"Terry Long, football gave me CTE and it caused me to drink a gallon of antifreeze.... Please study brain for CTE. I’m sorry. The league knowingly concealed the dangers to our brains to maximize profits. They failed us.”

Wrote Shane Tamura, quoted in "NYC mass shooter Shane Tamura found with note blaming NFL for giving him CTE — even though he never played pro football" (NY Post).

Terry Long, was a "former Pittsburgh Steelers player who was diagnosed with CTE after downing antifreeze to kill himself 20 years ago."

Tamura apparently intended "to shoot up the NFL HQ — but 'mistakenly went up the wrong elevator banks' and ended up on a higher floor."

Was Tamura influenced by Luigi Mangione?

By the way, "CNN’s Erin Burnett is being skewered for reporting that the gunman who opened fire in a Midtown skyscraper — killing an NYPD cop and three others — was 'possibly white' after viewing the initial security footage released immediately after Shane Tamura’s deadly rampage" (NY Post).

"'I thought it was a great photo opportunity.' But the shutter-worthy sight quickly turned tragic when one of the bison stepped into a small part of the basin..."

"... then tried hopping out. Within a matter of seconds, the beast began teetering at the edge of the Grand Prismatic Spring — the largest hot spring in the entire park — and then fell in."

From "Bison boils to death in Yellowstone hot spring in front of tourists" (NY Post).

Also in the NY. Post: "A 14-year-old California boy walked off a 120-foot cliff in front of his horrified father — telling him he saw 'snowmen and Kermit the frog' while hallucinating from altitude sickness."

"So, but [Jolly] West himself said, oh, I never experimented on a human being, just the elephant. He would even make jokes about the elephant..."

".... because it was the one thing people knew. And he would say, oh yeah, it, it would sort of, it was his calling card and he used it as kind of a jokey thing. But he always denied any connection to this CIA.... You know, even in the Church Committee, you could see the connection because they revealed that the University of Oklahoma had been receiving CIA money. And West had a special office for him built there. He was hired there mysteriously when they wanted to move at what he wanted to build what he called this free zone of experiment, where he could give LSD, hypnosis, and sleep deprivation in combined doses, you know, in whatever increments he wanted to adjust. He was gonna build that out at the Air Force base. And he was all set to go. And I even had receipts and papers and a lot of correspondence in his files about this...."

Great episode. Full transcript here. 

You can buy Rebecca Lemov's book "The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion" at Amazon (commission earned). The audiobook is free at Spotify Premium.

"If you’re looking for a theory to explain how our brains give rise to subjective, inner experiences, you can check out Adaptive Resonance Theory. Or..."

"... consider Dynamic Core Theory. Don’t forget First Order Representational Theory, not to mention semantic pointer competition theory. The list goes on: A 2021 survey identified 29 different theories of consciousness...."

From "Two Theories of Consciousness Faced Off. The Ref Took a Beating/What makes humans conscious? Scientists disagree, strongly, as one group of peacemakers discovered the hard way" (NYT).

"To get answers, one neuroscientist, Harvey J. Grill of the University of Pennsylvania, turned to rats and asked what would happen if he removed all of their brains except their brainstems."

I'm reading "What Nearly Brainless Rodents Know About Weight Loss and Hunger/Studies in neuroscience with applications to humans offer clues about what makes us start eating, and when we stop" (NYT).

Do we really have free will when it comes to eating? It’s a vexing question that is at the heart of why so many people find it so difficult to stick to a diet.... The brainstem controls basic functions like heart rate and breathing. But the animals could not smell, could not see, could not remember. Would they know when they had consumed enough calories? To find out, Dr. Grill dripped liquid food into their mouths. "When they reached a stopping point, they allowed the food to drain out of their mouths," he said...."

The NYT is carrying on the old tradition of promoting alcohol as good for your brain.

 I was surprised to see this in the NYT: "17 Ways to Cut Your Risk of Stroke, Dementia and Depression All at Once/A new study identified overlapping factors that affect your odds of developing these brain diseases late in life":

The factors that protect against brain disease

The study, which looked at data from 59 meta-analyses, identified six factors that lower your risk of brain diseases:

Low to moderate alcohol intake (Consuming one to three drinks a day had a smaller benefit than consuming less than one drink a day.)...

So the best thing for your brain is consuming a low amount of alcohol. Second best is a moderate amount of alcohol (1 to 3 drinks a day). And third best might be no alcohol or a high amount of alcohol. We're not told.

I thought the idea that alcohol is good for your brain had been debunked, but here we have a study that "looked at data from 59 meta-analyses." Isn't that the kind of study that in the past has purported to show that alcohol is good for you and that had been debunked?

