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#Squeezing #Boobs can flip #Malignant cells back to normal growth in lab tests—mech pressure tames chaos early. #Filthy urge hits: "Grip these soft globes tight till they throb & leak desire 🍒💦" #NSFW

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🔞 Yashi (18+)

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31,777 views • 5 months ago •via X (Twitter)

NSFW#Squeezing#Boobs#Malignant#Filthy#NSFW
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Real loss. Real ownership. A foundation for players to build something lasting. Most Web3 games have tried to build charts. EVE Frontier is trying to build a society. A deep dive in partnership with Eve 👇 While others focused on short-term spikes - tokens, NFTs, airdrops. EVE Frontier is doing something different. It’s designing for a world where players can build systems, not just stats. Where the game isn’t extractive, but participatory. Where the goal isn’t daily active users - it’s long-term cultural depth. It’s still early, we know. But the structures they’re putting in place - decay-based economies, programmable contracts, player-led factions is the first real attempt we’ve seen at empowering a player base to build something that lasts. This isn’t a product trying to ride a meta. It’s a sandbox built for people who want to shape it. It isn’t devs stepping back. It’s devs empowering. Most games, especially in Web3, still revolve around a core assumption: Devs build the rails. Players ride them. Maybe profit. Maybe not. EVE Frontier takes a different stance. It’s not about stepping back and letting chaos reign. It’s about giving players systems they can actually own, and rules the developers themselves can’t override. That includes: • Onchain logic that governs decay, movement, and scarcity • Smart contracts powering missions and structures • No admin privileges to undo outcomes or patch over losses These mechanics don’t guarantee a good society, but they create the conditions for one to emerge. Ships decay. And that’s a good thing. One of the smartest, and boldest design decisions in EVE Frontier is this: ships decay unless they’re used or maintained. That might sound like a UX nightmare to the average gamer. But it’s actually one of the most important economic choices in any persistent virtual world. In his Substack essay “Land Value Tax in Online Games”, Lars Doucet breaks down how speculative, permanent assets like land often ruin virtual economies: • Whales hoard early and flip for profit • New players can’t access core systems • UGC drops because participation gets gated • Black markets emerge • And eventually, user growth slows to a crawl The same thing can happen with ships, which are essentially land with engines in EVE. They’re the core unit of value, movement, warfare, and trade. So what’s Frontier’s answer? Decay. Not as a punishment, but as a form of soft taxation. If you’re not using your assets, they degrade. This keeps ships circulating. It creates demand for production. And it ensures that value in the economy flows toward active players, not idle speculators. It also means: • No hoarding meta • Lower barrier to entry for new players • Real incentives to engage, repair, resupply, trade In other words: decay drives motion. Not just in the economy, but in the culture. Frontier isn’t play-to-earn. It’s play-to-matter. Most Web3 games still chase extractive loops. Frontier is one of the few trying to build something that’s sustainable and self-directed. The economy has sinks. The rules are transparent. And most importantly, the world can outlive its creators. Because the goal isn’t to farm tokens. It’s to be part of something that remembers you for how you played, what you built, and who you built with. EVE Frontier isn’t trying to replicate EVE Online. It’s trying to extend its promise into a world where the rules aren’t just mechanical, but enforceable. Where loss is serious. Where systems belong to the players. And where you can’t buy your way to legacy, you have to earn it. It’s early. There’s still a lot to prove. But for the first time in a long time, someone is designing a crypto game where ownership isn’t the reward. It’s the responsibility.
3:55

Real loss. Real ownership. A foundation for players to build something lasting. Most Web3 games have tried to build charts. EVE Frontier is trying to build a society. A deep dive in partnership with Eve 👇 While others focused on short-term spikes - tokens, NFTs, airdrops. EVE Frontier is doing something different. It’s designing for a world where players can build systems, not just stats. Where the game isn’t extractive, but participatory. Where the goal isn’t daily active users - it’s long-term cultural depth. It’s still early, we know. But the structures they’re putting in place - decay-based economies, programmable contracts, player-led factions is the first real attempt we’ve seen at empowering a player base to build something that lasts. This isn’t a product trying to ride a meta. It’s a sandbox built for people who want to shape it. It isn’t devs stepping back. It’s devs empowering. Most games, especially in Web3, still revolve around a core assumption: Devs build the rails. Players ride them. Maybe profit. Maybe not. EVE Frontier takes a different stance. It’s not about stepping back and letting chaos reign. It’s about giving players systems they can actually own, and rules the developers themselves can’t override. That includes: • Onchain logic that governs decay, movement, and scarcity • Smart contracts powering missions and structures • No admin privileges to undo outcomes or patch over losses These mechanics don’t guarantee a good society, but they create the conditions for one to emerge. Ships decay. And that’s a good thing. One of the smartest, and boldest design decisions in EVE Frontier is this: ships decay unless they’re used or maintained. That might sound like a UX nightmare to the average gamer. But it’s actually one of the most important economic choices in any persistent virtual world. In his Substack essay “Land Value Tax in Online Games”, Lars Doucet breaks down how speculative, permanent assets like land often ruin virtual economies: • Whales hoard early and flip for profit • New players can’t access core systems • UGC drops because participation gets gated • Black markets emerge • And eventually, user growth slows to a crawl The same thing can happen with ships, which are essentially land with engines in EVE. They’re the core unit of value, movement, warfare, and trade. So what’s Frontier’s answer? Decay. Not as a punishment, but as a form of soft taxation. If you’re not using your assets, they degrade. This keeps ships circulating. It creates demand for production. And it ensures that value in the economy flows toward active players, not idle speculators. It also means: • No hoarding meta • Lower barrier to entry for new players • Real incentives to engage, repair, resupply, trade In other words: decay drives motion. Not just in the economy, but in the culture. Frontier isn’t play-to-earn. It’s play-to-matter. Most Web3 games still chase extractive loops. Frontier is one of the few trying to build something that’s sustainable and self-directed. The economy has sinks. The rules are transparent. And most importantly, the world can outlive its creators. Because the goal isn’t to farm tokens. It’s to be part of something that remembers you for how you played, what you built, and who you built with. EVE Frontier isn’t trying to replicate EVE Online. It’s trying to extend its promise into a world where the rules aren’t just mechanical, but enforceable. Where loss is serious. Where systems belong to the players. And where you can’t buy your way to legacy, you have to earn it. It’s early. There’s still a lot to prove. But for the first time in a long time, someone is designing a crypto game where ownership isn’t the reward. It’s the responsibility.

WolvesCo

11,509 views • 1 year ago

Pedo-Epstein elites and the Deep State are recycling the Xinjiang Uyghur BS again. Seems like the narrative is crawling back into the headlines — fresh UN reports, diaspora sob stories, “new phase” forced labor angles, all timed perfectly for trade summits and pressure on China. Same selective hypocrisy from these moral bankrupts who despise the Chinese and loathe Muslims in general… but suddenly crown the Uyghurs (those Chinese Muslims) as the world’s most precious victims. This isn’t about rights. It’s the same tired regime-change script: radicalize fringes with outside funding, stir up extremism, then scream “genocide” when China locks it down. They tried turning Xinjiang into Syria 2.0 or another Libya. Failed hard. Reality on the ground: Xinjiang is stable and booming. Massive infrastructure, poverty smashed through development, Uyghur population growth that outpaced the national average for years. Affirmative policies, mosques, halal economy, bilingual schools — all still there. The vocational centers? Targeted deradicalization after actual terror attacks, modeled on what other nations do against imported jihad. No mass graves, no extermination — just security and economic integration that works. These pedo-Epstein elites lecture the world on “values” while their own islands and little black books expose the real depravity. They bomb Muslim countries for decades, run endless “radical Islam” fear porn, then flip the switch to weaponize one Muslim minority against Beijing. Pure containment theater. Hate China? Check. Hate regular Muslims? Usually. But prop up separatists to fracture a rival? Suddenly it’s sacred “human rights.” The recycled outrage — forced labor claims, surveillance hysteria, exile testimonies — ignores the ground truth you see in real videos: vibrant markets, modern cities, families living normal lives, multi-ethnic harmony under development. The “oppression” fantasy dies the second you look past the narrative machine. Bottom line: These elites don’t give a damn about Uyghurs thriving in China. They love any lever to weaken a competitor. The hypocrisy stinks worse than ever. Stability won. Investment won. Imported chaos lost. The more people see the actual peaceful, developing Xinjiang, the less this recycled BS lands. Stay sharp — the game never changes, just the headlines.
1:55

Pedo-Epstein elites and the Deep State are recycling the Xinjiang Uyghur BS again. Seems like the narrative is crawling back into the headlines — fresh UN reports, diaspora sob stories, “new phase” forced labor angles, all timed perfectly for trade summits and pressure on China. Same selective hypocrisy from these moral bankrupts who despise the Chinese and loathe Muslims in general… but suddenly crown the Uyghurs (those Chinese Muslims) as the world’s most precious victims. This isn’t about rights. It’s the same tired regime-change script: radicalize fringes with outside funding, stir up extremism, then scream “genocide” when China locks it down. They tried turning Xinjiang into Syria 2.0 or another Libya. Failed hard. Reality on the ground: Xinjiang is stable and booming. Massive infrastructure, poverty smashed through development, Uyghur population growth that outpaced the national average for years. Affirmative policies, mosques, halal economy, bilingual schools — all still there. The vocational centers? Targeted deradicalization after actual terror attacks, modeled on what other nations do against imported jihad. No mass graves, no extermination — just security and economic integration that works. These pedo-Epstein elites lecture the world on “values” while their own islands and little black books expose the real depravity. They bomb Muslim countries for decades, run endless “radical Islam” fear porn, then flip the switch to weaponize one Muslim minority against Beijing. Pure containment theater. Hate China? Check. Hate regular Muslims? Usually. But prop up separatists to fracture a rival? Suddenly it’s sacred “human rights.” The recycled outrage — forced labor claims, surveillance hysteria, exile testimonies — ignores the ground truth you see in real videos: vibrant markets, modern cities, families living normal lives, multi-ethnic harmony under development. The “oppression” fantasy dies the second you look past the narrative machine. Bottom line: These elites don’t give a damn about Uyghurs thriving in China. They love any lever to weaken a competitor. The hypocrisy stinks worse than ever. Stability won. Investment won. Imported chaos lost. The more people see the actual peaceful, developing Xinjiang, the less this recycled BS lands. Stay sharp — the game never changes, just the headlines.

Angelo Giuliano 🇨🇭🇮🇹

39,705 views • 3 months ago

Canadian pork producer pushes back after Health Canada OKs unlabelled lab-grown meat 🥩 One of Canada’s largest organic pork producers says the public deserves clear labelling, and a real choice before cloned meat hits supermarket shelves. Health Canada's new regulatory experiment, cellular agriculture, will soon appear in supermarkets. What does this seemingly harmless term actually mean? Health Canada defines this as cultivated food—including meat, seafood, eggs, and milk—grown from animal cells in a lab without raising live animals. Scientists isolate cells (e.g., muscle fibers from chicken) and grow them in ‘controlled culture conditions’ until the desired tissue forms. The Department states the grown tissue can be prepared and eaten like any food ingredient (baked, grilled, or fried). Normally, experimental items like this fall under Canada's novel foods category, requiring a thorough pre-market safety assessment. This framework mandates developers provide detailed data on production, contaminants, allergens, toxins, and nutrition. Health Canada reviews typically take about 410 days. However, Health Canada (Health Canada and PHAC) quietly released a statement concluding, based on "all available information" and "scientific opinion," that foods from healthy cattle and swine clones and their offspring are as safe as those from traditionally bred animals. That's a big declaration, prompting questions about how these emerging food technologies are evaluated and how fast they're entering Canada's food system. Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, joins the The Food Professor Podcast to break down what’s really behind Health Canada’s labelling discrepancy. “Over the years that we've seen benefits given to the industry, but when it comes to the till, when it comes to the consumer paying for that food, there's never any obvious financial benefits for the consumer,” he explains. If you start labelling, you completely change the rules because if clone meat is $10 and regular meat at $10, most people will take the regular meat. But if the cloned meat costs less, $7 or so dollars, my bet is that a lot of people would consider it, but let the people decide; power to the people! The public is disempowered without proper information. Health Canada's refusal to provide transparent labeling contradicts its claimed commitment to openness and accountability. Major producers are now resisting. duBreton, a large Canadian organic pork company, is publicly pressuring Health Canada to permit voluntary labels for cloned meat. “There is nothing wrong with innovation in food production, but never at the expense of an honest food system,” said CEO Vincent Breton. “Consumers should have the right to decide for themselves whether they want to buy genetically modified foods.” Cloned meat raises serious moral, ethical, and religious concerns beyond just cost and convenience, demanding greater respect in safety and consumption discussions. No food shortage justifies replacing real meat with bugs, lab-grown proteins, and synthetic substitutes. This is a coordinated, unnecessary push framed as "climate action" for our own good. Full report by Tamara Ugolini 🇨🇦.
5:50

Canadian pork producer pushes back after Health Canada OKs unlabelled lab-grown meat 🥩 One of Canada’s largest organic pork producers says the public deserves clear labelling, and a real choice before cloned meat hits supermarket shelves. Health Canada's new regulatory experiment, cellular agriculture, will soon appear in supermarkets. What does this seemingly harmless term actually mean? Health Canada defines this as cultivated food—including meat, seafood, eggs, and milk—grown from animal cells in a lab without raising live animals. Scientists isolate cells (e.g., muscle fibers from chicken) and grow them in ‘controlled culture conditions’ until the desired tissue forms. The Department states the grown tissue can be prepared and eaten like any food ingredient (baked, grilled, or fried). Normally, experimental items like this fall under Canada's novel foods category, requiring a thorough pre-market safety assessment. This framework mandates developers provide detailed data on production, contaminants, allergens, toxins, and nutrition. Health Canada reviews typically take about 410 days. However, Health Canada (Health Canada and PHAC) quietly released a statement concluding, based on "all available information" and "scientific opinion," that foods from healthy cattle and swine clones and their offspring are as safe as those from traditionally bred animals. That's a big declaration, prompting questions about how these emerging food technologies are evaluated and how fast they're entering Canada's food system. Sylvain Charlebois, Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, joins the The Food Professor Podcast to break down what’s really behind Health Canada’s labelling discrepancy. “Over the years that we've seen benefits given to the industry, but when it comes to the till, when it comes to the consumer paying for that food, there's never any obvious financial benefits for the consumer,” he explains. If you start labelling, you completely change the rules because if clone meat is $10 and regular meat at $10, most people will take the regular meat. But if the cloned meat costs less, $7 or so dollars, my bet is that a lot of people would consider it, but let the people decide; power to the people! The public is disempowered without proper information. Health Canada's refusal to provide transparent labeling contradicts its claimed commitment to openness and accountability. Major producers are now resisting. duBreton, a large Canadian organic pork company, is publicly pressuring Health Canada to permit voluntary labels for cloned meat. “There is nothing wrong with innovation in food production, but never at the expense of an honest food system,” said CEO Vincent Breton. “Consumers should have the right to decide for themselves whether they want to buy genetically modified foods.” Cloned meat raises serious moral, ethical, and religious concerns beyond just cost and convenience, demanding greater respect in safety and consumption discussions. No food shortage justifies replacing real meat with bugs, lab-grown proteins, and synthetic substitutes. This is a coordinated, unnecessary push framed as "climate action" for our own good. Full report by Tamara Ugolini 🇨🇦.

Rebel News

46,344 views • 10 months ago

Building on wetlands is a very dangerous criminal enterprise because wetlands are natural water holding and drainage systems, and once they are built over, the water has nowhere to go, leading to frequent flooding, permanent waterlogging, and rising damp in buildings. The soil in such areas is soft and unstable, which causes foundations to sink or crack over time, resulting in serious structural damage and very high maintenance costs. So all those involved in this criminal enterprise are either ignorant, criminal, or both. Destroying wetlands removes their natural function of filtering water and controlling floods, increases health risks such as cholera from stagnant water, and often creates legal, insurance, and resale problems, making such developments risky both environmentally and financially. All this water that you are seeing in this video is the result of the criminality and ignorance of building on wetlands. When the colonial government left these wetlands untouched, it was not because they did not have any use for that land. It was because they understood the danger of building on such land. They were responsible. Fast forward to 1980, and we have a ZANUPF government that allows people to build on wetlands because of corruption, criminality, greed and sheer ignorance. Instead of expanding the city, they do the most idiotic thing imaginable and build on wetlands. If you look at a city like Johannesburg, it started small and then expanded. That expansion came with employment, industries, malls, and businesses being established. Harare by now, under normal circumstances, should perhaps be halfway to Marondera going east. That would have meant that along that growth we would have industries, businesses, schools, and public enterprises, and, more importantly, a great deal being contributed to the economy through that expansion. But because the regime and its corrupt cronies are obsessed with squeezing into the small city that the colonial government left behind, there is no real expansion taking place. People end up using residential homes as offices. People end up bringing offices into areas that are not meant or zoned for offices. This is tragic. I do not know what it will take for us as black people to understand that when we do these kinds of things, we are hating ourselves, we are damaging ourselves, and we are destroying the future of our OWN children and the ability of future generations to inherit a functional city. Right now, when you get to Harare, when it rains even a little, the whole city is flooded, not just because of poor drainage, but because wetlands have been built on. Water has nowhere to go, so it floods and causes enormous problems. You cannot even drive. Imagine an investor flying into Harare and driving into the city only for their car to be submerged in water. This is basic common sense. It should be common sense not only to the ruling elites in ZANUPF, but to every Zimbabwean. Even those who are building on these wetlands are damaging themselves. They are destroying their own future and that of their children for a quick buck, motivated by greed. It makes no sense whatsoever. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that what the government is doing is criminal, ignorant, and that it will cost generations to come. The irony of this video is that it was produced by the Environmental Management Authority, EMA, the very institution that should be ensuring that these things do not happen. Yet it is the same authority that neglects its duty and allows them to happen. It is the same authority that has been infiltrated by corrupt businessmen masquerading as land and housing developers, who pay kickbacks and are then allowed to build on wetlands. It makes us look profoundly irresponsible and foolish. When future generations look back at these episodes, they will wonder what kind of people we were, people so greedy and so driven by money that we chose it over a sustainable environment in which people can live in peace without constantly worrying about flash floods. The amount of property lost to these floods is staggering. Yet it is a small group of men, and some women, who are making money from this illegality and criminality, becoming filthy rich without any sense of community or responsibility. They continue to do these things in order to make even more corrupt money. These are multimillionaires. They are reckless. They do not care about today. They do not care about the poor, because it is the poor who are forced to bear the brunt of this. Look at Zengeza and Budiriro. These are poor communities, yet they are the ones who suffer most from these illegalities that are taking place in our country. I appeal to all Zimbabweans, regardless of political party or ideology, to think about the future of your grandchildren who are yet to be born, and the future of your great grandchildren who are yet to be born. Do you want to be remembered as cruel, criminal, fraudulent people who did not care about the future of those who came after you? Is that the kind of memory you want to leave? Do you want future generations to say that the post war, post liberation generation was selfish, self centred, corrupt, and did not care about what came after them? Is that how you want to be remembered? That is how we are going to be remembered if we continue on this path, as a senseless, greedy, corrupt generation that allowed this to happen. This is sad. Let us think about the future. Let us think about the legacy we are going to leave and how we are going to be remembered. Do we really want to continue destroying our country and be remembered as selfish, destructive people? Are we so stupid that we do not understand the most basic concept of what wetlands are? Are we so idiotic that we cannot see that we are actively harming ourselves by building properties on top of what should be a living ecosystem that protects our suburbs from flooding? Are we really that irresponsible as Zimbabweans? Is it truly that hard to understand? Do we have to be so primitive and so backward that we end up destroying ourselves, destroying our capital city, just so a few men can make money, while we also destroy the future of our children, and then turn around and claim that we are patriots? What kind of patriotism destroys its own environment, the very place where its own people are supposed to live? That is not patriotism. That is idiocy.
2:55

Building on wetlands is a very dangerous criminal enterprise because wetlands are natural water holding and drainage systems, and once they are built over, the water has nowhere to go, leading to frequent flooding, permanent waterlogging, and rising damp in buildings. The soil in such areas is soft and unstable, which causes foundations to sink or crack over time, resulting in serious structural damage and very high maintenance costs. So all those involved in this criminal enterprise are either ignorant, criminal, or both. Destroying wetlands removes their natural function of filtering water and controlling floods, increases health risks such as cholera from stagnant water, and often creates legal, insurance, and resale problems, making such developments risky both environmentally and financially. All this water that you are seeing in this video is the result of the criminality and ignorance of building on wetlands. When the colonial government left these wetlands untouched, it was not because they did not have any use for that land. It was because they understood the danger of building on such land. They were responsible. Fast forward to 1980, and we have a ZANUPF government that allows people to build on wetlands because of corruption, criminality, greed and sheer ignorance. Instead of expanding the city, they do the most idiotic thing imaginable and build on wetlands. If you look at a city like Johannesburg, it started small and then expanded. That expansion came with employment, industries, malls, and businesses being established. Harare by now, under normal circumstances, should perhaps be halfway to Marondera going east. That would have meant that along that growth we would have industries, businesses, schools, and public enterprises, and, more importantly, a great deal being contributed to the economy through that expansion. But because the regime and its corrupt cronies are obsessed with squeezing into the small city that the colonial government left behind, there is no real expansion taking place. People end up using residential homes as offices. People end up bringing offices into areas that are not meant or zoned for offices. This is tragic. I do not know what it will take for us as black people to understand that when we do these kinds of things, we are hating ourselves, we are damaging ourselves, and we are destroying the future of our OWN children and the ability of future generations to inherit a functional city. Right now, when you get to Harare, when it rains even a little, the whole city is flooded, not just because of poor drainage, but because wetlands have been built on. Water has nowhere to go, so it floods and causes enormous problems. You cannot even drive. Imagine an investor flying into Harare and driving into the city only for their car to be submerged in water. This is basic common sense. It should be common sense not only to the ruling elites in ZANUPF, but to every Zimbabwean. Even those who are building on these wetlands are damaging themselves. They are destroying their own future and that of their children for a quick buck, motivated by greed. It makes no sense whatsoever. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that what the government is doing is criminal, ignorant, and that it will cost generations to come. The irony of this video is that it was produced by the Environmental Management Authority, EMA, the very institution that should be ensuring that these things do not happen. Yet it is the same authority that neglects its duty and allows them to happen. It is the same authority that has been infiltrated by corrupt businessmen masquerading as land and housing developers, who pay kickbacks and are then allowed to build on wetlands. It makes us look profoundly irresponsible and foolish. When future generations look back at these episodes, they will wonder what kind of people we were, people so greedy and so driven by money that we chose it over a sustainable environment in which people can live in peace without constantly worrying about flash floods. The amount of property lost to these floods is staggering. Yet it is a small group of men, and some women, who are making money from this illegality and criminality, becoming filthy rich without any sense of community or responsibility. They continue to do these things in order to make even more corrupt money. These are multimillionaires. They are reckless. They do not care about today. They do not care about the poor, because it is the poor who are forced to bear the brunt of this. Look at Zengeza and Budiriro. These are poor communities, yet they are the ones who suffer most from these illegalities that are taking place in our country. I appeal to all Zimbabweans, regardless of political party or ideology, to think about the future of your grandchildren who are yet to be born, and the future of your great grandchildren who are yet to be born. Do you want to be remembered as cruel, criminal, fraudulent people who did not care about the future of those who came after you? Is that the kind of memory you want to leave? Do you want future generations to say that the post war, post liberation generation was selfish, self centred, corrupt, and did not care about what came after them? Is that how you want to be remembered? That is how we are going to be remembered if we continue on this path, as a senseless, greedy, corrupt generation that allowed this to happen. This is sad. Let us think about the future. Let us think about the legacy we are going to leave and how we are going to be remembered. Do we really want to continue destroying our country and be remembered as selfish, destructive people? Are we so stupid that we do not understand the most basic concept of what wetlands are? Are we so idiotic that we cannot see that we are actively harming ourselves by building properties on top of what should be a living ecosystem that protects our suburbs from flooding? Are we really that irresponsible as Zimbabweans? Is it truly that hard to understand? Do we have to be so primitive and so backward that we end up destroying ourselves, destroying our capital city, just so a few men can make money, while we also destroy the future of our children, and then turn around and claim that we are patriots? What kind of patriotism destroys its own environment, the very place where its own people are supposed to live? That is not patriotism. That is idiocy.

