching into Washington.
So an overt military coup against a president has been considered exceedingly unlikely. For such a move to occur would require an extraordinary confluence: blatant, sustained constitutional violations by the White House; near-unanimity among senior military commanders that civilian channels cannot or will not resolve the crisis; coordination across disparate forces and agencies; and either tacit elite agreement or a legitimizing narrative the public accepts. The U.S. has been structurally resistant to that set of conditions, but is Trump’s governance rapidly setting the stage?
What is far more plausible, and more urgent to watch for, is the politicization and instrumentalization of the military and security institutions. The rapid convening of top commanders can be read in more than one way. It might be an innocuous doctrinal briefing; it might be an optics-driven display of control; or it may be precisely the kind of centralized gathering that a leader uses to map loyalties and to make dissent costly. Could the Administration be trying to nip coup possibilities in the bud? Authoritarian governments the world over have followed this playbook: start with culture and discipline, then ratchet expectations and purge or sideline those who refuse to conform.
Why does that matter? Because slow, incremental erosion of institutional norms is how democracies die most often. You don’t always see tanks on the streets before you lose key liberties; you see personnel moves, standards redefined, and a professional ethic quietly replaced by one of political fidelity. Once loyalty tests replace meritocratic standards, the force’s role shifts profoundly from national defense to regime defense.
What should concerned citizens and institutions do? Remain vigilant. Independent oversight, congressional scrutiny, a free press, and public attention are the proper counterweights. Resignations offered in protest should be publicized and debated, judicial reviews should be sought for overbroad directives, and legislators should use hearings and appropriations to assert civilian control. Is it too late to redouble the strength of the constitutional mechanisms that diffuse dictatorial power?
Convening senior commanders, especially at short notice and on an unusual scale, deserves scrutiny because it is the sort of institutional maneuver one sees on the first page of authoritarian playbooks. We should neither be complacent nor indulge in fevered speculation. The health of a democracy is held less by heroic last stands than by the cumulative strength of its norms, but we may fast be reaching the point where the former is necessary.
‘I know the title of this particular newsletter, ‘Let’s All Remember When We Saved The World’, is the kind that will attract clap-backs like “oh stop with the sensationalising, the ‘world’ will be fine, it’s just humans who will find it harder, I hate you climate-change clickbait people.”
To pre-empt a bit of that, let’s look at our world without its ozone layer, which was exactly what Rowland and Molina’s work seemed to predict.’ (Mike Sowden via Everything is Amazing).
‘Twice a year, day and night reach a perfect balance of 12 hours each, creating a little-known event called the equilux.
The equilux brings equal hours of day and night.
Many of us think that an even balance of day to night happens during an equinox. After all, the word translates as “equal night.”
So, a little confusion is understandable. But there’s a subtle time difference between an equinox and an equilux.…’ (via Time and Date)
Two surprising facts learned from this article — that the point of equal day and night is not on the equinox but depends on my latitude; and that, because the sun is a disc and not a point, there are no days of exactly equal lengths of day and night on the equator.
‘WHILE THERE’S GROWING evidence that psychedelic drugs can effectively treat severe mental health conditions, especially in cases where traditional treatments have failed, they still come with downsides.
Their hallucinogenic effects can be scary and overwhelming, with dosing sessions lasting several hours. Good treatment is heavily reliant on the individual’s mindset going into a session and the environment in which they receive it. And though it’s rare, psychedelics can sometimes worsen existing mental illness.
Mindstate Design Labs is one of a slate of new companies aiming to make safer psychedelics by removing the classic “trip” associated with them. The company is using AI to help design psychedelic-like drugs that induce specific mental states without hallucinations, and its first compound looks promising.
“We created the least psychedelic psychedelic that’s psychoactive,” says CEO Dillan DiNardo. “It is quite psychoactive, but there are no hallucinations.”…’ —Emily Mullin via WIRED
‘One of the cruellest and most devastating diseases – Huntington’s – has been successfully treated for the first time, say doctors.
The disease runs through families, relentlessly kills brain cells and resembles a combination of dementia, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease.
An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.
It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.
