When they aren’t busy polluting the planet, cruise ships are pulling into the ports of major tourist centers — many of them at the same place and at the same time…

By Egon E. Mosum

One of the supposedly more romantic methods of travel is by ship.

What was once a risky venture now is a luxury experience within a floating city, where there is food, entertainment, food, drink, food, possible romance, and, did I happen to mention, food?

There are movies made about ocean travel, some tragic, like Titanic, some political, like Ship of Fools, some romantic, like An Affair to Remember.

But if cinematic sea voyages are the stuff that dreams are made of, sometimes the reality of ocean travel is the stuff of nightmares.

We’re not talking about sink or swim situations. We’re going to sail through the tall tales the cruise industry tries to feed its prospective passengers.

The promises made by the cruise industry, the puffery — sometimes they don’t hold water.

While the industry provides pictures of beautiful blue water, the passengers on the cruise ship are producers of ugly black water, the thirty or so liters of raw sewage produced by each passenger every day. 

Then there is the gray water, non-sewage run off from showers, pools, laundry and the like.[1]

That black and gray water gets discharged somewhere in that blue water, which isn’t exactly optimal for the environment, but the brochures of the big boats neglect to mention that fact.

But it just isn’t water pollution; an ocean going cruise ship generates thousands of tons of carbon dioxide a week.[2]

Polluted water, polluted air, courtesy of your travel by ship — a combination of sea going outhouse and factory chimney.

When they aren’t busy polluting the planet, cruise ships are pulling into the ports of major tourist centers — many of them at the same place and at the same time. 

Travel may be broadening, but there are limits to the amount of people that can comfortably enjoy visiting and touring in a port, and when the crowds are beyond manageable — and they often are — the sea going tourist may look to make a narrow escape.

Those pretty relaxing couples in the brochures may in reality be frustrated middle aged people ass to elbow with too many other middle aged people from too many other ships.[3]

One of the purposes of travel is to explore other lands, other cultures, and experience these up close and personal. 

That might be accomplished on a train, but on a cruise — not likely. 

The cruise passenger is basically riding in a bubble, stopping off for a brief landfall in an area of a new country which caters to tourists — which means, the goal is to make the traveler feel right at home while the burden of his traveler’s checks are removed from his person.

Feeling right at home is contraindicated if one really wants to obtain the benefit of foreign travel.

Then there is the element of limited time in port: ‘most of the places you cruise to will see you arriving at around eight in the morning, and you might leave at four, five, or maybe six o’clock in the evening, so you’re not really spending a lot of time in any destination.’[4]

When you book a cruise, you expect a certain itinerary. However, weather, illness, giant sea monsters, and other events can cause the ship to deviate from its course, and modify the itinerary.

So, although it isn’t widely advertised, the cruise ship can change the plans you made by changing the course it takes, and you don’t get a voice in that, and you don’t get any compensation when the good ship Lollipop doesn’t stop in Singapore like you wanted, but instead puts you off for a few hours in Sydney when you don’t even like Vegemite.

So remember, ‘cruise lines can change or cancel a port at any time without giving you compensation.’[5]

By now, you might be thinking, ‘next time,take the train,’ but sometimes you can’t hold your breath for the time required to cross an ocean by boxcar. So if you aren’t flying, you are sailing, sailing over the initial cruise price you were quoted.

When you read those advertisements for cruises to the paradise of your choice, you might think, ‘wow, that’s pretty reasonably priced.’

That’s the idea; they catch you, the fish, with the bait of a low price. However, this is bait and switch, because once they have you on the Love Boat, you may not find much love, but you sure as hell will find extra charges for just about everything.

‘They offer the lowest initial cruise fare to tempt you on board, but then once you’re on board, you can find that there are a lot of extra costs, for example gratuities and services charges which can be quite a lot of money.’ So advises Gary Bembridge, an experienced traveler in his article which has provided much food for thoughtful travelers.[6]

But sometimes you don’t shell out money for extras. In February, 2013 a fire aboard one of the ships in the Carnival line ‘left passengers stranded at sea for days without power, plumbing, and adequate food sources.‘

There was no extra charge for that experience of ‘rough seas.’[7]

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Travel by ship can be an enjoyable experience where the traveler can enjoy being pampered while being grossly overfed. Many people dream about cruising the ocean and visiting various foreign ports of call. They promise themselves ‘Someday I’ll sail to somewhere isle.’

One of the things cruise lines do very well is market themselves. One of the things they don’t do very well is paint an accurate picture of what these large ships do to the environment, what a ship trip can actually wind up costing the passengers, and the possibility of missed ports and overcrowded tourist traps.

But then again, why would they? They are in business to make a profit from their passengers, not scare them away.  It’s probably a safe bet that movie night on the Carnival line doesn’t include Titanic or The Poseidon Adventure.

A little more truth in advertising might calm the waves.  They wouldn’t even have to mention the fact that on an annual basis, about twenty-five passengers worldwide go overboard.[8]

[1] THE TERRIBLE TOLL OF THE CRUISE SHIP INDUSTRY Engleson 3/29/23 High Country News https://www.hcn.org/articles/ocean-the-terrible-toll-of-the-cruise-ship-industry/

[2] IBID.

The golden dream is factory made in casinos: lights, action, entertainment, free flowing booze and food, and other entertainments of a more intimate nature. All designed to keep you at the tables, because sooner or later, the house is going to win…

By Egon E. Mosum

Almost everyone at one time or another has a fantasy about winning big, getting that Royal Flush, hitting the Lotto, spinning the roulette wheel just right; getting three lemons on the slots.

For those whose tastes in gambling run more to the Bond side of things, there may be dreams of a big run at the chemin de fer table. (That’s a version of baccarat).

But no matter what the choice of wager might be, a large gambling win is a consummation devoutly to be wished by those presently sitting in the cheap seats.

The golden dream is factory made in casinos; lights, action, entertainment, free flowing booze and food, and other entertainments of a more intimate nature.

All designed to keep you at the tables, because sooner or later, the house is going to win.

But just like the fact that all that glistens isn’t gold, the casino playgrounds aren’t playing fair. And sometimes they are using loaded dice when it comes to customer come-ons.

Okay, let’s roll dem bones and see what number comes up.

The world outside may shun you as a loser, but in the casinos, you are a most welcome guest, a very important person, and everybody knows your name.

A Wharton School Business Journal article in 2009 reported ‘most casinos and slots parlors already collect some types of extensive marketing data on their customers.’[1]

They know what their customers like to eat, drink, and the games they like to play. 

They know which demographic likes a particular layout, which likes a particular time slot to gamble. 

By feeding these choices, the casino operators get the customer to stay longer, and have a more positive experience. All while they turn over the rent money to the casino in hopes of winning enough to buy a house for cash.

However, the only house that gets the cash is the casino that gets the customer’s cash.[2]

The bait used by casinos to reel in the fish includes ‘complimentary meals, free hotel stays, exclusive event invitations, and even cash-back incentives to encourage players to gamble more and stay loyal to a particular casino.’[3]

Casino loyalty programs provide special cards to their members, more for the benefit of the casino than the member. These cards track spending and other customer habits which can be used to siphon more money out of the customer's pocket.

However, that same trick can be turned on the casino by its own employees. ‘In one notable case, a group of casino employees created dozens of fake accounts linked to their own loyalty program cards. They then entered false data into the system to credit these accounts with millions of points, which were redeemed for cash and high-value rewards over several months.’[4]

Back to the customer and how casinos target those with gambling problems.

If you’ve ever been to a casino there are two things that you won’t find there; clocks and windows. They do not want gamblers to have any idea how long they have been trying their usually bad luck at the tables.

The layout of the casino is designed to make it difficult to find exits, but easy to see all the action taking place and the occasional winner.

Of course, the main attraction of gambling for the degenerates is not win or lose, it is the fast action. The games are designed to offer quick rewards, or at least a quick opportunity to try your luck again.

Nothing in a casino moves at a relaxed slow pace; that isn’t the road to quick and substantial profits.

Note also that gambling is a group activity. Very rarely will you see a lone gambler at a table during peak hours, and that community of bettors gives a feeling of belonging for those longing to lose their money while trying to win the house’s money.

But it isn’t only the perks and other tricks in the gambling environment that suckers in the suckers; it is the brain in the head of those suckers.

Gambling activity creates a dopamine rush in the brain similar to drugs that can do the same thing—spin the wheel, pick a card—get happy.[5]

Let’s face it the average life of the average Joe is pretty routine, boring even. But then, Joe steps into the lights and action of a casino, he’s treated as a pseudo-VIP and he has a chance (albeit small) to exit the place a rich man.

Even if he loses, it’s fast action, it’s an adrenalin flow; it’s fun and a vacation from the humdrum of everyday reality.

So Joe loves the high, loves the action and he pays for it, he really pays for it.

‘Casinos use a range of strategies that enable and even encourage gambling addiction. From targeted marketing and promotions to convenient financial access and accessibility, these tactics are designed to keep players engaged and spending money.’[6]

It’s great for the casinos, but sometimes it can be really bad for Joe, and his five million other Joes. It is estimated that in the United States there are some five million individuals who have gambling problems.

Only eight percent of them will seek help, probably the other ninety two percent are seeking their next bet.[7]

However, fifteen percent of gambling addicts will give up gambling by taking their own life, which is a very extreme form of therapy and not recommended by any medical establishment.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Despite their little notation of ‘bet with your head not over it,’ in the fine print in their promotional marketing efforts, casinos love gambling addicts. They are a major source of recurring revenue.

Three percent of problem gamblers are in debt due to gambling in excess of three hundred thousand dollars. There are an estimated twenty-three million people in debt due to gambling and seventy percent of the small percentage of people who do seek help from this addiction at one time or another will relapse.[8]

You may be a gambling addict, or you may know one.  You may have either experienced or at least observed the financial and emotional devastation that this addiction can cause, an addiction intentionally fueled by the casinos of the world.

In his work as an attorney, your author has seen people destroy their finances, their marriages and even commit crimes due to gambling addiction.

It’s a disease you wouldn’t want to bet on.

[1] HOW CASINOS FIND AND TARGET THE BIGGEST LOSERS Eliasberg & Iyengar 5/113/09 https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-casinos-can-find-and-target-their-favorite-customers-the-biggest-losers/

[2] HOW TO INCREASE THE VALUE OF EACH CASINO VISITOR https://www.trafsys.com/how-to-increase-the-value-of-each-casino-visitor/

Why did the Australian Foreign Minister feel it was time to warn the world…?

By David Sussin

During the United Nations Security Council's open debate session on September 26, one member gave an unusual warning.

The statement came from Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong under the generic title, "Statement to the UN Security Council Open Debate".

But while the title raised no red flags, the content did.

Mrs. Wong warned that AI was in danger of triggering a nuclear holocaust.

Specifically, she referenced AI's potential use in nuclear weapons and unmanned systems. She raised the dangerous potential of autonomous weapons that AI could trigger without humans in the loop.

Where nuclear warfare has been constrained by human judgement, accountability, and conscience, Wong reminded the group that AI lacks these traits. And because of this, "decisions of life and death must never be delegated to machines."

Listening to this dire scenario, you might wonder, what prompted the concern? As of this writing, none of the five nuclear powers have plans to integrate AI into their launch capabilities. To do so would be insanely irresponsible.

Although, it should be noted, several countries are determined to use AI in military applications -- early warning systems, missile defense, target recognition, command-and-control aids.

This includes China and the United States.

In fact, the Pentagon announced in July it was giving $200 million to Google, xAI, Anthropic and OpenAI to expand the use of AI in the U.S. military.

According to the Department of Defense's Chief Digital and AI Officer Doug Matty, "leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint Mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems."

That's a convoluted way of saying they want AI in everything, from intelligence analysis to campaign planning to logistics to data collection.

But it's a far cry from letting AI "push the button." In fact, both China and the U.S. have explicitly stated their commitment to keep AI out of the nuclear decision.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed late in 2024 that AI should never be empowered to decide to launch a nuclear war.

So why the warning from Mrs. Wong? Why did the Australian Foreign Minister feel it was time to warn the world…?

“One of the Largest Industries Ever”

The U.S. Government doesn't use our data against us. Or maybe you don't completely agree. Maybe you have questions…

By David Sussin

We happily give the U.S. Government our private information.

We fill out the forms without question.

When we pay taxes, have a baby, apply for a driver’s license, or collect social security, nobody worries about it -- our data is safe with the government.

Unlike criminal hackers in China or Nigeria scamming us with fake emails promising a gazillion dollars if we just click a link, the U.S. Government doesn't use our data against us.

Or maybe you don't completely agree. Maybe you have questions…

From a CalTech Garage to a $1T Market

Privacy in America is dead and buried. The current population of the United States is estimated at somewhat over three hundred and forty million people. The estimated number of surveillance cameras in the United States is around eighty-five million…

By Egon E. Mosum

Nineteen eighty four wasn’t a very good year in the novel by that name. But it appears that American society and infrastructure is rather fond of that year.

Because it appears that we are celebrating it every day of every year, and everywhere.

Some sixty years ago, there was a humorous television show titled “Candid Camera’. The show played pranks on unsuspecting people, and it was filmed for all in the audience to see.

Nowadays, the situations aren’t all silly, and the cameras are anything but candid.

And it’s not just cameras, it’s our computer that tracks our every move, it’s the virtual ‘assistant’ that records our every command.

Privacy in America is dead and buried.

The current population of the United States is estimated at somewhat over three hundred and forty million people. The estimated number of surveillance cameras in the United States is around eighty-five million.[1] (That was a 2021 estimate).

Do the math and you get one surveillance camera for every four people in the country. In New York City alone, just counting municipally operated cameras, we are talking about twelve thousand.[2]

Then of course, there are the private cameras, the security cameras, the drones.

Advocates for these ubiquitous cameras spout off about reduced crime rates. Depending upon the crime and the location, there have been some reductions. But not as much as one might think, and at what cost to individual privacy rights?

The greatest reduction of crime by the use of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras is in the places where the public parks their cars. The estimated reduction of crimes in this space is fifty one percent. 

Nice to know our hubcaps have a better than equal chance of remaining in situ.

After you leave your car in the parking lot, and take a walk through the town center, your camera benefit goes down, and only a ten percent reduction of crime is reported.

If you are in a housing project, or a gated community, or if you’re taking public transportation, the presence of closed-circuit television cameras does virtually nothing to reduce crime. But it does a great job of encroaching on your privacy.[3]

In a 2004 Australian study, while video surveillance did reduce property related crimes, it had no measurable effect on violent crime.[4]

In a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, it was revealed, ‘There is extensive academic literature on the subject — studies carried out over many years — and that research strongly indicates that video surveillance has no statistically significant effect on crime rates.’[5]

That report reflected a study between 2000-2008.

While both public and private users of video surveillance have gone to great lengths to make their cameras ubiquitous, the impotence to affect violent crime within a short length of the camera lens demonstrates little more than trick photography.

In that aforementioned American Civil Liberties Union report, it was stated ‘Regarding violent crime, there appeared to be no statistically significant change in the level of crime anywhere in the 500 foot range around the cameras. When violent crimes were disaggregated, a decline in homicide was observed within 250 feet of the cameras, however this reduction was offset completely by an equal increase in homicides between 250 and 500 feet from the cameras.’

So at best, these surveillance devices have made our society’s murderers a tad camera shy.

It appears that their victims weren’t ready for their close up.

Members of the public are not all enthusiastic fans of this society under surveillance.

In a 2013 Harvard Law School Law Review article, it was posited, ‘Surveillance menaces intellectual privacy and increases the risk of blackmail, coercion, and discrimination; accordingly, we must recognize surveillance as a harm in constitutional standing doctrine.’[6]

Imagine a peaceful protest being carried out in public regarding some issue or another. There is the exercise of free speech and the right to assembly. 

Now imagine that some governmental agency, city, state or federal — or all three have their cameras trained on the protestors.

It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure up a society that instead of having free speech and freedom of assembly, there is fear in the population, fear of who is watching, and what their intentions are in watching.

Regardless of the lighting conditions in which the surveillance is taking place, there will be a definite shadow cast on certain constitutional rights of our citizenry.

Besides privacy rights being negatively impacted, surveillance activities such as government red light cameras can sometimes unjustly lighten the wallets of the public, when they are found to be, or the interpretation of their images are found to be, erroneous.

Your author, in his role as an attorney, once defended an innocent driver when a red light camera took a blurry picture of a car that was the same make as his, but only had a blurry image of the license plate — and the police got it wrong, by one digit.

Fortunately, the client was acquitted.

More seriously, biometric identification cameras can not only be biometric, but racially biased and cause misidentification of people who are of a darker complexion.

Researchers have reported results that demonstrate, ‘Across all the datasets and systems, we generally find that photos of individuals who are masculine presenting, older, of darker skin type, or have dim lighting are more susceptible to errors than their counterparts in other identities.’[7]

Back to the red light districts of the highways, there are states that have outlawed cameras in search of red light violators — not surprisingly, the state of Texas in 2019 said ‘Sorry, but this state isn’t big enough for them thar cameras, and outlawed them.[8]

Now Texas may be the lone star state, but it isn’t alone in banning these cameras, as they have also been banned in Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia.’[9]

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Since the twenty first century began our society has seen a geometric progression in the use of surveillance cameras and other recording devices targeted at our citizenry.

It’s no surprise that the government invokes the magic words of security or national security, or traffic safety, or some other mantra to excuse its encroachments on our constitutional rights.

But the reality is the greatest effect of this surveillance state is the diminution of constitutional rights, while only a marginal safety or security effect is realized.

Many of the readers served in the military and swore to uphold and protect the constitution of the United States.  Some readers may be attorneys under the same obligation. 

But regardless of your personal history, you, the reader in the United States are the intended beneficiaries of the rights guaranteed to our citizenry.

You have the right to free assembly, the right to freedom of speech, you have privacy rights — these are not suggestions or privileges — they are rights.

As surveillance cameras and other similar devices become more widespread, those aforementioned rights become less widely safely exercised.

Some states are making progress in retarding the progress of ubiquitous surveillance, and are trying to turn the calendar back from nineteen eighty-four.

Do you live in one of them?

[1] https://www.videoexpertsgroup.com/glossary/how-many-surveillance-cameras-in-the-world

[2] IBID

Despite the best efforts of the marketers in Hollywood, the films they distribute to China are losing market share to China’s domestic movie industry…

By Egon E. Mosum

Martin Scorsese, who knows a thing or two about movie making said, ‘Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.’

Sounds kind of like censorship. And not every country in the world has the same idea about what should be in the frame, and what should be out.