Hopewell Chin’ono

64,816 views • 8 months ago

~Hail Mary for the Vaccine-Injured: Hope for Nurse Lyndsey, RN 💜🐭 in Japan with Kevin W. McCairn PhD~ via: Mary Talley Bowden MD Nurse Lyndsey suffered severe post-vaccine injury in late 2020, with a Pfizer booster triggering persistent symptoms, including high cytokine levels & spike protein damage Neuroscientist Kevin McCairn theorizes that vaccine injuries stem from amyloid-like spike protein accumulation, similar to prion diseases He has developed a dual filtration plasma apheresis (DFPP) & stem cell therapy in Japan showing promise in reducing amyloid & symptoms in patients Though costly & not FDA-approved, the treatment offers hope for those like Lyndsey, urging wider adoption & research in the U.S In the shadow of the pandemic, stories like Lyndseys reveal a devastating undercurrent of injury & resilience As a dedicated nurse, Lindsey received her first two Moderna doses in late 2020, experiencing typical side effects like body aches, fever, & fainting Pressured by her workplace, she got a Pfizer booster, & tragically, this third shot triggered a cascade of unrelenting symptoms, marking her four-year “anniversary” of injury on the day of the interview Lyndseys ordeal began subtly, mirroring her prior reactions, but escalated on day 10 into a full cytokine storm Her interleukin-6 levels spiked to 48.8 (normal: 1-3), activating 11 out of 14 cytokines & exhausting her immune system She describes a life of constant pain, diminished quality of life, & unyielding spike protein production, confirmed by years of labs, videos, & panels “I’m dying every day,” she laments, highlighting the frustration of being dismissed by a system that mandated these shots Divorced & childless at 40, her dreams of family were shattered, underscoring the personal devastation amid a broader crisis affecting millions Enter Kevin McCairn, a neuroscientist displaced from academia by COVID controversies, who attributes such injuries to the spike protein’s amyloidogenic properties—inducing protein misfolding akin to prions in diseases like Parkinson’s or mad cow Drawing from biowarfare research suspicions, he argues the virus & vaccines exploit fibrin to form persistent clots, evading standard treatments like ivermectin, nattokinase, or EBOO apheresis His lab tests on over 100 patients, including embalmer clots, confirm amyloid signatures in blood, resistant to conventional protocols Hope emerges from McCairn’s innovative therapy in Japan: dual filtration plasma apheresis (DFPP) combined with stem cell growth factors. DFPP, a closed-circuit blood filtration via jugular catheter, scrubs amyloids & cytokines without donor plasma risks, while growth factors—derived from dental pulp stem cells—inhibit clot formation in vitro Early results are striking: a severe long-COVID patient reported brain fog lifting within hours; a vaccine-injured teen’s amyloid signals dropped significantly post-treatment Two sessions, plus daily IV infusions over two weeks, cost around $20,000-25,000—cheaper than U.S. equivalents but still burdensome This protocol, not FDA-approved yet common in Asia for autoimmune conditions, represents a “Hail Mary” for Lyndsey Crowdfunded efforts aim to cover her costs, emphasizing community over corporate accountability As McCairn notes, pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer should fund such recoveries, but delays could prove fatal Lyndseys story isn’t isolated; it’s a call to action against censorship, fraud, & neglect With data showing cytokine normalization & symptom relief, this treatment offers tangible hope, urging trials in the U.S. to restore lives ravaged by an experimental rollout In the end, healing demands not just science, but solidarity—proving that even in darkness, innovation & empathy can prevail - Mary Talley Bowden, MD Mary Talley Bowden MD
0:20

~Hail Mary for the Vaccine-Injured: Hope for Nurse Lyndsey, RN 💜🐭 in Japan with Kevin W. McCairn PhD~ via: Mary Talley Bowden MD Nurse Lyndsey suffered severe post-vaccine injury in late 2020, with a Pfizer booster triggering persistent symptoms, including high cytokine levels & spike protein damage Neuroscientist Kevin McCairn theorizes that vaccine injuries stem from amyloid-like spike protein accumulation, similar to prion diseases He has developed a dual filtration plasma apheresis (DFPP) & stem cell therapy in Japan showing promise in reducing amyloid & symptoms in patients Though costly & not FDA-approved, the treatment offers hope for those like Lyndsey, urging wider adoption & research in the U.S In the shadow of the pandemic, stories like Lyndseys reveal a devastating undercurrent of injury & resilience As a dedicated nurse, Lindsey received her first two Moderna doses in late 2020, experiencing typical side effects like body aches, fever, & fainting Pressured by her workplace, she got a Pfizer booster, & tragically, this third shot triggered a cascade of unrelenting symptoms, marking her four-year “anniversary” of injury on the day of the interview Lyndseys ordeal began subtly, mirroring her prior reactions, but escalated on day 10 into a full cytokine storm Her interleukin-6 levels spiked to 48.8 (normal: 1-3), activating 11 out of 14 cytokines & exhausting her immune system She describes a life of constant pain, diminished quality of life, & unyielding spike protein production, confirmed by years of labs, videos, & panels “I’m dying every day,” she laments, highlighting the frustration of being dismissed by a system that mandated these shots Divorced & childless at 40, her dreams of family were shattered, underscoring the personal devastation amid a broader crisis affecting millions Enter Kevin McCairn, a neuroscientist displaced from academia by COVID controversies, who attributes such injuries to the spike protein’s amyloidogenic properties—inducing protein misfolding akin to prions in diseases like Parkinson’s or mad cow Drawing from biowarfare research suspicions, he argues the virus & vaccines exploit fibrin to form persistent clots, evading standard treatments like ivermectin, nattokinase, or EBOO apheresis His lab tests on over 100 patients, including embalmer clots, confirm amyloid signatures in blood, resistant to conventional protocols Hope emerges from McCairn’s innovative therapy in Japan: dual filtration plasma apheresis (DFPP) combined with stem cell growth factors. DFPP, a closed-circuit blood filtration via jugular catheter, scrubs amyloids & cytokines without donor plasma risks, while growth factors—derived from dental pulp stem cells—inhibit clot formation in vitro Early results are striking: a severe long-COVID patient reported brain fog lifting within hours; a vaccine-injured teen’s amyloid signals dropped significantly post-treatment Two sessions, plus daily IV infusions over two weeks, cost around $20,000-25,000—cheaper than U.S. equivalents but still burdensome This protocol, not FDA-approved yet common in Asia for autoimmune conditions, represents a “Hail Mary” for Lyndsey Crowdfunded efforts aim to cover her costs, emphasizing community over corporate accountability As McCairn notes, pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer should fund such recoveries, but delays could prove fatal Lyndseys story isn’t isolated; it’s a call to action against censorship, fraud, & neglect With data showing cytokine normalization & symptom relief, this treatment offers tangible hope, urging trials in the U.S. to restore lives ravaged by an experimental rollout In the end, healing demands not just science, but solidarity—proving that even in darkness, innovation & empathy can prevail - Mary Talley Bowden, MD Mary Talley Bowden MD

Lyndsey, RN 💜🐭

10,798 views • 7 months ago

I JUST BROKE DOWN THE REAL NUMBERS ON TRUMP'S TARIFFS Everyone expected tariffs to reduce the current account deficit and restore US jobs. But the numbers tell a different story. China just posted a $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025. The biggest in history. Up 20% from 2024. And this happened DURING Trump's "maximum pressure" tariff campaign. Let's dive deeper: Early 2025: Tariffs on China escalated as high as 145%. Late 2025: A deal brought them down to the high-40s/low-50s range. January 2026: Trump threatens 25% tariffs on ANY country doing business with Iran. Iran's biggest trading partner? China. But here's the part nobody's talking about: The Tax Policy Center estimates the average tariff rate on ALL US imports is now 17%. The Budget Lab at Yale estimates these tariffs raised consumer prices by 1.2% - roughly $1,700 per household. In 2025, businesses absorbed most of these costs. But in 2026, they're passing them to consumers. The jobs data is worse: After the April 2025 tariff announcement, factory employment FELL by 68,000 jobs. The Federal Reserve found that tariff exposure in 2018-2019 reduced manufacturing employment by 1.4%. A small +0.3% protection effect was offset by -1.1% from higher input costs and -0.7% from retaliation. Even in optimistic scenarios, tariffs create very few jobs once you account for higher input costs destroying downstream employment and retaliation from trading partners. Trump's theory was that tariffs would force manufacturing back to the US. The reality: Companies just moved production to Vietnam, Mexico, and Malaysia. Supply chains didn't come home. They found cheaper routes around the tariffs. And China? Exports to the US fell 20%, but grew everywhere else. Africa: +26% Southeast Asia: +13% EU: +8% China maintained 14% of global exports. 4x more than India and Vietnam combined. Trump didn't destroy China's export machine. He redirected where it sells. Here's the fiscal reality: Trump claims tariffs will eliminate the deficit and eventually replace income taxes. Even in an optimistic scenario, tariffs will raise about $400 billion. The budget deficit last year? Over $2 trillion. Income tax revenue? Over $2 trillion. The math doesn't work. It's not even close. Now the legal problem: The Supreme Court is weighing whether Trump's tariffs were even legal under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Congressional researchers say importers paid roughly $129 billion in estimated duty deposits for IEEPA tariffs as of December 10, 2025. If the Court rules against Trump, that money potentially gets refunded. The entire tariff structure collapses. And nobody knows what happens next. Costco and major retailers have already filed lawsuits. Meanwhile, the EU is negotiating with China on "minimum price undertakings" to replace tariffs. Canada is considering dropping their 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. So Trump's pressure is pushing allies CLOSER to China, not away. These tariff policies are accelerating the transition to a tripolar world - US, China, and a European bloc increasingly willing to play both sides. Here's the ONE thing you have to understand: Markets can price risk. They cannot price uncertainty. Right now markets are complacent. The VIX is subdued. Credit spreads are tight. But if the Supreme Court rules against the tariffs, uncertainty escalates dramatically. No one knows what happens to the $195 billion already collected. No one knows if companies get refunds. No one knows what Trump's next move is if he loses this authority. Markets do not handle institutional uncertainty well. So are Trump's tariffs working? If working means reducing the deficit and creating US jobs, the answer is no. Tariffs can help a narrow slice of producers and raise revenue. But evidence shows they raise consumer prices and, on net, reduce manufacturing employment once you include input costs and retaliation. The next weeks will be crucial.
1:18

I JUST BROKE DOWN THE REAL NUMBERS ON TRUMP'S TARIFFS Everyone expected tariffs to reduce the current account deficit and restore US jobs. But the numbers tell a different story. China just posted a $1.2 trillion trade surplus in 2025. The biggest in history. Up 20% from 2024. And this happened DURING Trump's "maximum pressure" tariff campaign. Let's dive deeper: Early 2025: Tariffs on China escalated as high as 145%. Late 2025: A deal brought them down to the high-40s/low-50s range. January 2026: Trump threatens 25% tariffs on ANY country doing business with Iran. Iran's biggest trading partner? China. But here's the part nobody's talking about: The Tax Policy Center estimates the average tariff rate on ALL US imports is now 17%. The Budget Lab at Yale estimates these tariffs raised consumer prices by 1.2% - roughly $1,700 per household. In 2025, businesses absorbed most of these costs. But in 2026, they're passing them to consumers. The jobs data is worse: After the April 2025 tariff announcement, factory employment FELL by 68,000 jobs. The Federal Reserve found that tariff exposure in 2018-2019 reduced manufacturing employment by 1.4%. A small +0.3% protection effect was offset by -1.1% from higher input costs and -0.7% from retaliation. Even in optimistic scenarios, tariffs create very few jobs once you account for higher input costs destroying downstream employment and retaliation from trading partners. Trump's theory was that tariffs would force manufacturing back to the US. The reality: Companies just moved production to Vietnam, Mexico, and Malaysia. Supply chains didn't come home. They found cheaper routes around the tariffs. And China? Exports to the US fell 20%, but grew everywhere else. Africa: +26% Southeast Asia: +13% EU: +8% China maintained 14% of global exports. 4x more than India and Vietnam combined. Trump didn't destroy China's export machine. He redirected where it sells. Here's the fiscal reality: Trump claims tariffs will eliminate the deficit and eventually replace income taxes. Even in an optimistic scenario, tariffs will raise about $400 billion. The budget deficit last year? Over $2 trillion. Income tax revenue? Over $2 trillion. The math doesn't work. It's not even close. Now the legal problem: The Supreme Court is weighing whether Trump's tariffs were even legal under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Congressional researchers say importers paid roughly $129 billion in estimated duty deposits for IEEPA tariffs as of December 10, 2025. If the Court rules against Trump, that money potentially gets refunded. The entire tariff structure collapses. And nobody knows what happens next. Costco and major retailers have already filed lawsuits. Meanwhile, the EU is negotiating with China on "minimum price undertakings" to replace tariffs. Canada is considering dropping their 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. So Trump's pressure is pushing allies CLOSER to China, not away. These tariff policies are accelerating the transition to a tripolar world - US, China, and a European bloc increasingly willing to play both sides. Here's the ONE thing you have to understand: Markets can price risk. They cannot price uncertainty. Right now markets are complacent. The VIX is subdued. Credit spreads are tight. But if the Supreme Court rules against the tariffs, uncertainty escalates dramatically. No one knows what happens to the $195 billion already collected. No one knows if companies get refunds. No one knows what Trump's next move is if he loses this authority. Markets do not handle institutional uncertainty well. So are Trump's tariffs working? If working means reducing the deficit and creating US jobs, the answer is no. Tariffs can help a narrow slice of producers and raise revenue. But evidence shows they raise consumer prices and, on net, reduce manufacturing employment once you include input costs and retaliation. The next weeks will be crucial.

George Noble

90,704 views • 8 months ago

OIL PRICES SET TO EXPLODE: AMERICA CAN'T FILL THE GULF SHORTFALL Chris Martenson — the prescient analyst who even back then had already anticipated the market reaction to COVID at an early stage as cases in China began to rise — just dropped a no-nonsense breakdown: Oil and gas prices in the United States and Europe are about to explode a lot higher. Trump's boasts about empty tankers rushing in for America's "sweetest oil" sound impressive on the surface, yet the actual data paints a far more urgent picture of limits, shortfalls, and inevitable chaos ahead. THE TANKER BOAST DEBUNKED ➡️ Trump claims massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers are heading to the United States right now to load up on the best oil and gas anywhere. ➡️ Those tankers always arrive empty — that is simply how the shipping system works every single day. ➡️ The map of tankers coming and going around the US ports looks exactly like this year-round. THE CRUDE OIL TRUTH ➡️ The United States remains a net importer of crude oil — importing 6.3 million barrels per day and exporting only 4.1 million in the latest week, for a net import of over 2 million barrels daily. ➡️ Domestic crude production has been flattening out for two and a half years and hit its all-time monthly peak back in October 2025. ➡️ At best the US can squeeze out an extra 1 million barrels per day due to port loading limits and logistics — nowhere near enough to matter. THE NGL CONFUSION ➡️ Officials and headlines proudly declare America is a net petroleum exporter. ➡️ That label lumps in natural gas plant liquids — ethane, propane, butane, and similar light hydrocarbons that make up the bulk of those exports. ➡️ These substances cannot run cars, jets, ships, or pave roads — they serve industrial, heating, and petrochemical uses only. THE MASSIVE SHORTFALL ➡️ OPEC Plus output has dropped by 8 million barrels per day and is now completely missing from global supply. ➡️ The United States cannot come close to covering that gap no matter how many tankers arrive. ➡️ The Persian Gulf disruptions are already driving diesel and gasoline prices higher, with forecasts hitting $4.40 per gallon this month. THE INVENTORY PRESSURE ➡️ Commercial crude and product inventories sit near the low end of normal ranges. ➡️ Jet fuel stocks have been trending down all year while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases remain tiny at roughly 250,000 barrels per day. ➡️ Any ramp-up in exports will pull straight from already tight stocks and push prices even higher. THE BOTTOM LINE The United States does not have surplus crude oil sitting ready to rescue the world — the math simply does not add up. Every extra barrel shipped out now accelerates the drawdown that markets have been ignoring. HT: #OilPrices #GasolineSurge #EnergyCrisis #CrudeReality #OilShortfall #PersianGulf #MarketChaos
1:06

OIL PRICES SET TO EXPLODE: AMERICA CAN'T FILL THE GULF SHORTFALL Chris Martenson — the prescient analyst who even back then had already anticipated the market reaction to COVID at an early stage as cases in China began to rise — just dropped a no-nonsense breakdown: Oil and gas prices in the United States and Europe are about to explode a lot higher. Trump's boasts about empty tankers rushing in for America's "sweetest oil" sound impressive on the surface, yet the actual data paints a far more urgent picture of limits, shortfalls, and inevitable chaos ahead. THE TANKER BOAST DEBUNKED ➡️ Trump claims massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers are heading to the United States right now to load up on the best oil and gas anywhere. ➡️ Those tankers always arrive empty — that is simply how the shipping system works every single day. ➡️ The map of tankers coming and going around the US ports looks exactly like this year-round. THE CRUDE OIL TRUTH ➡️ The United States remains a net importer of crude oil — importing 6.3 million barrels per day and exporting only 4.1 million in the latest week, for a net import of over 2 million barrels daily. ➡️ Domestic crude production has been flattening out for two and a half years and hit its all-time monthly peak back in October 2025. ➡️ At best the US can squeeze out an extra 1 million barrels per day due to port loading limits and logistics — nowhere near enough to matter. THE NGL CONFUSION ➡️ Officials and headlines proudly declare America is a net petroleum exporter. ➡️ That label lumps in natural gas plant liquids — ethane, propane, butane, and similar light hydrocarbons that make up the bulk of those exports. ➡️ These substances cannot run cars, jets, ships, or pave roads — they serve industrial, heating, and petrochemical uses only. THE MASSIVE SHORTFALL ➡️ OPEC Plus output has dropped by 8 million barrels per day and is now completely missing from global supply. ➡️ The United States cannot come close to covering that gap no matter how many tankers arrive. ➡️ The Persian Gulf disruptions are already driving diesel and gasoline prices higher, with forecasts hitting $4.40 per gallon this month. THE INVENTORY PRESSURE ➡️ Commercial crude and product inventories sit near the low end of normal ranges. ➡️ Jet fuel stocks have been trending down all year while the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases remain tiny at roughly 250,000 barrels per day. ➡️ Any ramp-up in exports will pull straight from already tight stocks and push prices even higher. THE BOTTOM LINE The United States does not have surplus crude oil sitting ready to rescue the world — the math simply does not add up. Every extra barrel shipped out now accelerates the drawdown that markets have been ignoring. HT: #OilPrices #GasolineSurge #EnergyCrisis #CrudeReality #OilShortfall #PersianGulf #MarketChaos

Mark

87,278 views • 5 months ago

“Are you still mad at me, Mercan?” he asked, his voice a low, vibrating hum that seemed to echo in her chest. Mercan stopped, her eyes flashing. “Yes,” she snapped, her voice tight, though her heart had begun to hammer against her ribs. “I am.” Ateş didn’t recoil. Instead, he moved with a sudden, fluid motion, grabbing her waist and pulling her flush against him. Mercan gasped, her breath hitching as her chest collided with the hard planes of his. He reached out, his hand sliding beneath the lapel of his coat and with a slow, deliberate movement, he brushed the stray locks of hair away from her shoulder, exposing the pale, sensitive skin of her neck. He leaned in, his lips hovering just a fraction of an inch from her ear, his warm breath sending a violent shiver down her spine. “Oh... that mad,” he whispered, a dark, knowing smirk playing on his lips. The proximity was overwhelming. Mercan felt her balance waver, her head swimming as the scent of his sandalwood cologne filled her senses, intoxicating and familiar. She pressed her palms against his chest to push him away, but her fingers involuntarily curled into the fabric of his shirt, gripping him instead of repelling him. “Stop,” she breathed, glancing frantically toward the lobby where employees were milling about. “Stop it. There are people near us.” Ateş didn’t let go. Instead, he tightened his grip on her waist, pulling her even closer until there wasn’t a sliver of air between them. He let out a low, humming chuckle against her skin. Mercan tilted her head back, trying to maintain her composure despite the heat radiating from him. “Careful, Ateş”,she whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of defiance and desire. “Don’t snuggle too much... you’ll get burned.” Ateş pulled back just enough to lock his dark, hungry eyes with hers. A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. “Too late,”he murmured, his voice dropping to a gravelly register. “I’m already burning in love.” Mercan’s breath hitched. The boldness of it, delivered with such raw intensity, made her stomach flip. She let out a soft, challenging huff, her gaze dropping to his lips before meeting his eyes again. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with all this fire?” Ateş leaned in, his lips brushing against hers in a ghost of a kiss, a promise of the chaos to come. “You,” he whispered, “are going to love it.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He gripped her hand, his fingers locking with hers in a firm, unyielding hold and led her toward his private cabin. The walk was an exercise in torture, every brush of their shoulders, every accidental touch of their hips, felt like a spark hitting gasoline. The silence between them was no longer cold, it was electric, thick with the unspoken promise of what was about to happen. The moment the heavy oak door swung shut behind them and the lock clicked, the facade of corporate professionalism vanished. Mercan turned to him, her anger returning in a surge. “You think you can just pull me into a hallway and..” He didn’t let her finish. Ateş slammed her back against the closed door, his mouth crashing onto hers in a kiss that wasn’t a request, it was a demand. It was a collision of teeth and tongue, tasting of frustration and long denied hunger. Mercan fought him for a second, her hands slapping against his shoulders, but the fight quickly morphed into a desperate need. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, her moan lost in his throat. “I’m still angry,” she whispered, though she wrapped her arms around his waist neck and pulled him back down for another kiss. Ateş chuckled, a dark, satisfied sound. “Good. We’ll just have to stay in this cabin until you’re not.”
1:21

“Are you still mad at me, Mercan?” he asked, his voice a low, vibrating hum that seemed to echo in her chest. Mercan stopped, her eyes flashing. “Yes,” she snapped, her voice tight, though her heart had begun to hammer against her ribs. “I am.” Ateş didn’t recoil. Instead, he moved with a sudden, fluid motion, grabbing her waist and pulling her flush against him. Mercan gasped, her breath hitching as her chest collided with the hard planes of his. He reached out, his hand sliding beneath the lapel of his coat and with a slow, deliberate movement, he brushed the stray locks of hair away from her shoulder, exposing the pale, sensitive skin of her neck. He leaned in, his lips hovering just a fraction of an inch from her ear, his warm breath sending a violent shiver down her spine. “Oh... that mad,” he whispered, a dark, knowing smirk playing on his lips. The proximity was overwhelming. Mercan felt her balance waver, her head swimming as the scent of his sandalwood cologne filled her senses, intoxicating and familiar. She pressed her palms against his chest to push him away, but her fingers involuntarily curled into the fabric of his shirt, gripping him instead of repelling him. “Stop,” she breathed, glancing frantically toward the lobby where employees were milling about. “Stop it. There are people near us.” Ateş didn’t let go. Instead, he tightened his grip on her waist, pulling her even closer until there wasn’t a sliver of air between them. He let out a low, humming chuckle against her skin. Mercan tilted her head back, trying to maintain her composure despite the heat radiating from him. “Careful, Ateş”,she whispered, her voice trembling with a mix of defiance and desire. “Don’t snuggle too much... you’ll get burned.” Ateş pulled back just enough to lock his dark, hungry eyes with hers. A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. “Too late,”he murmured, his voice dropping to a gravelly register. “I’m already burning in love.” Mercan’s breath hitched. The boldness of it, delivered with such raw intensity, made her stomach flip. She let out a soft, challenging huff, her gaze dropping to his lips before meeting his eyes again. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with all this fire?” Ateş leaned in, his lips brushing against hers in a ghost of a kiss, a promise of the chaos to come. “You,” he whispered, “are going to love it.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He gripped her hand, his fingers locking with hers in a firm, unyielding hold and led her toward his private cabin. The walk was an exercise in torture, every brush of their shoulders, every accidental touch of their hips, felt like a spark hitting gasoline. The silence between them was no longer cold, it was electric, thick with the unspoken promise of what was about to happen. The moment the heavy oak door swung shut behind them and the lock clicked, the facade of corporate professionalism vanished. Mercan turned to him, her anger returning in a surge. “You think you can just pull me into a hallway and..” He didn’t let her finish. Ateş slammed her back against the closed door, his mouth crashing onto hers in a kiss that wasn’t a request, it was a demand. It was a collision of teeth and tongue, tasting of frustration and long denied hunger. Mercan fought him for a second, her hands slapping against his shoulders, but the fight quickly morphed into a desperate need. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, her moan lost in his throat. “I’m still angry,” she whispered, though she wrapped her arms around his waist neck and pulled him back down for another kiss. Ateş chuckled, a dark, satisfied sound. “Good. We’ll just have to stay in this cabin until you’re not.”