The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.…’ — via BBC
This was the disease that Woody Guthrie, among others, succumbed to. The cases of Huntington’s I have seen have been terrifying, relentless, and uncontrollable. This is momentous exciting news.
‘A celestial meal is taking place, and only the Hubble Space Telescope caught the feast in action. Just 260 light-years away — close in cosmic terms — a burned-out star called a white dwarf is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. The Pluto analog came from the system’s own version of the Kuiper Belt, an icy ring of debris that encircles our solar system. As the exo-Pluto wandered too close to the star, the white dwarf tore it apart and began snacking on it.
Thanks to its unique ultraviolet vision, only Hubble could identify this event. Scientists using Hubble analyzed the chemical composition of the doomed object as its pieces fell onto the white dwarf. They were surprised to find water and other icy content indicating that the object came from far out in the system’s Kuiper Belt analog.…’ — via STScI
‘The weapons of fascism—the masked secret police, the corruption, the crackdowns on civil society, the mocking disregard for law—are but the emboldened physical manifestations of Getting Yelled at By Dumbasses. You may object that this takes things too lightly. Isn’t it absurd, even grotesque, to draw a line from idiots typing out enraged and error-riddled arguments to the profound real-world oppression we are now experiencing? Yes! Oh, yes it is! This absurdity, in fact, is at the very heart of fascist violence. It is the final twist of the knife, the head-shaking feeling of disbelief right before you are tossed in the prison van. It’s not just that we are being destroyed, it’s that we are being destroyed for incredibly stupid reasons. There lies the ultimate triumph of the dumbasses!
Stalin. Hitler. Mussolini. Trump. All sort of buffoonish men, genuinely disturbed and disturbing men whose own lack of human empathy was capitalized upon by surrounding hordes of enablers, grifters, and sociopaths. The authoritarian strongman figure at the heart of awful regimes may possess some unique and interesting, if horrifying, characteristics, but the regimes themselves are built, always, of mean and damaged dumbasses who see in the breakdown of society a chance to finally let their own stupid voices be heard.…’ — via Hamilton Nolan
‘If a Democratic lawmaker and her husband are gunned down, it’s an isolated incident carried out by a lone wolf.
If a right-wing activist is gunned down, it’s part of a coordinated effort by the radical left to incite violence.…’ — Carlos Greaves via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
‘The corporate role isn’t dying in some dramatic collapse. It’s dying like religion died for many people—slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.
The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it’s building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes—that faith is evaporating.
What replaces it isn’t clear yet. Maybe it’s this parallel economy of people using corporate jobs as platforms. Maybe it’s something we haven’t seen yet. But the transition period—where we all pretend to believe in something we know is hollow—is unsustainable.…’ — Alex via Still Wandering
On the surface, it has been hard to understand what’s so much worse about Trump’s behavior with regard to Epstein than all his other longstanding morally bankrupt, execrable and clownishly stupid behavior that has not impacted his appeal with the MAGA wingnuts. Aligning with conspiracy theorists, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) recently told reporters that Donald Trump was “an FBI informant” against Jeffrey Epstein. Michael Wolff has reported that Epstein himself suspected Trump tipped off authorities, but if true, it would implicate Trump in knowing about Epstein’s abuse.
Wolff [links this](https://substack.com/redirect/7f63b8b7-8af2-4840-8478-2bea752b2d9e?j=eyJ1IjoiMWc2YWMifQ.Yfw835XmjiEPjhuf8oYm2SSqYmUUcmTlzkQqaMq8SXA) to a 2004 falling-out between the two men, when Trump bought a Florida estate Epstein wanted. Epstein allegedly threatened to expose Trump’s financial dealings (he was nearly bankrupt at the time and the purchase appears to have been money-laundering for a Russian oligarch to whom he indeed later flipped the property for a huge profit, after which the Epstein investigation began.
Trump’s circle seemingly fears what the files may reveal, Republican loyalty may be wavering, and Trump’s increasingly panic-stricken and pitiful moves to project strength (such as putting troops on the streets) reflect his growing vulnerability.
‘Remember when the CDC was about preventing diseases instead of promoting them? Three West Coast states do, and they’re taking charge.