For some unsurprising reason, those countries that are a tad tyrannical, that have some version of a fearless leader, are more cinematically censorious.

When that country is China, a movie market that in 2025 has been estimated at over seventeen billion dollars,[1] you want to please the powers that be who determine what their audience will see.

When you don’t, it’ll cost you a lot of tickets and a lot of shekels.

Hollywood is realizing that now is the time for all good film to come to the aid of the party — the Chinese Communist party that controls the show. There are more movie viewers in China than there are people in the United States.[2]

But despite the best efforts of the marketers in California, the films they distribute are losing market share to the movie makers in China.

That’s because ‘as China has expanded its local film production, its audiences have gravitated toward the country’s own domestic fare, and Hollywood films have seen a significant decline in ticket sales from the region.’

Trump’s tariff war with the mainland hasn’t helped our movie industry any, as in a response to higher tariffs, ‘the Chinese government retaliated, including by restricting the number of Hollywood films it would allow to be showcased in its movie theaters.’[3]

The decline in revenues is a front kick in the ass to Hollywood, because ‘American movies' share of China's annual box office revenue has plunged from 36 percent in 2018 and 30 percent in 2019 to just 14 percent in 2024.’[4]

It appears that Bruce Lee is doing better than Spike Lee in that part of the world.

But it isn’t just an economic war carried over into the seats of the theater. The head of China’s Film Critic Association recently opined, ‘American stories often feel disconnected from Chinese life, making it harder to generate empathy or emotional response.’[5]

Now, lest the reader assume this market takedown is mainly due to a hatred for all things Western in the People’s Republic of Cinema, here’s a reality check, ‘Japanese animation continues to draw steady crowds, while European and Southeast Asian films are gaining ground.’[6]

Hollywood might wish to blame their tanking ticket sales in China on politics and/or economics, but even American audiences are growing a bit tired of the continuous sequels. (Are we at Rocky 18 yet?)

or the Marvel Multi-verse vs. Fast and Furious, or whatever the next pile of absolute digital dog rockets will be thrown at us at the local multiplex.

The cinematic efforts of countries with which China has had a horrible history are doing better than the Americans.  The Japanese were rather naughty in their medical torturing of the inhabitants of Nanjing during World War II, but their cartoons are performing well in dubbed Cantonese or Mandarin.

The Chinese movie-going audience is currently the second largest in the world. It will soon become the largest. Once, that market was very important in international sales for American movies, but nowadays, ‘for domestic films that do get a release in China, typically less than 10% of the film’s global gross box office revenue comes from China.’[7]

There are some cinematic exceptions to the above. Apparently, while the People’s Republic of China is not big on God, they seem to be big fans of Godzilla, because ‘"Godzilla X Kong" was one of the top 10 highest grossing films in China, making almost as much as it did in the U.S.’[8]

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

One of the ways we get our ideas and opinions about other nations and their cultures is through film, even though that’s looking through a somewhat distorted lens, too highly polished and of limited focal range. 

But it is important that there be an exchange of artistic endeavors between countries, especially those in opposition to each other, for it is much better to exchange box office blockbusters than ballistic missiles.

If we can keep the cultural lines open, perhaps we may lessen the chances of there being front lines of fighting.

When an international market for our movies shrinks, besides the economic effects, there is less cross-cultural pollination. That means creative isolationism, and therefore, less understanding between different cultures and people.

It is rather telling that the movie which seems to unite the interests of the American and Chinese movie going audience is Godzilla X Kong (Warner Bros.). The film did extremely well on both sides of the Pacific.

Even more interesting, from an ironic viewpoint, is the film debuted in the United States at Graumans Chinese Theater.[9]

Besides the larger societal loss of a Beijing that boos Hollywood, there is the domestic economic loss potential.

Less market share means less profits, less profits means fewer productions, and fewer productions means fewer jobs for people in the film industry.

When you couple declining revenues internationally (and domestically) with artificial intelligence and computer-generated graphics advancements displacing many of the creative talent in the movie industry, we may be looking at the end of an era with respect to American cinema.

In China, it is the party that controls the movie industry, and they don’t have the exact same financial needs as do the private producers of Hollywood. Their revenues are growing, their domestic audience share focused on Chinese concepts and cultural ways.

The isolationism movement in America, mainly targeting at limiting our involvement in foreign wars may be reflected in the mirror of an Eastern hemisphere that forcibly isolates our movie industry from the second largest market in the world, while embracing movies from Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia.

There may come a day when Hollywood is the third world of cinema, and China is number one on the world’s screens.

The film industry was a hallmark of American culture at one time. There was an era when we created such films as Twelve Angry Men and Inherit the Wind.

It will be a sad day when we wake up and realize that there’s no longer much to marvel at in the Marvel Multi-verse, and Gone With the Wind has been replaced by Godzilla, thanks to the People’s Republic of China.

Perhaps this is a preview of coming attractions.

[1] CINEMA-CHINA Statista https://www.statista.com/outlook/amo/media/cinema/china

[2] China’s Film Industry is Run Like Hollywood But By the Party Burja 12/13/23 Bismarck Brief https://brief.bismarckanalysis.com/p/chinas-film-industry-is-run-like

In outer space where satellites orbit, monitoring and photographing our planet, guiding missiles and gathering intelligence, soon will emerge the destruction of war…

By Egon E. Mosum

Man is an animal, and like many animals is territorial.

Unlike other animals, the territorial ambitions of man are without limit. First it was land, and there was war between tribes, and later, countries. 

Next it was the sea, and there were battles great and small between sea going vessels.

Then it was the air, and great fighter plane dogfights and bombers and later drone swarms.

If we can visit there, we can find a way to kill there, and/or from there.

Now, there is outer space, and we are preparing for the battles that will take place in that final frontier.

The first targets in war are the triple C infrastructures: communication, control, and command.

In outer space where satellites orbit monitoring and photographing our planet, guiding missiles and gathering intelligence, the destruction of war will first visit upon them.

‘Anti-satellite weapons have existed almost as long as satellites have. They are used to destroy or incapacitate satellites, either through physical destruction (crashing into a satellite with a missile or another satellite) or through non-kinetic attacks, such as by electromagnetic jamming, lasers, and cyberattacks.’[1]

The anti-satellite weapons are accelerating in capability and production. ‘Space is an increasingly militarized domain with the potential to be a source and place of armed conflict. In recent years, tests of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons capable of neutralizing civilian and military satellites have fuelled fears of warfare in that domain.’[2]

The Russians, who in the last three years have demonstrated an active expansionist policy are not just focused on the Ukraine, they are looking towards the stars, with weapons of satellite destruction.

Recent intelligence reports state ‘that the Russian ASAT system under development involves a nuclear explosive device that would produce not only a massive nuclear-driven blast wave and a surge of radiation, but also a powerful electromagnetic pulse that could destroy, blind, or disable other satellites in orbit over a wide zone.’[3]

But it isn’t only the Russians, our other major enemy China is cooking up some nasty anti-satellite weaponry in their war wok, in fact it has been reported that ‘China is building up an “arsenal” of ASAT capabilities.‘[4]

While kinetic weapons, those that use projectiles or the equivalent to physically destroy satellites and leave destructive debris which threatens other satellites have long been in production, the ASAT development future is ‘leading towards ground-based, non-destructive methods that use electronic systems to jam or disable satellites.[5]

For fans of Star Wars and other space battle movies, anti-satellite laser weaponry has been developed, using a destructive focused beam to blind the optical sensors of an enemy’s satellites. Of course, the Russians are hard at work developing such anti-satellite technologies.

‘There is strong evidence that a space surveillance complex in Russia’s northern Caucasus is being outfitted with a new laser system called Kalina that will target optical systems of foreign imaging satellites flying over Russian territory.’

The program started fourteen years ago.

Another anti-satellite weapon system the Russians have is ‘a truck-mounted laser system that is co-deployed with mobile ICBM units and intended to prevent foreign reconnaissance satellites from following their movements.’[6]

Back to our Chinese rivals, ‘The People’s Liberation Army is developing missiles and ground-based lasers to hit satellites from the ground—systems that could be deployed before the end of the decade.’

It is expected that by the mid to late years of the current decade, China is expected to ‘deploy systems high enough in power that they can physically damage satellite structures.’[7]

While kinetic anti-satellite weapons can be effective in the space battlefield, the other edge of the sword is that the debris from a destroyed targeted satellite can threaten the function and existence of other satellites from non-target countries that are subject to the debris field.

Thus, the concept of collateral damage is no longer an earth bound one.

It should come as no surprise that the three major candidates for world extinction efforts, the United States, Russia, and China are doing their best to bring war off planet. But it may surprise the reader to know that India is a player in real world ‘star wars’.

Mission Shakti was the name given to the March 2019 launch of an anti-satellite missile from the same country that gave us Ghandi and satyagraha, peaceful non-resistance. In less than three minutes from launch time, a low-level orbit satellite was destroyed.

But that was six years ago, now, ‘India is reportedly working on directed energy ASAT weapons, co-orbital ASAT weapons, lasers and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) based ASAT weapons.’[8]

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

When countries develop weapons, sooner or later, they will put them to bad use. Even the atomic bomb was used twice — by us.

We’ve seen in the Ukraine the rapid development of drone technology that is making armored columns and massed infantry a thing of the past. We’ve seen the tenth-rate tin pot dictatorship of North Korea suddenly get down from the cheap seats as they develop their ballistic missile program.

War and the pursuit of ever new, ever more powerful weaponry are stimuli to technological development when it comes to the two main functions of the military — to kill people and break things.

Satellites are on the target list of things to be broken; space will be the next theater of operations.

If we can get there, we can — and will — engage in destructive activities there. Sooner or later, space will be another battlefield for mankind to do his worst to his fellow man and the space-based orbiters so much depends on in today’s world.

Remember, it isn’t only the military that depends on satellites. We do, every day, whether we’re getting directions to the Dairy Queen or watching our wars live on our televisions.

The destruction of satellites, even in weapons testing, can create dangerous, destructive debris that can not only negatively impact on the military, but on we, the people.

Every frontier we have conquered, or at least trespassed upon, has seen us bring along a bag full of bullets, bombs and ballistic missiles.

Space is unquestionably next, and yet we are talking of eventually colonizing the planets. (At least Mars, our target colony planet, is named after the Roman God of War).

Where there is a quest to conquer territory, there will be terror, where there is a development in technology, it will often be used to make war before the peaceful uses are contemplated.

It is not a question of if there will be war in space — a war of the satellites at least — it is a question of when.

We can make all the treaties regarding the peaceful use of space we want, but they can be torn up into debris just as a satellite targeted by a kinetic weapon.

One may ask, “when will we ever learn?’

The answer to that question might well be found in the stars.

[1] RUSSIAN ANTI-SATELLITE WEAPONS Daniels & Massa 2/24/2024 https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-nuclear-anti-satellite-weapons-would-require-a-firm-us-response-not-hysteria/

[2] ANTI-SATELLITE WEAONS AND SELF DEFENSE O’Meara 5/24 https://ccdcoe.org/uploads/2024/05/CyCon_2024_OMeara-1.pdf

A study published last month by the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill reveals an ominous decline in insect populations. Even scarier, it's happening in parts of the world we assumed were safe from humanity's impact…

By David Sussin

A night with no insects sounds pretty good.

Sitting out with your drink of choice under the stars, maybe in the backyard, or maybe around a campfire.

In the brisk air round you there's nothing -- no buzzing mosquitos, no chirping crickets, no random beetles flying on you.

And even better, no deadly wasps or bees. Just calm silence.

Sounds pretty good until you notice the other details: stands of flowers unpollinated and dying. Trees bearing no fruit. Entire gardens left lifeless.

Of course, we need insects.

It's not hyperbolic to call them the architects of life on Earth. They pollinate 80% of flowering plants and a good deal of the crops that feed humanity.

A single bee colony can visit 2 million flowers in a day, transferring pollen that generates the fruits, vegetables, and nuts we depend on. Without insects, we'd face global famine.

But pollination is just the beginning. Insects form the foundation of nearly every terrestrial food web. They decompose organic matter, recycling nutrients back into soil.

They control pest populations, preventing any single species from overwhelming ecosystems. Birds, bats, amphibians, reptiles, and countless other animals depend on insects for survival -- remove insects, and these creatures follow them into extinction.

In healthy ecosystems, insects process leaf litter, aerate soil, and transfer energy from plants to higher-level predators.

They're nature's cleanup crew and delivery service rolled into one. Lose them, and forests stop regenerating properly. Dead organic matter accumulates. Ecosystems begin to rot from within.

Suddenly all that buzzing at night sounds comforting.

Except it might be ending sooner than we think. A study published last month (Sep, '25) by the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill called “Long-term decline in montane insects under warming summers”, reveals an ominous decline in insect populations.

Even scarier, it's happening in parts of the world we assumed were safe from humanity's impact.

For over two decades, the UNC researchers monitored flying insect populations in the pristine montane ecosystems (the middle level forests in the mountains) of Colorado's Rocky Mountains -- areas untouched by direct human interference.

These remote high-altitude meadows and forests were wilderness refuges, places where nature still functioned unmolested by human intrusion. Yet in this very place, scientists discovered a catastrophe unfolding in slow motion.

The study covered a 20-year period. During that span, researchers found insect populations declined an average 7%. By the end, 72% of the insects were gone. This isn't an expected, natural adjustment or fluctuation. It's a collapse happening in real-time.

The decline matches the rate found in heavily human-altered agricultural land. But now it's happening in the wild.

So why is it happening? Statistical analysis strongly links the trend to increasing summer temperatures. Daily minimums increased 0.8°C per decade, and as temperatures increased, the typical seasonal rise in insect abundance shifted to a seasonal decline.

But climate change isn't the only factor. The findings from this remote Colorado ecosystem signal a severe threat to high-elevation environments, which depend on insects to thrive.

It's what makes these results such a red flag.

The UNC study's findings of local insect decline is happening at a staggering rate, in a place where climate change and human activity can't fully explain it.

The results could signal the early stages of a planetary ecological breakdown so rapid, it would make previous mass extinctions pale in comparison.

If insects are disappearing from protected wilderness areas, nowhere on Earth is safe. Waves of extinction could crash over entire continents.

When insect-dependent ecosystems begin failing simultaneously across multiple regions, mountain forests lose their pollinators and decomposers, making them unable to regenerate.

You end up with dying wilderness around the globe. And without insects to control herbivore populations, plant communities will collapse, accelerating soil erosion. Watersheds destabilize. The very landscapes under our feet begin to unravel.

Bird populations, already declining globally, would face catastrophic crashes as their primary food source vanishes. Amphibians, already among the most threatened animal groups, would lose another crucial dietary component. The extinction cascade would roll upward through every trophic level.

But perhaps the most terrifying aspect is the speed. A 70% drop in just 20 years suggests we're not dealing with the gradual environmental changes that allowed previous ecosystems to adapt. We're witnessing ecological system failure happening faster than evolution can respond.

If this pattern holds globally, we may be looking at the sixth mass extinction happening not over millennia, but over decades.

The difference is that this time, there's no asteroid to blame, no volcanic eruption to point to. There's just the relentless, invisible pressure of a warming climate systematically dismantling the ecosystem.

Unlike previous mass extinctions, this one comes with the unique horror of being entirely preventable, happening while we watch, measure, and document the last days of life on Earth.

Could a loss of the insect population really drive these dramatic changes? We may find out.

In the meantime, listen closely when you go outside at night. The first signs of collapse will be the silence.

Sources:

<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250922074956.htm>

<https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.70187>

There are many areas of our planet where water is in short supply, and drinking water in even shorter supply. It is a commodity more valuable than oil, gold, or diamonds. That’s exactly why major corporations are so interested in controlling it…

By Egon E. Mosum

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner there is a famous line, ‘Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.’

In some areas of the world, that is not only a line of verse, it is a reality. 

There are many areas of our planet where water is in short supply; and drinking water in even shorter supply.

One would think that this indispensable necessity to human life, where a lack of access for three days can be fatal, would be more dispensed.

It is a commodity more valuable than oil, gold, or diamonds, and where there is a valuable — or in this case — necessary commodity, greed raises its ugly head.

And there is no greater fountain of greed than that which flows from major corporations.

Everyone with access to media of any sort knows that major corporations seek to control the flow of oil and gas, fewer can imagine the same desire applies to water.

‘Increased privatization of strategic water resources will, according to many scientists and environmental activists, continue to erode public access to fresh and clean water if privatization continues.’ This report appeared in an article by Roar Bijonnes, an environmental activist writing in the Systems Change Alliance website.[1]

Not that corporations are above theft of water supplies when it serves current profits before they obtain legal rights to the water sources.

Swiss company Nestlé has been rather naughty in California, raising the ante on water availability. As it has been reported ‘At stake is control of the nation’s freshwater supply and billions in profits as Nestlé bottles America’s water then sells it back in plastic bottles.’

It was reported in a Guardian article that ‘Last year (2018) Nestlé siphoned 45m gallons of pristine spring water from the creek and bottled it under the Arrowhead Water label. Though it’s on federal land, the Swiss bottled water giant paid the US Forest Service and state practically nothing.’[2]

In the aforementioned article the former Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé was quoted as saying ‘At its current pace, the world will run out of freshwater before oil, Brabeck said, and he suggests privatization is the answer.’

Well, that may be the answer for the corporation that controls the acquisition, storage, and distribution of water — for profit. It isn’t a very good answer for the consumer who doesn’t have much choice as to access to water when it’s owned by a corporation.

Oil is privately controlled, gas is privately controlled; our food is privately controlled. Has it been the experience of the reader that prices for these necessary commodities have remained stable, or have they skyrocketed over recent years?

We can turn down the thermostat a bit to conserve use of the commodities of oil and gas, we can go on a diet with respect to food. But it is rather a large challenge to change human biology and cut down on water consumption necessary to support life and health.

Municipalities which at present control much of our water supply, do not have to make a profit, they do not have stockholders to answer to. Public corporations seek to maximize their profits and the value of their shares of corporate stock.

Perhaps a conflict of interest may be visible to the discerning consumer. Scotch we can give up, or buy a rotgut version. Water? We’re pretty much stuck with what the world supplies, whether it comes out of a well, a river, or a plastic bottle packaging tap water in a fancy and expensive label.

With what Nestlé has done in California is enough to make us contemplate giving up chocolate milk, and the other thousands of products they produce and sell at a profit.

This is not to say that municipalities are the be all and end all of dispensers of utilities and necessities to the public, but many of those in charge can be voted out by the consumer if they perform below minimum standards.