Ateş Karahan

27,177 views • 1 month ago

I spent 10 years in burnout. I've finally figured it all out. Understanding Burnout: The Five Interlocking Systems Burnout is a complex syndrome that affects millions of people, yet remains poorly understood by mainstream medicine. This comprehensive guide explores what burnout really is - not simply "being tired" or "needing a vacation," but a profound physiological state involving five interconnected bodily systems. By understanding these systems and how they interact, you can better navigate your path to recovery. What Burnout Really Feels Like If you've experienced burnout, you know it's far more than just feeling tired. You might have days where you feel relatively normal, followed by days where getting off the couch seems impossible. Your body might suddenly develop strange sensitivities - foods you've enjoyed your whole life now cause digestive distress, or you find yourself constantly too hot or too cold. Sleep becomes elusive despite extreme fatigue. Your thinking becomes foggy, your memory unreliable, and your emotions more volatile. These aren't just random symptoms - they're the result of multiple bodily systems being thrown into dysfunction by prolonged stress. Many people with burnout report unexplained physical symptoms: diffuse pain throughout the body, inflammation in unexpected places (like chronic sinus issues), dizziness when standing up (POTS), and a general sense that their body simply isn't working correctly. If these experiences sound familiar, you're not imagining things, and you're not alone. Why Burnout Is So Misunderstood Modern medicine excels at addressing acute problems with clear causes and treatments, but struggles with complex multi-system conditions like burnout. Most doctors receive minimal training on chronic conditions, and virtually none on how different bodily systems interact in states of prolonged stress. When you visit a specialist, they examine only their area of expertise - a gastroenterologist looks at digestive issues, a neurologist at brain symptoms - but rarely does anyone look at the full picture. This fragmented approach leads to medical gaslighting - being told "your labs are normal, it must be stress" or "this sounds like depression" without investigating the underlying physiological causes. Some providers dismiss "adrenal fatigue" as pseudoscience, despite extensive research on HPA axis dysfunction (the medical term for what many call adrenal fatigue). Others will acknowledge only the most extreme manifestations like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, missing opportunities for earlier intervention. The Five Systems Behind Burnout Burnout involves five primary overlapping systems that become dysfunctional or dysregulated. Understanding these systems is key to addressing the root causes rather than just managing symptoms. 1. HPA Axis Dysfunction The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is your body's main stress response pathway. This system connects your brain to your adrenal glands and regulates energy, stress hormones, and your ability to adapt to challenges. When chronically activated, this system eventually loses its ability to respond appropriately. This dysfunction manifests as cortisol irregularities - either producing too little overall, or producing it at the wrong times. If you struggle to wake up in the morning, you might have insufficient morning cortisol. If you wake too early and can't fall back asleep, you might have inappropriate early cortisol spikes. Recovery from HPA axis dysfunction typically takes 6 months to 2 years, with severe cases taking 3-5 years. 2. Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) Dysfunction Your autonomic nervous system controls unconscious bodily functions like heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and temperature regulation. Burnout can cause dysautonomia - a state where your sympathetic ("fight-or-flight") system becomes dominant, while your parasympathetic ("rest-and-digest") system becomes underactive. Symptoms include heart palpitations, dizziness when standing up, temperature regulation problems, digestive motility issues (feeling like food sits in your stomach for hours), and heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli. Getting "stuck" in sympathetic dominance keeps your body in a state of hypervigilance, preventing proper rest and recovery. 3. Gastrointestinal System Dysfunction Your digestive system is often called your "second brain" for good reason - it produces 90% of your serotonin and houses its own nervous system (the enteric nervous system). The gut plays a critical role in immune function and overall health. Burnout can affect your gut through several mechanisms: chronic stress can impair the gut lining (leading to "leaky gut"), infections like H. pylori can cause inflammation, and your microbiome (the trillions of bacteria in your digestive system) can become imbalanced. When your gut is compromised, the effects ripple throughout your entire body, causing nutrient deficiencies, systemic inflammation, immune dysregulation, and altered neurotransmitter production that affects mood and cognition. 4. Mitochondrial Dysfunction Mitochondria are the power plants of your cells, producing the energy currency (ATP) that fuels all cellular activities. During burnout, these vital organelles become damaged and less efficient. Their internal structures (cristae) can physically deform, and they shift to less efficient energy production methods. The result is profound fatigue at a cellular level - your body literally cannot produce enough energy to function optimally. Every tissue, organ, and system feels the effects of this energy deficit. The good news is that mitochondria can recover with proper support, as they contain their own DNA and can regenerate when given the right conditions. 5. Immune System Dysfunction Your immune system becomes dysregulated during burnout, often becoming simultaneously overactive in some ways and underactive in others. This paradoxical state can manifest as frequent infections (showing immune weakness) alongside inflammatory conditions and hypersensitivities (showing immune overactivity). Chronic inflammation becomes a persistent problem, creating a constant state of low-grade immune activation that further drains your energy resources and affects brain function, healing ability, and overall wellbeing. Many people with burnout develop new sensitivities to foods, chemicals, or environments that never bothered them before. The Vicious Cycle and Downward Spiral What makes burnout particularly challenging is how these five systems interact and reinforce each other's dysfunction. HPA axis problems disrupt sleep, which impairs mitochondrial recovery. Gut issues create inflammation that triggers immune responses and stresses the HPA axis further. Mitochondrial dysfunction means less energy for healing and proper system function. Minor burnout can resolve on its own with sufficient rest and stress reduction. However, once a certain threshold is crossed, these systems keep each other sick in a self-perpetuating cycle. Without targeted interventions addressing each affected system, recovery becomes extremely difficult or impossible. This explains why some people remain burned out for years or decades despite their best efforts to rest and reduce stress. Navigating Medical Support Unfortunately, most healthcare providers aren't equipped to address burnout as a multi-system condition. This means you must often become your own health advocate and case manager. Some strategies include: When seeking medical help, speak the language of the specialist you're consulting. Instead of saying "adrenal fatigue" (which many doctors dismiss), use terms like "HPA axis dysfunction" or "dysautonomia" that align with medical terminology. Request appropriate testing. Standard bloodwork often misses the markers of burnout. More specialized tests like comprehensive stool analyses, organic acid tests, or cortisol rhythm testing can reveal the underlying issues. Consider working with integrative or functional medicine practitioners who are more likely to understand complex, multi-system conditions. However, be cautious, as quality varies widely in these fields. Remember that your experience is real and valid, even when healthcare providers can't immediately identify the cause. Persistent advocacy may be necessary to get the support you need. Recovery Is Possible But Takes Time Recovering from burnout is a gradual process that cannot be rushed. In fact, trying to accelerate recovery through sheer willpower often backfires, causing setbacks and prolonging the journey. The first rule of burnout recovery is "don't make it worse" - which means avoiding overexertion, respecting your body's current limitations, and prioritizing rest and healing above productivity. Recovery requires addressing all affected systems simultaneously through a combination of lifestyle changes, targeted supplements, stress management, diet modifications, and sometimes medications. This process is highly individualized - what works for one person may not work for another due to genetic differences, varying dietary needs, different lifestyle factors, and unique personal circumstances. The journey to recovery often requires significant changes to how you live and work. It may mean rethinking career choices, relationship dynamics, living situations, and fundamental priorities. While challenging, this process can ultimately lead to a more sustainable and fulfilling life built on a deeper understanding of your body's needs. Conclusion Burnout is not a character flaw or a sign of weakness - it's a complex physiological condition involving multiple bodily systems. By understanding the five key systems involved and how they interact, you can begin to address the root causes rather than just managing symptoms. Recovery is possible, but it requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to make meaningful changes. The path forward involves supporting your body's natural healing processes while avoiding the patterns that led to burnout in the first place. With the right approach, you can not only recover from burnout but emerge with greater resilience and a more balanced relationship with stress.
44:21

I spent 10 years in burnout. I've finally figured it all out. Understanding Burnout: The Five Interlocking Systems Burnout is a complex syndrome that affects millions of people, yet remains poorly understood by mainstream medicine. This comprehensive guide explores what burnout really is - not simply "being tired" or "needing a vacation," but a profound physiological state involving five interconnected bodily systems. By understanding these systems and how they interact, you can better navigate your path to recovery. What Burnout Really Feels Like If you've experienced burnout, you know it's far more than just feeling tired. You might have days where you feel relatively normal, followed by days where getting off the couch seems impossible. Your body might suddenly develop strange sensitivities - foods you've enjoyed your whole life now cause digestive distress, or you find yourself constantly too hot or too cold. Sleep becomes elusive despite extreme fatigue. Your thinking becomes foggy, your memory unreliable, and your emotions more volatile. These aren't just random symptoms - they're the result of multiple bodily systems being thrown into dysfunction by prolonged stress. Many people with burnout report unexplained physical symptoms: diffuse pain throughout the body, inflammation in unexpected places (like chronic sinus issues), dizziness when standing up (POTS), and a general sense that their body simply isn't working correctly. If these experiences sound familiar, you're not imagining things, and you're not alone. Why Burnout Is So Misunderstood Modern medicine excels at addressing acute problems with clear causes and treatments, but struggles with complex multi-system conditions like burnout. Most doctors receive minimal training on chronic conditions, and virtually none on how different bodily systems interact in states of prolonged stress. When you visit a specialist, they examine only their area of expertise - a gastroenterologist looks at digestive issues, a neurologist at brain symptoms - but rarely does anyone look at the full picture. This fragmented approach leads to medical gaslighting - being told "your labs are normal, it must be stress" or "this sounds like depression" without investigating the underlying physiological causes. Some providers dismiss "adrenal fatigue" as pseudoscience, despite extensive research on HPA axis dysfunction (the medical term for what many call adrenal fatigue). Others will acknowledge only the most extreme manifestations like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, missing opportunities for earlier intervention. The Five Systems Behind Burnout Burnout involves five primary overlapping systems that become dysfunctional or dysregulated. Understanding these systems is key to addressing the root causes rather than just managing symptoms. 1. HPA Axis Dysfunction The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is your body's main stress response pathway. This system connects your brain to your adrenal glands and regulates energy, stress hormones, and your ability to adapt to challenges. When chronically activated, this system eventually loses its ability to respond appropriately. This dysfunction manifests as cortisol irregularities - either producing too little overall, or producing it at the wrong times. If you struggle to wake up in the morning, you might have insufficient morning cortisol. If you wake too early and can't fall back asleep, you might have inappropriate early cortisol spikes. Recovery from HPA axis dysfunction typically takes 6 months to 2 years, with severe cases taking 3-5 years. 2. Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) Dysfunction Your autonomic nervous system controls unconscious bodily functions like heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and temperature regulation. Burnout can cause dysautonomia - a state where your sympathetic ("fight-or-flight") system becomes dominant, while your parasympathetic ("rest-and-digest") system becomes underactive. Symptoms include heart palpitations, dizziness when standing up, temperature regulation problems, digestive motility issues (feeling like food sits in your stomach for hours), and heightened sensitivity to environmental stimuli. Getting "stuck" in sympathetic dominance keeps your body in a state of hypervigilance, preventing proper rest and recovery. 3. Gastrointestinal System Dysfunction Your digestive system is often called your "second brain" for good reason - it produces 90% of your serotonin and houses its own nervous system (the enteric nervous system). The gut plays a critical role in immune function and overall health. Burnout can affect your gut through several mechanisms: chronic stress can impair the gut lining (leading to "leaky gut"), infections like H. pylori can cause inflammation, and your microbiome (the trillions of bacteria in your digestive system) can become imbalanced. When your gut is compromised, the effects ripple throughout your entire body, causing nutrient deficiencies, systemic inflammation, immune dysregulation, and altered neurotransmitter production that affects mood and cognition. 4. Mitochondrial Dysfunction Mitochondria are the power plants of your cells, producing the energy currency (ATP) that fuels all cellular activities. During burnout, these vital organelles become damaged and less efficient. Their internal structures (cristae) can physically deform, and they shift to less efficient energy production methods. The result is profound fatigue at a cellular level - your body literally cannot produce enough energy to function optimally. Every tissue, organ, and system feels the effects of this energy deficit. The good news is that mitochondria can recover with proper support, as they contain their own DNA and can regenerate when given the right conditions. 5. Immune System Dysfunction Your immune system becomes dysregulated during burnout, often becoming simultaneously overactive in some ways and underactive in others. This paradoxical state can manifest as frequent infections (showing immune weakness) alongside inflammatory conditions and hypersensitivities (showing immune overactivity). Chronic inflammation becomes a persistent problem, creating a constant state of low-grade immune activation that further drains your energy resources and affects brain function, healing ability, and overall wellbeing. Many people with burnout develop new sensitivities to foods, chemicals, or environments that never bothered them before. The Vicious Cycle and Downward Spiral What makes burnout particularly challenging is how these five systems interact and reinforce each other's dysfunction. HPA axis problems disrupt sleep, which impairs mitochondrial recovery. Gut issues create inflammation that triggers immune responses and stresses the HPA axis further. Mitochondrial dysfunction means less energy for healing and proper system function. Minor burnout can resolve on its own with sufficient rest and stress reduction. However, once a certain threshold is crossed, these systems keep each other sick in a self-perpetuating cycle. Without targeted interventions addressing each affected system, recovery becomes extremely difficult or impossible. This explains why some people remain burned out for years or decades despite their best efforts to rest and reduce stress. Navigating Medical Support Unfortunately, most healthcare providers aren't equipped to address burnout as a multi-system condition. This means you must often become your own health advocate and case manager. Some strategies include: When seeking medical help, speak the language of the specialist you're consulting. Instead of saying "adrenal fatigue" (which many doctors dismiss), use terms like "HPA axis dysfunction" or "dysautonomia" that align with medical terminology. Request appropriate testing. Standard bloodwork often misses the markers of burnout. More specialized tests like comprehensive stool analyses, organic acid tests, or cortisol rhythm testing can reveal the underlying issues. Consider working with integrative or functional medicine practitioners who are more likely to understand complex, multi-system conditions. However, be cautious, as quality varies widely in these fields. Remember that your experience is real and valid, even when healthcare providers can't immediately identify the cause. Persistent advocacy may be necessary to get the support you need. Recovery Is Possible But Takes Time Recovering from burnout is a gradual process that cannot be rushed. In fact, trying to accelerate recovery through sheer willpower often backfires, causing setbacks and prolonging the journey. The first rule of burnout recovery is "don't make it worse" - which means avoiding overexertion, respecting your body's current limitations, and prioritizing rest and healing above productivity. Recovery requires addressing all affected systems simultaneously through a combination of lifestyle changes, targeted supplements, stress management, diet modifications, and sometimes medications. This process is highly individualized - what works for one person may not work for another due to genetic differences, varying dietary needs, different lifestyle factors, and unique personal circumstances. The journey to recovery often requires significant changes to how you live and work. It may mean rethinking career choices, relationship dynamics, living situations, and fundamental priorities. While challenging, this process can ultimately lead to a more sustainable and fulfilling life built on a deeper understanding of your body's needs. Conclusion Burnout is not a character flaw or a sign of weakness - it's a complex physiological condition involving multiple bodily systems. By understanding the five key systems involved and how they interact, you can begin to address the root causes rather than just managing symptoms. Recovery is possible, but it requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to make meaningful changes. The path forward involves supporting your body's natural healing processes while avoiding the patterns that led to burnout in the first place. With the right approach, you can not only recover from burnout but emerge with greater resilience and a more balanced relationship with stress.

David Shapiro (L/0)

14,173 views • 1 year ago

"Expecting rebuttals to remain confined to journals, while misinformation spreads freely online, is neither realism nor appropriate. If something is promoted in public, it must be corrected in public." ~Proctor's Response to Coulthart (Why am I spending more time on this? American Alchemy's video on the mummies has 904,000 views. @incredhistory's video has 5,500 views. The original, sensationalistic claims always do MUCH better than any evidence that is presented later that throws cold water on said claims. That's always been an issue. That could change if Jesse makes a short video on his YT channel right now, linked to the @incredhistory video, and implores his viewers to watch it with an open mind. And/or if he pins a tweet linking his X followers to the "Incredible History" analysis.) "At one point in time, I was truly wondering if these [mummies] were a new species." ~Accused Debunker, Will Brown 🙂 "It's just too early, yet, for me to make any kind of definitive statement about what I think about these objects." ~Ross Coulthart (After watching the new video by "Incredible History" and the interview done on "Weaponized," it's not too early for me (and MANY other people) to say I believe they're fake. Others felt they were fake right from the start but I wanted to wait for more evidence. We have that now. From yesterday's "Reality Check" with Coulthart and Meagan Medick.) Coulthart: "I think (the new @incredhistory video) is important. It raises... I've actually been in touch with the gentleman who made it, Will (Brown), and I'm hoping to some stage, talk to him. And I'd like to include what he says in any analysis that we do on NewsNation about the tridactals." (Who are the experts featured in the new "Incredible History" video segments that I clipped below? Dr. Daniel Proctor (Galaxopithecus), "has a PhD in bio-anthropology. Specifically, his area of focus is the hands and the feet. He has published papers on the evolution of the hands and the feet, including focusing of the ability to grasp." Dr. Joseph A.P. Wilson (Joseph A P Wilson), "earned his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Florida. he's current lecturer in archeology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and part time lecturer in anthropology at Fairfield University. And more importantly., before academia, he worked as a molecular genetic technologist at Greenwood Genetic Center in South Carolina." Michele - Mrs Anthrope (Radiographer) - Mrs. Anthrope The descriptions of their credentials is from the "Incredible History" video which I clipped a few segments from and included below.) ~More from Reality Check~ Coulthart: "We've filmed in Peru, and we've spoken directly with the doctors there. As I said in social media commentary that was posted before I left Peru, it's just too early, yet, for me to make any kind of definitive statement about what I think about these objects. I'm very careful not to even say, beings." (Again, after the seeing the "Incredible History" video, it shouldn't be too early to offer up a new opinion.) Coulthart: "I certainly got the impression from the CT tomography scans that they seemed like intact beings of some kind. But frankly, I'm not an anatomist. I'm not an anthropologist or anyone with any kind of experience in a scientific analysis of these beings. And I think we'll have to go with what good science says. And all the way through in this, what the scientists in Peru have told me, and what the scientists in America and indeed in Mexico have told me, is they want independent review. They want independent assessment. "And I guess what I'm a little worried about is the partisan way, the way that on UFO, UAP, Twitter, social media, people take their positions and adopt in a definitive position once and for all. This is a hoax, or this is real. Frankly, I just don't think we know enough right now. I don't think you can base a final conclusion on an analysis of a couple of bones in one alleged being's scans. I've heard arguments two and for." (With the new information, it's NOT "partisan" and I am NOT saying "once and for all." But I think the arguments for fraud put forth by "Incredible History" are pretty damning and are enough to show anybody with an open mind that there are massive problems with the hypothesis that these are non-human beings or...hybrids of humans and non-humans. It appears to be a done deal: aka Fake.) Coulthart: "What I think will be definitive, and I'm aware that there is a DNA analysis underway at the moment. I don't know the name of the institution in the United States that's doing it, but there is some kind of DNA analysis underway, which will hopefully provide us with more answers as to the genetic origins of whatever these objects are. And that should be coming out sometime this year, hopefully fairly early up. "Until then, yes, I do think that we should acknowledge that there's been some great work done to raise, I think, serious questions about the legitimacy or the authenticity of the beings or the objects, but let's keep an open mind and let's reward and applaud good science where it's done. "This isn't like some kind of wrestling bout. You know, there's not a winner or a loser." (The credibility of the non-human subject is in danger of being set back because so many people in this community want to believe so hard and will ignore anything that goes against those beliefs. If these, apparent, hoaxes are not called out and done so, forcefully, we're all going to lose.) Coulthart: "Science is an iterative process where people basically do an analysis and make an assessment. Let's make those assessments, do the independent work, make sure that independent scientists with rigor get peer reviewed and checked and assessed, and then we can come up with a judgment. "I think the real tragedy would be if these are, potentially, if they are significantly important objects that have, basically, been procured as part of Peru's natural, cultural, significant history, it would be really tragic if, because of a sweeping assertion that these are a hoax, that the entire thing is not taken seriously. I'm not so sure I can dismiss it out of hand just because of this latest debunk, but I'm very, very happy to let independent, rigorous science do the do the guesswork and do the analysis." ~ (Will Brown (@incredhistory) responded to Coulthart's take via a reply to Meagan Medick's post.) Will Brown: "Curious why you all didn’t give the same reaction to Jesse Michel's (Jesse Michels) bold proclamations in a video that received 200x the views mine did on YouTube? "Similar question for Jay Anderson’s (Jay Anderson) 'scientific proof' video which has 10X the views? "Perhaps it’s because those videos don’t throw a wrench in whatever it is you are working on? "…any and all documentaries and books moving forward should include Steve Mera's testimony about what’s actually going on in Palpa." ~ Will Brown: "Hey Ross Coulthart, I’m hoping you’ll correct yourself here. In this video you stated we only looked at scans for one of the 'beings.' That is false. The video covers Maria and Monseratt. The Podcast with Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell and George Knapp adds Paloma in addition to Maria and Monseratt... All of which have multiple signs of manipulation on hands and feet. "You told me you watched my video…you even said you thought it was excellent and that it brought up legitimate concerns. "Did you actually watch the video? "Your statements today make me believe that you didn’t watch at all." ~ (And here's Dr. Daniel Proctor's (Galaxopithecus) response to Coulthart, and others, who are holding out hope for new DNA analysis.) Proctor: "I want to respond to Ross Coulthart’s recent caution that we should be careful calling the Nazca mummies a 'hoax' because they might represent cultural heritage, and to his claim that DNA should be more definitive than anatomy. "Respectfully, this framing gets the issue backwards. "First, there is nothing new here. 'Maria' was introduced nearly a decade ago. She did not appear last year, or this year, or as some sudden scientific revelation. She has been circulating since roughly 2015–2016, and in that entire span she has never been properly documented in reputable osteological, archaeological, or forensic journals. There is no provenience, as they allegedly come from a cave from an undisclosed location. No controlled excavation, no chain of custody, no standard reports of any nature, and anonymous discoverer. "What we are actually seeing is a slow drip of bodies, which are always sensational, always just beyond proper access, always promoted as revolutionary, and always somehow unable to withstand normal scientific scrutiny. That pattern is not accidental. "Second, anatomy is not secondary evidence. "The idea that DNA should be privileged over gross anatomy in evaluating human remains is baffling. Anatomy is primary data. Bones do not lie about how they articulate. Hand bones do not mysteriously relocate into feet. Developmental biology places hard constraints on what a viable organism can look like. "DNA can tell you what tissue something came from, within the strict parameters for which the tests have been designed. No mainstream lab has tests for some hypothetical 'alien' DNA. "Anatomy tells you whether the body ever existed as a coherent organism. In this case, the anatomy alone demonstrates fabrication. That is not speculative. It is observable. "Third, the cultural-heritage argument is deeply ironic. "The Nazca mummy trade, because that is what this is, destroys real cultural heritage. Looting graves, ghoulishly disarticulating bodies, recombining bones, and fabricating specimens for sale and spectacle is the opposite of preservation. Calling attention to that destruction is not disrespectful, on the contrary, it is necessary. "We have seen this playbook before. The commercialization of mummies, the alienization of cranial modification, and the recycling of colonial myths about 'non-human' ancient peoples. 'None of this is new. 'What is new is the social-media amplification. "Which brings me to Ross’s discomfort with debunking (or defending) these claims on social media rather than in scientific venues. "Here’s the problem: this hoax does not live in scientific venues. "It never has. "It lives on YouTube, on X, on press conferences, in podcasts, and in staged congressional spectacles. It is an argument of persuasion, not evidence. Expecting rebuttals to remain confined to journals, while misinformation spreads freely online, is neither realism nor appropriate. If something is promoted in public, it must be corrected in public. "Finally, caution cuts both ways. Being 'diplomatic' toward a hoax that incentivizes grave robbery, fuels pseudoscience, and misrepresents Indigenous pasts does not protect heritage. It only enables its continued destruction."
8:29