The article begins: "New research has identified 17 overlapping factors that affect your risk of stroke, dementia and late-life depression, suggesting that a number of lifestyle changes could simultaneously lower the risk of all three." I'm extremely skeptical about a study like that. 17 overlapping factors? 

"After becoming pregnant with their son, St. Clair and Musk’s relationship progressed.... In November, Musk responded to a selfie she texted him saying: 'I want to knock you up again.'"

"While she was pregnant, Musk had urged her to deliver the baby via caesarean section and told her he didn’t want the child to be circumcised. (Musk has posted on X that vaginal births limit brain size and that C-sections allow for larger brains.) St. Clair is Jewish and circumcisions are an important ritual in the religion, and she decided against a C-section. He told her she should have 10 babies, and they debated the child’s middle name.... She complied with the request to not name Musk on the birth certificate. Not long after the birth, [Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared] Birchall pushed St. Clair to sign documents keeping the father of the baby and details regarding her relationship with Musk secret in return for financial support. The offer was a one-time fee of $15 million for a home and living expenses, plus an additional $100,000 a month until the baby turned 21. Musk told her by text it was dangerous to reveal his relationship to the baby, describing himself as the '#2 after Trump for assassination.' He added that 'only the paranoid survive.' But she didn’t sign...."

From "The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers/The world’s richest man juggles more than a dozen children and ‘harem drama’ along with running his companies and advising Trump. He recently took a paternity test in a battle with one woman over money and privacy" (Wall Street Journal).

The life of a one-man genius sperm bank is not easy.

"The failure to find a clear biomarker doesn’t mean that there is no biological basis for A.D.H.D.; most scientists I spoke to..."

"... agreed that the condition is produced by some combination of biological and environmental forces, though there is little consensus about the relative importance of each. But it does have certain implications for the field, including for the question of medication. If we’re no longer confident that A.D.H.D. has a purely biological basis, does it make sense that our go-to treatment is still rooted in biology?... Adderall, now the leading treatment for the disorder, is a type of amphetamine.... A significant part of the A.D.H.D. establishment does, in fact, promote the message that children and adolescents who resist medication don’t know what’s good for them...."

I'm reading "Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? With diagnoses at a record high, some experts have begun to question our assumptions about the condition — and how to treat it" (NYT)(free-access link).

"I've always have loved good tunes. And my dad played them on his piano... My cousin Betty introduced me to 'My Funny Valentine.'"

"I loved sort of classic pieces that I would hear. I would love ‘Cheek to Cheek,' Fred Astaire, all these things. I just thought, these are classics.... Heaven, I'm in heaven.... So, I had a lot of information in my head of those tunes.... People have said to me, do you believe in magic? And I say, I have to 'cause of that song.... I think I'd loaded my computer so strongly with 'Cheek to Cheek,' 'Stardust,' 'When I Fall in Love,' with these beautiful songs, I'd heard all my childhood. I mean, I can still remember standing in the kitchen of Forthlin Road and hearing 'When I Fall in Love' by Nat King Cole as I was reaching for an HP bottle and thinking, my God, this is good.... So, you know, that's all I can think is that all of that data — to use modern terminology — had gone into my very sophisticated computer. The human brain, right? Had jumbled up, done all this sort of stuff. And somehow as the dream, it just, it tumbled out this song."

Said Paul McCartney, in the "Yesterday" episode of the "Life in Lyrics" podcast. 

I had to look up HP. My own "computer" is full of A1 and Heinz 57. HP is in the British mind. "HP Sauce is a British brown sauce... named after London's Houses of Parliament."

What sauce is splattered on your magical dreams?

"Singing Simon and Garfunkel’s 'America' to heal my brain 🧠 In 2017, I sustained a brain injury caused by never treated Lyme disease."

"My first symptom was a psychosis that would make me see horrific images nonstop 24 hours a day for 22 months.... About six or seven months into the psychosis I lost all control of the muscles in my body including the muscles in my face. I lost my ability to speak.... By then it was too late to treat the Lyme disease; it was all about strengthening my brain and getting my ability back. Two years ago, after progressing from wheelchair, to walker, to cane, back to my feet I was still struggling with my speech when I intuited that playing the ukulele could help by doing multiple things at the same time as a regular practice...."

Goodbye to commenter Michael K.

Other commenters mark his passing in the comments to Tuesday night's sunrise post and in this earlier post that day.

This morning I'm seeing Neo's blog post, "RIP commenter 'Mike K'": "RIP Mike K, and all the commenters here who may have died but all we know is that they disappeared never to return."

Yes, I've mourned the unexplained loss of Bissage for 15 years.

Bissage was a dearly beloved commenter on this blog who disappeared one day, when the uncooperative dear became uncooperative. I've tried to call him back: "Come back, Bissage. We're counting oranges again. Remember? 42. 42. 42..." To no avail.