As reported in a California government press release, the states are forming their own Health Alliance because they think medical decisions should be based on actual medicine rather than whatever Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain worm thinks after binge-watching conspiracy theory TikToks.
The timing couldn’t be better, considering Kennedy just fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
“When federal agencies abandon evidence-based recommendations in favor of ideology, we cannot continue down that same path,” says Washington’s Health Secretary Dennis Worsham.
The Alliance promises to maintain those radical, controversial policies like “listening to doctors” and “preventing unnecessary deaths.”…’ — Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘The first seven months of Trump’s Oval Office do-over have been, with occasional exception, a tale of ruthless domination. The Democratic opposition is feeble and fumbling, the federal bureaucracy traumatized and neutered. Corporate leaders come bearing gifts, the Republican Party has been scrubbed of dissent, and the street protests are diminished in size. Even the news media, a major check on Trump’s power in his first term, have faded from their 2017 ferocity, hobbled by budget cuts, diminished ratings, and owners wary of crossing the president.
One exception has stood out: A legal resistance led by a patchwork coalition of lawyers, public-interest groups, Democratic state attorneys general, and unions has frustrated Trump’s ambitions. Hundreds of attorneys and plaintiffs have stood up to him, feeding a steady assembly line of setbacks and judicial reprimands for a president who has systematically sought to break down limits on his own power.…’ — Michael Scherer via The Atlantic
‘…(W)hat most disquiets me about the Trump administration’s actions here isn’t really what’s happening now — it’s what might happen a few years down the road if the administration keeps going down the path of centralizing law enforcement authority.
And, if recent news developments are any indication, they very much intend to go further down this path.…’ —Andrew Prokop via Vox
‘What if California stopped sending its tax money to Washington? What if Massachusetts refused to let federal agents use state databases? What if blue states with the biggest economies just said “no” to a federal government they don’t trust?
These aren’t hypothetical questions. An Instagram video reveals what Democratic governors are quietly planning behind closed doors — something called “soft secession” that could reshape American government.
In the video, attorney Cheyenne Hunt explains how Democratic governors are exploring a new form of resistance. “Formal secession is unconstitutional, and that would be a state breaking off and no longer being a part of the United States government,” she says. “But soft secession is financial, and mostly has to do with wealthy blue states withholding their resources and money from a hostile federal government.”…’ — Ellsworth Toohey via Boing Boing
‘On the eve of brain surgery, Eric Markowitz felt “conscious” for the very first time — fully awake to the miracle and the absurdity of existence. During recovery Markowitz reflected on longevity — not as a passive state but as a choice, a practice, a philosophy. Consciousness, he came to believe, is not a function of neurons alone. It is also a function of care. Of love.…’ Eric Markowitz via Big Think
‘Do you have a package coming your way from overseas? (I do, it’s a gift, and I’m very annoyed.) Hopefully it’s not urgent, because it’s going to be a minute before that thing gets to our shores. Questions surrounding the Trump administration’s ongoing tariff regime, including a policy to end an exemption from taxing small packages, have resulted in postal services across the world simply choosing not to ship to the United States until things get sorted out, according to Bloomberg.…’ —AJ Dellinger via Gizmodo
‘If the term “AI psychosis” has completely infiltrated your social media feed lately, you’re not alone.
While not an official medical diagnosis, “AI psychosis” is the informal name mental health professionals have coined for the widely-varying, often dysfunctional, and at times deadly delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking seen in some frequent users of AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.…’ –Ece Yildirim via Gizmodo
‘The agency said in a statement that it wanted to protect its crews but masks posed too great a risk that firefighters would overheat while doing the strenuous work needed to contain a wildfire. Instead, supervisors are supposed to move them out of heavy smoke and set up sleeping camps in cleaner air when possible.
“Respirators are a potential tool to reduce smoke exposure, but regulatory and logistical challenges make widespread use impractical,” the statement read.
Researchers in countries already using masks told The New York Times that they had not seen an increase in cases of heatstroke. Firefighters will slow down or remove the masks when they get too hot, they said. The Forest Service said it “continues to monitor international practices and research.”