"Expecting rebuttals to remain confined to journals, while misinformation spreads freely online, is neither realism nor appropriate. If something is promoted in public, it must be corrected in public." ~Proctor's Response to Coulthart (Why am I spending more time on this? American Alchemy's video on the mummies has 904,000 views. @incredhistory's video has 5,500 views. The original, sensationalistic claims always do MUCH better than any evidence that is presented later that throws cold water on said claims. That's always been an issue. That could change if Jesse makes a short video on his YT channel right now, linked to the @incredhistory video, and implores his viewers to watch it with an open mind. And/or if he pins a tweet linking his X followers to the "Incredible History" analysis.) "At one point in time, I was truly wondering if these [mummies] were a new species." ~Accused Debunker, Will Brown 🙂 "It's just too early, yet, for me to make any kind of definitive statement about what I think about these objects." ~Ross Coulthart (After watching the new video by "Incredible History" and the interview done on "Weaponized," it's not too early for me (and MANY other people) to say I believe they're fake. Others felt they were fake right from the start but I wanted to wait for more evidence. We have that now. From yesterday's "Reality Check" with Coulthart and Meagan Medick.) Coulthart: "I think (the new @incredhistory video) is important. It raises... I've actually been in touch with the gentleman who made it, Will (Brown), and I'm hoping to some stage, talk to him. And I'd like to include what he says in any analysis that we do on NewsNation about the tridactals." (Who are the experts featured in the new "Incredible History" video segments that I clipped below? Dr. Daniel Proctor (Galaxopithecus), "has a PhD in bio-anthropology. Specifically, his area of focus is the hands and the feet. He has published papers on the evolution of the hands and the feet, including focusing of the ability to grasp." Dr. Joseph A.P. Wilson (Joseph A P Wilson), "earned his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Florida. he's current lecturer in archeology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and part time lecturer in anthropology at Fairfield University. And more importantly., before academia, he worked as a molecular genetic technologist at Greenwood Genetic Center in South Carolina." Michele - Mrs Anthrope (Radiographer) - Mrs. Anthrope The descriptions of their credentials is from the "Incredible History" video which I clipped a few segments from and included below.) ~More from Reality Check~ Coulthart: "We've filmed in Peru, and we've spoken directly with the doctors there. As I said in social media commentary that was posted before I left Peru, it's just too early, yet, for me to make any kind of definitive statement about what I think about these objects. I'm very careful not to even say, beings." (Again, after the seeing the "Incredible History" video, it shouldn't be too early to offer up a new opinion.) Coulthart: "I certainly got the impression from the CT tomography scans that they seemed like intact beings of some kind. But frankly, I'm not an anatomist. I'm not an anthropologist or anyone with any kind of experience in a scientific analysis of these beings. And I think we'll have to go with what good science says. And all the way through in this, what the scientists in Peru have told me, and what the scientists in America and indeed in Mexico have told me, is they want independent review. They want independent assessment. "And I guess what I'm a little worried about is the partisan way, the way that on UFO, UAP, Twitter, social media, people take their positions and adopt in a definitive position once and for all. This is a hoax, or this is real. Frankly, I just don't think we know enough right now. I don't think you can base a final conclusion on an analysis of a couple of bones in one alleged being's scans. I've heard arguments two and for." (With the new information, it's NOT "partisan" and I am NOT saying "once and for all." But I think the arguments for fraud put forth by "Incredible History" are pretty damning and are enough to show anybody with an open mind that there are massive problems with the hypothesis that these are non-human beings or...hybrids of humans and non-humans. It appears to be a done deal: aka Fake.) Coulthart: "What I think will be definitive, and I'm aware that there is a DNA analysis underway at the moment. I don't know the name of the institution in the United States that's doing it, but there is some kind of DNA analysis underway, which will hopefully provide us with more answers as to the genetic origins of whatever these objects are. And that should be coming out sometime this year, hopefully fairly early up. "Until then, yes, I do think that we should acknowledge that there's been some great work done to raise, I think, serious questions about the legitimacy or the authenticity of the beings or the objects, but let's keep an open mind and let's reward and applaud good science where it's done. "This isn't like some kind of wrestling bout. You know, there's not a winner or a loser." (The credibility of the non-human subject is in danger of being set back because so many people in this community want to believe so hard and will ignore anything that goes against those beliefs. If these, apparent, hoaxes are not called out and done so, forcefully, we're all going to lose.) Coulthart: "Science is an iterative process where people basically do an analysis and make an assessment. Let's make those assessments, do the independent work, make sure that independent scientists with rigor get peer reviewed and checked and assessed, and then we can come up with a judgment. "I think the real tragedy would be if these are, potentially, if they are significantly important objects that have, basically, been procured as part of Peru's natural, cultural, significant history, it would be really tragic if, because of a sweeping assertion that these are a hoax, that the entire thing is not taken seriously. I'm not so sure I can dismiss it out of hand just because of this latest debunk, but I'm very, very happy to let independent, rigorous science do the do the guesswork and do the analysis." ~ (Will Brown (@incredhistory) responded to Coulthart's take via a reply to Meagan Medick's post.) Will Brown: "Curious why you all didn’t give the same reaction to Jesse Michel's (Jesse Michels) bold proclamations in a video that received 200x the views mine did on YouTube? "Similar question for Jay Anderson’s (Jay Anderson) 'scientific proof' video which has 10X the views? "Perhaps it’s because those videos don’t throw a wrench in whatever it is you are working on? "…any and all documentaries and books moving forward should include Steve Mera's testimony about what’s actually going on in Palpa." ~ Will Brown: "Hey Ross Coulthart, I’m hoping you’ll correct yourself here. In this video you stated we only looked at scans for one of the 'beings.' That is false. The video covers Maria and Monseratt. The Podcast with Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell and George Knapp adds Paloma in addition to Maria and Monseratt... All of which have multiple signs of manipulation on hands and feet. "You told me you watched my video…you even said you thought it was excellent and that it brought up legitimate concerns. "Did you actually watch the video? "Your statements today make me believe that you didn’t watch at all." ~ (And here's Dr. Daniel Proctor's (Galaxopithecus) response to Coulthart, and others, who are holding out hope for new DNA analysis.) Proctor: "I want to respond to Ross Coulthart’s recent caution that we should be careful calling the Nazca mummies a 'hoax' because they might represent cultural heritage, and to his claim that DNA should be more definitive than anatomy. "Respectfully, this framing gets the issue backwards. "First, there is nothing new here. 'Maria' was introduced nearly a decade ago. She did not appear last year, or this year, or as some sudden scientific revelation. She has been circulating since roughly 2015–2016, and in that entire span she has never been properly documented in reputable osteological, archaeological, or forensic journals. There is no provenience, as they allegedly come from a cave from an undisclosed location. No controlled excavation, no chain of custody, no standard reports of any nature, and anonymous discoverer. "What we are actually seeing is a slow drip of bodies, which are always sensational, always just beyond proper access, always promoted as revolutionary, and always somehow unable to withstand normal scientific scrutiny. That pattern is not accidental. "Second, anatomy is not secondary evidence. "The idea that DNA should be privileged over gross anatomy in evaluating human remains is baffling. Anatomy is primary data. Bones do not lie about how they articulate. Hand bones do not mysteriously relocate into feet. Developmental biology places hard constraints on what a viable organism can look like. "DNA can tell you what tissue something came from, within the strict parameters for which the tests have been designed. No mainstream lab has tests for some hypothetical 'alien' DNA. "Anatomy tells you whether the body ever existed as a coherent organism. In this case, the anatomy alone demonstrates fabrication. That is not speculative. It is observable. "Third, the cultural-heritage argument is deeply ironic. "The Nazca mummy trade, because that is what this is, destroys real cultural heritage. Looting graves, ghoulishly disarticulating bodies, recombining bones, and fabricating specimens for sale and spectacle is the opposite of preservation. Calling attention to that destruction is not disrespectful, on the contrary, it is necessary. "We have seen this playbook before. The commercialization of mummies, the alienization of cranial modification, and the recycling of colonial myths about 'non-human' ancient peoples. 'None of this is new. 'What is new is the social-media amplification. "Which brings me to Ross’s discomfort with debunking (or defending) these claims on social media rather than in scientific venues. "Here’s the problem: this hoax does not live in scientific venues. "It never has. "It lives on YouTube, on X, on press conferences, in podcasts, and in staged congressional spectacles. It is an argument of persuasion, not evidence. Expecting rebuttals to remain confined to journals, while misinformation spreads freely online, is neither realism nor appropriate. If something is promoted in public, it must be corrected in public. "Finally, caution cuts both ways. Being 'diplomatic' toward a hoax that incentivizes grave robbery, fuels pseudoscience, and misrepresents Indigenous pasts does not protect heritage. It only enables its continued destruction."

Joe Murgia

44,343 views • 8 months ago

"We do it again. We do it again. We do it again. Because, this can't be. The problem is..it be. No matter how skeptical you are, be as skeptical as you'd like, but there it is." ~Bengston (This is what Mick West said he doesn't find interesting and thus, he doesn't want to interview Bengston. The truth? IMO, he's scared shitless to take on Bengston as there's too much data to refute. Psi (or whatever this is) is real and this is one of the more interesting claims in the world. How could you NOT be interested in this? How about you, Michael Shermer?) "We re-injected the mice without any treatment, and the mice were immune to cancer." ~Bengston (It's the 1970s on Long Island. A skeptical Bill Bengston is working as a lifeguard at the town pool and meets a guy, Ben, who claims to be psychic. No matter what tests Bengston comes up with, Ben passes with flying colors. Then Ben starts healing people. But how to know if they were being healed with Ben's psi or something more prosaic? Did they change their diet? Supplements? Conventional medicine? Not everybody came back so it was very hard to know. So Bengston moves to the lab where Ben would try to cure mice of a cancer that has killed every mouse ever injected within 27 days max. At the last minute, Ben drops out and Bengston is forced to be the healer.) ~ Bill Bengston: "If you watch a few hundred healings, at first it's exhilarating, but after a while it's frustrating. Because you don't know what, why, where, when, any of those things that someone interested in serious inquiry might be interested in. You were just looking at people coming in, some benefit occurred. People leaving. Sometimes they didn't come back. Sometimes it took more than one treatment. Sometimes it happened pretty quick. I think I was the fastest ever (Bengston says Ben healed his back after one short treatment). But what did? "So you come in, you have x, it's a famous algebraic disease. You have x, and you leave better. Now maybe it's the multiple treatments, you know, whatever it may be. But you leave better. What did it? Was it time? Because people get better over time. Was it belief? I didn't think it was belief, because I wasn't a believer. I was an experiencer, but not a believer. Was it the food you ate, the food you stopped eating, the grapefruit you had in the morning? I can't...I don't have the head to wrap myself around clinical questions like that. I never know why something happens, because there's too many variables and such. "And so, after watching a couple hundred healings, taking part in a couple hundred healings, I decided to...I gotta go past this. And I ran into another guy who was watching this, somewhat parallel to me. A geologist, pretty well known (David Krinsley ~Joe). And we said, 'What can we do to test this? You know, the phenomenon is seriously interesting. What could we do to really test it so that if healing occurs, there's no viable counter hypothesis.' "And at the time, he was the head of the geology department at City University of New York, and he said, 'I got some favors owed me, let me see what I can find out in the biology department. I'm pretty good friends with the chairman of the biology department there.' "And so he met with the biology chair, and he said, 'Well, let me poke around in my department and see what we can do.' And he said, 'I got the perfect study. There's a mouse model of cancer that has 100% fatality. Never been an extension of life past a month after it's been injected with cancer. There's thousands of journal articles written about this mouse and this cancer. Everybody around the world knows this mouse and this cancer. If you're in oncology, you know this mouse and this cancer, and [there] has never been a cure.' "I said, 'Let's do it. Let's find out what we can do.' "And at the time, I had no idea what to expect. So I was thinking, 'Well, maybe we can extend the life towards a month. Maybe it won't be a normal curve distribution, maybe it'll be a negatively-skewed distribution. And maybe the mouse will live to the end of their lifespan and all that. "We had no idea what to expect. "So we got a cage of mice. I held the cage of mice for an hour at a time in the lab at Queens College, City University, and we watched as the tumors grew. And I was sure this was failing. And incidentally, I'm almost always wrong. I expected, if we got to the mice right after injection and we treated them a couple times, enough, every day - we didn't know - if we treated them every day, they wouldn't develop cancer. I was thinking, you know, it's something like radiation. You know, you go, 'Zzt, zzt,' and you zap the mice and the tumors, or the cancer cells die, or something along those lines. I was thinking conventional oncology. "And so, I put my hands around the cage of mice, treated them every day, the tumors started to grow anyway, and I wanted to call off the experiment. You know, it shows you how much I believe. I got talked into going a couple extra days, and the tumors developed these blackened areas. And I said, 'Let's call it off, didn't work. You know, we tried it. Didn't work.' "Go a couple more days. Tumors started to ulcerate, and so there was this raw part of a tumor. And I said, 'Would you pay attention? It doesn't work!' Couple more days. And then the tumors suddenly imploded, and the mice were cured. They weren't remitted, they were cured. And by that, I mean it wasn't a suppression of symptoms, it wasn't a temporary reduction in symptoms. It was...there was no cancer in the mouse at all. "And it's farther than that. We re-injected the mice without any treatment, and the mice were immune to cancer. Now that's reasonably interesting. "So, first thing you do is, I, as a skeptic, go, 'Umm, this doesn't make any sense (laughs). Let's do it again. But let's not do it with just me, let's do it with some volunteers.' "So I had a couple of faculty volunteers who thought this thing was insane, and they were right. So I had a couple of faculty volunteers, they got a couple of student volunteers. All non-believers, no experience in any of this hocus pocus. Taught 'em the little technique that I had developed. They treated the mice, the exact same pattern: Tumor grows, blackened area, ulceration, implosion, full lifespan cure. "We do it again. We do it again. We do it again. Because, this can't be. The problem is..it be." (Both laugh) "It's just, you know, no matter how skeptical you are, be as skeptical as you'd like, but there it is. You know, I deny this gravity, you know? I don't believe in gravity. There is gravity. I don't believe in this healing. There is healing. "I just finished, recently, my twentieth mouse experiment, I'm a little slow. I've done it in, I think, six medical schools, equal number of other biology labs. And I just finished at Tokyo University, multiple strains of cancer and details you don't care about. "And so, I have done, at this point, twenty mouse experiments, multiple medical schools, many cell experiments. I've done many experiments. That's the really short version. A hundred years truncated into a couple of paragraphs."
7:35

"We do it again. We do it again. We do it again. Because, this can't be. The problem is..it be. No matter how skeptical you are, be as skeptical as you'd like, but there it is." ~Bengston (This is what Mick West said he doesn't find interesting and thus, he doesn't want to interview Bengston. The truth? IMO, he's scared shitless to take on Bengston as there's too much data to refute. Psi (or whatever this is) is real and this is one of the more interesting claims in the world. How could you NOT be interested in this? How about you, Michael Shermer?) "We re-injected the mice without any treatment, and the mice were immune to cancer." ~Bengston (It's the 1970s on Long Island. A skeptical Bill Bengston is working as a lifeguard at the town pool and meets a guy, Ben, who claims to be psychic. No matter what tests Bengston comes up with, Ben passes with flying colors. Then Ben starts healing people. But how to know if they were being healed with Ben's psi or something more prosaic? Did they change their diet? Supplements? Conventional medicine? Not everybody came back so it was very hard to know. So Bengston moves to the lab where Ben would try to cure mice of a cancer that has killed every mouse ever injected within 27 days max. At the last minute, Ben drops out and Bengston is forced to be the healer.) ~ Bill Bengston: "If you watch a few hundred healings, at first it's exhilarating, but after a while it's frustrating. Because you don't know what, why, where, when, any of those things that someone interested in serious inquiry might be interested in. You were just looking at people coming in, some benefit occurred. People leaving. Sometimes they didn't come back. Sometimes it took more than one treatment. Sometimes it happened pretty quick. I think I was the fastest ever (Bengston says Ben healed his back after one short treatment). But what did? "So you come in, you have x, it's a famous algebraic disease. You have x, and you leave better. Now maybe it's the multiple treatments, you know, whatever it may be. But you leave better. What did it? Was it time? Because people get better over time. Was it belief? I didn't think it was belief, because I wasn't a believer. I was an experiencer, but not a believer. Was it the food you ate, the food you stopped eating, the grapefruit you had in the morning? I can't...I don't have the head to wrap myself around clinical questions like that. I never know why something happens, because there's too many variables and such. "And so, after watching a couple hundred healings, taking part in a couple hundred healings, I decided to...I gotta go past this. And I ran into another guy who was watching this, somewhat parallel to me. A geologist, pretty well known (David Krinsley ~Joe). And we said, 'What can we do to test this? You know, the phenomenon is seriously interesting. What could we do to really test it so that if healing occurs, there's no viable counter hypothesis.' "And at the time, he was the head of the geology department at City University of New York, and he said, 'I got some favors owed me, let me see what I can find out in the biology department. I'm pretty good friends with the chairman of the biology department there.' "And so he met with the biology chair, and he said, 'Well, let me poke around in my department and see what we can do.' And he said, 'I got the perfect study. There's a mouse model of cancer that has 100% fatality. Never been an extension of life past a month after it's been injected with cancer. There's thousands of journal articles written about this mouse and this cancer. Everybody around the world knows this mouse and this cancer. If you're in oncology, you know this mouse and this cancer, and [there] has never been a cure.' "I said, 'Let's do it. Let's find out what we can do.' "And at the time, I had no idea what to expect. So I was thinking, 'Well, maybe we can extend the life towards a month. Maybe it won't be a normal curve distribution, maybe it'll be a negatively-skewed distribution. And maybe the mouse will live to the end of their lifespan and all that. "We had no idea what to expect. "So we got a cage of mice. I held the cage of mice for an hour at a time in the lab at Queens College, City University, and we watched as the tumors grew. And I was sure this was failing. And incidentally, I'm almost always wrong. I expected, if we got to the mice right after injection and we treated them a couple times, enough, every day - we didn't know - if we treated them every day, they wouldn't develop cancer. I was thinking, you know, it's something like radiation. You know, you go, 'Zzt, zzt,' and you zap the mice and the tumors, or the cancer cells die, or something along those lines. I was thinking conventional oncology. "And so, I put my hands around the cage of mice, treated them every day, the tumors started to grow anyway, and I wanted to call off the experiment. You know, it shows you how much I believe. I got talked into going a couple extra days, and the tumors developed these blackened areas. And I said, 'Let's call it off, didn't work. You know, we tried it. Didn't work.' "Go a couple more days. Tumors started to ulcerate, and so there was this raw part of a tumor. And I said, 'Would you pay attention? It doesn't work!' Couple more days. And then the tumors suddenly imploded, and the mice were cured. They weren't remitted, they were cured. And by that, I mean it wasn't a suppression of symptoms, it wasn't a temporary reduction in symptoms. It was...there was no cancer in the mouse at all. "And it's farther than that. We re-injected the mice without any treatment, and the mice were immune to cancer. Now that's reasonably interesting. "So, first thing you do is, I, as a skeptic, go, 'Umm, this doesn't make any sense (laughs). Let's do it again. But let's not do it with just me, let's do it with some volunteers.' "So I had a couple of faculty volunteers who thought this thing was insane, and they were right. So I had a couple of faculty volunteers, they got a couple of student volunteers. All non-believers, no experience in any of this hocus pocus. Taught 'em the little technique that I had developed. They treated the mice, the exact same pattern: Tumor grows, blackened area, ulceration, implosion, full lifespan cure. "We do it again. We do it again. We do it again. Because, this can't be. The problem is..it be." (Both laugh) "It's just, you know, no matter how skeptical you are, be as skeptical as you'd like, but there it is. You know, I deny this gravity, you know? I don't believe in gravity. There is gravity. I don't believe in this healing. There is healing. "I just finished, recently, my twentieth mouse experiment, I'm a little slow. I've done it in, I think, six medical schools, equal number of other biology labs. And I just finished at Tokyo University, multiple strains of cancer and details you don't care about. "And so, I have done, at this point, twenty mouse experiments, multiple medical schools, many cell experiments. I've done many experiments. That's the really short version. A hundred years truncated into a couple of paragraphs."