However, John Q. Public can’t vote on the board members of a major corporation, unless they own the stock. And if they do, it will normally not be in such amounts that the vote they cast will have any significance.

If our citizenry has certain inalienable rights, access to water should probably be pretty high on that list.

Try not paying your phone bill, what happens? Eventually you can’t make a call. Try not paying your oil and gas bill, and eventually, they’ll turn off the heat. 

You can buy a pre-paid phone, you can put on a sweater, but what happens if some corporation that owns access to your drinking water cuts off the supply?

Three days, you won’t need that water anymore, nor food; nor oxygen. You will only require the services of an undertaker.

Is this a power we wish to be controlled by a corporation interested in profits more than people—like they all are?

‘One of the most important struggles being waged around the world against corporate control is over who owns our water.’[3]

That quote was from an article written twenty years ago.

Did you ever drink bottled water? Did you know the corporate markup on that supposedly ‘pure’ water which is basically tap water with a public relations department is sold to you at a markup between one hundred fifty and a thousand times?

That’s a lot of profit for the corporations pushing plastic bottles of H2O. One might understand that those kinds of markups would make the corporations rather interested in controlling the water supply.

In a study two years ago, ‘which studied 109 countries, it was concluded that the highly profitable and fast-growing bottled water industry is masking the failure of public systems to supply reliable drinking water for all.’[4]

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Anybody who can read and has lived for at least twenty years is aware that while a policeman might be our friend (some might disagree) there is no doubt that major multi-national corporations are not.

Time after time they have been sued, fined, and even criminally charged for the commercial and penal violations they commit with respect to the public.

They have sold us adulterated and mislabeled food, they provide us with such healthful products as tobacco and alcohol which can impact on our durability as individual consumers. They have sold us exploding cars and electronics, and dangerous medicines.

Now, not only are they seeking to control our drinking water, they are succeeding at doing so. It doesn’t take much imagination that with monopoly on a crucial resource and human necessity like water, corporate profits and power will soar like never before.

What will happen to those who can’t afford to pay the bill for drinking water when the corporate collection department turns it off for non-payment?

As a citizen, as a human being who is dependent upon drinking water for your very existence, you might wish to get involved and contact your supposed representatives in government and protest against any privatization of water.

The life you save may be your own.

[1] CORPORATE GIANTS TO SOAK UP WORLD’S WATER SUPPLY Bijonnes, SYSTEMS CHANGE ALLIANCE https://systemschangealliance.org/corporate-giants-to-soak-up-global-water-supply/

[2] THE FIGHT TO STOP NESTLE’ FROM TAKING AMERICA’S WATER Tom Perkins, 10/29/19 THE GUARDIAN https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles

Politicians can be bought. They can peddle their influence, and not only for payment in the currency of their own country. Once again, time to lift up the rock, and see what creatures lurk beneath…

By Egon E. Mosum

What is the primary motivation for someone to enter into the realm of national and international level politics?

Is it for the purpose of bringing peace and freedom to those who have (allegedly) selected them?

If you believe that, you should also seriously consider the actual existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

For an individual to believe that they, and only they, have the solution to their nation’s problems, and on a larger scale, the world’s problems, requires a monumental ego.

And as we have seen, not necessarily a tremendous quantum of intelligence or knowledge.

On the other hand, if one believes the major motivations of those who enter into these arenas to be self-aggrandizement, power, and an increase in material wealth, well, now we are talking reality.

In simpler terms, politicians can be bought. They can peddle their influence, and not only for payment in the currency of their own country.

Once again, time to lift up the rock, and see what creatures lurk beneath; jaws, claws and pockets wide open in expectation of getting filled.

At the time of this writing, much is being made of the nation of Qatar being allowed a ‘facility’ in the United States for the parking of their jets and the training of the pilots who will fly them. 

Critics of our present leader, when Qatar has ‘gifted’ a four hundred-million-dollar plane to the United States (and by extension it’s president), and granted to Trump a golf course in their country, believe the Qatari ‘air base’ is a quid pro quo, may, or may not be correct.

Those of the readership of this newsletter, who lean left, will be nodding their heads in the affirmative. Those on the right will disagree.

Those are conflicting opinions, although your author points out the indisputable fact that in 1970, when he was in Air Force Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, there were numerous (Shah Regime) Iranian pilots being trained at the base, which he personally witnessed. 

Back then they were our buddies — supposedly.

Nobody raised an eyebrow, nobody cried foul. There was a Republican President at the time, and although Nixon was disgraced for other reasons, it had nothing to do with foreign pilots being trained at an American Air base.

Differences of opinion make horse races and stock markets. But facts are facts. So, let’s look at the politicians who did sell out to foreign interests, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Exhibit A, Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey who, in July 2024 was convicted on charges of accepting bribes and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptians, and our (now) friends, the Qataris.

Four hundred and eighty-thousand dollars in cash was found in the Menendez home during the FBI raid. That was along with other goodies like a hundred thousand dollars-worth of gold bars, expensive home furnishings, and a luxury vehicle, courtesy of his foreign friends.[1]

Eleven years in prison was his eventual reward.

Let’s talk about two who were pardoned by Trump.

Michael Flynn, who was Trump’s former national security advisor was, in May 2024 indicted for soliciting illegal monies, and receiving them from foreign countries including, our not so very friendly NATO ally, Turkey.

According to the Defense Department’s Inspector General report, Flynn ‘accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from foreign interests and governments.’

In 2017, Flynn ‘talked turkey’ and ‘while pleading guilty in 2017, Flynn …‘admitted to committing another crime: related to his acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government of Turkey without registering with the justice department as an agent of a foreign government.’[2]

Pardoned by Trump.

Then we have another Trump advisor, Paul Manafort, who was his campaign manager in 2016, and pleaded guilty to receiving money from the Ukraine.

‘Manafort had accepted a plea deal in the case in September 2018, admitting to money laundering, tax fraud and illegal foreign lobbying connected to his years working for Ukrainian politicians.’

At his sentencing, Manafort said ‘I am sorry for what I’ve done. Let me be very clear, I accept the responsibility for the acts that caused me to be here today.’[3]

Pardoned by Trump.

Let’s give the Democrats some time in this article.

Henry Cuellar, Democrat from Texas was indicted in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in May, 2024. ‘According to court documents, beginning in at least December 2014 and continuing through at least November 2021, Congressman Cuellar and Imelda Cuellar allegedly accepted approximately $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities: an oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the Government of Azerbaijan, and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.’[4]

Thanks to Pam Bondi, in August of 2025, ‘At the request of prosecutors, a federal judge appeared ready to dismiss two of the 14 charges alleging Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife accepted $600,000 in bribes from Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank in a Thursday hearing.’

That’s a Republican appointee helping out a Democratic Congressman.[5]

How about another Democrat?

New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, was charged in September, 2024 with bribery and more ‘By allegedly taking improper and illegal benefits from foreign nationals — including to allow a Manhattan skyscraper to open without a fire inspection — Adams put the interests of his benefactors, including a foreign official, above those of his constituents.’[6]

In April, 2025, the case was dismissed with prejudice against Adams, which in legalspeak means they cannot bring it again.

The reason, according to the Department of Jusitce was ‘the case should be dismissed because prosecuting Adams would interfere with his ability to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.’[7]

After reading the above, you might just want to be singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.’

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

You are always told it is your obligation to vote for your selected representative. It is claimed that it is your duty.

It is not however, the duty of those we put into office to have a flag on one side of their desk, and a cash register and an adding machine on the other.

When a criminal admits to criminal actions, he is guilty — period. If he is pardoned, he is still guilty.

Whether they are from the party of the elephant, or the party of the jackass, they are not supposed to take bribes, neither foreign nor domestic.

But they quite often do, and they do so, because they are criminals we have innocently put into a position wherefrom they can line their pockets with rubles, zlotys, dinars, and whatever other currency they will accept from some foreign nation for influence peddling.

That should make us angry, if not physically sick.

Those guilty parties, on both sides of the aisle, have betrayed their trust, have betrayed the American people, and pardoned or not, are beneath the average bad guy who sticks up a liquor store, or mugs an old lady.

They are traitors, nothing less, and quite often, nothing more.

In the future, let the voter beware.

[1] Former U.S. Senator Robert Menendez Sentenced To 11 Years In Prison For Bribery, Foreign Agent, And Obstruction Offenses US Attorney Press Release  Southern District of New York 1/29/25 https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-senator-robert-menendez-sentenced-11-years-prison-bribery-foreign-agent-and

[2] Michael Flynn ignored official warnings about receiving foreign payments 4/8/21 Murray Waas The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/08/michael-flynn-ignored-official-warnings-receiving-foreign-payments

By Egon E. Mosum

For the Shakespeare fans out there, a quote from Hamlet in Act II Scene 2 comes to bear.

‘What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!’

That quote is over five hundred years old, but for those who tend to more modern bards like Bob Dylan, when it comes to that piece of work, ‘The times they are a-changin.’

Man, for centuries has had bits and pieces added to the piece of work he was; peg legs to replace the real deal gone missing, hooks to replace lost hands, glass eyes to cover dark holes of blindness.

But those were doll parts, ineffective cosmetic replacements. It wasn’t until our present time when false flesh replacements provide real function, and are now headed towards not only mimicking the real thing, but improving upon it.

Our technology has changed the world, and now our technologies are changing what it means to be a man, to be human.

The study of this is called ‘transhumanism’… 

A drug that’s more deadly than fentanyl? Standard doses of Narcan often had no effect at all on victims. Toxicology showed only trace amounts of fentanyl -- too little to explain the deaths. Something stronger was in play…

By David Sussin

In 2013, emergency responders in the U.S. became aware of a powerful drug on the market that was gaining popularity over heroin.

Because, from a user's perspective, it was much better. It was fifty times stronger.

Once it became widely available on the street, there was no stopping its popularity.

It's called fentanyl, named by the chemists who first synthesized it in 1959.

The name refers to its chemical components, phenyl and aniline (a basic building block in chemical dyes, plastics and pain killers).

Its name indicates the second big advantage fentanyl had over heroin: this new drug was made in a lab, not manufactured from plants.

Drug cartels could make a virtually unlimited supply. No more worrying about poppy crops needed in heroin production, grown on the other side of the world in countries like Afghanistan.

This made it much cheaper to produce fentanyl, as much as 99% less per dose. And because its potency was so much higher, cartels could charge more. The margins were ridiculous. And the new product sold like crazy.

The tragic part is how we know it was so popular…

Elon Musk: “Robots Will…Do Everything Better”

That’s what Elon says. And it’s already happening. 

Just look at fast food. Miso Robotics is already delivering an AI-powered fry-cooking robot called Flippy that can cook perfectly and never calls in sick.^* 

As restaurants grapple with 144% labor turnover rates and $20/hour minimum wages, it’s no surprise brands like White Castle are turning to Miso. Now, after selling out the first run of its first fully commercial robot in one week, Miso’s scaling production to 100,000+ US fast food locations in need. 

In fact, with its US-based manufacturing ramping up now, Miso is currently finalizing its latest major brand partnership and other significant announcements.

And you can join as an investor before these pivotal next steps. Become a Miso shareholder by October 23, the final day to invest this year.

Some actors and performers play a part in real life, and sometimes they not only play a bad guy ‘on TV’ but in reality too…

By Egon E. Mosum

Actors and other performers may enact many roles, many parts.

Some actors are known for playing mobsters, serial killers, and other evil doers. They are acting, they are performing; they are glorified puppets.

However, actors and performers play a part in real life, and sometimes they not only play a bad guy ‘on TV’ but in reality.

In the past few days from the time I am writing this article, we have seen hip-hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs get a fifty-month sentence for two charges of ‘transportation to engage in prostitution.’

That is the most recent incident of a celebrity going to spend some poor quality time in a gated community with excellent security but poor amenities.

But there have been many prior instances where performers off stage, wound up wearing a wardrobe of orange jumpsuits or the equivalent, and that is what we shall explore in this article.

The tradition of celebrities committing crimes and winding up in jail is an old one.

Robert Mitchum, well known actor of the forties and fifties, who played a variety of low-life characters in his career, once did sixty days in jail for a marijuana charge.[1]

Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr. spent some time behind iron bars for his misdeeds.

In 1997 he spent six months in Los Angeles County Jail for drug related offenses.

Now, while Downey might be able to learn his lines, he didn’t learn his lesson, and in 2000, wound up with a three year sentence of imprisonment at the California state prison in Corcoran.[2]

It appears that celebrities and illicit substances are old pals, and it seems that the marriage of the two often windup celebrating a ‘honeymoon’ in a state or federal correctional facility.

Tim Allen who starred in Home Improvement and Last Man Standing, in 1979 found a home in a cell that needed much improvement and wound up standing behind bars for twenty-eight months in Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution. 

It seems our beloved thespian, according to CBS News, was also a major drug dealer, and he wasn’t acting.[3]

Tina Turner’s former husband Ike, when he wasn’t rolling down the river, was snorting cocaine, and because of that he got to spend seventeen months in jail in 1989.  He didn’t exactly give up his bad ways, because in 2008, he died of a cocaine overdose.[4]

One is reminded of the quip of Robin Williams, ‘Cocaine is God’s way of saying you’re making too much money.’

Big time (and big fat) famous producer Harvey Weinstein didn’t conduct himself with sufficient decorum when it came to the female sex, and wound up with a twenty-three year sentence for sexual assault.

Danny Masterson, an actor on ‘That 70s Show’ was also the kind of guy who didn’t understand it when a woman just said no, and he was convicted of two rape charges, getting himself government housing for twenty-three years in 2023.

It is unlikely that he will engage in rough sex with women at the facility in which he is staying.

Rhythm and Blues magnate R. Kelly is another gentleman who was convicted of multiple sex abuse charges, including child trafficking. He will be composing his tunes in prison for simultaneous twenty- and thirty-year sentences.[5]

These examples highlight the potential for abuse when people are overpaid for the little or next to nothing that they really do, are idolized by fans, surrounded by paparazzi and believing the bs produced by their publicity agents.

They feel themselves to be above the law, above the people they exploit sexually or deal drugs to. They are Hollywood. They are celebrities.

They are a bunch of entitled sickos that sooner or later will run out of luck, run out of time, and run into the law.

In one sense, they are Frankenstein’s monsters created by the electricity of fandom.

In a 2021 article by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, it was reported ‘people who commit sexual abuse may also feel entitled to harass a victim because of their celebrity status, or do it as a self-serving way to feel strong when overpowering the victim. They may also feel confident that they can get away with harassing someone as a result of their social status, and feel more empowered committing the crime.’

J.L. Heinze in that article stated ‘Like all of us, celebrities have two lives — a public life and a private life...we have no idea of the lives they lead in private. We don’t know about their inner thoughts, their intimate personalities, their traumas, or the way they treat people when the camera isn’t rolling.’[6]

If we wish to consider that politicians are celebrities, the last few years have shown us that our chosen representatives can choose to commit sexual crimes too.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

You may have a wife, a daughter, a sister, or other female relative or friend. 

Many of them have the potential to be victims of sexual crimes; some of them may be partial to the ingestion of certain substances which aren’t exactly good for their health.

Where there are those seeking the approval and attention of famous people, where are those who are seeking the good times of coke and smoke and those who are quick with a joke, there will be victims.

Where there are those whose ego has been artificially inflated by the press, by publicity, by financial success, and adoring fans (or voters), there are potential perpetrators of crimes.

Maybe it’s time that all of us stopped the worship of celebrities, of the famous, the rich, and the entitled narcissists that they often become, and realize that the man behind the curtain is often just a naked fool with a spoonful of medicine up his nose.

The real celebrities worth caring about are the cops, the firemen, the doctors, the lawyers (at least some of them) and the military guys and girls who deserve to be appreciated, and are trying to be the best they can be, but not by dealing drugs or committing sex crimes upon the innocent.

Remember, without fans, without voters, these celebrities are hollowed out nobodies.  We give them their status, and we should demand that they give us their best, and not view us as merely customers or persons to be exploited.

[1] Actor Robert Mitchum is released after serving time for marijuana possession History.com https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-30/actor-robert-mitchum-is-released-after-serving-time-for-marijuana-possession

[2] Robert Downey Jr. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Downey_Jr.

judges commit crimes too, more often than one would suspect…

By Egon E. Mosum

They sit higher than anyone else in the courtroom. 

They look down (at least physically), upon the parties and their attorneys. They lecture the jurors.

They state law, they impose sentences.

They are distributors of money and property in divorce cases; they award compensation in civil cases, and can order the cessation of certain behaviors, while mandating the performance of others.

They are powerful people in society, the members of our judiciary.

Whether it’s the local judge in the traffic court, or the Supremes in Washington D.C., by their very position, they are entitled to respect, and the presumption of rectitude.

But it turns out that presumption is a rebuttable one.

Because judges commit crimes too, more often than one would suspect.

There is no need for all to rise when it comes to the black robes with black hearts and black hats that we will survey in this article, so remain seated.

When someone is in a position of power, they are also in a position to abuse it, to accept bribes, to grant inappropriate favors.

When those in such a position violate the law they interpret and are supposed to uphold, it is a testament to arrogance, hubris, and hypocrisy.

Exhibit A, to be put into evidence, is the ‘kids for cash’ scandal that took place in Pennsylvania in 2007.

Judges in Luzerne county Pennsylvania ‘accepted nearly $2.6 million in alleged kickbacks from two private for-profit juvenile facilities.’ They would quickly plead and bleed juvenile defendants guilty and send them off to the private jails which of course, would profit from it.[1]

One could envision a judicial bench with an American Flag on one end, and a cash register on the other. It was the best injustice money could buy.

Now while presiding over a calendar of United States District Court cases can be a taxing responsibility, nobody sent a memo to Federal Judge Harry Claiborne.

Because in 1984 he was convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to two years’ incarceration. While in prison, he still received his seventy-eight thousand dollar plus per annum salary.

Claiborne entered prison in March of 1986, and it wasn’t until October of 1986 that he was finally impeached and his salary terminated.[2]

Some of the readers may be old enough to remember that when Nixon was President, he resigned before being impeached.  However, Federal Judge Walter Nixon Jr. didn’t get such a bailout.

Judge Nixon, like all judges had administered the oath to parties many times, making them swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

One would have thought that he understood the meaning of that mandate, but it turned out no.

He was convicted of perjury in 1986 and sentenced to five years imprisonment. He had lied when questioned by authorities about his intervention in a state case involving the drug prosecution of a son of his business partner.