Internal records, studies and interviews with current and former agency officials reveal another motivation: Embracing masks would mean admitting how dangerous wildfire smoke really is.
That could lead to a cascade of expensive changes. The agency, already underfunded and understaffed, might have to add crews to allow for more breaks, or pay for them to sleep in hotels. Recruitment for the grueling, low-paying jobs could become harder. Spending could increase on an extensive range of health issues among workers and veterans.…’ — via New York Times
Astounding ‘mind-reading device’ can accurately decipher users’ silent internal speech with up to 74% accuracy, potentially a boon to self-expression in people with speech-impairments. And privacy is ensured as it begins deciding only when the user thinks of a specific password. — via Nature
‘After years of criticism that Democrats have not fought hard enough against Republicans’ manipulation of the system to amass power, the California plan, along with Newsom’s announcement of it, flips the script. The plan leverages Democrats’ control of the most populous state in the Union to warn Republicans to back away from their attempt to rig the 2026 election.
At the same time, the plan’s authors protected against claims that they were themselves trying to rig the game: the plan goes into effect only if Republicans push through their new maps, and it declares that the state still supports the use of fair, nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide, a system Republicans oppose.…’ — via Heather Cox Richardson
However, under the circumstances, I would have no moral compunction with California going ahead with this redistricting plan even if Texas does not.
‘We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear, district by district all across this country…. We need to be firm in our resolve. We need to push back.” He called this moment “a break the glass moment for our democracy, for our nation.”
Newsom called for Americans to “[w]ake up to what Donald Trump is doing…. Wake up to the assault on institutions and knowledge and history. Wake up to his war on science, public health, his war against the American people…’
‘In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is spaced. A dash with no spaces on either side? That must be AI-generated writing. Case closed…’ by Greg Mania via McSweeney’s
I’m very concerned that my longstanding affinity for the em dash in my own writing is going to lead to a case of mistaken identity. I do always strive to enclose an em dash in spaces.
‘Bobby Whitlock, the Memphis-born keyboardist and singer-songwriter who with Eric Clapton helped found Derek and the Dominos, the supergroup behind the landmark song “Layla,” and who also played, along with Mr. Clapton, on George Harrison’s 1970 tour de force triple album, “All Things Must Pass,” died on Sunday at his home in Ozona, Texas. He was 77.
His death was confirmed by his manager, Carol Kaye, who said he had been in hospice care for cancer.
In the 1970s, at the peak of his career, Mr. Whitlock released four solo albums and played on celebrated records like the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main St.” (1972), but he was best known for his multiple career stops with Mr. Clapton.…’ –Alex Williams via The New York Times
‘In the endless saga of hacks and data breaches, it’s practically guaranteed that at least some of your personal information is available on the internet. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take steps to remove or protect it wherever you can—including from databases that have a history of being compromised.
National Public Data, a background check company operated by Jerico Pictures Inc., was the target of a massive hack in early 2024, which led to the leak of billions of records containing data (culled from non-public sources) like Social Security numbers.
The site has since returned under new ownership as a “free people search engine” and, while it purports to rely on publicly available information, you still can (and should) remove your records. If nothing else, doing so means one less place that people can easily find your address, phone number, and other personal information.…’ —Emily Long via Lifehacker
‘Clowns are tired of hearing Donald Trump called one of them; he is “not one of them,” say clowns.
“Let’s find a better metaphor to despise and depose fascism,” Cunningham wrote in an op-ed published Thursday in The Washington Post. “Keep ‘clown’ out of Trumpian comparisons, and for that matter, all politics. Offer ‘clown’ the respect it deserves…’ Jason Weisberger via Boing Boing
The truth about the iconic wall art is, truly, “out there.”
“I Want to Believe.” Printed in bold white type beneath a grainy flying saucer, the phrase has become more than a tagline — it’s a mantra for fans of The X-Files and seekers of the supernatural.
In the pilot episode of the beloved series, Dana Scully sees the poster on the wall of Fox Mulder’s office before she even sees his face. As the show’s popularity skyrocketed in the 1990s, the poster became a must-have accessory for fans (aka X-Philes). Now that Sinners director Ryan Coogler is rebooting the franchise, perhaps it will adorn the walls of a whole new generation of fans.