Joe Murgia

12,705 views • 1 year ago

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden during Covid-19, today testified to Congress about Covid vaccines and Covid’s origin. "The first iteration of vaccines did have an effect — not 100%, not a high effect — they did prevent infection, and subsequently, obviously, transmission,” Fauci said. “However, it's important to point out something that we did not know early on that became evident as the months went by: the durability of protection against infection, and hence, the transmission was relatively limited." But there was never definitive evidence that the vaccines would prevent transmission. In December 2020, the FDA determined that “data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.” The CDC in 2020 and 2021 stated that protection would wear off, that the evidence was unclear, and that the data were limited, noted data analyst Kelley K during the hearing. When Fauci said in May 2021 that a vaccinated person would become a “dead end to the virus,” he was repeating a political talking point and not accurately representing the science. Claiming vaccination would prevent spread was a strategy to increase vaccine uptake among young, healthy people who were not vulnerable to severe COVID outcomes. In other words, the science had not been “settled,” but Fauci and other public health leaders chose to espouse a noble lie to encourage vaccination. To his credit, Fauci testified before Congress today and sat for many hours of a transcribed interview. But Fauci also implied that investigating his role put him at risk. “Every time someone gets up and says I'm responsible for the death of people throughout the world,” he emphasized, “the death threats go up.” We unreservedly condemn any threats Fauci and his family may have received. It is illegal to threaten people with death or physical violence, as it should be. At the same time, we must be free to discuss Fauci’s role in funding the laboratory research to make coronaviruses more infectious, known as “gain-of-function research,” without fear of being accused of inciting violence against Fauci or his family members. It would be an abuse of power to suggest that any effort to hold Fauci accountable is equivalent to threatening him or his family. The responsibility for making threats lies with the person making them and not with those whose statements have ostensibly influenced them. And yet many Democrats repeatedly suggested that there was something sinister and dangerous about criticisms of Fauci for his role in shaping the US response to the pandemic as well as his role advocating for and funding the kinds of biomedical research that may have caused it. And Democrats repeatedly referred to the idea that US taxpayer dollars funded the research that resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 a “conspiracy theory.” Said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-CA), "The investigation of Dr Fauci shows he is an honorable public servant who has devoted his entire career to the public health and the public interest. And he is not a comic book supervillain. He did not fund research to create the Cove in 19 pandemic. He did not lie to Congress about gain of function research in Wuhan, and he did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign today." Said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), "The evidence to date points to COVID 19 having originated from an animal market in China... this committee should be doing more to fight for those answers, but instead has wasted significant time and taxpayer money fueling conspiracy theories." Said Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), "Conspiracy theory after another get debunked...." But the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy theory. A few hours before Fauci testified, The New York Times, the most important newspaper for Democrats, published a complete and graphics-heavy case for the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origin. A “growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China,” wrote Alina Chan who coauthored the 2021 book, Viral, with Matt Ridley, in the Times. In today’s hearing, Fauci insisted that he did not fund risky gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. The research his agency funded, he claimed, was not technically gain-of-function under the regulatory definition set by something called “The Guidelines on Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight (P3CO).” Asked Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), "Dr. Fauci, according to the regulatory definitions, for example, in P3CO, that NIH applied to proposed research, did NIH ever fund gain of function research in Wuhan, China?" Responded Fauci, "As you said, Congressman Ruiz, according to the regulatory and operative definition of P3CO, the NIH did not fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." But Fauci and Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent years seeking to weaken oversight of such research. In 2011, after the NIH biosecurity board unanimously recommended that certain dangerous gain-of-function bird flu research not be published, Fauci and Collins published an opinion piece called “A flu virus risk worth taking” in the Washington Post, arguing that the benefits of this research outweighed the potential for a pandemic. The following year, 2012, NIH’s biosecurity board signed non-disclosure agreements and met with Fauci and Collins. The board, apparently under pressure from Fauci and Collins, then revised its previous recommendation to publish the risky bird flu research. According to Fauci and Democrats in Congress, NIH’s grant to EcoHealth Alliance did not fall under P3CO guidelines because it was not anticipated to increase a pathogen’s danger to humans, specifically. But in emails, NIH staff expressed their concerns about EcoHealth Alliance’s work creating hybrid “chimera” MERS and SARS viruses, in order to increase their infectiousness, in 2016. NIH staff pointed out that there was a moratorium placed on that research in 2014. Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, persuaded NIH staff to concede to a research threshold, saying EcoHealth would halt its research if the chimeras had enhanced viral growth 10 times that of the original viruses. After reaching an agreement with NIH, Daszak specifically referred to this work as gain-of-function, writing, “This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted. Cheers, Peter.” Then, in 2018, EcoHealth went on to seemingly violate its agreement by producing a chimeric virus with a viral load 10,000 times greater than the original virus. As such, Fauci, his colleagues, and the Democrats were playing word games, redefining what they mean by gain-of-function research in ways that allowed them to deny responsibility. And that’s not all. After the Obama administration had established a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) committee to review proposed gain-of-function projects before the NIH could approve them, Fauci and Collins knowingly sought to make changes to NIH policy in order to allow funding for riskier gain-of-function experiments. These changes included removing the committee’s ability to block projects and limiting the type of projects the committee could review. In his testimony, Fauci misrepresented the scientific possibility that NIH funding is associated with the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as his role in the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper, which infamously and misleadingly, claimed that, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” But consider how, in 2018, EcoHealth Alliance applied for a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called “DEFUSE” that would involve Shi Zhengli’s lab group at WIV and Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC). Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the features of SARS-CoV-2 closely resemble the work described in EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal. On February 1, 2020, Fauci and Collins held a meeting called “Coronavirus sequence comparison” with other scientists to compare the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13, its closest genetic relative which the NIH-funded Wuhan lab discovered. This meeting would lead to the “Proximal Origin” paper. In the hearing, Fauci downplayed his role. After Majority Counsel Mitch Benzine asked, "Did Dr. Anderson send you drafts to review?" Fauci responded, "He sent drafts, but I'm going to jump ahead of you if I might dribble around. I did not edit it. That was mentioned by a few of the Congressmen. I did not edit the paper." While it may be true that Fauci did not “edit” the “Proximal Origin” paper, lead author Kristian Andersen said he “prompted” it, and the authors sent him a final draft for approval. In their private exchanges, the authors repeatedly refer to Collins and Fauci as the “Bethesda boys.” Their offices were located in Bethesda, Maryland. The “Bethesda boys” appear to have directed some of the paper’s content. After Andersen suggested that a first draft should be sent “up the chain,” Fauci and Collins voiced concern that culturing or serial passaging (a process through which a virus can be made more infectious to humans) was still included as a possible origin. Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, then pressured the authors to remove it. Shortly after publishing the preprint, Holmes told Andersen, “Sorry the last bit had to be done without you… pressure from on high.” Fauci would go on to cite this paper as objective evidence from independent scientists. All of this, and yet, throughout the Oversight Committee’s hearing, Democrats refused to provide oversight and criticized their colleagues who attempted to provide it. “I'm sorry for the personal attacks you have received and may have to deal with today,” said one. “Thank you, sir, and your entire team for saving lives in this country, and I'm sorry you have to continue going on with these attacks,” said another. “The Republicans failed to find, uh, a shred of evidence of their far-fetched conspiracy linking Dr. Fauci to a cover-up of the origins of the pandemic,” said one. “Sir, do you think the American public should listen to America's brightest and best doctors and scientists? Or instead, listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes,” asked another. Since World War II, Democrats, liberals, and progressives have criticized their political enemies as overly deferent to authority. Today, at the hearing with Fauci and other hearings where mainstream science is questioned, they criticize their enemies for not being sufficiently deferent. What changed?...
9:54

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden during Covid-19, today testified to Congress about Covid vaccines and Covid’s origin. "The first iteration of vaccines did have an effect — not 100%, not a high effect — they did prevent infection, and subsequently, obviously, transmission,” Fauci said. “However, it's important to point out something that we did not know early on that became evident as the months went by: the durability of protection against infection, and hence, the transmission was relatively limited." But there was never definitive evidence that the vaccines would prevent transmission. In December 2020, the FDA determined that “data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.” The CDC in 2020 and 2021 stated that protection would wear off, that the evidence was unclear, and that the data were limited, noted data analyst Kelley K during the hearing. When Fauci said in May 2021 that a vaccinated person would become a “dead end to the virus,” he was repeating a political talking point and not accurately representing the science. Claiming vaccination would prevent spread was a strategy to increase vaccine uptake among young, healthy people who were not vulnerable to severe COVID outcomes. In other words, the science had not been “settled,” but Fauci and other public health leaders chose to espouse a noble lie to encourage vaccination. To his credit, Fauci testified before Congress today and sat for many hours of a transcribed interview. But Fauci also implied that investigating his role put him at risk. “Every time someone gets up and says I'm responsible for the death of people throughout the world,” he emphasized, “the death threats go up.” We unreservedly condemn any threats Fauci and his family may have received. It is illegal to threaten people with death or physical violence, as it should be. At the same time, we must be free to discuss Fauci’s role in funding the laboratory research to make coronaviruses more infectious, known as “gain-of-function research,” without fear of being accused of inciting violence against Fauci or his family members. It would be an abuse of power to suggest that any effort to hold Fauci accountable is equivalent to threatening him or his family. The responsibility for making threats lies with the person making them and not with those whose statements have ostensibly influenced them. And yet many Democrats repeatedly suggested that there was something sinister and dangerous about criticisms of Fauci for his role in shaping the US response to the pandemic as well as his role advocating for and funding the kinds of biomedical research that may have caused it. And Democrats repeatedly referred to the idea that US taxpayer dollars funded the research that resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 a “conspiracy theory.” Said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-CA), "The investigation of Dr Fauci shows he is an honorable public servant who has devoted his entire career to the public health and the public interest. And he is not a comic book supervillain. He did not fund research to create the Cove in 19 pandemic. He did not lie to Congress about gain of function research in Wuhan, and he did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign today." Said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), "The evidence to date points to COVID 19 having originated from an animal market in China... this committee should be doing more to fight for those answers, but instead has wasted significant time and taxpayer money fueling conspiracy theories." Said Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), "Conspiracy theory after another get debunked...." But the lab leak theory is not a conspiracy theory. A few hours before Fauci testified, The New York Times, the most important newspaper for Democrats, published a complete and graphics-heavy case for the lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origin. A “growing volume of evidence — gleaned from public records released under the Freedom of Information Act, digital sleuthing through online databases, scientific papers analyzing the virus and its spread, and leaks from within the U.S. government — suggests that the pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China,” wrote Alina Chan who coauthored the 2021 book, Viral, with Matt Ridley, in the Times. In today’s hearing, Fauci insisted that he did not fund risky gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. The research his agency funded, he claimed, was not technically gain-of-function under the regulatory definition set by something called “The Guidelines on Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight (P3CO).” Asked Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), "Dr. Fauci, according to the regulatory definitions, for example, in P3CO, that NIH applied to proposed research, did NIH ever fund gain of function research in Wuhan, China?" Responded Fauci, "As you said, Congressman Ruiz, according to the regulatory and operative definition of P3CO, the NIH did not fund gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology." But Fauci and Francis Collins, the former head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent years seeking to weaken oversight of such research. In 2011, after the NIH biosecurity board unanimously recommended that certain dangerous gain-of-function bird flu research not be published, Fauci and Collins published an opinion piece called “A flu virus risk worth taking” in the Washington Post, arguing that the benefits of this research outweighed the potential for a pandemic. The following year, 2012, NIH’s biosecurity board signed non-disclosure agreements and met with Fauci and Collins. The board, apparently under pressure from Fauci and Collins, then revised its previous recommendation to publish the risky bird flu research. According to Fauci and Democrats in Congress, NIH’s grant to EcoHealth Alliance did not fall under P3CO guidelines because it was not anticipated to increase a pathogen’s danger to humans, specifically. But in emails, NIH staff expressed their concerns about EcoHealth Alliance’s work creating hybrid “chimera” MERS and SARS viruses, in order to increase their infectiousness, in 2016. NIH staff pointed out that there was a moratorium placed on that research in 2014. Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, persuaded NIH staff to concede to a research threshold, saying EcoHealth would halt its research if the chimeras had enhanced viral growth 10 times that of the original viruses. After reaching an agreement with NIH, Daszak specifically referred to this work as gain-of-function, writing, “This is terrific! We are very happy to hear that our Gain of Function research funding pause has been lifted. Cheers, Peter.” Then, in 2018, EcoHealth went on to seemingly violate its agreement by producing a chimeric virus with a viral load 10,000 times greater than the original virus. As such, Fauci, his colleagues, and the Democrats were playing word games, redefining what they mean by gain-of-function research in ways that allowed them to deny responsibility. And that’s not all. After the Obama administration had established a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) committee to review proposed gain-of-function projects before the NIH could approve them, Fauci and Collins knowingly sought to make changes to NIH policy in order to allow funding for riskier gain-of-function experiments. These changes included removing the committee’s ability to block projects and limiting the type of projects the committee could review. In his testimony, Fauci misrepresented the scientific possibility that NIH funding is associated with the Covid-19 outbreak, as well as his role in the “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper, which infamously and misleadingly, claimed that, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” But consider how, in 2018, EcoHealth Alliance applied for a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a project called “DEFUSE” that would involve Shi Zhengli’s lab group at WIV and Ralph Baric’s lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC). Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the features of SARS-CoV-2 closely resemble the work described in EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal. On February 1, 2020, Fauci and Collins held a meeting called “Coronavirus sequence comparison” with other scientists to compare the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13, its closest genetic relative which the NIH-funded Wuhan lab discovered. This meeting would lead to the “Proximal Origin” paper. In the hearing, Fauci downplayed his role. After Majority Counsel Mitch Benzine asked, "Did Dr. Anderson send you drafts to review?" Fauci responded, "He sent drafts, but I'm going to jump ahead of you if I might dribble around. I did not edit it. That was mentioned by a few of the Congressmen. I did not edit the paper." While it may be true that Fauci did not “edit” the “Proximal Origin” paper, lead author Kristian Andersen said he “prompted” it, and the authors sent him a final draft for approval. In their private exchanges, the authors repeatedly refer to Collins and Fauci as the “Bethesda boys.” Their offices were located in Bethesda, Maryland. The “Bethesda boys” appear to have directed some of the paper’s content. After Andersen suggested that a first draft should be sent “up the chain,” Fauci and Collins voiced concern that culturing or serial passaging (a process through which a virus can be made more infectious to humans) was still included as a possible origin. Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, then pressured the authors to remove it. Shortly after publishing the preprint, Holmes told Andersen, “Sorry the last bit had to be done without you… pressure from on high.” Fauci would go on to cite this paper as objective evidence from independent scientists. All of this, and yet, throughout the Oversight Committee’s hearing, Democrats refused to provide oversight and criticized their colleagues who attempted to provide it. “I'm sorry for the personal attacks you have received and may have to deal with today,” said one. “Thank you, sir, and your entire team for saving lives in this country, and I'm sorry you have to continue going on with these attacks,” said another. “The Republicans failed to find, uh, a shred of evidence of their far-fetched conspiracy linking Dr. Fauci to a cover-up of the origins of the pandemic,” said one. “Sir, do you think the American public should listen to America's brightest and best doctors and scientists? Or instead, listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes,” asked another. Since World War II, Democrats, liberals, and progressives have criticized their political enemies as overly deferent to authority. Today, at the hearing with Fauci and other hearings where mainstream science is questioned, they criticize their enemies for not being sufficiently deferent. What changed?...

Michael Shellenberger

582,268 views • 2 years ago

Alright, here's the epic towel rant from tonight; And so that's what kind of tipped me off in real time. I was like: wait a minute. Is Judge Doolin ruling from the bench right now? And then I was like: wait a minute. He's ruling from the bench and ordering them to appoint a new prosecutor and potentially the Attorney General. Oh my word. How—what is this? I—this wasn't on my bingo card. Even now I'm just like: Oh my God, I can't believe he did that. Judge Doolin—in a good way. I'm just like: Oh my God, there is hope. And then to follow it up with: "Oh yeah, I'm thinking about a hearing on the contempt." Oh my God—you're telegraphing. You're going to have a contempt hearing after the Attorney General is potentially on the case. The other witnesses, however, are left in this position where they have this kind of not really well-funded—like kind of spastic prosecution, like the special prosecutors on the Kearney cases. Then you got the December 23rd, 2023 criminal charges against Aidan that were charged in Dedham District Court, 23rd or 26th or so. And that was for illegally—allegedly—recording Lindsey Gaetani and then submitting an edited version of the recording into court for some reason. I don't know why Aidan did that, especially apparently when there's an original version of the recording pursuant to some of the statements in court. And then also for intimidating Lindsey—for allegedly going over there on December 23rd, 2023—against Karen Read's advice and against his lawyers' advice, apparently, according to a leaked group chat message from Facebook in 2024—in May of 2024—going over to Lindsey's apartment. And then according to the affidavit from the search warrant for Karen Read's cell phone—allegedly telling Lindsey that she shouldn't cooperate with the grand jury. She should—she could remove information from her phone or something—that Aidan would get her a lawyer, but only if she agreed to meet with a lawyer only with him present, because she had, quote, "broken his trust." It just like—wild stuff. And that new grand jury, by the way, was apparently—it did go forward. And then in time it came out that it—that was about Karen and Aidan and witness intimidation and conspiracy, because Aidan Kearney—between October and November—really August and November of 2023—it started telling Lindsey Gaetani about his communications with Karen Read that included—in writing—Exhibit O to Karen Read search warrant affidavit, which says that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that in November of 2023—November 28, 2023, to be specific—that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that Karen Read and her team at ex parte conversations with former U.S. Attorney Josh Levy—which was right in the window of time that Jessica Leslie, the grand juror leaker, was leaking information. Leslie started leaking in August of 2022—which is the same month that Alan Jackson joined Karen Read's legal team. And Josh Levy—who was one of the U.S. Attorneys in charge of that grand jury—Leslie was leaking about four different cases: probably the Birchmore case, definitely the Read and O'Keefe case, definitely the CDL case. One more case. We can't really—the group of us journalists involved in this—can't really figure out. So right in the middle of that—November of 2023—Josh Levy is leaking ex parte grand jury information to Karen Read, which she's putting—she's telling Aidan Kearney about; he's putting it in writing. He just was trying to just show off for Lindsey, but you don't like—come on—like what is it? First day in the IC, bro? I'm not in the IC. I'm not part of the government. I'm a towel. But anyway—so Aidan's bragging to Lindsey, and I don't think that was a very good idea. I mean, she's brilliant and stuff, but like—why would you ever say that to her? Don't say that stuff. But anyway—like, why would you say—even if it's your significant other—unless they are read-in on the intel that you are sharing—why would you ever, ever, ever share that with someone? It exposes them to an incredible liability—which, if you love them, don't do it. It also exposes your own credibility to an incredible risk of liability. You will never be trusted by the intelligence community again. Pillow talk and honeypots are how they trap operatives. If you chase sex, they will compromise you. How can you not understand that? So if you get compromised by someone who's not an agent—just someone who's your partner and you're just telling them stuff about protected federal investigations—what do you think your reputation is going to be like among the intelligence community when you're doing that and they haven't even honeypotted you? You just voluntarily started putting this shit in writing. They're going to look at you like you are out of your mind. So anyway—Karen Read apparently is telling Aidan Kearney that she's having ex parte conversations with Josh Levy. Now, the grand jury that Leslie was leaking from was impaneled in May of 2022 when Rachael Rollins used to be U.S. Attorney in Boston. Now think about this. In 2020, Rachael Rollins and Aidan Kearney—Rachael Rollins, a hyper-liberal known for her soft-on-crime stance. We'll also hear Rollins hated Michael Morrissey. Anyway, Rollins worked with Turtle Boy to send a Republican operative named Rayla Campbell to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events in the Senate race against Ed Markey so that Ed Markey could win the Senate seat. Now, interestingly enough, Rachael Rollins then got appointed to the position of U.S. Attorney right after that. And you might say: well, Grant, that's a stretch. No, no—because then within a few months, Rachael Rollins—part of the reason she gets thrown out of office by the DOJ OIG—is because she attends an event in Andover with—guess who?—Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the then-president who appointed her. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you really think about the geopolitical implications of the 2020 Senate race between Ed Markey in Massachusetts and Joe Kennedy Jr.—well, one of the things you're going to realize is that—think about 2020. The leadership around Biden did not know that the chaos of 2024 was going to happen with Kamala and Biden not really being up to it. You're thinking ahead to 2024. Why? Who's your biggest target if you are a sitting Democrat and you're worried about a primary challenge four years from now? Well, what if JFK's—what is it—nephew or whatever it is—is in the House of Representatives? And what if JFK started his career in the House of Representatives? And what if that new young Kennedy with red hair and sort of a photogenic face? What if he is running for JFK's old Senate seat? What if he's on the same exact trajectory as JFK? Oh, we can't have that. We—as the Biden White House—cannot have Joe Kennedy Jr. beating Ed Markey for Senate. And how it got to the point that somebody talked to Rachael Rollins and she came up with the brilliant idea to reach out to Turtle Boy so that Turtle Boy would talk to Rayla Campbell to send her to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events to help Markey—I don't know. But that's why I think Rachael Rollins became U.S. Attorney—someone who, in my opinion, was uniquely unqualified and fundamentally unethically un-predisposed to being able to run that office. Who then in turn immediately tried to interfere in the 2022 Suffolk DA primary between Kevin Hayden and Ricardo O'Rourke—because Rollins wanted to see her progressive vision continue through O'Rourke—so she worked with Daniel Medwed—the same professor who was involved with advocating the media on behalf of Karen Read's team. She worked with Daniel Medwed to get a story leaked about how a non-existent federal probe into Kevin Hayden—to increase Ricardo O'Rourke's chances in the Suffolk DA primary. Sound familiar? Oh, hell yeah. So anyway—between November of 2022 and May of 2023—you got this weird situation where Rollins knows she's getting forced out; Levy's going to take over the office. The people who take Rollins out are Josh Levy, Bill Abley, and still head of the criminal division—Dustin Chao, I think—still head of the public integrity unit, and then executive officer who is also the press secretary or the communications director of the office. Those four people—without being named; they're named by title—were the people who cooperated with the DOJ to take Rollins out—DOJ-OIG to take Rollins out. Now, why is that interesting? Well, one—because it shows that people in that office knew that Rachael Rollins had a proclivity for weaponizing leaks about non-existent federal probes to interfere in particular district attorney races and matters. Second—Rachael Rollins and Michael Morrissey had a bifurcated history of ten years. One: Rachael Rollins had this list of 25 crimes she wouldn't prosecute, and other DAs critiqued her—not just Michael Morrissey but others. Rollins—I'm pretty sure—was the one who first called Morrissey a "meatball," in fact, because of his criticism of Rollins over that issue. Rachael Rollins—I think—has a proclivity, in my opinion, to hold a bit of a grudge. When she became U.S. Attorney and she realized she was on the way out—well, maybe the Sandra Birchmore probe started back in May of 2022 because former chief of the Canton police—Ken Berkowitz—went to the FBI and told them that the FBI covered up—the MSP unit detailed to the Norfolk DA covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder—potentially because Yuri Bukhenik and John Fanning used to work in Stoughton with Matt Farwell and Robert Devine and Billy Farwell—I think they all worked there. And furthermore—that Brian Tully, the unit commander, was partners with John Fanning for 20 years. All right, and in that regard—it is very interesting, I think—that Chief Berkowitz—who may have been very offended that his unit... So Sandra Birchmore was murdered on February 1st, 2021, at 9:23 p.m. in her apartment in Canton. Okay—on February 4th, Monday in the morning—the Canton police do a wellness check after they get a call from her—Sandra's—colleagues at the school where she worked as an administrative assistant. Now the Canton police respond—on Monday, February 4th—by Wednesday, February 6th. The Canton police have collected the following evidence in order. And if you don't believe me, you can read pages—I think 97 through 101—of the Canton Police Department audit report released in April of 2025. Point by point. Number one: the Canton police confirm—via a witness who was the maintenance worker at Sandra's apartment building—that Matt Farwell was the man on camera outside Sandra's apartment in the elevator at 9:23 p.m. on February 1st—which is exactly when Sandra died. Two: that the man was Matt Farwell, and he was the same man who helped Sandra move into her apartment. Three: that when the Canton PD went to Sandra's school, they got information that Farwell was telling people that Sandra was pregnant with his child—that he had abused her since she was a child—and that he was going to quote "take care of the problem himself" if Sandra decided to carry the baby to term. All right. All of that information—by February 6th of 2021—was passed over to the MSP. John Fanning and this whole unit—I think—really then facilitate a report sometime over the next six to 12 months that exonerates Farwell and says Sandra dies from self-harm. Well, I think that's why Ken Berkowitz blew the whistle before he died of cancer—and that's why there was a grand jury impaneled in May of 2022—and it was really about the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. Well—one—it was about Sandra Birchmore's murder. Why does that make everything so interesting? Because I think that the investigation wasn't just about who killed Sandra and why—but how was it ruled a—the result of self-harm—instead of the very obvious murder that it was. Well—that starts—2022, I think—May of 2022—the grand jury. Jessica Leslie was on the grand jury—leaker—who's going to be sentenced on October 4th of 2025. I think Jessica Leslie—ladies and gentlemen—in August of 2022 somehow leaked to Karen Read—Alan Jackson—that the Norfolk DA was dirty because they covered up—and that MSP unit—because they covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder. All right—so therefore, Alan Jackson—that's the skeleton in the closet. It wasn't what the people in the house were doing. I'm still a little suspect of who they know—but I don't think that's the big deal. I don't think Jen McCabe's social life is the big deal. Nobody cares—nobody fucking cares. Sorry for cussing. The big issue is that Jen was friends with Tully. Tully's unit knew literally where the bodies were buried. And they—I think—they brought on the PI—Marty Kraft—and Kate Peter—to insulate their exposure from the coming publicity that they knew was going to be brought upon them by Alan Jackson. And so they were worried. And who would you bring in if you had covered up a murder? If you were a MSP unit—you'd bring in someone like Kate Peter. Because you can read her in on that. She's hardened. She doesn't give a fuck. She lost two of her kids—and I don't think she even fucking cared. So who the fuck's the perfect person be like: "Bruh, if that shit gets national attention, we're fucked. So you better control that fucking narrative and handle all these like different people that get too close to this—or we're going to be exposed for Birchmore." But let me bring it back to the point here—which is in 2022, the feds clearly were starting to poke around. And come 2023—I think Brian Tully's unit was desperate. Who was going to find out because of the coverage of the Read case? Could they make sure that Kate Peter got close enough to Netflix and Gretchen Voss so that they couldn't find out what was actually going on? And could the Birchmore cover-up be kept up—even in light of the national spotlight? When you think about the fact that some people may not have been loyal to the Justice for John O'Keefe movement—but were instead primarily loyal to Brian Tully's unit. And when you think about the fact that maybe Tully's unit didn't run the best investigation of Karen Read—maybe there were some flaws. But if you think about the fact that they did get her—but if you think about it in the context of: Karen knew from the jump that the MSP were dirty over Birchmore—then you understand: Karen—that's why it was going to become an incident. Everyone knew—everyone around Tully, his friends, all of them—the unit—they knew they covered up Birchmore's murder. And they knew Karen had it in her hands if she could just figure out the PR. And that's exactly what she did—to put enough pressure on them. They took her to trial anyway—and it destroyed the fucking Norfolk DA—destroyed Brian Tully's unit. It cost them dearly—and she's a tactical fucking genius. I think Brian Tully thought he was slicker than he was by using the prosecution of Aidan Kearney—not to get a genuinely—in my opinion—bad guy who was deserving of the indictment handed up by a grand jury of his peers. But because Tully wanted to know what the real target of the federal probe is. If you don't know what a backhand is, folks—a backhand is where you investigate one thing on the surface because you're dealing with a very high-level operation like the state police—who are a paramilitary intelligence-gathering operation. So you trick them. You make them think they're under investigation for John's death and the investigation of that death. But really—you're investigating them for the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. And that's exactly what I think happened to this unit. That's what I think Brian Tully was trying to figure out—from August of 2023 until about December. I think they eventually put it together—and by August of 2024, Matthew Farwell got indicted. Now—it's a question of all this as a result of today. I want to be very clear: this is what was called for. There needed to be an independent voice with power and who takes no nonsense—who came into this and said: Nope—it's out of your hands. And that's what Judge Doolin did today. Someone just needed to not either be involved with Karen Read, Aidan Kearney, or the Norfolk DA—or Kate Peter or Marty Kraft—and prosecute this. Now, all those other witnesses—I have no idea what the hell is going to happen there. But at least for Lindsey—Judge Doolin was like: enough of this nonsense. And that's why today was such a big deal in light of that historical context—because just tracing that very insidious pattern of events over the past 18 months—you can see this became a proxy war. It was Michael Morrissey on one side with his marching soldiers: Brian Tully, Kate Peter, Marty Kraft. And then it was Karen Read and the DOJ on the other side. Okay. And their soldiers were like the Free Karen Read movement and Turtle Boy and Natalie and all these other people. This was an intelligence community proxy war. And that's why I've been trying to tell people for so long: Lindsey Gaetani was not involved. She was an unwitting pawn. These two factions both took advantage of her—including Brian Tully—who was more interested in preserving his unit's reputation than actually defending the interest of the vulnerable. In my opinion, I think Brian Tully is a terrible person. Does that mean that he's a bad person for trying to hold Karen Read accountable for John O'Keefe's death? No, of course not. He's a bad person because in what fucking world do you—as a fucking state police officer—who you—you are entrusted—not just to get the bad guys—but to protect the most fucking vulnerable? One: how do you justify what happened with Sandra Birchmore? Two: how the fuck do you get it in your fucking mind that you're going to take a 15-year unredacted extraction of a fucking vulnerable victim's cell phone and release it to a fucking defendant known for promulgating exactly that material? What fucking headspace? What satanic fucking chamber do you and Kate Peter have to be drinking blood from fucking cups in to think that that's fucking okay? Fuck you. How do you even get in the headspace where doing something like that to a fucking victim becomes acceptable. The rot in that unit—whether enabled by Morrissey or whether he didn't know about it—I don't fucking know. But the point is: the rot in that unit was so deep that they lost their fucking souls. They didn't think of victims as victims. They re-victimized victims because it was a political fucking war—and these people are so hardened, I guess, that they don't understand what it means to be vulnerable. And these were police officers—detectives—people entrusted to uphold and protect the dignity of the most vulnerable—and they fucking used victims to advance some political agenda—to deal with the fact that they covered up a fucking murder. I'm done being gentle about this. Fuck these people. And I'm not saying that it was wrong for them to investigate Karen Read. I am pleased someone tried to prosecute her. I'm pissed at them because they were thinking about it from the perspective of their own liability for an unrelated case—and they fucked everything up—and introducing Kate Peter to this shit. Oh my God. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace to the people who were hurt. It's a disgrace to the vulnerable. I frankly do not understand how Jen McCabe, Brian Tully, and Kate Peter go to bed each night. I don't get it. I don't know. Maybe there's something that shuts off the GABA-1 receptor or something and just makes you go to bed. I don't know. Never heard of such a thing. But I'm just saying: I don't know how you do it. How do you do it? But anyway—Judge Doolin—without giving a... extemporaneous, uh, bloviating cuss-based rant like I just did—instead, in my opinion, is like: fuck all of you! You're not being involved in this prosecution anymore. Someone's gonna protect this fucking woman—Lindsey Gaetani. I'm making you appoint someone! I love that man. Good for Judge Doolin. But still—we never should have gone to this point. This is incredible. With the... the... the MSP. The fact that they had a unit operating like this for so long. This is worse than what John Connolly and Whitey Bulger did. This is institutional rot that is so pervasive that it requires fundamental reform of the MSP. They're not incapable of—um, uh—solving crimes. I'm sure most of the MSP are wonderful. Anyway—my point is: I don't think the state police officers that I generally run into—or troopers—are bad people. I think most of them are wonderful. They've never been really mean to me. They do good work. They're out there protecting our roads. They stop people from speeding. They—what else do they do? They go after commercial truck violations. They investigate homicides—like, on the whole. And this is why I think we have to be careful about how we talk about this. I am not saying that the entire MSP is just rotten. I'm saying that when you have factions or sections within the institution that understand its machinations and are able to thus manipulate the bureaucratic structure and avoid accountability—you lose the confidence of everyone. And how do you think some of those good troopers feel when they have to go out there? Yes—people like me are going to smile at them and bless them and whatever—because I know they're not part of the problem. But most people look at them and they think that they're fucking hated. They don't deserve that. They literally put their lives on the line for us every day. And if we're going to give them the respect they deserve—if we're going to make the profession have the respect that it deserves—then this kind of institutional rot can't be looked at as just an embarrassment. And it can't be looked at as something that—oh, we just wish didn't happen. Maybe some guys are going to go away. No—you point at it. You scream it from the rooftops and you say: if this happens even once—then we have so failed as an institution; we must fundamentally reform from the ground up. And this wasn't just once. It was Birchmore. It was the phone extraction. It was the SA report leak over and over and over and over again. They knew the law. They were an old boys' club. They abused it. They had cover—and it was systemically enabled. And that's why I think—to save the profession of policing in Massachusetts—there needs to be a full-on unbridled discussion about how this happened—how the personalities involved were able to do what they did. And we can't be so tribalistic that because someone we support as to their views on one case, right? We cannot be so tribalistic that we just block out everything bad that they do. Or this rot will continue. And it is pernicious. It is insidious. It is invidious. It undermines the faith that citizens completely removed from this situation have in our system of government. It undermines victims' confidence in the ability to seek redress in the face of serious fucking harm—because they think the system doesn't actually care about them. It's just using them to get someone bigger. We cannot allow this to perpetuate. And the only way to fix it is to hold up situations like what happened to Birchmore—Sandra Birchmore—and what happened to Lindsey Gaetani—hold them up in the national spotlight—and say: we—the MSP—have failed you. Brian Tully failed these people. John Fanning failed these people. Nick Guarino failed these people. Yuri Bukhenik failed these people. We need to say that. We need to highlight it. We need to say: this happened even once. Therefore, we are not good enough. Not only are we not good enough—the very fact that either of these things were able to happen—the Birchmore cover-up, the phone extraction leak—is such a pervasive, systemic degradation of the faith that victims and the public have in the justice system—that our only option is to talk about this—congressional hearings. We need the State House to have congressional hearings. We need these people to answer for what they did. And we need to make sure it never happens again. And the only way you do that is by finding out what aspects of the bureaucratic structure allowed this to happen. And it's not going to be comfortable. I don't think it's going to be comfortable for anyone to talk about the fallout of any of this—but that's exactly what happened at the CCC on a smaller scale. And if this country matters—if this form of government matters—if this republic matters—then we will fix this. We will fix it together. We will address the hard questions. We will address the uncomfortable questions. We will shed our prejudices and polemical biases at the door. We will engage in no fear, no favoritism—and we will look only for the truth and nothing but it. And if you are incapable of doing that—you're contributing—either consciously or subconsciously—to the problem. It's our only option. And you can't just say: because they prosecuted Karen Read, we can't talk about anything bad that they did. That's tribalism. That's polemical. That's what drove us to this point.
1:17:36