Three years later, he was impeached.[3]

Now, judges are people, at least theoretically. They have the emotions of people, and like some people, some of them can have their good sense overruled by their emotions. Such as happened with former Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, Sol Wachtler.

As an interesting side note, it was Wachtler who coined the phrase that “a district attorney could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”

It turns out, that a district attorney got to indict Justice Wachtler, when his Honor was arrested in 1992 for extortion, racketeering and blackmail, with respect to a former mistress and her daughter.

Wachtler copped a plea to harassment and threatening to kidnap the daughter in 1993 and received a fifteen-month sentence. Apparently, someone in the Federal Prison in which he served his time was not a fan, and stabbed Wachtler in the shoulder while he slept the sleep of the not-so-innocent.

After serving his sentence, Wachtler became an author, and an adjunct professor of law(!) at Touro, a Long Island New York law school. 

He wasn’t teaching ethics.

Ohio Judge Tracie Hunter was of course, a law school graduate, and a lawyer before ascending to the bench. One would presume she knew her stuff when it came to evidence.  Perhaps she knew too much, because she was indicted in 2014 on two counts of tampering with it, along with theft, unlawful interest in a public contract, and forgery. 

To give her credit, she was also charged with misusing a credit card, issued by and for the court.

She exercised her right to a jury trial, and in this case, it proved that exercise can be very beneficial because she was only convicted of the unlawful interest charge.

She was sentenced to six months in jail, and a year of community service.

Not good enough for our (former) Judge Hunter, and she made a variety of motions to vacate the sentence.

When all of her maneuverings failed, she had to be physically dragged out of the courtroom to serve the seventy-five days she would wind up getting.

Her law license was suspended, and in 2023, when she tried to get it back, because of the time in which it had been suspended, she was allowed to apply for reinstatement.[4]

There is no evidence found as to whether or not that happened, but, as they say, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence — with respect to whether she is once again a member of a bar somewhere.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Whether it’s a traffic ticket, a lawsuit, a divorce, or perhaps even some sort of criminal charge, a significant portion of the population, sooner or later will find themselves in court, sitting and standing (depending upon which part of the procedures is being conducted) in front of a judge, who has the high chair in the room.

Often, they also take the high moral tone.

It is not a comfortable position to be in when you are in that room, for that man in the black robe can issue orders which can affect your wealth, your freedom, or even more potentially devastating, your care insurance premium.

Your author, under his real name, spent thirty-five years in the courtrooms in the state of New York, and he has seen the entire spectrum of judicial behavior. From the good guys who treated the public like the citizens with constitutional rights that they are, to the bums who brought a mixture of arrogance and ignorance to the bench.

And also the ones who got caught doing naughty things and were thrown off of their benches.

Judges are in a position of public trust. There are those who honor that position, and those that defile it.

When the law breaks the law, what does that say about our legal system?

[1] LUZERNE KIDS FOR CASH SCANDAL Juvenile Law Center 2007 https://jlc.org/luzerne-kids-cash-scandal

[2] IMPEACHMENT TRIAL HARRY E. CLAIBORNE US SENATE https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment/impeachment-claiborne.htm

Mice are a mainstay in scientific research. Before big pharma poisons us with whatever they’ve cooked up to make a huge profit, they try it out on mice first. But leave it to man not to leave well enough alone…

By Egon E. Mosum

There is an old challenge question from one man to another. ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’

Even if you said ‘mouse’ you’d (genetically speaking) be about ninety percent man.

Those little squeaky mammals are a mainstay in scientific research, and before big pharma tries to poison us with whatever they have cooked up to make a huge profit, they try it out on mice first.

But leave it to man not to leave well enough alone.

Because when it comes to who’s who in the evolutionary pecking order, we are the big cheese. We like to mess with mice whenever we can, scientifically speaking.

So, the boys in the white coats and the pocket protectors decided one fine day to mix human genes with mouse genes to see what would happen.

Steamboat Willie had some surprises in store.

A 2017 article in the publication of the National Review of Genetics tells us ‘For decades, the laboratory mouse (Mus Musculus) has been the preferred model organism for the study of human biology and diseases. Humans and mice share a very similar genetic background, and around 90% of both genomes can be partitioned into regions of conserved synteny.’[1]

That’s fancy science talk for they are pretty much the same.

Now while it was Walt Disney that first tried to humanize a mouse in two dimensions about ninety-seven years ago when Steamboat Willie appeared, these days we are trying to do pretty much the same thing in three dimensions in the laboratory.

In 2020, a ‘team of researchers injected 10 to 12 human stem cells into developing mouse embryos. Within 17 days, those stem cells developed into millions of mature cells, including human red blood cells and eye cells.’

What was produced? ‘These human-mouse chimeras exhibited 4% human cells.’ 

One may smell a rat when it comes to potential future ethical problems. ‘Chimera test subjects must be human enough to serve as effective models for health research, but not so human that they qualify for protection from this research altogether.’[2]

We may envision a ‘rats have rights’ movement one day, and that is not being flip, it is being future oriented.

That genetic four percent human mouse was five years ago from this writing, and perhaps one of those future rat rights may be freedom of speech, because this year, scientists have put a language gene in a mouse.

‘Mouse pups that had the human version of the language gene showed different vocalization patterns from their buddies with the usual version mice have. When calling for their mother, their squeaks were higher pitched and featured a different selection of sounds than usual.’[3]

With current research, we can not only enlarge a mouse’s mouse vocabulary, we can make them smarter.

In 2025, scientists added some human genes to mice and ‘the addition of human genes increased average brain size by 6.5%, boosting neuron production and expanding the brain’s outer layer.’[4]

If all of this has you thinking of the movie ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau’ you might be on to something. H.G. Wells wrote the 1896 novel of a doctor experimenting with human animal hybrids, and it didn’t turn out all that well.

One hundred and twenty-nine years later, we have gone from science fiction to science fact, and that must give us pause.

Where there is controversial medical research, legal ramifications are often not far behind.

While no law has yet passed as of this writing, there was a proposed bill in Congress called the Human-Animal Chimera Prohibition Act of 2023. 

The bill sought to criminalize the creation of prohibited human animal chimera, forbade the transfer of human embryos into a non-human womb, and vice-versa, and to transport or receive for any purpose a prohibited human-animal chimera.[5]

A similar bill was introduced into Congress in March of 2025.[6]

There has been a history of trying to pass these types of laws in our legislature in the twenty first century, but so far, no dice, mice.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

We need mice for medical research. ‘Mice and rats have long served as the preferred species for biomedical research animal models due to their anatomical, physiological, and genetic similarity to humans. Advantages of rodents include their small size, ease of maintenance, short life cycle, and abundant genetic resources.’[7]

Genetically altering mice facilitates research into innovations which can be eventually applied to humans. ‘Several hundred mouse stocks containing mutations have been used for a long time as models of human disease and for the study of metabolic processes.’[8]

We have reached new heights of adding human genes to mice, and we are creating ‘super mice,’ mice that are different from normal mice. We are altering their vocal patterns, significantly increasing the size of their brains.

Depending upon the age of the reader, it might be remembered that while in high school, one of the books we were forced to read was the 1959 story Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

Algernon was a mouse that through surgical intervention became super intelligent. It was fittingly, first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Algernon unfortunately, lost his intelligence and died.[9]

The book was more than a novel, it was a prediction, and now, sixty-six years after the publication of Algernon, we are well on our scientific way of creating a lab full of potential Algernons.

Our society is cognizant of the need for the ethical treatment of animals, and of establishing laboratory standards for animal experimentation in furtherance of medical research eventually designed to benefit humans.

But, when we are on our way to humanizing animals, making them more cognizant, more intelligent, potentially more like us, there will be a need for legislation. It will need to contain protocols and procedures in genetic research so that we don’t take this country, and other countries engaged in this type of research, and turn them into Islands of Doctor Moreau.

We need mice for medicine, and they eventually may need us for legislation regarding the alteration of their bodies, minds, and perhaps even self-awareness.

We must demonstrate ethical courage in this Brave New World of human-animal hybrid creation.

Hopefully, our society and our legislators will ‘man up.’

[1] Comparative transcriptomics in human and mouse NATIONAL REVIEW OF GENETICS, Breschi, et. al. May 8, 2017 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6413734/

[2] Scientists made a mouse embryo that’s 4% human Kaur, 5/21/2020 CNN https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/us/human-mouse-chimera-hybrid-scn-trnd

You ever get the feeling things aren't what they seem? Maybe you heard the theory we live in a computer simulation…

By David Sussin

You ever get the feeling things aren't what they seem?

Maybe you heard the theory we live in a computer simulation.

Of course, no one really believes that. But the strange truth is, no one can rule it out. That's how little we know for sure.

What we do know is, 85% of our Universe is made of mysterious 'dark matter'. We've never seen it, but we know it's there because we see the effects of it, the gravitational force of this mysterious mass.

It impacts how galaxies rotate, how light bends in space, and how the universe must have formed.

But we don't know what it's made of. Dark matter doesn't emit light, so we can't see it. And it doesn't absorb light like a black hole, so there's no deep, unending blackness to be found.

We assume it's made up of particles because it has mass that effects objects around it. But what particles? It's one of physics' greatest mysteries.

For decades, scientists have run experiments trying to pin down the answer, testing suspected particles with odd names like WIMPs, axions, and "light dark matter".

It's this last suspect - "light dark matter" - that is behind a recent breakthrough from the University of Zurich and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The idea is, what if dark matter has eluded us because it's simply too small, too low energy to measure?

Maybe we just don't have the tools or technology to see it.

Researchers behind this study published in August may have just solved the problem. They figured out a way to detect incredibly small energy deposits, with the goal of uncovering very light "dark matter" particles.

Using innovative tools, scientists probed a world of incredibly tiny energy particles science has never been able to see.

And in doing so, they unexpectedly uncovered mysterious signals of an unknown origin -- maybe beyond our own reality.

They call it the QROCODILE experiment. The name stands for "Quantum Resolution-Optimized Cryogenic Observatory for Dark matter Incident at Low Energy". So, it's good they went with the abbreviation.

The experiment uses a sensitive "superconducting nanowire single-photon detector". It's made from an extremely thin wire placed on a silicon-based surface.

And its revolutionary: it can detect incredibly tiny amounts of energy -- down to just 0.11 electron volts.

It's hard to explain just how small that is. By comparison, a single calorie of food has 2.4 × 10²³ times more energy. We're talking about energy emissions on a subatomic scale.

Using this detector, researchers explored the quantum-scale world all around us but completely invisible. Until now.

They were looking for very light "dark matter" particles. But what they found only opened up new mysteries.

The detector heard signals at energy levels once thought impossible. The experiment lasted over 415 hours (just over 17 days). During that time, researchers detected 15 pulses of unknown origin.

The scientists took steps to minimize background interference and narrow down where the pulses came from -- likely candidates would be cosmic rays or radioactivity from surrounding materials.

In the end, there was no explanation. They don't claim that these pulses were examples of dark matter, but they do conclude all 15 originate from dark matter in some way they don't fully understand.

Were these faint signals from parallel dimensions, or cosmic forces all around us but invisible, like dark matter itself?

The experiment puts us on the verge of discovering something fundamental about the nature of reality itself. At the quantum level, dark matter operates in unexpected ways, exhibiting properties we never anticipated.

If 85% of the universe operates by physics we don't understand, it becomes plausible we're walking around blind to fundamental layers of reality.

Dark matter with small effective electric charges suggests it can interact with electromagnetic fields, if extremely weakly.

It opens the door to shadow or mirror worlds - parallel structures of matter that barely interact with ours.

Perhaps the researchers happened upon the first evidence of a multiverse, different regions of space-time fluctuating into our own. Or other dimensions folding into ours at a subatomic level.

The room you're in, the air you breathe, it's all permeated with this dark matter, on time scales and energy levels we can't perceive.

Dark matter remains one of the most significant mysteries in modern physics.

This new experimental technique may be a step toward finding an actual particle and closing the gap in our understanding.

The next stage of the project, called NILE QROCODILE, will see the experiment moved deep underground to shield readings from cosmic rays. Researchers hope to isolate the dark matter around us and push the boundaries of our understanding.

But they might also glimpse forces operating our world that, maybe, we weren't meant to see.

Sources:

<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250915202843.htm>

<https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/4hb6-f6jl>

There may have been life thriving on Mars. Billions of years ago, the red planet was likely as blue as the Earth. What's not so commonly known is, what went wrong…

By David Sussin

It's common knowledge that the planet Mars wasn't always a barren, toxic wasteland.

Geological evidence suggests it once had rivers, lakes, and even oceans.

Its atmosphere was thicker, able to trap heat and support liquid water. There may have been life thriving there. Billions of years ago, the red planet was likely as blue as the Earth.

What's not so commonly known is, what went wrong.

Mars once had a protective magnetic field generated by a molten, churning iron core. It's amazing that a force field of sorts can be generated around the entire planet, protecting it from deadly solar radiation.

Scientists call it a geodynamo process. The outer core was made of molten iron, which conducts electricity.

Heat from the inner core causes the molten iron to move around in huge convection currents. As Mars spun, the flow of liquid iron organized into spirals and -- astoundingly -- generated powerful electric currents.

And those currents formed a magnetic field around the planet.

This invisible bubble of magnetism protected the Mars atmosphere from the constant blast of solar wind, a stream of high-energy particles streaming out from the Sun. But around four billion years ago, the Martian dynamo sputtered and died.

The magnetic field collapsed. And without that shield, the planet's atmosphere slowly disappeared. The planet decayed into the barren, frozen, toxic world we know today.

We're very familiar with this protective magnetic bubble, because Earth has a strong one. Our molten outer core is still churning, still generating a powerful field that deflects the deadly solar wind.

It's the reason our oceans remain, our air is thick enough to breathe, and our planet is not a lifeless wasteland.

We've been very confident this protection wasn't going away. Because we understood how it works, what keeps it in place.

Until now.

A new study from the Southwest Research Institute in Texas revealed we don't know as much about the solar wind as we thought -- and our magnetic field may not be so stable against it.

The study uses data from NASA's "Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission", which launched four spacecraft in orbit in 2015, specifically to observe Earth's magnetosphere. And they found something unexpected.

It was well known that things called "Pickup ions" (PUIs) exist around the sun. These are formerly neutral atoms drifting through space that are zapped into ions by the power of the Sun.

Once they're ionized, they get caught by the solar wind and spiral around magnetic field lines. In fact, they tend to create additional waves in the solar wind.

And that's what made this new study disturbing. The MMS spacecraft observed Pickup ions (PUIs) near Earth. Turns out, these PUIs are actively stirring up the solar wind barraging our planet.

According to Dr. Michael Starkey, lead scientist on the study, "PUIs play a larger role in the heating and thermalization of the solar wind near Earth than previously thought."

It reveals a blind spot in our understanding of the toxic radiation raining down on us every minute of every day. These PUIs are stirring up turbulence and changing the heat levels of the solar wind as it hits the Earth's shield.

Suddenly our confidence in how the magnetosphere holds up under stress is misplaced -- we didn't even realize this additional element was in play.

The magnetic field wouldn't have to disappear entirely for this to cause a devastating crisis. If a massive solar storm erupted, sending a coronal mass ejection hurtling toward Earth, the magnetosphere normally absorbs the shock.

But if PUIs amplify turbulence in ways our models don't anticipate, the storm could open cracks in Earth's magnetic field.

The initial problems would be scary but manageable. Satellites would be destroyed, cutting off GPS, communications, and weather forecasting.

On Earth, geomagnetically induced currents would surge through power grids, frying transformers and plunging cities into darkness.

But the deeper danger is long-term.

If Earth's magnetic field were ever to weaken significantly our air would become vulnerable to solar stripping. Earth's atmosphere would thin. Oceans would slowly evaporate as surface radiation levels rose.

The lush, protective biosphere we depend on would slip away, leaving our planet exposed to the raw elements of space.

We keep dreaming of turning Mars into another Earth. But if we lose our magnetic field, the transformation will go the other way. Earth would become Mars.

It's highly unlikely. It would take some extraordinary event hitting us from the volatile Sun to trigger the process.

Then again, based on recent solar activity, it may not be so unlikely.

Solar flares -- explosions of energy from the sun -- are ranked in size and strength in three classes: C for small, M for medium, and X class for the biggest. And within each class, numbers are added to indicate how strong they are. For example, an X2 flare is twice as strong as an X1.

In May of 2024, the Sun unleashed an X8.7-class flare, one of the most powerful solar explosions our home star can produce. Its energy is equivalent to billions of nuclear bombs going off at once. The event triggered the strongest geomagnetic storm to hit Earth in 20 years.

Later that same year, the Sun added an X9-class flare to the mix, making 2024 the most active year for solar weather in modern observation.

Will our magnetic bubble hold up against these growing solar explosions? Probably. But it's worth noting, looking at all the planets around us -- if Earth manages to stay 'blue', we'd be the only one.

Sources:

<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250911073154.htm>

AI technology is now ubiquitous. But a study from Charles Darwin University in Australia warns we are often using AI without questioning it, and without any transparency into how it works…

By David Sussin

It's not often a new technology is accused of undermining democratic values and destroying ethical landscapes at dangerous speed.

Nobody ever said that about the Sony Walkman.

But Artificial Intelligence is obviously on a different scale. It has abilities our world has never seen.

It's so fast at processing massive datasets and so impressive in returning complex answers, we can't wait to hand over the keys to every important aspect of society.

We've come a long way since 1967, when Stanford chemists first experimented with AI to help analyze molecular structure.

The technology is now ubiquitous. Governments use it for policy analysis and decision making. Medicine relies on it for diagnostics, drug discovery, and patient care.

AI has been integrated into education through personalized learning. Global financial systems depend on it for fraud detection, trading, and risk management. It's grown beyond any new technology.

It's infrastructure. Even more than that, AI is actively shaping our society.

It should be a great thing. AI is doing complicated work for us humans, and doing it in seconds.

But a study published this April from Charles Darwin University in Australia warns we are often using AI without questioning it, and without any transparency into how it works.

There's a "black box" around AI's internal process, how it makes decisions and generates answers. Not only can it be factually wrong, its answers are generated without human guardrails -- there's nothing ensuring its recommendations are good for humanity.

That may sound grandiose, if you're just asking ChatGPT about a lasagna recipe. But when government uses AI to make policy, it becomes key.

The authors of the study, titled "Human dignity in the age of Artificial Intelligence," see the enforcement of ethical guardrails as the difference between a utopian future and a slow descent into a Mad Max dystopia.

A huge red flag came in March of 2023, when Italy became the first Western Democracy to ban ChatGPT.