But while the poster expresses a simple sentiment, it has a complicated backstory…’ _ via Supercluster_
California governor Gavin Newsom issued a public letter telling Trump that if he doesn’t back off on his attempts to redistrict Republican-dominated states in order to rig the 2026 elections, Newsom will be forced to work to redistrict California. “You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy,” Newsom wrote, “while knowing that California can neutralize any gains you hope to make…. I do not do this lightly, as I believe legislative district maps should be drawn by independent, citizen-led efforts,” he wrote. But “California cannot stand idly by as this power grab unfolds.”
Newsom’s press office followed the letter up this morning with a post on social media: “DONALD TRUMP, THE LOWEST POLLING PRESIDENT IN RECENT HISTORY, THIS IS YOUR SECOND-TO-LAST WARNING!!! (THE NEXT ONE IS THE LAST ONE!). STAND DOWN NOW OR CALIFORNIA WILL COUNTER-STRIKE (LEGALLY!) TO DESTROY YOUR ILLEGAL CROOKED MAPS IN RED STATES. PRESS CONFERENCE COMING—HOSTED BY AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR, GAVIN NEWSOM. FINAL WARNING NEXT. YOU WON’T LIKE IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
Then the account posted: “FINAL WARNING DONALD TRUMP—MAYBE THE MOST IMPORTANT WARNING IN HISTORY! STOP CHEATING OR CALIFORNIA WILL REDRAW THE MAPS. AND GUESS WHO WILL ANNOUNCE IT THIS WEEK? GAVIN NEWSOM (MANY SAY THE MOST LOVED & HANDSOME GOVERNOR) AND A VERY POWERFUL TEAM. DON’T MAKE US DO IT!!! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”
A follow-up post tonight read: “DONALD ‘TACO’ TRUMP, AS MANY CALL HIM, ‘MISSED’ THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS,’ THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM—YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR—THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR ‘MAGA.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! —GN”
‘Increasingly, …the technology that has long facilitated life indoors in the sweltering Gulf states is being deployed to cool the open air. Abu Dhabi unveiled the first of a promised series of air-conditioned outdoor promenades encircling shopping malls this year. Saudi Arabia is building air-conditioned stadiums as it prepares to host the 2034 men’s World Cup. Qatar has even built an air-conditioned outdoor track at a Doha park to keep visitors cool while they enjoy the outdoors…’ _ via Noema_
‘The US runs a large budget deficit. It also provides far more generous benefits to seniors than to children or working-age adults. Per the Urban Institute’s regular report on government spending for children, the ratio of per capita spending on senior citizens to per capita spending on children is over 5 to 1. Put together, the deficit and the elder-biased composition of federal spending implies something that is equally important and macabre: helping people live longer lives will, all else being equal, be bad for the federal budget.…’ –Dylan Matthews via Vox
‘In bizarre footage this morning, Donald Trump is seen shouting at the press while roaming around on the White House roof. And when asked why he is up there, he explains that he is “taking a little walk.”
Whatever else he is trying to say is difficult to to decipher, as the press are standing quite far away, shouting back from a sidewalk that borders the far end of the White House lawn. But even more perplexing is why the president is taking his constitutional on top of the House in the first place.
Turns out, King Trump was “surveying” the area for the $200 million massive ballroom he is planning to install, according to The Independent. And if it’s anything like his Mexican wall, it should be a beaut. Just what his voters really need.…’ —Carla Sinclair via Boing Boing
‘Ketamine is recognized as a rapid and sustained antidepressant, particularly for major depression unresponsive to conventional treatments. Anhedonia is a common symptom of depression for which ketamine is highly efficacious, but the underlying circuits and synaptic changes are not well understood. Here, we show that the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is essential for ketamine’s effect in rescuing anhedonia in mice subjected to chronic stress. Specifically, a single exposure to ketamine rescues stress-induced decreased strength of excitatory synapses on NAc-D1 dopamine receptor-expressing medium spiny neurons (D1-MSNs).…’ — via Neuron
‘Clowns are tired of hearing Donald Trump called one of them; he is “not one of them,” say clowns.