Alright, here's the epic towel rant from tonight; And so that's what kind of tipped me off in real time. I was like: wait a minute. Is Judge Doolin ruling from the bench right now? And then I was like: wait a minute. He's ruling from the bench and ordering them to appoint a new prosecutor and potentially the Attorney General. Oh my word. How—what is this? I—this wasn't on my bingo card. Even now I'm just like: Oh my God, I can't believe he did that. Judge Doolin—in a good way. I'm just like: Oh my God, there is hope. And then to follow it up with: "Oh yeah, I'm thinking about a hearing on the contempt." Oh my God—you're telegraphing. You're going to have a contempt hearing after the Attorney General is potentially on the case. The other witnesses, however, are left in this position where they have this kind of not really well-funded—like kind of spastic prosecution, like the special prosecutors on the Kearney cases. Then you got the December 23rd, 2023 criminal charges against Aidan that were charged in Dedham District Court, 23rd or 26th or so. And that was for illegally—allegedly—recording Lindsey Gaetani and then submitting an edited version of the recording into court for some reason. I don't know why Aidan did that, especially apparently when there's an original version of the recording pursuant to some of the statements in court. And then also for intimidating Lindsey—for allegedly going over there on December 23rd, 2023—against Karen Read's advice and against his lawyers' advice, apparently, according to a leaked group chat message from Facebook in 2024—in May of 2024—going over to Lindsey's apartment. And then according to the affidavit from the search warrant for Karen Read's cell phone—allegedly telling Lindsey that she shouldn't cooperate with the grand jury. She should—she could remove information from her phone or something—that Aidan would get her a lawyer, but only if she agreed to meet with a lawyer only with him present, because she had, quote, "broken his trust." It just like—wild stuff. And that new grand jury, by the way, was apparently—it did go forward. And then in time it came out that it—that was about Karen and Aidan and witness intimidation and conspiracy, because Aidan Kearney—between October and November—really August and November of 2023—it started telling Lindsey Gaetani about his communications with Karen Read that included—in writing—Exhibit O to Karen Read search warrant affidavit, which says that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that in November of 2023—November 28, 2023, to be specific—that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that Karen Read and her team at ex parte conversations with former U.S. Attorney Josh Levy—which was right in the window of time that Jessica Leslie, the grand juror leaker, was leaking information. Leslie started leaking in August of 2022—which is the same month that Alan Jackson joined Karen Read's legal team. And Josh Levy—who was one of the U.S. Attorneys in charge of that grand jury—Leslie was leaking about four different cases: probably the Birchmore case, definitely the Read and O'Keefe case, definitely the CDL case. One more case. We can't really—the group of us journalists involved in this—can't really figure out. So right in the middle of that—November of 2023—Josh Levy is leaking ex parte grand jury information to Karen Read, which she's putting—she's telling Aidan Kearney about; he's putting it in writing. He just was trying to just show off for Lindsey, but you don't like—come on—like what is it? First day in the IC, bro? I'm not in the IC. I'm not part of the government. I'm a towel. But anyway—so Aidan's bragging to Lindsey, and I don't think that was a very good idea. I mean, she's brilliant and stuff, but like—why would you ever say that to her? Don't say that stuff. But anyway—like, why would you say—even if it's your significant other—unless they are read-in on the intel that you are sharing—why would you ever, ever, ever share that with someone? It exposes them to an incredible liability—which, if you love them, don't do it. It also exposes your own credibility to an incredible risk of liability. You will never be trusted by the intelligence community again. Pillow talk and honeypots are how they trap operatives. If you chase sex, they will compromise you. How can you not understand that? So if you get compromised by someone who's not an agent—just someone who's your partner and you're just telling them stuff about protected federal investigations—what do you think your reputation is going to be like among the intelligence community when you're doing that and they haven't even honeypotted you? You just voluntarily started putting this shit in writing. They're going to look at you like you are out of your mind. So anyway—Karen Read apparently is telling Aidan Kearney that she's having ex parte conversations with Josh Levy. Now, the grand jury that Leslie was leaking from was impaneled in May of 2022 when Rachael Rollins used to be U.S. Attorney in Boston. Now think about this. In 2020, Rachael Rollins and Aidan Kearney—Rachael Rollins, a hyper-liberal known for her soft-on-crime stance. We'll also hear Rollins hated Michael Morrissey. Anyway, Rollins worked with Turtle Boy to send a Republican operative named Rayla Campbell to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events in the Senate race against Ed Markey so that Ed Markey could win the Senate seat. Now, interestingly enough, Rachael Rollins then got appointed to the position of U.S. Attorney right after that. And you might say: well, Grant, that's a stretch. No, no—because then within a few months, Rachael Rollins—part of the reason she gets thrown out of office by the DOJ OIG—is because she attends an event in Andover with—guess who?—Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the then-president who appointed her. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you really think about the geopolitical implications of the 2020 Senate race between Ed Markey in Massachusetts and Joe Kennedy Jr.—well, one of the things you're going to realize is that—think about 2020. The leadership around Biden did not know that the chaos of 2024 was going to happen with Kamala and Biden not really being up to it. You're thinking ahead to 2024. Why? Who's your biggest target if you are a sitting Democrat and you're worried about a primary challenge four years from now? Well, what if JFK's—what is it—nephew or whatever it is—is in the House of Representatives? And what if JFK started his career in the House of Representatives? And what if that new young Kennedy with red hair and sort of a photogenic face? What if he is running for JFK's old Senate seat? What if he's on the same exact trajectory as JFK? Oh, we can't have that. We—as the Biden White House—cannot have Joe Kennedy Jr. beating Ed Markey for Senate. And how it got to the point that somebody talked to Rachael Rollins and she came up with the brilliant idea to reach out to Turtle Boy so that Turtle Boy would talk to Rayla Campbell to send her to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events to help Markey—I don't know. But that's why I think Rachael Rollins became U.S. Attorney—someone who, in my opinion, was uniquely unqualified and fundamentally unethically un-predisposed to being able to run that office. Who then in turn immediately tried to interfere in the 2022 Suffolk DA primary between Kevin Hayden and Ricardo O'Rourke—because Rollins wanted to see her progressive vision continue through O'Rourke—so she worked with Daniel Medwed—the same professor who was involved with advocating the media on behalf of Karen Read's team. She worked with Daniel Medwed to get a story leaked about how a non-existent federal probe into Kevin Hayden—to increase Ricardo O'Rourke's chances in the Suffolk DA primary. Sound familiar? Oh, hell yeah. So anyway—between November of 2022 and May of 2023—you got this weird situation where Rollins knows she's getting forced out; Levy's going to take over the office. The people who take Rollins out are Josh Levy, Bill Abley, and still head of the criminal division—Dustin Chao, I think—still head of the public integrity unit, and then executive officer who is also the press secretary or the communications director of the office. Those four people—without being named; they're named by title—were the people who cooperated with the DOJ to take Rollins out—DOJ-OIG to take Rollins out. Now, why is that interesting? Well, one—because it shows that people in that office knew that Rachael Rollins had a proclivity for weaponizing leaks about non-existent federal probes to interfere in particular district attorney races and matters. Second—Rachael Rollins and Michael Morrissey had a bifurcated history of ten years. One: Rachael Rollins had this list of 25 crimes she wouldn't prosecute, and other DAs critiqued her—not just Michael Morrissey but others. Rollins—I'm pretty sure—was the one who first called Morrissey a "meatball," in fact, because of his criticism of Rollins over that issue. Rachael Rollins—I think—has a proclivity, in my opinion, to hold a bit of a grudge. When she became U.S. Attorney and she realized she was on the way out—well, maybe the Sandra Birchmore probe started back in May of 2022 because former chief of the Canton police—Ken Berkowitz—went to the FBI and told them that the FBI covered up—the MSP unit detailed to the Norfolk DA covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder—potentially because Yuri Bukhenik and John Fanning used to work in Stoughton with Matt Farwell and Robert Devine and Billy Farwell—I think they all worked there. And furthermore—that Brian Tully, the unit commander, was partners with John Fanning for 20 years. All right, and in that regard—it is very interesting, I think—that Chief Berkowitz—who may have been very offended that his unit... So Sandra Birchmore was murdered on February 1st, 2021, at 9:23 p.m. in her apartment in Canton. Okay—on February 4th, Monday in the morning—the Canton police do a wellness check after they get a call from her—Sandra's—colleagues at the school where she worked as an administrative assistant. Now the Canton police respond—on Monday, February 4th—by Wednesday, February 6th. The Canton police have collected the following evidence in order. And if you don't believe me, you can read pages—I think 97 through 101—of the Canton Police Department audit report released in April of 2025. Point by point. Number one: the Canton police confirm—via a witness who was the maintenance worker at Sandra's apartment building—that Matt Farwell was the man on camera outside Sandra's apartment in the elevator at 9:23 p.m. on February 1st—which is exactly when Sandra died. Two: that the man was Matt Farwell, and he was the same man who helped Sandra move into her apartment. Three: that when the Canton PD went to Sandra's school, they got information that Farwell was telling people that Sandra was pregnant with his child—that he had abused her since she was a child—and that he was going to quote "take care of the problem himself" if Sandra decided to carry the baby to term. All right. All of that information—by February 6th of 2021—was passed over to the MSP. John Fanning and this whole unit—I think—really then facilitate a report sometime over the next six to 12 months that exonerates Farwell and says Sandra dies from self-harm. Well, I think that's why Ken Berkowitz blew the whistle before he died of cancer—and that's why there was a grand jury impaneled in May of 2022—and it was really about the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. Well—one—it was about Sandra Birchmore's murder. Why does that make everything so interesting? Because I think that the investigation wasn't just about who killed Sandra and why—but how was it ruled a—the result of self-harm—instead of the very obvious murder that it was. Well—that starts—2022, I think—May of 2022—the grand jury. Jessica Leslie was on the grand jury—leaker—who's going to be sentenced on October 4th of 2025. I think Jessica Leslie—ladies and gentlemen—in August of 2022 somehow leaked to Karen Read—Alan Jackson—that the Norfolk DA was dirty because they covered up—and that MSP unit—because they covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder. All right—so therefore, Alan Jackson—that's the skeleton in the closet. It wasn't what the people in the house were doing. I'm still a little suspect of who they know—but I don't think that's the big deal. I don't think Jen McCabe's social life is the big deal. Nobody cares—nobody fucking cares. Sorry for cussing. The big issue is that Jen was friends with Tully. Tully's unit knew literally where the bodies were buried. And they—I think—they brought on the PI—Marty Kraft—and Kate Peter—to insulate their exposure from the coming publicity that they knew was going to be brought upon them by Alan Jackson. And so they were worried. And who would you bring in if you had covered up a murder? If you were a MSP unit—you'd bring in someone like Kate Peter. Because you can read her in on that. She's hardened. She doesn't give a fuck. She lost two of her kids—and I don't think she even fucking cared. So who the fuck's the perfect person be like: "Bruh, if that shit gets national attention, we're fucked. So you better control that fucking narrative and handle all these like different people that get too close to this—or we're going to be exposed for Birchmore." But let me bring it back to the point here—which is in 2022, the feds clearly were starting to poke around. And come 2023—I think Brian Tully's unit was desperate. Who was going to find out because of the coverage of the Read case? Could they make sure that Kate Peter got close enough to Netflix and Gretchen Voss so that they couldn't find out what was actually going on? And could the Birchmore cover-up be kept up—even in light of the national spotlight? When you think about the fact that some people may not have been loyal to the Justice for John O'Keefe movement—but were instead primarily loyal to Brian Tully's unit. And when you think about the fact that maybe Tully's unit didn't run the best investigation of Karen Read—maybe there were some flaws. But if you think about the fact that they did get her—but if you think about it in the context of: Karen knew from the jump that the MSP were dirty over Birchmore—then you understand: Karen—that's why it was going to become an incident. Everyone knew—everyone around Tully, his friends, all of them—the unit—they knew they covered up Birchmore's murder. And they knew Karen had it in her hands if she could just figure out the PR. And that's exactly what she did—to put enough pressure on them. They took her to trial anyway—and it destroyed the fucking Norfolk DA—destroyed Brian Tully's unit. It cost them dearly—and she's a tactical fucking genius. I think Brian Tully thought he was slicker than he was by using the prosecution of Aidan Kearney—not to get a genuinely—in my opinion—bad guy who was deserving of the indictment handed up by a grand jury of his peers. But because Tully wanted to know what the real target of the federal probe is. If you don't know what a backhand is, folks—a backhand is where you investigate one thing on the surface because you're dealing with a very high-level operation like the state police—who are a paramilitary intelligence-gathering operation. So you trick them. You make them think they're under investigation for John's death and the investigation of that death. But really—you're investigating them for the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. And that's exactly what I think happened to this unit. That's what I think Brian Tully was trying to figure out—from August of 2023 until about December. I think they eventually put it together—and by August of 2024, Matthew Farwell got indicted. Now—it's a question of all this as a result of today. I want to be very clear: this is what was called for. There needed to be an independent voice with power and who takes no nonsense—who came into this and said: Nope—it's out of your hands. And that's what Judge Doolin did today. Someone just needed to not either be involved with Karen Read, Aidan Kearney, or the Norfolk DA—or Kate Peter or Marty Kraft—and prosecute this. Now, all those other witnesses—I have no idea what the hell is going to happen there. But at least for Lindsey—Judge Doolin was like: enough of this nonsense. And that's why today was such a big deal in light of that historical context—because just tracing that very insidious pattern of events over the past 18 months—you can see this became a proxy war. It was Michael Morrissey on one side with his marching soldiers: Brian Tully, Kate Peter, Marty Kraft. And then it was Karen Read and the DOJ on the other side. Okay. And their soldiers were like the Free Karen Read movement and Turtle Boy and Natalie and all these other people. This was an intelligence community proxy war. And that's why I've been trying to tell people for so long: Lindsey Gaetani was not involved. She was an unwitting pawn. These two factions both took advantage of her—including Brian Tully—who was more interested in preserving his unit's reputation than actually defending the interest of the vulnerable. In my opinion, I think Brian Tully is a terrible person. Does that mean that he's a bad person for trying to hold Karen Read accountable for John O'Keefe's death? No, of course not. He's a bad person because in what fucking world do you—as a fucking state police officer—who you—you are entrusted—not just to get the bad guys—but to protect the most fucking vulnerable? One: how do you justify what happened with Sandra Birchmore? Two: how the fuck do you get it in your fucking mind that you're going to take a 15-year unredacted extraction of a fucking vulnerable victim's cell phone and release it to a fucking defendant known for promulgating exactly that material? What fucking headspace? What satanic fucking chamber do you and Kate Peter have to be drinking blood from fucking cups in to think that that's fucking okay? Fuck you. How do you even get in the headspace where doing something like that to a fucking victim becomes acceptable. The rot in that unit—whether enabled by Morrissey or whether he didn't know about it—I don't fucking know. But the point is: the rot in that unit was so deep that they lost their fucking souls. They didn't think of victims as victims. They re-victimized victims because it was a political fucking war—and these people are so hardened, I guess, that they don't understand what it means to be vulnerable. And these were police officers—detectives—people entrusted to uphold and protect the dignity of the most vulnerable—and they fucking used victims to advance some political agenda—to deal with the fact that they covered up a fucking murder. I'm done being gentle about this. Fuck these people. And I'm not saying that it was wrong for them to investigate Karen Read. I am pleased someone tried to prosecute her. I'm pissed at them because they were thinking about it from the perspective of their own liability for an unrelated case—and they fucked everything up—and introducing Kate Peter to this shit. Oh my God. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace to the people who were hurt. It's a disgrace to the vulnerable. I frankly do not understand how Jen McCabe, Brian Tully, and Kate Peter go to bed each night. I don't get it. I don't know. Maybe there's something that shuts off the GABA-1 receptor or something and just makes you go to bed. I don't know. Never heard of such a thing. But I'm just saying: I don't know how you do it. How do you do it? But anyway—Judge Doolin—without giving a... extemporaneous, uh, bloviating cuss-based rant like I just did—instead, in my opinion, is like: fuck all of you! You're not being involved in this prosecution anymore. Someone's gonna protect this fucking woman—Lindsey Gaetani. I'm making you appoint someone! I love that man. Good for Judge Doolin. But still—we never should have gone to this point. This is incredible. With the... the... the MSP. The fact that they had a unit operating like this for so long. This is worse than what John Connolly and Whitey Bulger did. This is institutional rot that is so pervasive that it requires fundamental reform of the MSP. They're not incapable of—um, uh—solving crimes. I'm sure most of the MSP are wonderful. Anyway—my point is: I don't think the state police officers that I generally run into—or troopers—are bad people. I think most of them are wonderful. They've never been really mean to me. They do good work. They're out there protecting our roads. They stop people from speeding. They—what else do they do? They go after commercial truck violations. They investigate homicides—like, on the whole. And this is why I think we have to be careful about how we talk about this. I am not saying that the entire MSP is just rotten. I'm saying that when you have factions or sections within the institution that understand its machinations and are able to thus manipulate the bureaucratic structure and avoid accountability—you lose the confidence of everyone. And how do you think some of those good troopers feel when they have to go out there? Yes—people like me are going to smile at them and bless them and whatever—because I know they're not part of the problem. But most people look at them and they think that they're fucking hated. They don't deserve that. They literally put their lives on the line for us every day. And if we're going to give them the respect they deserve—if we're going to make the profession have the respect that it deserves—then this kind of institutional rot can't be looked at as just an embarrassment. And it can't be looked at as something that—oh, we just wish didn't happen. Maybe some guys are going to go away. No—you point at it. You scream it from the rooftops and you say: if this happens even once—then we have so failed as an institution; we must fundamentally reform from the ground up. And this wasn't just once. It was Birchmore. It was the phone extraction. It was the SA report leak over and over and over and over again. They knew the law. They were an old boys' club. They abused it. They had cover—and it was systemically enabled. And that's why I think—to save the profession of policing in Massachusetts—there needs to be a full-on unbridled discussion about how this happened—how the personalities involved were able to do what they did. And we can't be so tribalistic that because someone we support as to their views on one case, right? We cannot be so tribalistic that we just block out everything bad that they do. Or this rot will continue. And it is pernicious. It is insidious. It is invidious. It undermines the faith that citizens completely removed from this situation have in our system of government. It undermines victims' confidence in the ability to seek redress in the face of serious fucking harm—because they think the system doesn't actually care about them. It's just using them to get someone bigger. We cannot allow this to perpetuate. And the only way to fix it is to hold up situations like what happened to Birchmore—Sandra Birchmore—and what happened to Lindsey Gaetani—hold them up in the national spotlight—and say: we—the MSP—have failed you. Brian Tully failed these people. John Fanning failed these people. Nick Guarino failed these people. Yuri Bukhenik failed these people. We need to say that. We need to highlight it. We need to say: this happened even once. Therefore, we are not good enough. Not only are we not good enough—the very fact that either of these things were able to happen—the Birchmore cover-up, the phone extraction leak—is such a pervasive, systemic degradation of the faith that victims and the public have in the justice system—that our only option is to talk about this—congressional hearings. We need the State House to have congressional hearings. We need these people to answer for what they did. And we need to make sure it never happens again. And the only way you do that is by finding out what aspects of the bureaucratic structure allowed this to happen. And it's not going to be comfortable. I don't think it's going to be comfortable for anyone to talk about the fallout of any of this—but that's exactly what happened at the CCC on a smaller scale. And if this country matters—if this form of government matters—if this republic matters—then we will fix this. We will fix it together. We will address the hard questions. We will address the uncomfortable questions. We will shed our prejudices and polemical biases at the door. We will engage in no fear, no favoritism—and we will look only for the truth and nothing but it. And if you are incapable of doing that—you're contributing—either consciously or subconsciously—to the problem. It's our only option. And you can't just say: because they prosecuted Karen Read, we can't talk about anything bad that they did. That's tribalism. That's polemical. That's what drove us to this point.