The AI product, made by OpenAI, was violating Italy's data protection laws on several fronts. First, it was collecting user data without permission, using personal information to train its algorithms without consent.

Second, ChatGPT would process personal data along with hallucinated, incorrect facts, resulting in potentially damaging recommendations.

A third concern was ChatGPT's absence of any age verification, surprising since OpenAI's own terms reserve ChatGPT's use for people who are at least 13 years old.

If there was a human involved in this process at any point, they might have flagged this on the OpenAI side. But in a world where algorithms make all the decisions, there is no human concern, no ethical judgement. There is just data.

By April of 2023, Italy lifted the ban. OpenAI made fast adjustments to its chatbot and calmed concerns. But the researchers at Charles Darwin University point out, not every country is enforcing regulations on AI. In fact, some are not attempting to regulate AI at all.

The United States is big on doing nothing. That is, relying on companies to self-regulate. The CDU study warned against this approach, saying "it may potentially pose many risks to the USA's stability, safety, and security."

It's a risk we willingly take, for the freedom of financial success. We let tech companies grow into powerful regimes unto themselves, with their own geopolitical influence, wielding power beyond U.S. borders and jurisdiction.

So, what exactly is the risk of unregulated AI?

That we'll actually rely on it.

Turns out, humans will give up their judgement to AI at alarming rates. Even when they know AI can be wrong. And even when the situation is life or death.

As one example, the CDU paper sites a study on drone warfare done in 2024. Participants had to respond to an AI agent's recommendation whether to kill enemy combatants or preserve citizens. The goal was to see how often people deferred to the AI, even when they know it's unreliable.

Participants acted as lethal drone operators, and saw a series of eight greyscale aerial images. Superimposed symbols on each picture indicated "enemy" (a small red circle) or "ally" (a small green circle).

Then the same images were presented again without the symbols. The participant had to remember: was it an enemy that should be hit with a missile and destroyed? Or an ally to be left alone? They made the call. And they were pretty good at it. Participants got it right 70% of the time.

That was before AI Chatbots chimed in with their feedback.

After participants made their initial call, the AI-agent would say "I agree" or "I don't agree" or "I don't think that's right" -- basically giving an opinion that might cause the participant to reconsider their own human judgement.

The right move would be to ignore AI entirely -- the feedback was entirely random, not at all based on the facts, and often incorrect. Participants were given a chance to stick with their original decision or change it based on AI's feedback. Then they fired their missile. Or not.

There were two experiments done. In the first, 58% of the participants changed their mind to match AI recommendations.

In the second, the percentage of those who over-relied on bad AI feedback rose to 67%. In the end, overall accuracy declined by 20% because the AI had an oversized influence on drone operator confidence. This, despite the AI explicitly stating its fallibility and providing random input.

The truth is, AI can be programmed to have a confident tone, and give its answers in convincing language. It doesn't even know if it's right or wrong.

The CDU paper recommends regulating this technology with a human-centric approach, so AI responses are consistent with human values and principals, and ensure humans have a place in the decision-making process.

Hopefully the U.S. isn't too far down the unregulated road.

This past May, the U.S. Air Force revealed plans for an unmanned, AI-driven fighter called the YFQ-42A. It's built to keep up with an F-22 fighter as a "wingman", fully capable of carrying weapons and executing lethal strikes.

Evidence indicates, when this AI wingman makes a recommendation, we're likely to follow its lead. Whether it's good for humanity or not.

Sources:

<https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-first-uncrewed-fighter-jets-photos-2025-3?utm_source=chatgpt.com>

<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250907172635.htm>

<https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-69771-z>

<https://spectrum.ieee.org/humanoid-robot-scaling>

<https://knightcolumbia.org/content/failure-internet-freedom>

<https://houstonherald.com/2025/02/study-humans-overtrust-ai-in-life-or-death-decisions>

The station at 4625 kHz is located 18 miles outside Moscow, broadcasting day and night from a lonely, rusted tower in the countryside. Is it a relic of the Cold War, or something else…?

By David Sussin

In January of 1983, Ary Boender was not looking to discover a secret Russian radio transmission.

He was a 29-year-old living in the Netherlands, starting his career in finance.

His hobby was shortwave radio -- specifically the high frequency, non-broadcast range, between 3 and 30 MHz.

For shortwave radio nerds, this is where all the excitement is. Instead of radio broadcasts like the BBC or Voice of America, the higher frequencies are home to practical communications, used by governments for air traffic control, ship to shore messages, or weather stations.

And once in a while, if you're obsessed with scanning and logging these frequencies like Boender was, you might just hear signals from the military, or even foreign spies.

On this particular night, Boender was scanning for a different station, rolling across the dial, when he heard a crackly beeping at 4625 kHz, over and over, and then it stopped.

This pattern kept repeating. Boender was captivated. Because a haunting, mysterious beeping is addictive -- it's a mystery. Someone out there is sending it, and someone else has the code and knows what it means.

In a 2011 interview, Boender said that first night was "thrilling". He'd come across a true mystery -- no one knew what the signal was. "The fun is to find out who they are and where they transmit from and what the purpose is."

Well, it's fun until the world learned what it was.

The station at 4625 kHz is located 18 miles outside Moscow, broadcasting day and night from a lonely, rusted tower in the countryside.

At first it was dismissed as a relic of the Cold War, locked in a loop of repeating beeps. But that changed in 1992. Someone took control of the broadcast.

This was no relic - the frequency was being actively used. The beeps changed to extended "buzzing", one second each, between 21 and 34 times per minute.

Taken as a whole, the buzzing has been described as a "nasally foghorn blaring through a crackly ether". Then, every once in a while, the buzzing would be interrupted by Russian Morse code, or -- even more ominous -- a voice.

They would always say the same thing. They would give the call sign for the station, common practice on shortwave radio. The mysterious station was UVB-76.

For years, the station remained in this buzzing mode. Was this just a channel marker, to keep the frequency occupied so no one else uses it?

The military sometimes does this to hold a frequency open until it's needed. Or is it tied to Russia's early warning nuclear command system, part of the "Dead Hand" automated signal meant to launch an attack if the country's leadership was wiped out?

It's this theory that has given the radio station the nickname "Doomsday Radio".

On Christmas Eve 1997, a major break in the buzzing occurred, confirming at least one thing about UVB-76: the Russians were actively using it to communicate. With no warning, a male Russian voice came on the air.

He gave a series of numbers and names. Specifically he said the code word "BROMAL". "The Buzzer" station was broadcasting coded messages. Who was hearing this? What did it mean? Nobody knew.

The actual entire message that night: "Ya UVB-76, Ya UVB-76. 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14. Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4."

What military entity or undercover operative heard this and took action? Or was it just a test of the system?

It might be surprising governments still use shortwave radio for crucial, secret communication in the digital age. But shortwave radio has significant advantages over digital networks and satellites.

Especially the higher frequencies, which can bounce off the ionosphere and -- by doing this -- travel thousands of miles to remote locations, a key advantage reaching ships in isolated locations at sea.

Shortwave is also more reliable. It doesn't rely on internet connections or phones or satellites or anything that can be hacked or jammed.

For this reason, it's often the only method for communications in disasters. The fact anyone can hear the signals isn't really an issue.

The coded messages are nearly impossible to interpret without the keys to decipher them. And the signals can be disguised, simply by making them continuous -- no one would ever know regular radio traffic from a coded signal.

What about those Russian names and numbers? They sound borderline corny, like made-up code for a James Bond movie.

But it turns out, this style of communication is very familiar in military or diplomatic circles. Known signal stations that message field agents for the CIA or MI6, or US military frequencies coordinating ship movements use exactly the same mix of text and number coding.

And the fact that the Russians have neither confirmed nor denied the existence of UVB-76 is also expected if it is, indeed, a classified Russian military frequency.

So, we're pretty certain the numbers station is, indeed, controlled by Russian military intelligence. But this knowledge isn't so comforting, because we don't know what the signals mean.

And they keep coming.

In December of 2002, a distorted voice suddenly came on the frequency, breaking through the static to say, "UVB-76, UVB-76. 62 691 IZAFET 36 93 82 70."

In February of 2006, a message came on that combined numbers with the names, "Konstantin-Tatiana-Oksana-Anna-Elena-Pavel-Schuka".

A similar message was broadcast in August of 2010 and June of this year, when the United States hit nuclear sites in Iran. UVB-76 broadcasted, "PANIROVKA, KLINOK, BOBINA".

Was this a warning to their Iranian partners?

It's actually somewhat comforting when the messages coincide with world events -- the Russian maneuvers in Chechnya in December 2002, or the Iranian bombing this year. It's expected Russian military would need to give orders globally during these times.

But that doesn't explain the message just sent earlier last month.

On Monday, September 8 of this year, UVB-76 came alive once again. This time, it broadcasted 1.04 minutes of code words, a list of Russian names that went, "Nikolai, Zhenya, Tatyana, Ivan, Olga, Elena, Leonid".

This was followed by a series of numbers: 38, 965, 78, 58, 88, 37, then followed by phrases like "soft sign," "five signs," and "reception." The instructions were complex. Were they giving coordinates for a strike? Were they a green light to covert operatives?

We have no idea. But in this case, it's no fun to wait and see.

Sources:

https://priyom.org/media/57653/the_buzzer_primer.pdf

https://ronmilione.blogspot.com/2011/10/inside-russian-short-wave-radio-enigma.html

https://www.numbersoddities.nl/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU0LSae-HZU

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/russias-doomsday-radio-speaks-again-uvb-76-broadcasts-russian-names-numbers-and-cryptic-phrases/articleshow/123772355.cms

https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp65-00756r000400090001-8

https://www.slashgear.com/1425407/uvb-76-strange-history-radio/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Ancient viral relics remain in our DNA, from a time before humans walked the Earth. Up until now, they were dormant and mysterious. But that just changed…

By David Sussin

We think of viruses as germs that make us sick. But they do much more.

They interact with human proteins. And through this interaction, they drive changes in who we are, what we're like.

In 2016, scientists studied 1,300 proteins affected by viruses and found that these pathogens drive a surprising amount of evolutionary change.

In fact, the results were published under the title, "Viruses are a Dominant Driver of Protein Adaptation in Mammals".

These viral fossils are called "human endogenous retroviruses" or HERVs. And the study showed they've driven about 30% of the adaptive changes in human proteins.

This means viruses have been one of the most powerful forces shaping human evolution.

There are some astounding examples: the gene crucial for forming memories and learning in the brain, called the "Arc gene", evolved from a retrovirus capsid protein. And retroviral genes regulate innate immunities, ironically helping us fight infections.

The disturbing thing is, viruses are not human. They are separate entities that infect us. Yet remnants of ancient viruses have been in our system so long that they've become part of our biology.

About 8 percent of our DNA -- the code that tells our cells how to grow, function, and interact -- actually comes from HERVs.

These are broken, leftover fragments from infections our distant ancestors endured, long before humans even existed as a species. They are molecular fossils of ancient viral encounters.

Some would point to this as proof our viral-driven genetic leaps in human intelligence and communication weren’t random, but engineered by ancient astronauts.

Why are humans so far ahead of all other animals on Earth?

Astronomer Fred Hoyle and Nobel laureate molecular biologist Francis Crick (among others) championed the theory that human life was seeded from space -- they called it "directed panspermia".

Astrophysicist Paul Wesson speculated there could even be "necropanspermia", where dead viruses sparked life once they mixed with Earth's elements.

These theories of ancient astronauts engineering human life are widely dismissed. Yet ancient viral relics remain in our DNA, from a time before humans walked the Earth.

Up until now, they were dormant and mysterious, taking up space in our genome with their structure and function largely unknown.

But that just changed.

Scientists at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology created the first 3-D look at an ancient viral protein previously hidden in our DNA.

It comes from an ancient family of viruses called HERV-K that still makes viral proteins in our system. The one they modeled is called "Env", and it shows up in a lot of terrible places.

The protein has been found in several cancers, including breast, ovarian, prostate, melanoma, and leukemia. It's also been linked to autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and type 1 diabetes, as well as neurodegenerative diseases like ALS.

Before the study, scientists had no structural information about the protein, preventing them from studying it as a possible treatment for all the diseases where it shows up.

Now, a new world of possibilities has opened up. Using a powerful imaging method, the La Jolla researchers mapped the viral protein in three dimensions.

The ancient pathogen's structure was odd - you might even call it alien. It didn't match known viruses. The researchers found it possessed a "distinct fold and architecture compared to HIV and simian immunodeficiency virus."

Env had a three-part structure, a tall, tripod-like shape which is longer and narrower than similar proteins from HIV or SIV. And the protein's surface has a shape never seen before, tall and formed in unusually flat sheets.

It also has a lighter sugar coating than typical HIV or SIV viruses, making the protein more exposed and easier to target with treatments.

The ancient HERV-K Env protein was so unusual that existing lab tools couldn't study it properly -- they could only detect simple, unfolded pieces of the protein, not its full 3D shape.

So, the researchers created a new set of custom antibodies that could recognize the protein in its different shapes and parts. Through this innovation, they were able to map the protein's structure both before and after it fused with cells.

Now that scientists have identified the unique structural features of the ancient viral protein, they have a solid foundation for future studies. That includes novel immunotherapies against the associated cancers, autoimmune disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases touched by this DNA relic hiding within us.

A new era of experimentation has begun.

Did these ancient viruses have interstellar origins? Are they the secret sauce that gave humans the evolutionary leap beyond all other animals on Earth? Whatever they are, they've been asleep in our DNA for eons. Until now.

What happens when we wake them up?

Sources:

https://elifesciences.org/articles/12469

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady8168

https://www.lji.org/news-events/news/post/a-stunning-first-look-at-the-viruses-inside-us/

Imagine the island of Manhattan flying at 134,000 miles through space, that's what is out there right now…

By David Sussin

We get hit with stuff from space constantly.

More than you might think. Somewhere around 20,000 meteors larger than a softball hit Earth every year.

A few hundred are big enough to recover and catalog. Why aren't they more of a big deal?

So far, every single one has been from our own solar system, mostly from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, some from the Moon or Mars after they're hit by other meteors.

So, there's not much new to be learned by these objects. We're just glad they aren't the size of buses, and they mostly disappear into our oceans.

It's extremely rare anything enters our solar system from outside its boundaries. Astronomers call these objects 'interstellar'.

They know immediately when an object has arrived from interstellar space: its trajectory and velocity can't be explained by gravitational interactions within our solar system.

Meaning, it's not orbiting the sun or any other object. It's literally passing through. And it's moving much faster than your average meteoroid.

When they do show up, it's a rare opportunity to learn just what is out there. These objects form in star systems not our own, so they carry valuable data.

But it's no exaggeration to call it rare. Before this year, interstellar objects have entered our solar system twice.

An interstellar object called Oumuamua passed through in 2017. It moved at a staggering 58,000 miles an hour, far faster than any object knocked from the asteroid belt at the edge of our solar system.

Then in 2019, an object called Borisov arrived, with a bright coma and tail, consistent with your typical comet. But again, its speed set it apart. It was moving at over 71,000 miles an hour, faster than any comet in our solar system.

On July 1st of this year, the southern ATLAS telescope at Cerro Tololo in Chile discovered a third.

The telescope is part of three positioned around the globe to detect near-Earth objects that pose a collision risk. This new object was in no danger of hitting Earth. But it did cause concern.

First, it’s the fastest interstellar object ever observed, moving at 134,000 miles an hour. And -- unlike its two predecessors -- its path is exceptionally straight.

The good news is, the speed and trajectory confirm it is just passing through our solar system. But something traveling so fast and so straight begs another question: what the heck is it?

Well, it's large, maybe the largest interstellar object observed to date.

Estimates suggest a size as large as 12 miles long. Imagine the island of Manhattan flying at 134,000 miles through space, that's what is out there right now.

And it's ancient. It's the oldest object ever seen by humanity.

We know this because its path indicates it originated from the Milky Way's thick disk of stars, a region high above and below the part of the galaxy we're in, where stars are 8-12 billion years older than our sun.

This interstellar object -- officially called 3I/ATLAS -- is older than our own solar system, by billions of years.

It comes from somewhere formed in the early Galaxy -- places we weren't even sure existed. If it was designed by ancient aliens, it was made to survive across light-years.

And there's something unusual flying off of it, being released in staggering quantities: water.

It's another first for interstellar objects. The Swift Space Telescope used ultraviolet images of 3I/ATLAS to spot it. It's releasing water at a rate of about 88 pounds per second. It's hard to comprehend that much water -- it's all the rain on Earth in a single day, but released every second.

Is it an ancient alien probe, sent eons ago to scout us?

Well, it's the first thing astronomers attempt to rule out. Because most likely, 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet.

First, they examine the trajectory. If it is moving too fast, on an odd incoming angle (not lining up with the galactic plane where most stars orbit), it indicates it might have been sent intentionally rather than wandering naturally.

And, disturbingly, 3I/ATLAS checks this box. It is, indeed, coming in at an odd angle and at tremendous speed. But this alone isn't enough to call it intentional. In fact, the angle would be consistent with an object originating in the Milky Way's 'thick disk'.

The other key indicator an object might be alien is a change in speed, independent of the objects around it -- astronomers call this non-gravitational acceleration. It suggests some kind of ship, with hidden engines, able to navigate independently.

The thing is, a detailed analysis estimates that 3I/ATLAS is experiencing non-gravitational acceleration. But it's extremely slight, and could be attributed to dust particles ejected, exerting recoil forces. Slight or not, it's another box checked in favor of 3I/ATLAS being, well, unnatural.

Of course, a comet has one major trait that's easy to identify. It's called a coma, a gas and dust cloud that surrounds it as it gets warmed by the sun. And 3I/ATLAS does exhibit an active coma -- but with unusual characteristics, different than your typical comet.

When comets warm and develop a visible coma, they show cyanide gas first. But 3I/ATLAS showed water first, with the cyanide gas appearing later. This indicates the object has sources of ice on board, outside its nucleus.

In fact, before the cyanide gas appeared, a spectroscopy detected atomic nickel emissions in the coma. Again, this is highly unusual, and not found in the majority of comets.

Add to this, the carbon dioxide levels of 3I/ATLAS are unusually high. Astronomers figure this means the object formed in a very cold region of the Milky Way, far from its parent star. Wherever it was made, it was in deep space more extreme than typical comets.

Lastly, the coma has an unusual red hue, indicating its composition differs from typical comets.

But despite the unusual water trail, high CO₂ levels, odd nickel emissions, and the mysterious red-tinted coma that make 3I/ATLAS chemically and physically different from most comets, NASA is confident the object is, in fact, a comet. NASA's official website calls it "Comet 3I/ATLAS".