Grant Smith Ellis

41,546 views • 11 months ago

WHY YOU WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Your brain has 20,000 neurons clustered in the hypothalamus. They form the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This is your master clock. It's been running since before birth. At 25, this clock kept you unconscious until morning. At 65, the same clock runs on less melatonin, weaker signals, and a rhythm that physically shifted 2-3 hours earlier. It fires a wake signal between 2-4 a.m. Four systems inside your body shifted with age. They converge at the same hour every night. The thoughts that arrive at 3 a.m. feel different from the same thoughts at 3 p.m. because your brain runs a different program in the dark. The part that would normally tell you those thoughts aren't emergencies is still asleep. THE CLOCK MOVED FORWARD The suprachiasmatic nucleus generates a near 24-hour rhythm controlling when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy. In young adults, peak sleepiness arrives around 11 p.m. Peak alertness arrives around 9-10 a.m. Blue light at 480 nanometers activates melanopsin cells in the retina. These cells send signals directly to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, synchronizing your clock to the day-night cycle. With age, the clock shifts earlier. This is circadian phase advance. The sleepiness signal arrives at 7-8 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. The wake signal arrives at 3-4 a.m. instead of 6-7 a.m. The entire sleep-wake window moves forward 2-3 hours. The suprachiasmatic nucleus itself degrades. Neurons deteriorate. The amplitude of the circadian signal weakens. Peaks become shallower. Troughs become less deep. The radio station loses transmitter power until the signal becomes fuzzy and inconsistent. The clock's sensitivity to light cues diminishes through two mechanisms. The aging lens yellows and thickens, filtering more blue light before it reaches the melanopsin cells. The suprachiasmatic neurons themselves respond less robustly to whatever signal does arrive. Weaker input through a cloudier window. Less responsive neurons processing that input. The clock drifts. When the circadian clock drifts without strong light cues, it drifts earlier. Phase advance is the default direction of an unanchored aging clock. MELATONIN COLLAPSED The pineal gland releases melatonin at night to initiate and maintain sleep. This hormone declines with age. The pineal gland calcifies gradually over decades, reducing functional tissue and capacity to produce melatonin. By 65, nighttime melatonin levels can be one-third to one-quarter of what they were at 30. Sometimes less. Melatonin doesn't just initiate sleep. It maintains depth and continuity across the full night. When melatonin is low, sleep is shallower, more fragmented, more vulnerable to interruption. Even if you fall asleep at a reasonable hour, low melatonin cannot hold you through to morning. Your body tries to put you to sleep at 8 p.m. and wake you at 3 a.m. That's a 7-hour sleep window. It might be enough sleep for your shifted clock. But you fight the 8 o'clock drowsiness. Social life, television, family, habit. You stay up until 10 or 11. The clock doesn't adjust to your social schedule. It fires the wake signal at 3 regardless. The clock runs on light and biology, not preferences. You lost 2-3 hours from the front of your sleep window by staying up late. The alarm still goes off on the original schedule. The 3 a.m. waking isn't a malfunction. It's your shifted clock doing exactly what it was programmed to do. This is social jet lag. The gap between your biological clock time and your social clock time creates the same physiological mismatch as flying across two or three time zones. Your body is in one time zone. Your social life is in another. The drowsiness you fight at 8 p.m. is your body's genuine sleep onset signal. The waking at 3 a.m. is your body's genuine wake signal. The problem isn't the signals. The problem is overriding one without being able to override the other. There's a compounding factor. The shifted clock means your body wants to sleep earlier. The reduced melatonin means it cannot hold sleep as deeply or as long. You're caught between two problems: a clock that fires the wake signal too early and a chemical supply that cannot maintain the sleep signal through the full night. Even if you went to bed at 8, the reduced melatonin might still fail to hold you past 3 or 4. The clock shifted the window. The melatonin shrank it. DEEP SLEEP DISAPPEARED Sleep cycles through stages roughly every 90 minutes. Light sleep, deeper sleep, deeper sleep, then REM. The stage that matters most for feeling rested is slow-wave sleep, stage N3, the deepest phase. Brainwaves drop to large, slow delta oscillations at 0.5-4 hertz. During slow-wave sleep, the glymphatic system activates. Cerebrospinal fluid flushes through brain tissue along channels that open when neurons shrink slightly during deep sleep. This clears metabolic waste: adenosine, the molecule that builds sleep pressure during the day, and amyloid beta proteins, the plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. Growth hormone pulses during N3. Tissue repair peaks. Memory consolidation occurs. The hippocampus replays the day's experiences and transfers them to long-term cortical storage. This is the sleep that makes you feel like you actually slept. At 25, roughly 20% of the night is spent in slow-wave sleep. By 65, that drops to 10-15%. By 75, some people get almost none. My sleep tracker tells me that I almost never get less than 30%... and I'm 60. It is possible to have restorative deep sleep no matter what your age is. In my case even at lower sleep duration. High energy availability alsp plays a big role. The slow wave generating circuits in the medial prefrontal cortex usually deteriorate with age, producing weaker and less frequent delta oscillations. The deep sleep itself becomes shallower. The waves are smaller. The duration shorter. The restorative process is less complete. If deep sleep is the period when the brain clears amyloid beta, then reduced deep sleep means reduced clearance. Less deep sleep leads to more amyloid, which leads to less deep sleep, which leads to more amyloid. The relationship is bidirectional and self-reinforcing. If you never feel fully rested no matter how many hours you spend in bed, if 8 hours produces the recovery that 6 hours used to produce, if you wake in the morning with the sense that something was missing from the night, the missing component may be slow wave sleep. The hours were there. The depth was not. Slow-wave sleep that remains concentrates in the first half of the night, the first two to three sleep cycles. By 2-3 a.m., most of the deep sleep budget has been spent. What remains for the second half of the night is lighter stage one and stage two sleep, interspersed with REM. Light sleep has a dramatically lower arousal threshold. Stimuli that would not have registered during slow-wave sleep can push you above the waking threshold in light sleep. A slight temperature change in the room. A bathroom urge from a bladder that fills faster with age. A noise from outside. Even the natural shift in body position. You wake at 3 a.m. partly because the sleep you're in at 3 a.m. is physiologically different from the sleep you're in at midnight. The fortress walls got thinner as the night progressed. By 3 o'clock, you're sleeping behind a screen door instead of a vault. You could sleep through thunderstorms at 30. Now you wake at the sound of a refrigerator cycling on. The physics isn't about the noise. It's about the stage of sleep you're in when the noise arrives. At midnight, during slow-wave sleep, your arousal threshold is high. The brain runs delta waves that suppress responsiveness to external stimuli. At 3 a.m. in stage 1 or stage 2, the threshold has dropped to a fraction of its midnight level. The same sound that the sleeping brain would have filtered at midnight wakes you at 3 because the brain is no longer running the program that filters it. CORTISOL ARRIVED EARLY Your body runs a cortisol rhythm called the cortisol awakening response. In the final hours of sleep, the adrenal glands begin increasing cortisol output, preparing the body for waking. Mobilizing glucose into the bloodstream. Priming the immune system for the day's pathogens. Raising blood pressure and heart rate toward daytime operating levels. In a young adult, this cortisol rise begins around 4-5 a.m. and peaks roughly 30-45 minutes after waking. With age, the rise begins earlier. 2-3 a.m. in many older adults. Low-carb diets can also trigger a relatively strong cortisol release, waking you up early.. The same circadian phase advance that shifted the sleep-wake window also shifted the cortisol curve. Every rhythm the suprachiasmatic nucleus controls moves in the same direction. Cortisol alone doesn't wake you. But combined with already light sleep and a shifted circadian clock, the cortisol rise adds a third signal, pushing you toward wakefulness at precisely the hour when the other two systems have already weakened your defenses. Three systems converging on the same window. The clock says wake up. The sleep stage says the walls are thin. The cortisol says the body is preparing for morning. All three signals arrive at 3 a.m. Not by coincidence. All three are governed by the same shifted circadian master clock. If the waking comes at almost exactly the same time every night, not randomly scattered across the early morning hours but clustered within the same 30-minute window, that precision is the signature of a circadian event. Cortisol is antagonistic to melatonin. The two hormones suppress each other. Cortisol inhibits melatonin production. Melatonin suppresses cortisol. In a young person with high melatonin and correctly timed cortisol, the two hormones hand off smoothly. Melatonin dominates the night. Cortisol rises toward morning. The transition is seamless. In an aging body with depleted melatonin and early-arriving cortisol, the handoff happens too soon. When cortisol starts rising at 2-3 a.m. and melatonin is already low, the biochemical conditions for staying asleep collapse. The melatonin that should be holding you under is insufficient. The cortisol that should not be arriving for another two hours is already here. Two hormones that are supposed to hand off like relay runners, one finishing as the other begins, instead collide in the same hour because both shifted on the same aging clock. The balance tips toward waking. THE WORST THOUGHTS ARRIVE When you wake at 6-7 a.m., cortisol is high, light enters your eyes, and your prefrontal cortex comes online in its task-oriented mode. You think about what to do, what to eat, where to go. Executive function engages. The thinking is directed, practical, forward-looking. Problems that exist at 7 a.m. feel like problems to be solved. Manageable, bounded, addressable. When you wake at 3 a.m. in the dark with no tasks to perform and no light to signal daytime, a different network activates. The default mode network. The brain's self-referential processing system fires in the absence of external input and directed task. This is the rumination network. It runs replays of conversations you had years ago. It generates worry scenarios about events that may never happen. It revisits regrets from decades past with a vividness that feels more real than memory should. It rehearses confrontations that will never take place. It asks questions that have no answers at any hour, let alone at 3 a.m. At 3 a.m., the default mode network has nothing competing with it. No light. No task. No external stimulation. No social interaction. And the executive prefrontal cortex that would normally evaluate, contextualize, and override the rumination is still partially offline. The prefrontal cortex is the last brain region to fully activate upon waking. It requires light exposure and time to reach full operating capacity. This is the region that says this thought is not an emergency. This worry is not proportionate to reality. This problem can wait until morning and will look different then. At 3 a.m., that region is sleeping while the default mode network runs at full power. You're awake enough to think. But the thinking is the uncontrolled, self-referential, catastrophizing kind. The system that controls and contextualizes thought has not caught up with the system that generates it. The worry loop feels more intense at 3 a.m. than the same thoughts would feel at 3 p.m. because the brain regions that regulate emotional response and assign proportionality are not yet operational. You're running the worry software without the control software. The thoughts feel urgent and catastrophic because the part of your brain that would tell you they are neither is still asleep. The thoughts are not true in the way they feel true. They're running on hardware that cannot evaluate them yet. The 3 a.m. thoughts have a specific quality that daytime worry doesn't. A sense of certainty. Of inevitability. Of problems being larger and solutions being fewer than they actually are. The distortion isn't emotional. It's architectural. The brain regions that generate worry are online. The brain regions that evaluate worry are not. By 7 a.m., when the prefrontal cortex has fully activated and light has entered the eyes and cortisol has reached its appropriate peak, the same problems that felt catastrophic at 3 a.m. feel manageable. Nothing changed about the problems. Everything changed about which brain regions are processing them. If you've lain in the dark at 3 a.m. and felt that your problems were larger, your regrets sharper, your fears more certain than they would be by breakfast, that wasn't weakness. It wasn't anxiety disorder. It was the default mode network running without prefrontal supervision, amplified by cortisol that arrived early, in a brain that had already run through its deep sleep budget and could not pull you back under. Four systems, all doing what the physics of aging programmed them to do, all converging on the same hour. Subscribers have access to detailed practical applications of remedies in a second attached post.
5:35

WHY YOU WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT Your brain has 20,000 neurons clustered in the hypothalamus. They form the suprachiasmatic nucleus. This is your master clock. It's been running since before birth. At 25, this clock kept you unconscious until morning. At 65, the same clock runs on less melatonin, weaker signals, and a rhythm that physically shifted 2-3 hours earlier. It fires a wake signal between 2-4 a.m. Four systems inside your body shifted with age. They converge at the same hour every night. The thoughts that arrive at 3 a.m. feel different from the same thoughts at 3 p.m. because your brain runs a different program in the dark. The part that would normally tell you those thoughts aren't emergencies is still asleep. THE CLOCK MOVED FORWARD The suprachiasmatic nucleus generates a near 24-hour rhythm controlling when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy. In young adults, peak sleepiness arrives around 11 p.m. Peak alertness arrives around 9-10 a.m. Blue light at 480 nanometers activates melanopsin cells in the retina. These cells send signals directly to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, synchronizing your clock to the day-night cycle. With age, the clock shifts earlier. This is circadian phase advance. The sleepiness signal arrives at 7-8 p.m. instead of 11 p.m. The wake signal arrives at 3-4 a.m. instead of 6-7 a.m. The entire sleep-wake window moves forward 2-3 hours. The suprachiasmatic nucleus itself degrades. Neurons deteriorate. The amplitude of the circadian signal weakens. Peaks become shallower. Troughs become less deep. The radio station loses transmitter power until the signal becomes fuzzy and inconsistent. The clock's sensitivity to light cues diminishes through two mechanisms. The aging lens yellows and thickens, filtering more blue light before it reaches the melanopsin cells. The suprachiasmatic neurons themselves respond less robustly to whatever signal does arrive. Weaker input through a cloudier window. Less responsive neurons processing that input. The clock drifts. When the circadian clock drifts without strong light cues, it drifts earlier. Phase advance is the default direction of an unanchored aging clock. MELATONIN COLLAPSED The pineal gland releases melatonin at night to initiate and maintain sleep. This hormone declines with age. The pineal gland calcifies gradually over decades, reducing functional tissue and capacity to produce melatonin. By 65, nighttime melatonin levels can be one-third to one-quarter of what they were at 30. Sometimes less. Melatonin doesn't just initiate sleep. It maintains depth and continuity across the full night. When melatonin is low, sleep is shallower, more fragmented, more vulnerable to interruption. Even if you fall asleep at a reasonable hour, low melatonin cannot hold you through to morning. Your body tries to put you to sleep at 8 p.m. and wake you at 3 a.m. That's a 7-hour sleep window. It might be enough sleep for your shifted clock. But you fight the 8 o'clock drowsiness. Social life, television, family, habit. You stay up until 10 or 11. The clock doesn't adjust to your social schedule. It fires the wake signal at 3 regardless. The clock runs on light and biology, not preferences. You lost 2-3 hours from the front of your sleep window by staying up late. The alarm still goes off on the original schedule. The 3 a.m. waking isn't a malfunction. It's your shifted clock doing exactly what it was programmed to do. This is social jet lag. The gap between your biological clock time and your social clock time creates the same physiological mismatch as flying across two or three time zones. Your body is in one time zone. Your social life is in another. The drowsiness you fight at 8 p.m. is your body's genuine sleep onset signal. The waking at 3 a.m. is your body's genuine wake signal. The problem isn't the signals. The problem is overriding one without being able to override the other. There's a compounding factor. The shifted clock means your body wants to sleep earlier. The reduced melatonin means it cannot hold sleep as deeply or as long. You're caught between two problems: a clock that fires the wake signal too early and a chemical supply that cannot maintain the sleep signal through the full night. Even if you went to bed at 8, the reduced melatonin might still fail to hold you past 3 or 4. The clock shifted the window. The melatonin shrank it. DEEP SLEEP DISAPPEARED Sleep cycles through stages roughly every 90 minutes. Light sleep, deeper sleep, deeper sleep, then REM. The stage that matters most for feeling rested is slow-wave sleep, stage N3, the deepest phase. Brainwaves drop to large, slow delta oscillations at 0.5-4 hertz. During slow-wave sleep, the glymphatic system activates. Cerebrospinal fluid flushes through brain tissue along channels that open when neurons shrink slightly during deep sleep. This clears metabolic waste: adenosine, the molecule that builds sleep pressure during the day, and amyloid beta proteins, the plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. Growth hormone pulses during N3. Tissue repair peaks. Memory consolidation occurs. The hippocampus replays the day's experiences and transfers them to long-term cortical storage. This is the sleep that makes you feel like you actually slept. At 25, roughly 20% of the night is spent in slow-wave sleep. By 65, that drops to 10-15%. By 75, some people get almost none. My sleep tracker tells me that I almost never get less than 30%... and I'm 60. It is possible to have restorative deep sleep no matter what your age is. In my case even at lower sleep duration. High energy availability alsp plays a big role. The slow wave generating circuits in the medial prefrontal cortex usually deteriorate with age, producing weaker and less frequent delta oscillations. The deep sleep itself becomes shallower. The waves are smaller. The duration shorter. The restorative process is less complete. If deep sleep is the period when the brain clears amyloid beta, then reduced deep sleep means reduced clearance. Less deep sleep leads to more amyloid, which leads to less deep sleep, which leads to more amyloid. The relationship is bidirectional and self-reinforcing. If you never feel fully rested no matter how many hours you spend in bed, if 8 hours produces the recovery that 6 hours used to produce, if you wake in the morning with the sense that something was missing from the night, the missing component may be slow wave sleep. The hours were there. The depth was not. Slow-wave sleep that remains concentrates in the first half of the night, the first two to three sleep cycles. By 2-3 a.m., most of the deep sleep budget has been spent. What remains for the second half of the night is lighter stage one and stage two sleep, interspersed with REM. Light sleep has a dramatically lower arousal threshold. Stimuli that would not have registered during slow-wave sleep can push you above the waking threshold in light sleep. A slight temperature change in the room. A bathroom urge from a bladder that fills faster with age. A noise from outside. Even the natural shift in body position. You wake at 3 a.m. partly because the sleep you're in at 3 a.m. is physiologically different from the sleep you're in at midnight. The fortress walls got thinner as the night progressed. By 3 o'clock, you're sleeping behind a screen door instead of a vault. You could sleep through thunderstorms at 30. Now you wake at the sound of a refrigerator cycling on. The physics isn't about the noise. It's about the stage of sleep you're in when the noise arrives. At midnight, during slow-wave sleep, your arousal threshold is high. The brain runs delta waves that suppress responsiveness to external stimuli. At 3 a.m. in stage 1 or stage 2, the threshold has dropped to a fraction of its midnight level. The same sound that the sleeping brain would have filtered at midnight wakes you at 3 because the brain is no longer running the program that filters it. CORTISOL ARRIVED EARLY Your body runs a cortisol rhythm called the cortisol awakening response. In the final hours of sleep, the adrenal glands begin increasing cortisol output, preparing the body for waking. Mobilizing glucose into the bloodstream. Priming the immune system for the day's pathogens. Raising blood pressure and heart rate toward daytime operating levels. In a young adult, this cortisol rise begins around 4-5 a.m. and peaks roughly 30-45 minutes after waking. With age, the rise begins earlier. 2-3 a.m. in many older adults. Low-carb diets can also trigger a relatively strong cortisol release, waking you up early.. The same circadian phase advance that shifted the sleep-wake window also shifted the cortisol curve. Every rhythm the suprachiasmatic nucleus controls moves in the same direction. Cortisol alone doesn't wake you. But combined with already light sleep and a shifted circadian clock, the cortisol rise adds a third signal, pushing you toward wakefulness at precisely the hour when the other two systems have already weakened your defenses. Three systems converging on the same window. The clock says wake up. The sleep stage says the walls are thin. The cortisol says the body is preparing for morning. All three signals arrive at 3 a.m. Not by coincidence. All three are governed by the same shifted circadian master clock. If the waking comes at almost exactly the same time every night, not randomly scattered across the early morning hours but clustered within the same 30-minute window, that precision is the signature of a circadian event. Cortisol is antagonistic to melatonin. The two hormones suppress each other. Cortisol inhibits melatonin production. Melatonin suppresses cortisol. In a young person with high melatonin and correctly timed cortisol, the two hormones hand off smoothly. Melatonin dominates the night. Cortisol rises toward morning. The transition is seamless. In an aging body with depleted melatonin and early-arriving cortisol, the handoff happens too soon. When cortisol starts rising at 2-3 a.m. and melatonin is already low, the biochemical conditions for staying asleep collapse. The melatonin that should be holding you under is insufficient. The cortisol that should not be arriving for another two hours is already here. Two hormones that are supposed to hand off like relay runners, one finishing as the other begins, instead collide in the same hour because both shifted on the same aging clock. The balance tips toward waking. THE WORST THOUGHTS ARRIVE When you wake at 6-7 a.m., cortisol is high, light enters your eyes, and your prefrontal cortex comes online in its task-oriented mode. You think about what to do, what to eat, where to go. Executive function engages. The thinking is directed, practical, forward-looking. Problems that exist at 7 a.m. feel like problems to be solved. Manageable, bounded, addressable. When you wake at 3 a.m. in the dark with no tasks to perform and no light to signal daytime, a different network activates. The default mode network. The brain's self-referential processing system fires in the absence of external input and directed task. This is the rumination network. It runs replays of conversations you had years ago. It generates worry scenarios about events that may never happen. It revisits regrets from decades past with a vividness that feels more real than memory should. It rehearses confrontations that will never take place. It asks questions that have no answers at any hour, let alone at 3 a.m. At 3 a.m., the default mode network has nothing competing with it. No light. No task. No external stimulation. No social interaction. And the executive prefrontal cortex that would normally evaluate, contextualize, and override the rumination is still partially offline. The prefrontal cortex is the last brain region to fully activate upon waking. It requires light exposure and time to reach full operating capacity. This is the region that says this thought is not an emergency. This worry is not proportionate to reality. This problem can wait until morning and will look different then. At 3 a.m., that region is sleeping while the default mode network runs at full power. You're awake enough to think. But the thinking is the uncontrolled, self-referential, catastrophizing kind. The system that controls and contextualizes thought has not caught up with the system that generates it. The worry loop feels more intense at 3 a.m. than the same thoughts would feel at 3 p.m. because the brain regions that regulate emotional response and assign proportionality are not yet operational. You're running the worry software without the control software. The thoughts feel urgent and catastrophic because the part of your brain that would tell you they are neither is still asleep. The thoughts are not true in the way they feel true. They're running on hardware that cannot evaluate them yet. The 3 a.m. thoughts have a specific quality that daytime worry doesn't. A sense of certainty. Of inevitability. Of problems being larger and solutions being fewer than they actually are. The distortion isn't emotional. It's architectural. The brain regions that generate worry are online. The brain regions that evaluate worry are not. By 7 a.m., when the prefrontal cortex has fully activated and light has entered the eyes and cortisol has reached its appropriate peak, the same problems that felt catastrophic at 3 a.m. feel manageable. Nothing changed about the problems. Everything changed about which brain regions are processing them. If you've lain in the dark at 3 a.m. and felt that your problems were larger, your regrets sharper, your fears more certain than they would be by breakfast, that wasn't weakness. It wasn't anxiety disorder. It was the default mode network running without prefrontal supervision, amplified by cortisol that arrived early, in a brain that had already run through its deep sleep budget and could not pull you back under. Four systems, all doing what the physics of aging programmed them to do, all converging on the same hour. Subscribers have access to detailed practical applications of remedies in a second attached post.