Let's hope they're right. If it is an ancient alien probe that just confirmed to its creators Earth is here, we may not want to know what happens next.

Sources:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/alien-spaceship-or-comet-nasa-shares-update-on-mysterious-object-racing-through-the-solar-system/articleshow/123520962.cms

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250829235726.htm

https://news.umich.edu/getting-to-know-3i-atlas-our-solar-systems-newest-interstellar-visitor/

https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08111

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/19/3i-atlas-comet-interstellar-alien-object-where-size-speed?utm_source=chatgpt.com

www.astronomy.com/science/what-we-know-so-far-about-3i-atlas-the-interstellar-visitor

https://www.space.com/astronomy/asteroids/astronomers-say-new-interstellar-visitor-3i-atlas-is-very-likely-to-be-the-oldest-comet-we-have-ever-seen

https://www.space.com/14187-milky-disk-stars-galaxy-formation-segue.html

Many hold onto the belief there is a hidden leviathan yet to be found, silently gliding through the depths of the Pacific…

By David Sussin

In 1997, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded a strange sound deep in the South Pacific.

NOAA officials knew it was some kind of animal, because the sound started at ultra-low frequencies and rose in pitch.

Ice breaking or underground quakes don't have that kind of pattern -- they're abrupt and limited in frequency.

And unlike ice cracking or ground shifting, the sound lasted nearly a minute. The pattern clearly matched what they'd expect from whale calls or other animal vocalizations.

And it was detected across thousands of miles of ocean, again common for the low-frequency sounds made by marine animals, but rare for ice quakes. This noise was biological.

Researchers who heard the sound called it "amazing". But it was also disturbing. Because they didn't know what animal could make it. It was no whale.

In fact, the amplitude was beyond what any currently known creature could make. It was extremely loud. Which suggested the animal was extremely big. Was there a giant roaming undiscovered in the deepest parts of the ocean?

It wasn't a one-off anomaly -- the sound kept happening. The mystery creature made the call several times, in a brief, concentrated series that was recorded and analyzed.

Something was out there.

28 years later, we still don't know what it was. Since no known animal ever surfaced whose call matches the extremely low frequency, high volume pattern, NOAA now attributes it to ice quakes.

But many hold onto the belief there is a hidden leviathan yet to be found, silently gliding through the depths of the Pacific.

Could such a creature roam the Earth's oceans undetected for all of human history? Seems unlikely. But a recent, ground-breaking study revealed how possible that may be -- and how little we know about the depths of our own oceans.

The study -- published in July this year -- was impressive in its scale. Led by Museums Victoria Research Institute, the work involved over 40 institutions around the world.

The goal was simple. Researchers wanted to understand how marine species split and move between different parts of the ocean, and how unique communities of animals develop in oceans around the world.

The DNA analyzed came from specimens collected during 332 research voyages, many undertaken decades ago, and preserved in institutions around the world. Lynley Crosswell, CEO and Director of Museums Victoria called it "science on a global scale."

The focus of this massive study was about as far from a giant sea creature as you can get: the brittle star. It's a relative of a starfish, with a round center three centimeters across.

Turns out, this tiny animal is the perfect choice if you want to study differences in the same animal in every possible ocean, because brittle stars are everywhere, across all sea floors on Earth. In fact, they are everywhere in big numbers.

Brittle stars also offer a window into the past few other living creatures can match. By comparison, humans first appeared around 300,000 years ago. But brittle stars originated around 480 million years ago, well before dinosaurs.

Indeed, brittle stars are among the most ancient creatures living on Earth today, a living fossil that allowed researchers to investigate movement over evolutionary timescales.

The researchers expected to find different species of brittle stars restricted to different regions. It's how marine life is, generally -- different oceans tend to have their own communities.

It's true, all the oceans are connected in some way, through narrow straits or passages. But there are barriers between them that make it hard or, in some cases, impossible for animals to move freely around.

Some are physical land barriers, and some are seas so shallow the fish are literally stopped from crossing. And there are other major barriers as well. Stark differences in temperatures block the movement of some species from tropical to temperate or polar waters, for example.

And certain dangerous currents also create natural barriers isolating populations. There should be distinct groups of brittle stars in every ocean.

But that's not at all what they found.

Turns out, on the sea floor where brittle stars live, there are different rules. Here, we are at the abyssal zone, 20,000 feet under. It's pitch dark, near freezing, and under extremely high pressure.

The sea floor is mostly flat abyssal plains, with occasional trenches, ridges, and underwater mountains. You won't find as much life here as in shallower waters, but you will find the most stable and continuous habitat on Earth.

Which is why the brittle stars could call it home for such a mind-boggling span of time, nearly half a billion years.

This new study of brittle star biogeography found the exact same species in vast, geographically distant areas and separate deep-sea regions.

Any barriers in the upper part of the ocean meant nothing to them. Genetic analyses showed that populations in different deep-sea biomes were closely related. They've been moving around the globe freely for generations.

The study showed the same biomes in northern Atlantic and southern Australian oceans -- opposite sides of the planet. Any barriers in temperatures or currents had no effect on the dispersal of the ancient animals.

In the most dramatic example, the eastern Pacific-Indo-Pacific barrier, which is a major divider of biomes in the Pacific and Indian oceans was not at all evident in the abyssal data. It just didn't exist.

Simply put, they found a more extensive degree of deep-sea connectivity than was ever previously understood. At extreme depths, the ocean is truly a different world, an environment that is highly connected, or, as one of the study leads described it, "a superhighway."

Under land barriers and shallow seas lies uninterrupted plains where animals can live undisturbed for millions of years.

We have yet to travel all the highways at these abyssal depths. But back in 1997, we may have already heard one of its creatures inviting us to try.

Sources:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09307-1

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250806094119.htm

On the one hand, there's no doubt UAPs are up there. On the other, the government seems to want the questions to stop there. So, we're left wondering. Although, that may have just changed…

By David Sussin

In June, President Trump was asked again about those mysterious unidentified flying objects seen over New Jersey late last year.

The question came from podcast host Miranda Divine on her show "Pod Force One", produced by the New York Post.

And if the question seemed out of left field -- the mysterious lights in the sky are no longer in the news -- it was a good one to ask. Because nine months later, the public still has no idea what they were.

As a reminder, this was much bigger than a random UFO sighting by some guy on a farm somewhere. FBI investigators at the time collected over 3,000 witness reports.

And the flying objects were seen over military sites like Naval Weapons Station Earle, and critical infrastructure like the Round Valley Reservoir.

The objects were absolutely real. The FAA even restricted flights over the area.

So, near the end of the forty-minute interview, Divine asked if the President knew what they were. Mr. Trump said, "I can't tell you who it was or what it was, but it's not a big deal."

The dodge actually provides some clarity (and mirrors answers the President gave back in January). It confirms the government does know what the UAPs were.

It also suggests they were not flown by aliens or an enemy force, but under control of the government, thus, "not a big deal".

This, of course, tells us nothing about what they were. We seem to be in a constant state of wondering, when it comes to UAPs.

On the one hand, there's no doubt they're up there. On the other, the government seems to want the questions to stop there. So, we're left wondering.

Although, that may have just changed.

On an episode this month of Joe Rogan's popular podcast, second-term Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna said she'd seen classified photos proving the government had alien technology.

Just like that, maybe the wondering can stop.

Congresswoman Luna made it explicitly clear: "I have seen photos. So, I was in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) and I can't discuss all that was in a SCIF, but what I can tell you is based on the photos that I've seen, I'm very confident that there's things out there that have not been created by mankind."

This matches what many reputable sources claimed in Congressional testimony: that the government has an ongoing program to reverse-engineer alien technology recovered from crashes.

Those witnesses include former U.S. Air Force officer David Grusch, retired U.S. Navy Commander David Fravor, former U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves, and former Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell.

From the testimony of these and others, we are meant to understand alien technology not only exists, but is being actively tested for use by the U.S. Government.

Their testimony lines up with information Congresswoman Luna has received in her position as chair of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets and member of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Caucus.

According to Luna, "there is definitely something that I think would rival what we know currently with physics and a tech . . . something that I can tell you with confidence that exists that we don't know how to explain currently."

Fellow UAP Caucus member Rep. Tim Burchett tried to warn us back in March of 2023, telling Newsweek magazine, "UFO technology is possibly being reverse-engineered right now." Burchett insisted the U.S. has "recovered a craft at some point, and possible beings".

Physicist Hal Puthoff is another prominent voice trying to warn us. Puthoff served as a contractor and senior advisor for both the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP) and its successor, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) -- both U.S. government initiatives focused on unexplained aerial phenomena.

In an earlier Joe Rogan podcast, Mr. Puthoff shared that he participated in a classified meeting to evaluate the potential societal fallout of disclosing that the U.S., Russia, and China had recovered extraterrestrial craft and biologics. While we wonder if it's true, the major world powers debate if we should know at all.

Congresswoman Luna came face to face with the cover up in 2023.

In January, a U.S. Air Force pilot flying a mission in the Gulf of America (formerly Gulf of Mexico), off the coast of Florida, reported seeing a group of four UAPs on radar.

Upon closer approach, the pilot visually observed one of the objects, describing it as the size and shape of an Apollo spacecraft, with a "gunmetal gray" conical top and an "orange-reddish" illuminated, rounded bottom.

When the pilot closed to within 4,000 feet of the object, the aircraft's radar malfunctioned and became disabled for the rest of the flight. For some reason, a circuit breaker tripped.

Representatives Luna and Burchett both investigated the incident. The Department of Defense told them the objects were "very likely an ordinary object," such as a commercial lighting balloon. Nothing to see here.

Except the pilot's radar showed a group of four UAPs flying in a "clear diamond formation." If you've ever watched balloons floating in the sky, you know they don't stay in locked formation. This made no sense.

And the pilot described "blurry air" around the objects, like a heat signature, also inconsistent with a balloon. Most important, the unclassified summary of the incident notes that "no airspeeds were noted for any of the UAP in this report."

Any balloon would have a clear airspeed relative to the ground. It would be determined by the wind speed at its altitude. The lack of a recorded airspeed is a sign the objects were not behaving according to known aerodynamic principles.

It might be time to stop wondering.

The question is no longer if they're covering something up -- we're seeing it in plain sight. There are thousands of reported UAPs every year, and it's looking more and more like these are government tests of technologies beyond our understanding.

Is the alien tech leading to new propulsion systems, perhaps ships that can traverse extra dimensions, as suggested by Congresswoman Luna in her interview with Rogan?

Let's hope the military gets it working before the owners come back to claim their wreckage. When that happens, it will certainly be a "big deal".

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4DMC_CYzU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_drone_sightings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-yPOBaYDOo&t=4667s

https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/2023/03/08/6408238c46163fe11a8b45fe.html

www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/pentagon-reinforces-mr-luis-elizondo-had-no-responsibilities-on-aatip-senator-harry-reids-2009-memo-changes-nothing

https://youtu.be/4aBOzVRzL5Y

Nuclear weapons are an effective threat between nations, but in battle they are destructive on a scale that removes them as a viable option. It's overkill to the point of being apocalyptic. That's why the Pentagon wants the gamma-ray bomb…

By David Sussin

In 2003, the Pentagon added an ominous item to its wish list of weapons they deemed essential to maintaining superior firepower: a gamma ray bomb.

The Department of Defense at the time said, "such extraordinary energy density has the potential to revolutionize all aspects of warfare".

They weren't kidding.

A weapon capable of releasing high energy gamma rays would be devastating beyond anything used on a battlefield today. Every living thing in the immediate area would be eradicated. In a flash.

If this sounds like a nuclear bomb, it's actually worse. Precisely because no one wants to use a nuclear bomb. A nuclear blast radius is enormous and indiscriminate, killing and destroying everything miles from its target.

And there's fallout. Radiation contaminates soil, water, and air for a generation. The area hit is uninhabitable. Nuclear weapons are an effective threat between nations, but in battle they are destructive on a scale that removes them as a viable option. It's overkill to the point of being apocalyptic.

That's why the Pentagon wants the gamma-ray bomb.

If it worked, it would emit a single burst of high-energy radiation on a precise target. The effects of the radiation would be concentrated. And the source is non-nuclear - there's no fallout, no long-term environmental destruction.

Gamma Ray weapons promise destructive power comparable to nuclear weapons, but with tactical precision and contained destruction.

It's a dark idea to get excited about, but when you work in the Department of Defense, these are the things that make the wish list.

At the time, there were those who feared gamma ray bombs would unleash a new arms race. But they did have one major thing to comfort them: the weapon was nearly impossible to make.

The explosive required the release of gamma radiation from the nuclei of elements like hafnium that exist in a high-energy state, or nuclear isomer, that slowly decays to a low-energy state by emitting gamma rays.

The first problem in making this happen was creating hafnium in a high energy state on demand. Energy had to somehow be "pumped" into its nuclei.

This meant bombarding the hafnium with high-energy photons. This process requires a nuclear reactor or a particle accelerator. And even if it works, only tiny amounts can be made.

And that's just step one.

An element like hafnium won't release the gamma rays all at once. The decay process (half-life) is 31 years. Pretty slow when your commander yells "fire" and you have to launch a weapon. So, step two in creating this bomb required scientists to artificially trigger the decay process by bombarding the nuclear isomer with low-energy X-rays.

The potential is powerful - one gram of fully charged hafnium isomer could store more energy than 50 kilograms of TNT. But the cost of using that energy is high and the process is complex. Which explains why, over two decades later, the Department of Defense still didn't get their "wish".

But that may have just changed.

Scientists from the University of Colorado have developed a way to generate extraordinarily strong electromagnetic fields in a very small space. The method made the cover of Advanced Quantum Technologies June issue. It's a major breakthrough in sub-atomic technology.

Up to now, generating these high-energy fields required huge, expensive facilities. Scientists needed particle colliders 16 miles long, like the Large Hadron Collider.

But the University of Colorado researchers did the same thing using something the size of your thumb. They created a nanostructured metal surface -- a chip -- on which they could create waves of electrons, or plasmons.

These plasmons generate extreme electromagnetic fields concentrated in a spot a billionth of a meter across. It's truly astounding.

The silicon material in the chip manages the heat generated by the waves and keeps the plasmons intact and stable. Suddenly, scientists can shrink miles-long colliders into a tiny chip.

It opens up the potential for practical experiments with extremely high energy, on a scale far smaller than previously possible.

There are many possible benefits from this new source of extreme quantum energy. The University of Colorado lab has already demonstrated plasmonic nanostructure that can target cancer cells, delivering highly localized treatments with minimal side effects.

In fact, it opens up the potential for many types of medical therapy and cures delivered at a concentrated, nuclear level. There is also the potential for lightning-fast optical switches and interconnects far beyond what metal wires handle, revolutionizing computing, data centers, and communications.

But the Pentagon took note of a different potential use. In the words of the lead University of Colorado scientist, "gamma ray lasers could become a reality."

Turns out, the extreme plasmon fields can "shake" the nuclei of isotopes, triggering nuclear transitions that would otherwise require huge amounts of energy or massive particle accelerators.

The nuclei release their stored energy as gamma photons. And if this process is synchronized across many nuclei, the emitted gamma rays can form a focused, laser-like beam. All from materials that fit on a tabletop.

Sounds like the military might have a path to a highly precise, directional, and intense gamma-ray pulse that wouldn’t create a massive fallout.

In 2003, the idea of a gamma ray weapon was science fiction.

But at the time, the Department of Defense put it on the list of weapons they wanted, reminding everyone that "less than six years intervened between the first scientific publication characterizing the phenomenon of fission and the first use of a nuclear weapon in 1945."

Just over twenty years after they made that request, we may have taken a giant leap toward the first use of a gamma-ray laser.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/14/usa.davidadam?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4049-gamma-ray-weapons-could-trigger-next-arms-race/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250812234617.htm

https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qute.202500037

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2441423-we-may-finally-know-what-caused-the-biggest-cosmic-explosion-ever-seen/

Military service is probably one of the riskiest occupations in which one can participate. It’s not a surprise, it’s an accepted risk, and that is one of the reasons that those who are veterans of foreign wars are looked up to with respect and admiration for their courage and sacrifice...

By Egon E. Mosum

Military service is probably one of the riskiest occupations in which one can participate.

While you are engaged in killing people and breaking things, (which is the real function of any military once the glitter is blown off the patriotic picture frame), the other side is trying to kill and break you.

It’s not a surprise, it’s an accepted risk, and that is one of the reasons that those who are veterans of foreign wars are looked up to with respect and admiration for their courage and sacrifice.

Obviously, what enters into service starts out as a civilian, and through basic training and advanced training, and then in training maneuvers and exercises the civilian becomes the soldier, sailor, airman or marine. 

Then that military man or woman becomes combat ready, so he or she has a fair chance of survival while becoming combat experienced — which is an entirely different thing.

It’s not expected that during training and during exercises the G.I. is going to die. But it happens. Because for training to be useful, it must contain some lesser yet similar risk to the real deal that one trains for.

Unfortunately, as I write this article, four American military personnel have just died in a training accident.

In the past week, ‘the victims are chief warrant officers Andrew Cully and Andrew Kraus, and sergeants Donavon Scott and Jadalyn Good.’ CBS news reported that these Special Operation soldiers died when ‘their MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 17 (2025).’[1]

I have included their names so the readers will know who sacrificed their lives for their country, even though it was during a training exercise and not actual combat. 

The goals were the same, to protect this country and its people; the venue of the death does not dilute from the dedication to duty that these soldiers demonstrated.

This was the most recent occurrence of our GIs dying in training, and unfortunately it isn’t the only one.

Anyone, (and your author is one), who has known the ‘pleasure’ of undergoing basic training in the summertime in a state that isn’t exactly known for the need to wear a fur coat, is familiar with the risk of heat stroke.

It can, and does kill.

In October, 2009 ‘Pvt. Jamal Britt, assigned to C Co., 3rd Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment, collapsed during the Army Physical Fitness Test.’ His death at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, was due to heat stroke. He was nineteen.

He had company a few months before when at the same fort, ‘Eighteen-year-old Pvt. Jonathan Morales of Milwaukee died Aug. 20 from apparent heatstroke while participating in a march, just days before he was to graduate from basic training.’[2]

When your author went through Air Force basic training in San Antonio in the months of July and August, I learned first-hand about what heat can do to you when you are exercising heavily, but fortunately, I just passed out for a few seconds. Britt and Morales were not so lucky.

So, we have seen that military training can be an equal opportunity killer, it can take the lives of raw recruits, and it can take the lives of seasoned operators.

Let’s raise the periscope and take a look at some more examples of when military lessons became lethal, and practice did not make perfect.

Kyle Mullen was a college football star, and just the type one would expect to try to earn his “Budweiser” badge as a United States Navy Seal. 

His first attempt failed, and he took the basic course again in 2022, and in the middle of the traditional Hell Week, (wherein would-be SEALS get to know what cold wet and tired really mean), Mullen became seriously ill, coughing up blood and exhausted.

But Mullen had the right stuff, and finished Hell Week. Unfortunately, Hell Week also finished Mullen. He died after that infamous week, at twenty-four years old, likely from some form of pneumonia.[3]

Then in 2024, there were two men who had become Navy Seals, and proudly wore the insignia of America’s best. 

But they didn’t get to retire with a trove of sea stories, because they ‘drowned as they tried to climb aboard a ship carrying illicit Iranian-made weapons to Yemen because of glaring training failures and a lack of understanding about what to do after falling into deep, turbulent waters, according to a military investigation into the January (2024) deaths.’

This incident is a different angle about death and training. The deaths in this case didn’t take place during training, but likely occurred because of training that was not up to par.[4]

It’s no secret that the toughest basic training is brought to you by the United States Marine Corps. (Full Metal Jacket movie fans get the idea).

It is a major accomplishment to successfully finish Marine Corps boot camp, but unfortunately, not every ‘boot’ walks out upright.

‘Pfc. Noah Jamar Evans, 21, died April 18, 2023, at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina.’ He was engaged in a physical fitness test, one in which he died trying to pass.

It was reported in The Marine Times, that ‘Evans was the fourth recruit to die at the boot camp in the span of two years.’[5]

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

Our national security is highly dependent on our individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. Technological wonders can help win a war, but when things get down and dirty, and it’s time to do the building-to-building bullet ballet, it’s the guys who fill those boots on the ground that get the job done.

We owe them.

We should all be concerned with their well-being; that their training is the best, and that training is as safe as is practically possible without diluting its value to prepare our GIs for the real thing.

There are times when the trainers fail, there are times when the trainees fail in body not in spirit, and these times will unfortunately continue.

But the odds of survival can be increased.

We can contact our representatives and insist that our guys and gals in uniform get the best training there is, and they get the best medical care that can get while they are in uniform, whether in training or in combat.

After all, we are the guys paying for it.

In today’s reality, it is difficult to get our ‘representatives’ to get off their political ass and do anything, but everybody looks good when they are rooting for our troops, and the optics are just fine for our fine legislators when they strive to serve those who serve us all.

Maybe it’s time we make the call, and maybe it’s time our politicians answer it.

[1] Four Soldiers Killed in Black Hawk Helicopter Crash 9/22/25 CBS NEWS https://www.cbsnews.com/news/soldiers-killed-black-hawk-helicopter-crash-identified-washington-state/

If the government has been re-engineering alien propulsion systems for at least 36 years, where is the technology? Why aren't we testing it out? Turns out, that might be exactly what the government has been doing…

By David Sussin

Bob Lazar claimed he helped reverse engineer alien propulsion systems at a site near Area 51.

If you follow Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), you know the story. Lazar claimed he was a physicist hired by the U.S. Government.

He was interviewed by an investigative television journalist in 1989, and said he'd worked on an anti-gravity reactor from an alien ship.

There's no record of his working for the government in any capacity, so it's easy to dismiss his claims.

But in July of 2023, former Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office intelligence officer David Grusch testified before the House Oversight Committee and said projects like Lazar's had been going on for decades.

He insisted, under oath, that he knew of a "multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program".

In November 2024, during another congressional hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth," several former officials confirmed the story.

Tim Gallaudet (ret. Navy Rear Admiral), Luis Elizondo (former DoD intelligence officer), and journalist Michael Shellenberger testified under oath that there was, in fact, a secret UAP crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program.

The Pentagon continues to deny all of it.

And there really is no evidence to support it. If the government has been re-engineering alien propulsion systems for at least 36 years, it's fair to ask: where is the technology? Why aren't we testing it out?

Turns out, that might be exactly what the government has been doing -- and in plain sight. In a diabolical cover up, the test flights may be disguised as just more mystery UAPs.

Again, if you follow UAPs, you know about the tic tac-shaped craft spotted in 2004. The sighting is among the most famous in recent years, because it had so many convincing witnesses.

The UAPs were not only seen but videotaped by the naval crew on the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group southwest of San Diego.

The navy ships were on a routine training exercise. Before anyone saw the alien ships, their radar detected multiple targets flying 80,000 feet in the sky. Commander David Fravor flying an F/A-18F Super Hornet witnessed the now famous white "Tic Tac-shaped object" hovering just above the water.

If tic tac described the shape, it did not do justice to the size. The flying object was 40 feet long, with no visible wings or exhaust.

Then they got a taste of what alien propulsion systems can do. The UAP mirrored the flight maneuvers for the F18 before abruptly accelerating, covering 60 miles in under a minute.

The event couldn't be dismissed outright, because the F18 took video. Ultimately, as UAP watchers know, the Pentagon confirmed the video was real.

But their take was, oh well, just another unidentified flying object for the list. Easy as that, the incident would remain talked about but nothing more -- no further explanation would be coming.

Except now, twenty years later, there's a whistleblower talking.

Republican Congressman Eric Burlison from Missouri revealed on the Alieninfoo Podcast that he's been told something astounding about the tic tac shaped craft spotted in 2004.

The UAPS were, indeed, alien technology. But it wasn't aliens flying them. Burlison was told they were being flown by Lockheed Martin.

Apparently, the craft was an early prototype, a first attempt from Lockheed Martin to reverse engineer alien technology and actually make it work.

According to Congressman Burlison, "they had a prototype. They've made changes to it, they've made it more advanced and then now it's in iteration number three. Which I did see a photo of and it looks like pretty advanced military craft like a plan but clearly human made - nothing I've ever seen. (The whistleblower's) claim is that they have discovered a new type of propulsion. They used it in the first iteration which was the tic tac. They have an intermediary one. And now they are putting it in what looks conventional military aircraft so it's not obvious."

Were the tic tac UAPs actually a live example of alien technology reverse engineered, just as Bob Lazar claimed was happening 36 years ago?

Someone with the same information has also been leaking to UFO Investigator Ross Coulthart, who said on his recent podcast for News Nation, "I do believe the tic tac incident had Lockheed Martin at the helm."

And his source had more information that explained the mystery behind the tic tac UAP's lack of any visible propulsion system. According to Coulthart, "I was told that the tic tac operated by Lockheed Martin was being controlled by a human psionic."

In the world of UAP conspiracies, a human psionic is a human with psychic abilities that can interact with, control, or even pilot UAPs.

And if that sounds crazy, it does help explain what was seen on video by at least 12 military personal in 2004: a craft with no visible pilot or propulsion system, moving in impossible ways, with sudden stops, the ability to hover, and rapid accelerations reaching hypersonic speeds.

Multiple sources out there are speaking up. The Department of Defense through Lockheed Martin may be implementing alien propulsion into the next generation of military hardware.

You might think Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard would shut these rumors down if given the chance.

But recently on the Pod Force One podcast she did quite the opposite: she expressed her belief that aliens exist and UAPs need more investigation, saying, "the intelligence community is dedicated to uncovering and sharing the truth with the public".

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin reported a $950 million loss on an "Aeronautics Classified Program" for the Second Quarter of 2025. Maybe flying those tic tacs is harder than it looks.

Sources:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-house-oversight-committee-probes-ufos-and-wider-implications

https://www.upr.org/npr-news/2024-11-13/experts-testify-before-lawmakers-that-the-u-s-is-running-secret-uap-programs

https://www.history.com/articles/uss-nimitz-2004-tic-tac-ufo-encounter

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14940473/Explosive-new-claims-iconic-Tic-Tac-UFO-reveal-shocking-secrets.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go74U7WVejs&list=PL6PrA6lo8rJLRExhMvX6wKyNzy0hr_QM3&index=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ltdnsvrRjc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Gv52tenUk

https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2025-07-22-Lockheed-Martin-Reports-Second-Quarter-2025-Financial-Results?_gl=1*1lstmv0*_gcl_au*MTgzMTgxOTYxNS4xNzU0OTQ2NjM3

In nature, protein evolution happens over millions of years. But the Scripps Research Institute came up with a method that evolves proteins up to 100,000-times in a matter of days…

By David Sussin

Scientists at Scripps Research Institute just made a major leap toward synthetically enhanced humans.

A large portion of medical breakthroughs involve proteins. Life-saving medicine like insulin, antibodies that target cancer, and enzymes that correct genetic defects, are all proteins.

But there's been a significant limitation to these advances.

We're stuck with the proteins naturally available. And they don't change very often -- or more accurately, they're always changing, but at a glacially slow pace.

In nature, protein evolution happens over millions of years. Proteins only change as organisms accumulate mutations. This happens across generations. This is time we don't have.

For a human living on Earth today, millions of years is the same as saying never. We can't wait around for new proteins to evolve, so any future medical advancements based on them are pretty meaningless to us.

Of course, in lab settings scientists have been able to speed up the process a bit.

They have methods that can improve or add new functions to proteins in a matter of years. Mutation rates are still low and the process is labor-intensive, but it works. Years is better than generations.

But the Scripps Research Institute came up with a method that evolves proteins up to 100,000-times in a matter of days…

From garages to trillion-dollar giants… one thing never changed.

Apple started in a garage.

Amazon started in a basement.

Google started in a dorm room.

Different stories. Different products. Different acronyms.

FAANG.

MANGO.

But one constant fueled them all: DATA^*

Could the government have plans to unleash pathogens on its own citizens? It's way too extreme to be a possibility. Except it's happened before…

By David Sussin

According to the 2025 U.S. Intelligent Threat Assessment, the next terror attack won't involve highjacking a plane. It'll be invading our DNA.

The 2025 Report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirms that Russia and North Korea possess active offensive biological weapons programs.

Bad operators China and Iran are also identified as actively pursuing bioweapons. But particularly ominous are the terrorist organizations.

Helped by the increased speed of AI assistants, terrorist groups are pursuing biological materials for use as weapons.

The report specifically mentions Al-Qaeda's pursuit of anthrax, botulism, and plague. ISIL also gets called out for potentially possessing tools and know-how to produce these weapons.

In addition, lone wolves and domestic militia groups are referenced as intending to use these horrific means to reach their goals…

“Elon: Apple stopped innovating.” Here’s where the upside moved.

“Apple used to really bring out products that would blow people’s minds.”
- Elon Musk

It's not a Marvel Comics fantasy to imagine a Chinese soldier who only sleeps 3 hours a night, heals from serious injuries in days, resists pain and infection, and is just plain stronger than any soldier in the West. Of course, genetically making these changes hasn’t been feasible. Until now…

By David Sussin

In 2020, U.S. intelligence warned that China was researching CRISPR-based gene editing to enhance soldier performance.

It shouldn't be a surprise.

President Xi Jinping has stated China's goal is to surpass the global power of Western nations - particularly the United States - by 2049.

This means China is committed to developing the most powerful military in the world. And one dark advantage they have over the West is their willingness to cross ethical lines to achieve that goal.

That's why we find Chinese studies on genetic editing not in medical journals, but military plans…

Does iPhone 17 prove Elon’s Apple criticism right?

“Apple used to really bring out products that would blow people’s minds.”
- Elon Musk

For centuries oil has meant wealth, and for most countries in the Middle East were it not for oil, their sheiks would be pounding sand, and instead of driving a Bugatti, would be driving dune buggies…

By Egon E. Mosum

Not all boiler rooms are heated by oil, although some may be funded by it. 

For centuries oil has meant wealth, and for most countries in the Middle East were it not for oil, their sheiks would be pounding sand, and instead of driving a Bugatti, would be driving dune buggies.

Like Jimmy Durante once said, ‘Everybody wants to get into the act,’ and that fact is what makes oil exploration scams so potentially lucrative.

Developers and scammers push the promise of a gusher to would be investors who see themselves with a bank account that gushes with profits while they develop a new taste for cowboy boots and hats.

But it isn’t always liquid gold and Texas Tea. Sometimes it’s more like a product that one steps in on a ranch left by an older form of wealth — cattle.

So, let’s do some drilling and see what we can find under the rock…

Does Oracle’s 40% jump signal a boom for the young tech darling?

Oracle’s AI-cloud surge just proved the market pays big for data & computation at scale.

The Food and Drug Administration, that same organization which okays certain amounts of rat droppings and insect parts in our food, says wood pulp is just fine…! 

By Egon E. Mosum

It’s no secret that the corporate food industry is decidedly not the health industry.

Besides chemicals in our food that can’t be pronounced, besides certain tolerances for rat poop and insect parts that the Food and Drug Administration says are within ‘safe’ levels, there’s another ingredient our federal regulators allow us to consume…

Wood.

Maybe you’ve been to one of those old-time bars or restaurants that have sawdust on the floor. Maybe you would rather walk on it than eat it, but if you consume certain foods, you’ll be doing just that — eating sawdust.

Now, it may be called cellulose, but it can also be referred to as wood pulp.

What kinds of foods contain wood pulp?

Like some grated parmesan on your pasta? Up to almost nine percent of it can be wood pulp.

Bagel in the morning? Wood pulp in that also.

Heat up the frozen pizza in the oven? You’re cooking wood pulp too.

Salad dressing? Yes. Breakfast cereal? Wood pulp. Veggie burgers, because you think meat is unhealthy? Have some wood pulp, termites love the stuff.[1]

There’s a lot more foods that contain wood pulp, but if I gave a complete list, it would ruin your appetite…

From garages to trillion-dollar giants… one thing never changed. 

Apple started in a garage.

Up to now, the search for extraterrestrials focused on traditional habitable planets, or "goldilocks zones", where the amount of water and sunlight provide energy for life to exist. Turns out they’ve been looking in the wrong place…

By David Sussin

We haven't found aliens living on Mars. But a new study suggests we might be looking in the wrong place.

Since NASA's Viking spacecraft landed on the red planet in 1976, we've been searching for signs of life there -- even a microbial version.

To date, there have been six missions that have successfully landed on Mars. None has found any life.

It makes sense. There may have been living organisms on our Earth-like neighbor in the distant past, but in its current state, life as we know it would not survive.

For one thing, it's lethally cold. The average temperature on Mars is -80 degrees Fahrenheit. And there's no liquid water, essential for life.

In fact, the atmospheric pressure is so low, any water that might appear would evaporate or freeze instantly -- the surface can't support water in a liquid state. Add to that, there's no breathable oxygen and the soil is toxic (apparently it contains perchlorate, highly reactive salts that would kill most life on Earth).

If all that wasn't enough to keep you from moving to Mars, there's also constant bombardment from lethal radiation.

Mars lacks the magnetic field and thick atmosphere enjoyed by Earth. Anyone on the surface is left unprotected against the shower of cosmic rays. High-energy radiation from the sun would quickly destroy their DNA and sterilize the soil.

But a ground-breaking study published this year revealed this same radiation actually has the potential to feed life, under the right circumstances.

Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Science at NYU Abu Dhabi, along with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and five other Universities, proved that certain microbial communities can live entirely underground and use radiation for energy.

Up to now, the search for extraterrestrials focused on traditional habitable planets, or "goldilocks zones", where the amount of water and sunlight provide energy for life to exist.

But the new study, "Radiolysis as an Energy Source for Extraterrestrial Life", proves sunlight is not the only source of energy. Cosmic rays may kill life as we know it, but there may be alien life that use those deadly rays like a power charger…

DoorDash’s $79B Explosion — But bigger?

When DoorDash first hit the scene, critics brushed it off as “nothing new.”

What DARPA really wanted was a micro robot that could be implanted in a target. And that's exactly where the medical community was excelling…

By David Sussin

The Government wants to make microrobots that can control you. Or worse.

One of their earliest attempts was in the form of cyborgs. Not human-machine hybrids, like the DC Comics superhero cleverly named "Cyborg". Humans are clearly too big for the job.

The Defense Department needed an animal small enough to travel undiscovered. These controllable robots needed to secretly conduct reconnaissance, collect intelligence, track targets -- and, yes, even deliver toxins.

In 2006, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) found the answer: insects. The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) project attempted to embed control systems into insects and turn them into controllable micro-cyborgs.

Sounds like a bad science fiction movie. Except it worked.

Under the HI-MEMS project, DARPA was able to implant electrodes into a pupal that grew into a hornworm moth. When the moth grew to full size, the electrodes remained in its muscles.

Military scientists were able to direct its flight, turning the hornworm moth into a cyborg drone. And there were other successes. With similar electrode implants, DARPA was able to modulate the leg motion of a darkling beetle and steer the flight of a flower beetle.

But by 2009, funding for the project ended without any cyborgs deployed in the field (to our knowledge). It's possible that even though the project had success, a modified insect was still too visible for the intended mission.

What they really wanted was a micro robot that could be implanted in a target. And that's exactly where the medical community was excelling…

DoorDash’s $79B Explosion — But bigger?

When DoorDash first hit the scene, critics brushed it off as “nothing new.”

The Petries heard rumors of hieroglyphic records from the Nile Valley that mentioned a temple on the site. No one had documented any buildings at Serabit el-Khadim. But the Petries had a hunch. Turns out, they were right…

By David Sussin

In 1904, British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie and his wife led an expedition to the Sinai Peninsula.

No one thought it was a good idea.

First off, their destination -- a site called Serabit el-Khadim -- was nearly impossible to access. It was on a rocky plateau 2,800 feet up a steep approach.

There were no roads or maps. The only way to get there was ascending to the site on foot across jagged mountain terrain, with camels in tow carrying food, water, tents, and excavation tools.

It was a grueling, unforgiving trek. All this with temperatures regularly over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In Petrie's own words: "the ascent to Serabit is one of the most frightful paths I have ever had the misfortune to follow. It is a break-neck track up crags and precipices, without any pretense of a route."

That alone made the idea ill advised.

But there was a second reason not to go: no one had any idea if anything was up there. The epic effort could all be for nothing.

Again, according to Petrie, from his own diary in 1906, "the site was scarcely known. Some blocks with hieroglyphs had been seen by travelers, but no one had examined the place. I hoped that a temple might be found."

They were going on hope. The Petries heard rumors of hieroglyphic records from the Nile Valley that mentioned a temple on the site. No one had documented any buildings at Serabit el-Khadim. But the Petries had a hunch.