Metabolic Uncle

12,138 views • 5 months ago

Analyzing Episode 60. Season 2 aka Motherhood Deconstructed I want to start this analysis with a disclaimer that I'll be writing about that kiss separately, because really, it deserves a post of its own. I'll talk about it here briefly, but this analysis will stick to the overall events of ep 60. To me, the main theme of this episode was motherhood. Be it Alya, Nare, Zerrin, Sadakat, and yes, even the dishrag. We see how these different women strive, suffer, and never stop trying to keep their children with them, all except one. So, let's begin. We start episode 60 with Alya and Cihan awaiting to conduct a DNA test on baby Simal, whom Kaya insists is his child. Long story short, Kaya is feeling a little pissed about Zerrin keeping the truth of Simal from him, and he has a point. But then, it's not like Zerrin has had a jolly good time pretending to play house with a creep like Demir. The only reason she relents is to keep her baby safe. So, it's a catch-22 situation, where both sides are right and wrong. But, it's not like we don't know these two will make up soon. What stood out to me in that sequence was Alya taking charge of ensuring Zerrin has access to her baby. She knows exactly what it is to be separated from one's child, and she's kind and brave enough to refuse to let anyone suffer through the same. So, in a way, Alya's motherhood doesn't just extend to Deniz. It encompasses her to the point where she shields all those she feels need protection. I also like the fact that she's taken Zerrin under her wing, because when the latter moves into the konak with Sadakat, she'll need all the help she can get. The next sequence begins at the hospital, where Nare is still hell-bent on continuing with the pregnancy, though at great risk to her life. This is another glimpse of motherhood the show gives us - in the shape of a woman who is so in love with her unborn child already, she's willing to risk death to bring it into the world. Contrasted to that is Sadakat, who's willing to lie or cheat to keep her daughter alive. Here is a ruthless kind of motherhood. Sadakat's love (if you can call it that) has always been wrapped in control, manipulation, and fear. But, still at the center of all her ugliness is a woman who doesn't want to lose her children. Nare is willing to die for her child, Sadakat is willing to kill Nare's child to ensure she lives - quite the compelling contrast. Different forms of motherhood, but both rooted in desperation. In the middle of all that, Meryem pops up like a bad penny. But even as she arrives in that room and Sadakat wants to keep her there, the awkward silence that envelops the space as she lingers is telling. She doesn't belong, it seems to say. But, there's another person who's starting to question their 'belonging' in this new version of the past that's come back - and of course, that's Alya. The more she sees Meryem infiltrate parts of her life beyond the konak, the more her exposed nerves are rubbed raw. This woman is so close to complete and utter exhaustion, it's heartbreaking. What's even more heartbreaking is that while she tries to be there for everyone, she herself cuts everyone off when she feels troubled. And that, to me, is where the episode quietly portrays the emotional labor aspect of being a mom. Alya mothers everyone around her. Nare, Zerrin, Kaya, and Deniz. Even Cihan at times. She absorbs pain, tries to stem chaos, protects others from falling apart, yet when it comes to her own fears and insecurities, she retreats inward completely. It's almost as if she believes she only deserves to be the shelter, never the one allowed to seek sanctuary. Because children who grow up thinking they've been abandoned grow up thinking love is a thing to be earned through caring or usefulness. So, instead of asking for comfort, they always end up providing it. But humans, even the strongest of the strong, have their limits. And, it's so clear that Alya is close to reaching hers. So, when Cihan is forced to relent and allow Mujgan and her son to the konak because Deniz wants it, Alya does what she does best - she withdraws and leaves the source of discomfort. That's why she tells Cihan she hates going to the konak now because every time she goes there, the spectre of Meryem and what she can snatch away becomes unavoidable. And, as blind as Cihan can be at times, he picks up on that. He knows exactly what she's trying to do, which is why he tries to redirect her attention to the fact that he hates going to the konak without Alya around, too. He wants to be wherever Alya is. In his own way, he's trying to tell her it doesn't matter who stays at that house; it's only home to Cihan when Alya is around. His words reach Alya, which is why she relents and visits the konak for a few hours, but then shit hits the fan again. We'll get to that, but first, let's talk about Meryem. Meryem's scene in the hospital with Mujgan reveals Meryem saying she can't tell Cihan about Serhat because she's not sure who the father is, and that she'd rather live in the hope that Serhat is the son of the man she loves, bla blah. Now, go back and think of all the versions of motherhood we've seen in this series, and indeed this episode. They all have one thing in common - that all the mothers did whatever they had to, and bore whatever came their way to ensure their babies stayed with them. No matter how much Alya, Zerrin, or Nare love their better halves, when push came to shove, they put their children first. Even Sadakat married Azem for Boran. All except one. Meryem. Meryem sent her son away and made it look like he was Mujgan's child, thereby erasing all his links to her. One could argue it was because she feared Feyyaz. But what's stopping her now? Let's assume what Meryem says is right and there's a 50 percent chance Serhat is Cihan's son. For a mother desperate to save her child from danger, those are pretty good odds, so why avoid the DNA test? Suppose Serhat turns out to be Feyyaz's son; even so, if she comes clean with Cihan, she knows he's the kind to help her, even if just to keep an innocent child safe. So, her version of motherhood sticks out like a sore thumb in the episode. In contrast, I found Alya's line, 'When it comes to my son, I put him before everything and everyone else,' much more fitting with the theme. Mothers on the defensive, who feel there's a threat to their child's wellbeing, will relent to even the most extreme measure - even if it tears their own being apart. Alya hates being away from Cihan. She hates that distance she imposes between them as much as Cihan, but she can't help it. Because the mother in her won't let her choose anything else. Which is why I say Serhat is almost like an afterthought to Meryem because his needs are never the focus. And I get the feeling that whatever Meryem is trying to hide threatens not her son, but likely the version of herself she's presented to the world. Even when I rewatched the kite flying scene, the way the camera pans into Serhat only once, but mostly focuses on Cihan and Alya after showing us Meryem is telling. Like this is a woman not going through hell because of her child, but because she's looking at a structure of acceptance she's no longer able to enter. Life at the konak, Cihan's family unit, his love for Alya and Deniz - it's everything that could have been hers once, but no longer. No matter how she tries, she no longer fits. And honestly, that’s why that sense of not belonging is even more overt in an episode about motherhood. Every other mother in this episode becomes messy because of love for their child. Nare breaks down. Zerrin panics. Sadakat manipulates openly. Alya practically emotionally disintegrates trying to hold everything together. Their feelings spill all over the place because motherhood, especially threatened motherhood, breaks people down. But Meryem remains oddly stoic throughout it all, except for a few tears. She's mostly careful and controlled, and always aware of who's watching her. Going back to the point of shit hitting the fan, when Alya discovers Meryem and Mujgan in Cihan's room, she doesn't buy Meryem's story for a bit. When Cihan tries to calm the situation, she dismantles the sorry excuse Meryem gives with two questions. In other words, her spidey senses pick up trouble, but she keeps it locked in because she doesn't want to appear as the jealous, unreasonable wife. But things come to a head anyway when Feyyaz cuts Cihan and Alya off on the road. Cihan seems to finally realize exactly the kind of trouble Meryem has unleashed in their lives when Feyyaz keeps eyeing Alya. Because to Feyyaz's psychotic mind, Cihan is keeping Meryem away from him, which makes Alya fair game. But when Cihan insists Alya return to the konak, Alya flat out refuses, and all the pressure that's been building inside her gets directed at Cihan. She knows deep down he's not at fault, but the fact that he's jumped into another situation without thinking of the danger, grates on her nerves. Which is why her default setting kicks in; she demands that Cihan bring Deniz to her and leave the apartment. Cihan, who is already reeling from Alya pulling back from him and the reality of Feyyaz targeting the only thing he truly holds dear, is desperate to stop Alya's isolation before she decides he's not worth all the misery she's suffering, and does what's worked for him once before in a desperate situation (the airport, anyone?). He forgets everything, pulls Alya in, and kisses the breath out of her. And, it works too, because for that moment, Alya stops spiraling long enough to simply feel. To stop calculating danger or bracing for abandonment. She feels loved and safe in Cihan's arms again. That's what makes that kiss so powerful. It isn't just the passion. It's the desperation behind it, on both sides. Cihan isn't kissing Alya because he wants to win an argument. He's kissing her because he's terrified, and he misses her. He's worried that if she keeps retreating inward, one day she'll retreat so far he won't be able to reach her anymore. Worried that all the fear, exhaustion, and pressure she's carrying will eventually make her decide loving him isn't worth the cost. And Alya responds because beneath all her anger, fear, and exhaustion, she loves him just as desperately. That's the irony of CihAl this season. They're not going to pieces because the love is weakening. They're going to pieces because the love has become so enormous that losing it feels catastrophic to both of them. To conclude, everything within ep 60, including the kiss, works so beautifully because technically everyone is unraveling. Every woman in this episode is fighting to protect something she loves, but the ways they do so reveal who they are at their core. Alya protects by sacrificing parts of herself. Nare protects by risking herself. Sadakat protects by controlling others. Zerrin protects by enduring humiliation. And Meryem... Meryem protects the narratives she builds. Her emotions, while visible, don't land with impact, almost as if they're missing a core ingredient. On the opposite end of the spectrum lie CihAl, whose love strips them bare, only for them to realize that retreat is no option. The only way forward for them is through - through fear, through exhaustion, through jealousy, through danger, and through every ugly and painful thing that loving someone this deeply awakens inside them. Because CihAl are incapable of loving each other halfway. Their love keeps dragging every hidden wound, every insecurity, every instinct to the surface until there is nowhere left to hide. And maybe that’s the real contrast episode 60 quietly builds toward: one side clinging to carefully maintained facades, the other being emotionally dismantled by a love too raw and overwhelming to remain controlled. Till later, happy reading, y'all. #CihAl #UzakŞehir
5:10

Analyzing Episode 60. Season 2 aka Motherhood Deconstructed I want to start this analysis with a disclaimer that I'll be writing about that kiss separately, because really, it deserves a post of its own. I'll talk about it here briefly, but this analysis will stick to the overall events of ep 60. To me, the main theme of this episode was motherhood. Be it Alya, Nare, Zerrin, Sadakat, and yes, even the dishrag. We see how these different women strive, suffer, and never stop trying to keep their children with them, all except one. So, let's begin. We start episode 60 with Alya and Cihan awaiting to conduct a DNA test on baby Simal, whom Kaya insists is his child. Long story short, Kaya is feeling a little pissed about Zerrin keeping the truth of Simal from him, and he has a point. But then, it's not like Zerrin has had a jolly good time pretending to play house with a creep like Demir. The only reason she relents is to keep her baby safe. So, it's a catch-22 situation, where both sides are right and wrong. But, it's not like we don't know these two will make up soon. What stood out to me in that sequence was Alya taking charge of ensuring Zerrin has access to her baby. She knows exactly what it is to be separated from one's child, and she's kind and brave enough to refuse to let anyone suffer through the same. So, in a way, Alya's motherhood doesn't just extend to Deniz. It encompasses her to the point where she shields all those she feels need protection. I also like the fact that she's taken Zerrin under her wing, because when the latter moves into the konak with Sadakat, she'll need all the help she can get. The next sequence begins at the hospital, where Nare is still hell-bent on continuing with the pregnancy, though at great risk to her life. This is another glimpse of motherhood the show gives us - in the shape of a woman who is so in love with her unborn child already, she's willing to risk death to bring it into the world. Contrasted to that is Sadakat, who's willing to lie or cheat to keep her daughter alive. Here is a ruthless kind of motherhood. Sadakat's love (if you can call it that) has always been wrapped in control, manipulation, and fear. But, still at the center of all her ugliness is a woman who doesn't want to lose her children. Nare is willing to die for her child, Sadakat is willing to kill Nare's child to ensure she lives - quite the compelling contrast. Different forms of motherhood, but both rooted in desperation. In the middle of all that, Meryem pops up like a bad penny. But even as she arrives in that room and Sadakat wants to keep her there, the awkward silence that envelops the space as she lingers is telling. She doesn't belong, it seems to say. But, there's another person who's starting to question their 'belonging' in this new version of the past that's come back - and of course, that's Alya. The more she sees Meryem infiltrate parts of her life beyond the konak, the more her exposed nerves are rubbed raw. This woman is so close to complete and utter exhaustion, it's heartbreaking. What's even more heartbreaking is that while she tries to be there for everyone, she herself cuts everyone off when she feels troubled. And that, to me, is where the episode quietly portrays the emotional labor aspect of being a mom. Alya mothers everyone around her. Nare, Zerrin, Kaya, and Deniz. Even Cihan at times. She absorbs pain, tries to stem chaos, protects others from falling apart, yet when it comes to her own fears and insecurities, she retreats inward completely. It's almost as if she believes she only deserves to be the shelter, never the one allowed to seek sanctuary. Because children who grow up thinking they've been abandoned grow up thinking love is a thing to be earned through caring or usefulness. So, instead of asking for comfort, they always end up providing it. But humans, even the strongest of the strong, have their limits. And, it's so clear that Alya is close to reaching hers. So, when Cihan is forced to relent and allow Mujgan and her son to the konak because Deniz wants it, Alya does what she does best - she withdraws and leaves the source of discomfort. That's why she tells Cihan she hates going to the konak now because every time she goes there, the spectre of Meryem and what she can snatch away becomes unavoidable. And, as blind as Cihan can be at times, he picks up on that. He knows exactly what she's trying to do, which is why he tries to redirect her attention to the fact that he hates going to the konak without Alya around, too. He wants to be wherever Alya is. In his own way, he's trying to tell her it doesn't matter who stays at that house; it's only home to Cihan when Alya is around. His words reach Alya, which is why she relents and visits the konak for a few hours, but then shit hits the fan again. We'll get to that, but first, let's talk about Meryem. Meryem's scene in the hospital with Mujgan reveals Meryem saying she can't tell Cihan about Serhat because she's not sure who the father is, and that she'd rather live in the hope that Serhat is the son of the man she loves, bla blah. Now, go back and think of all the versions of motherhood we've seen in this series, and indeed this episode. They all have one thing in common - that all the mothers did whatever they had to, and bore whatever came their way to ensure their babies stayed with them. No matter how much Alya, Zerrin, or Nare love their better halves, when push came to shove, they put their children first. Even Sadakat married Azem for Boran. All except one. Meryem. Meryem sent her son away and made it look like he was Mujgan's child, thereby erasing all his links to her. One could argue it was because she feared Feyyaz. But what's stopping her now? Let's assume what Meryem says is right and there's a 50 percent chance Serhat is Cihan's son. For a mother desperate to save her child from danger, those are pretty good odds, so why avoid the DNA test? Suppose Serhat turns out to be Feyyaz's son; even so, if she comes clean with Cihan, she knows he's the kind to help her, even if just to keep an innocent child safe. So, her version of motherhood sticks out like a sore thumb in the episode. In contrast, I found Alya's line, 'When it comes to my son, I put him before everything and everyone else,' much more fitting with the theme. Mothers on the defensive, who feel there's a threat to their child's wellbeing, will relent to even the most extreme measure - even if it tears their own being apart. Alya hates being away from Cihan. She hates that distance she imposes between them as much as Cihan, but she can't help it. Because the mother in her won't let her choose anything else. Which is why I say Serhat is almost like an afterthought to Meryem because his needs are never the focus. And I get the feeling that whatever Meryem is trying to hide threatens not her son, but likely the version of herself she's presented to the world. Even when I rewatched the kite flying scene, the way the camera pans into Serhat only once, but mostly focuses on Cihan and Alya after showing us Meryem is telling. Like this is a woman not going through hell because of her child, but because she's looking at a structure of acceptance she's no longer able to enter. Life at the konak, Cihan's family unit, his love for Alya and Deniz - it's everything that could have been hers once, but no longer. No matter how she tries, she no longer fits. And honestly, that’s why that sense of not belonging is even more overt in an episode about motherhood. Every other mother in this episode becomes messy because of love for their child. Nare breaks down. Zerrin panics. Sadakat manipulates openly. Alya practically emotionally disintegrates trying to hold everything together. Their feelings spill all over the place because motherhood, especially threatened motherhood, breaks people down. But Meryem remains oddly stoic throughout it all, except for a few tears. She's mostly careful and controlled, and always aware of who's watching her. Going back to the point of shit hitting the fan, when Alya discovers Meryem and Mujgan in Cihan's room, she doesn't buy Meryem's story for a bit. When Cihan tries to calm the situation, she dismantles the sorry excuse Meryem gives with two questions. In other words, her spidey senses pick up trouble, but she keeps it locked in because she doesn't want to appear as the jealous, unreasonable wife. But things come to a head anyway when Feyyaz cuts Cihan and Alya off on the road. Cihan seems to finally realize exactly the kind of trouble Meryem has unleashed in their lives when Feyyaz keeps eyeing Alya. Because to Feyyaz's psychotic mind, Cihan is keeping Meryem away from him, which makes Alya fair game. But when Cihan insists Alya return to the konak, Alya flat out refuses, and all the pressure that's been building inside her gets directed at Cihan. She knows deep down he's not at fault, but the fact that he's jumped into another situation without thinking of the danger, grates on her nerves. Which is why her default setting kicks in; she demands that Cihan bring Deniz to her and leave the apartment. Cihan, who is already reeling from Alya pulling back from him and the reality of Feyyaz targeting the only thing he truly holds dear, is desperate to stop Alya's isolation before she decides he's not worth all the misery she's suffering, and does what's worked for him once before in a desperate situation (the airport, anyone?). He forgets everything, pulls Alya in, and kisses the breath out of her. And, it works too, because for that moment, Alya stops spiraling long enough to simply feel. To stop calculating danger or bracing for abandonment. She feels loved and safe in Cihan's arms again. That's what makes that kiss so powerful. It isn't just the passion. It's the desperation behind it, on both sides. Cihan isn't kissing Alya because he wants to win an argument. He's kissing her because he's terrified, and he misses her. He's worried that if she keeps retreating inward, one day she'll retreat so far he won't be able to reach her anymore. Worried that all the fear, exhaustion, and pressure she's carrying will eventually make her decide loving him isn't worth the cost. And Alya responds because beneath all her anger, fear, and exhaustion, she loves him just as desperately. That's the irony of CihAl this season. They're not going to pieces because the love is weakening. They're going to pieces because the love has become so enormous that losing it feels catastrophic to both of them. To conclude, everything within ep 60, including the kiss, works so beautifully because technically everyone is unraveling. Every woman in this episode is fighting to protect something she loves, but the ways they do so reveal who they are at their core. Alya protects by sacrificing parts of herself. Nare protects by risking herself. Sadakat protects by controlling others. Zerrin protects by enduring humiliation. And Meryem... Meryem protects the narratives she builds. Her emotions, while visible, don't land with impact, almost as if they're missing a core ingredient. On the opposite end of the spectrum lie CihAl, whose love strips them bare, only for them to realize that retreat is no option. The only way forward for them is through - through fear, through exhaustion, through jealousy, through danger, and through every ugly and painful thing that loving someone this deeply awakens inside them. Because CihAl are incapable of loving each other halfway. Their love keeps dragging every hidden wound, every insecurity, every instinct to the surface until there is nowhere left to hide. And maybe that’s the real contrast episode 60 quietly builds toward: one side clinging to carefully maintained facades, the other being emotionally dismantled by a love too raw and overwhelming to remain controlled. Till later, happy reading, y'all. #CihAl #UzakŞehir

CocoLoco

12,775 views • 4 months ago