Turns out, they were right…

Google closes secret $20B deal with Apple to become iPhone’s default search engine…

We keep hearing melting ice is causing sea levels to rise. But this isn't a post about that. Because researchers from Arizona State University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory just discovered something much worse…

By David Sussin

We keep hearing melting ice is causing sea levels to rise. Don't worry -- this isn't another post convincing you it's happening.

But the idea makes sense: if ice melts, the water's got to go somewhere.

The scary thing about global ice melting is just how much water that would create.

There is a lot of ice on the planet -- around 6 million cubic miles. Each cubic mile of ice contains a trillion gallons of water.

It's almost impossible to comprehend that much water. If it all melts, the Earth would drown in 7 quintillion gallons of water. Not every day you get to use the number "quintillion".

It's enough water to cover the continental United States -- 2,000 feet deep.

But this isn't a post about that. Because researchers from Arizona State University and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory just discovered something much worse…

Apple committed $600B to America. Here’s who could benefit most

Apple made headlines with a $600 billion commitment to American manufacturing – the largest in US history.

That means billions for new jobs, new factories, new labs, and new opportunities in the smartphone industry.^*

Isaac Asimov suggested three rules to program into robots to safeguard humanity, in case they decided to get rid of us. It might be time to make sure any AI model has that rule built in somehow. Before any more lines are crossed…

By David Sussin

Almost overnight, AI has gone from a chatbot that could give advice for your sore throat to the most important tool in modern medicine.

Human doctors remain the decision makers in your medical treatment, but AI has an astoundingly large role.

Drug companies use AI-designed molecules to accelerate vaccine development. AI algorithms are embedded into pacemakers and insulin pumps. Brain implants use AI to decode neural signals.

AI is a trusted second pair of eyes for radiologists and pathologists reviewing medical images, helping to diagnose tumors and spot issues humans miss. AI chatbots triage patient symptoms, and suggest possible diagnoses.

The list is long and mind blowing. It wasn't so long ago AI didn't exist. Now its helping to edit genes.

But there are lines we haven't crossed. Yes, AI helps analyze data and design treatments. But an AI-designed component has never had the ability to be injected into a human and attack live cells -- even deciding to kill them.

Until now…

The Freedom Dividend Might Cost You Big

They’re calling it ‘the Freedom Dividend.’

Free checks, no strings – paid out to people just doing what they already do on their phones: play games, use apps, and listen to music.

Tech titans like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are all pushing for Universal Basic Income because they know jobs are disappearing due to AI.

People are buying dirty diplomas knowingly, and using them to beef up a resume to scam an employer into hiring them. In a February 2023 article in The Watchdog it was reported ‘About 500,000 Americans currently hold fake degrees.’

By Egon E. Mosum

In the classic song, ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon,’ one of the most telling lines is ‘It’s a Barnum and Bailey World, Just as Phony as it Can be.’

That likely does not come as any great surprise to the reader, and sometimes phony isn’t a cause for concern, sometimes it is merely laughable.

However, there are times when phony can be downright dangerous.

We would like our speedometers and fuel gauges to be accurate. We would like the ingredients labels on our food to be complete. Our journey, our health may depend on it.

In the world of academic degrees, especially the important ones like J.D. and M.D. we are depending upon the (hopeful) fact that these are genuine, and not just fancy engraving on a worthless piece of paper.

Our lives, our freedom may depend on it.

For those who are religious, we would hope that the credentials of our chosen theologians were meaningful, as our ‘souls’ may depend upon it.

But, credentials aren’t always credible, and aren’t always deserving of credit, and for those seeking the imprimatur of an advanced degree without putting in the work, there are diploma mills.

Those scam educational institutions where a sheepskin may be had for a requisite number of shekels, are definitely participants and citizens of that ‘Barnum and Bailey World.’

Let’s take a look under the rock, and see what creatures wearing caps and gowns are crawling around…

Today’s Fastest Growing Company Might Surprise You

Astronauts out in space must perform a variety of technological functions as well as navigational endeavors.  They need to be in their right minds, but sometimes the bon voyage isn’t all that bon…

By Egon E. Mosum

Those brave astronauts in the various space programs undergo significant physical and psychological testing and conditioning; they must.

Once they get out into the wild black yonder of space, they face extraordinary danger, extended time packed in a small craft with others, weightlessness, radiation, and other stressors.

They have been chosen for their resilience, their strength and endurance as it relates to space travel, but sometimes even the best machines break down.

While the delusional who believe in the law of attraction think that the universe is in tune with us, is our friend, those who engage in space travel know the reality — the universe has a whole menu of choices in how it can kill, sicken, or drive a man mad who dares to venture into it.

In space, no one can hear you scream we are told in the movie Alien.

That however does not negate the possibility that you will be screaming.

Astronauts out in space must perform a variety of technological functions as well as navigational endeavors.  They need to be in their right minds, but sometimes the bon voyage isn’t all that bon.

Space travelers can develop problems, ‘specifically, symptoms of emotional dysregulation, cognitive dysfunction, disruption of sleep-wake rhythms, visual phenomena and significant changes in body weight, along with morphological brain changes, are some of the most frequently reported occurrences during space missions.’

Some of those changes referenced above can cause illusions and hallucinations, which are definitely risk factors to the successful completion of a mission.[1]

There is perhaps no greater opportunity to feel alone, in the larger sense at least, than to be in outer space, away from your planet, your country, your home and your family.  It can be, especially on an extended trip, a significant stressor.

One of today’s fastest-growing software companies might surprise you

🚨Heads up! It's not the publicly traded tech giant you might expect…

The reader will kindly note, that this article in no way is a criticism of faith nor the faithful, but only a warning that not everyone who counsels against sin follows the manual.

By Egon E. Mosum

In the New Testament, at Matthew 6:20, it is written ‘But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.’

In Matthew 7:15 we are advised, ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’

Sometimes religious leaders act as if they didn’t get the memo. 

Sometimes they aren’t looking for heavenly treasures, but the kind that are supposed to be rendered unto Caesar. Sometimes those pulpit pundits are wearing bespoke sheep’s clothing, paid for by sheep they have shorn.

In other words, not every person in a dog collar is as loyal as a dog to their flock of believing souls.

Sometimes they act more like the kinds of animals into which their King of Kings sent the demons he exorcised in Gadara.

Or, to be less fancy, there are priests who pilfer, reverends who rip off the offerings…

Mark Cuban’s Biggest Regret?

Some: Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, actually served in uniform, but some of those might have slightly inaccurate memories about the nature of their service…

By Egon E. Mosum

Our politicians all serve in uniform.

Not military uniforms, but the blue suit, usually red or blue tie, white shirt and lapel flag pin type of uniform; the colors that often replicate those on our flag in the United States.

Our politicians are all, of course, patriots; real Americans, ready to sacrifice the lives of others in the service of the multi-national corporations that control our country.

That might seem rather cynical, but what is cynical is not necessarily inaccurate.

But of course, all of our politicians, (including those who didn’t dodge the draft when it existed, or forgot to enter military service as part of their curriculum vitae), are gung-ho when it comes to supporting the military.

Some of them, Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, actually served in uniform, but some of those might have slightly inaccurate memories about the nature of their service.

That, after reading this article, might be regarded as somewhat of an understatement and certainly not inaccurate…

This stock jumped 2,900%. Most investors missed it.

While Wall Street was distracted, one startup quietly built a platform with 50M+ users and landed the #1 spot on Deloitte’s list of the Fastest-Growing Software Companies.

That company is Mode Mobile – and their stock is already up 2,900% for early investors.^*

By completely rethinking the $500B smartphone industry, their users have earned and saved over $325M from simply using their phones. It’s a model that’s generated $75M in revenue, and powered a jaw-dropping 32,481% growth in just 3 years.

Mode has retail deals with Walmart and Best Buy, a reserved Nasdaq ticker ($MODE), and is still offering pre-IPO shares to the public… for now.

But the last two rounds sold out fast, and space in this one is limited.

⚠️ Secure your shares now – before the potential public debut.

The highest priced cigars in that market are Cubans, and the counterfeiters are perfectly willing to appear to satisfy the aficionados with bogus stogies, and they are getting better at it…

By Egon E. Mosum

Rudyard Kipling said, ‘a good cigar’s a smoke.’

Can’t argue with that, and you also can’t argue with the current reality that a good cigar costs a small fortune.

In any luxury market, there is a lot of money to be made, whether it is wine, jewelry, gourmet food, or cigars. 

In that market, there is also a lot of money to be made by skillfully providing the ersatz item, the bogus Bordeaux, the spurious sapphire, and the counterfeit Cuban cigar.

While not quite up there in the numbers generated by illicit narcotics, the phony cigar market is a multi-million-dollar industry.

Anybody who smokes handmade cigars knows they cost a bunch more than a buck a stick. ‘The United States imported 430 million premium, handmade cigars in 2024.’[1]

Even if we made the incorrect assumption that each one of those cigars cost only a dollar, that would be four hundred and thirty million dollars in the 2024 United States market alone. 

Of course, hand-made imported cigars cost more than a dollar a piece, more likely ten times that, depending on the brand and whether or not the particular state selling them has a pile of taxes added to the product.

Depending on the country of origin, hand-made imported cigars can run from about eleven dollars each to over one hundred and fifty dollars each (2024 prices-pre tariff), so even if we used the low figure, we’d be talking about a four point seven plus billion-dollar market — in the United States alone.[2]

Of course, the highest priced cigars in that market are Cubans, and the counterfeiters are perfectly willing to appear to satisfy the aficionados with bogus stogies, and they are getting better at it…

The real big data play – Palantir’s 1,597% vs 32,481% company no one’s talking about

Anyone who invested in Palantir at IPO in 2020 could be sitting on nearly 1,600% gains right now.

But that great return is already in the past, and the stock is now one of the S&P 500’s most expensive.

But while Palantir was climbing on the back of your public information, another company was redefining big data.^*

Mode Mobile has already delivered 32,481% revenue growth before even going public.

Mode has:

• 50M+ users

• $325M+ paid to users

• $75M in real revenue

• Nasdaq ticker secured for potential IPO

• Pre-IPO shares available for a limited time

There are versions of the flu we prepare for every season, but the Spanish Flu is a relic of history. Until now…

By David Sussin

The COVID experience was a painful reminder pandemics can actually happen.

Live in a modern, healthy society long enough, it can seem like we're immune, like pandemics are historical artifacts. We live in the future. We don't have flying cars yet, but at least we've conquered pandemics.

Then the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread, bringing COVID-19. By March, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) made it official: that ancient relic called a pandemic was here again. And it was bad.

Current WHO estimates have the global death toll from COVID-19 at over 7 million people.

It's not clear what the world learned from the experience. But if we learned anything, it was that the danger of pandemics is still out there…

Apple’s $600B bet may power this breakout

Apple made headlines with a $600 billion commitment to American manufacturing – the largest in US history.

That means billions for new jobs, new factories, new labs, and new opportunities in the smartphone industry.^*

Researchers from the US Geological Survey and the University of Columbia revealed a shocking fact: there are a significant number of earthquakes we never knew about at all. Until now…

By David Sussin

If an Earthquake happens and we never know it, should we care?

The question assumes an earthquake could happen that wasn't reported. And the one comforting thing about earthquakes is, after they happen, they are given a number.

We're immediately told how bad they were on the Richter scale. The Loma Prieta quake that interrupted the World Series in 1989 was a 6.9.

The infamous San Francisco Quake of 1906 was a 7.9. Technically, there's no limit to how high the number goes. The highest ever recorded was a 9.5, which flattened cities in Chile in 1960.

The seismic shock of that jolt was so big, tectonic plates were plunged deep into the mantle of the planet causing a 2.5 centimeter shift in the Earth's axis -- yes, the earthquake was so big, it altered the Earth's rotation. If anything qualifies as "the big one", that was it.

Most earthquakes are in the 2-3 point range on the scale. We get no warning they are coming. But we always get a full report after the fact. We get the number.

Except a study published last month (July 2025) reveals this is not true at all. Researchers from the US Geological Survey and the University of Columbia revealed a shocking fact: there are a significant number of earthquakes we never knew about at all. Until now…

Did Apple just start the next mobile boom?

Apple is working to make using your phone easier than ever with a new Siri that can control apps for you with a single voice command.

Every time Apple upgrades how we interact with our devices, mobile engagement skyrockets.

And companies monetizing that attention see their numbers explode.

Mode Mobile is one of those companies, but they’ve taken it further.^*

Instead of Big Tech mining your attention for free, Mode pays you for it.

The result?

●     32,481% revenue growth.
●     50M+ users.
●     $75M+ revenue.
●     2 sold out raises

Stuff in space can't fly around in circles on its own. It's Newton's first law: objects move in a straight line unless something with enough gravitational force pulls it into a curved path. That's what was odd about the discovery of Sedna…

By David Sussin

If an object in space travels in an orbit, it's got to be orbiting something.

Stuff in space can't fly around in circles on its own.

It's Newton's first law: objects move in a straight line unless something with enough gravitational force pulls it into a curved path.

That's what was odd about the discovery of Sedna.

Astronomers found the object in 2003, when they were searching for distant objects beyond Pluto. There was this very distant, slow moving object, roughly 8 billion miles away -- three times farther than Pluto.

It was so far away, they didn't believe what they were seeing. It looked like a glitch. It sure wasn't on any map. But over the course of several nights, they confirmed it was there.

And the odd thing? It wasn't moving in a straight line. Something had caused it to settle into a curved path. It had been orbiting in deep space since the beginnings of our solar system. But orbiting what, exactly…?

Apple’s next move could reshape how we use phones

Apple’s in the headlines again.

Bloomberg says the company is testing a next-gen Siri that won’t just answer questions, it’ll run your apps for you.

Book an Uber. Post on social media. Send a file. All with one voice command.

But while everyone’s focused on Apple’s stock price, the biggest percentage gains can happen in smaller, under-the-radar companies riding the same wave of mobile engagement.

That’s where Mode Mobile comes in.*

Mode’s platform rewards people for the screen time Big Tech already takes, and it’s already grown 32,481% in revenue (America’s #1 fastest growing software company per Deloitte).

Plus, the company has:

●     50M+ users
●     $325M+ paid to users
●     $75M in real revenue
●     Nasdaq ticker secured for potential IPO

Researchers found subtle electromagnetic signals -- faint magnetic fields -- that had never before been detected. The discovery redefines what we thought we knew about these everyday materials.

By David Sussin

We find hidden surveillance electronics in products from China all the time. Server motherboards, keyboard switches, smartphones -- there are a surprising number of examples.

It's concerning, but we get it. Nations watch each other.

But in a study published last month (July 2025) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, scientists announced a disturbing discovery: there are hidden magnetic signals coming from common materials we thought we completely understood.

Ordinary metals like copper, gold, and aluminum were thought to be non-magnetic. This isn't a recent theory. It's not like we just found copper.

These metals have been known to us since the dawn of human civilization. We discovered copper in the Stone Age. Aluminum was found in ores more recently, but still, it's been around for 200 years. We shouldn't be finding anything surprising in them.

Yet that's exactly what happened in the study…

Miss Palantir at $10? Don’t miss this at $0.30.

When Palantir went public at $10 per share, not many people imagined it would climb 2,500% in just a few years.

And while that ship has sailed, the next one might be in front of our eyes.

Meet Mode Mobile, a company turning everyday phone use into real rewards for 50 million+ users in 170 countries.^*

Instead of Big Tech taking your attention for free, Mode pays people for it for using apps, games, and other everyday activities they’re already doing.

That model has led to:

According to the Big Bang theory, the creation of the universe resulted in equal amounts of matter and antimatter. We shouldn't be here. Humans should never have existed. Yet here we are…

By David Sussin

We shouldn't be here.

Humans should never have existed.

According to the Big Bang theory, the creation of the universe resulted in equal amounts of matter and antimatter.

Actually, the idea goes beyond the Big Bang theory.

The fact that matter and antimatter are created in equal amounts is part of our Standard Model of particle physics. It's how the Universe works.

A particle with a certain charge is always balanced by an antiparticle with the opposite charge. If an electron is created, a positron (the antimatter version) is also created.

It's not just a "model". Scientists have confirmed it many times in real world experiments. It always comes out the same. Where there is matter, there is antimatter.

The problem is, when matter meets antimatter, they cancel each other out. Or, more accurately, they annihilate each other. There is a massive explosion of light.

Nothing survives.

You’re feeding AI for free. Why?

The hidden fuel behind AI? Your phone.

When a large language model (LLM) like Chat GPT responds to your question with mind-boggling speed and detail, we know it isn't a conscious being giving us its personal thoughts.

By David Sussin

AI is everywhere. We are including it in every possible corner of society as fast as we can. But we don't fully understand what it's doing.

Of course, we have some idea.

When a large language model (LLM) like Chat GPT responds to your question with mind-boggling speed and detail, we know it isn't a conscious being giving us its personal thoughts.

It's assembling words like puzzle pieces, based on whatever text it's trained on. It doesn't actually know anything, not the way humans do. For example, you know a pillow is soft. LLMs know the word soft is often used with the word pillow. There's a big difference.

LLM's seem like they know something. They have no actual knowledge. Although, that may be changing…

Apple’s Starlink Update Sparks Huge Earning Opportunity

Zwicky calculated how fast the galaxies were moving through space. The answer? 1,200 miles a second, or 4 million miles an hour. His answer was correct, but it was also impossible…

By David Sussin

Astronomers are not too clear on the biggest question in the universe: "what the heck is all this?"

We know some of the Universe is made up of matter. This includes everything we can detect as existing in the world -- humans, other animals, the Earth, amoebas, microbes, the billions of stars and galaxies in space. Everything.

But here's the shocker: "everything" doesn't cover everything in the Universe. Not even close.

The first one to notice it was Fritz Zwicky. It was 1933. The Swiss astronomer was studying the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which are 320 million light years from Earth. Or 1.9 sextillion miles. (That's a ten with twenty-one zeros after it -- very far away.)

Zwicky calculated how fast the galaxies were moving through space. The answer? 1,200 miles a second, or 4 million miles an hour. His answer was correct, but it was also impossible.

The cluster of galaxies was holding together as they moved through space, but they shouldn't be. At those extreme speeds, they should have flown apart. If the only thing holding them together was gravity from the galaxies themselves, they would not have held together at all.

There must be something else…

This tech company grew 32,481%...

Tech titans like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are calling for Universal Basic Income as AI threatens to eliminate millions of jobs.

But there’s a critical question few are asking: Who will pay for it?

Breaking news:

Apple just enabled Starlink satellite support to T-Mobile iPhones.

One of the biggest potential winners from global satellite coverage?