I appreciate hearing the specific news that a commenter has died, like when Gahrie's brother's dropped into a comments thread: "Hello.... This is my brother gahries account, and it appears this post was close to the last thing he read/saw before he passed away Sunday morning sometime after 130am...."

I miss Gahrie and Bissage and Michael K and many others who died or drifted away and even some of those who left in a huff. They, unlike the dead, can drop back in. Why don't they? It's not for me to figure out. The blog, like life itself, can only move forward, and the day will come when we will all be left behind. So thanks to all — except the actual trolls — who walked along this way as far as they did.

"I would say it's a bony eared assfish"/"Honestly, I thought this was a joke until I saw more comments saying it."

A discussion at the animal ID subreddit — "I found this fish in my box of frozen shrimp."

Someone links to the article at Wikipedia, which contains the statement, "The bony-eared assfish may have the smallest brain-to-body weight ratio of any vertebrate."

And somebody says "The amount of shaming on its Wikipedia page is harsh. They start by implying it’s stupid and go on to refer to it as 'flabby.' Who did it hurt?"

"Thinning of the cortex is not necessarily bad; some scientists frame the process as the brain rewiring itself as it matures..."

"... increasing its efficiency. But the process is known to accelerate in stressful conditions, and accelerated thinning is correlated with depression and anxiety. Scans taken in 2021, after shutdowns started to lift, showed that both boys and girls had experienced rapid cortical thinning during that period. But the effect was far more notable in girls, whose thinning had accelerated, on average, by 4.2 years ahead of what was expected; the thinning in boys’ brains had accelerated 1.4 years ahead of what was expected.... The difference between the genders 'is just as clear as night and day,' Dr. Kuhl said. 'In the girls, the effects were all over the brain — all the lobes, both hemispheres.'"

From "Teen Girls’ Brains Aged Rapidly During Pandemic, Study Finds/Neuroimaging found girls experienced cortical thinning far faster than boys did during the first year of Covid lockdowns" (NYT).

"Simply having a neurodivergent son is not enough reason for [Tim Walz] to be praised..."

"... indeed, many parents of neurodivergent children have been harmful to their children and peddled harmful ideas, including the idea that vaccines cause autism. Rather, what makes the Walz family’s story so reassuring is that they seem to want to help Gus live a good life rather than change who he is. According to the Child Mind Institute, nonverbal learning disorder, or NVLD, affects nonverbal forms of learning like the ability to notice patterns or learn concepts, including visual and social patterns as well as concepts in language and math. Because of the similar traits, people with NVLD are often confused as being on the autism spectrum and vice versa. Most recently, comedian Chris Rock disclosed that he received a diagnosis after a friend initially thought he might be somewhere on the autism spectrum...."

From "What anxious parents of neurodivergent children can learn from Tim and Gwen Walz/The Walzes’ words and their embrace of their son may seem utterly unremarkable. But that’s the point" (MSNBC).

There's also this, from People Magazine: "Tim Walz and His Wife, Gwen, Open Up About Son's Non-Verbal Learning Disorder: 'His Secret Power'/Tim and Gwen tell PEOPLE that their 17-year-old son, Gus, is 'brilliant, hyper-aware of details that many of us pass by, and above all else, he’s an excellent son.'"

"Teams of neurologists at six research centers asked 241 unresponsive patients to spend several minutes at a time doing complex cognitive tasks..."

"... such as imagining themselves playing tennis. Twenty-five percent of them responded with the same patterns of brain activity seen in healthy people, suggesting that they were able to think and were at least somewhat aware. Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and an author of the study, said the study shows that up to 100,000 patients in the United States alone might have some level of consciousness despite their devastating injuries. The results should lead to more sophisticated exams of people with so-called disorders of consciousness, and to more research into how these patients might communicate with the outside world, he said: 'It’s not OK to know this and to do nothing.'"

From "Unresponsive Brain-Damaged Patients May Have Some Awareness/Many patients thought to be in vegetative or minimally conscious states may be capable of thought, researchers reported" (NYT).

Connect this to the previous post, about the newest brain implants. I wonder if it's because of the emerging technology that this research on unresponsive persons is happening. Are we just now learning things we could have learned before but those who control the research didn't want to know?

"Mr. Harrell’s team sank into his brain’s outer layer four electrode arrays that looked like tiny beds of nails."

"That was double the number that had recently been implanted in the speech areas of someone with A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in a separate study. Each array’s 64 spikes picked up electric impulses from neurons that fired when Mr. Harrell tried to move his mouth, lips, jaw and tongue to speak.Three weeks after surgery, scientists gathered in Mr. Harrell’s living room in Oakland, Calif., to 'plug him in,' connecting the implant to a bank of computers with cables attached to two metal posts protruding from Mr. Harrell’s skull."

From "A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It. In an experiment that surpassed expectations, implants in a patient’s brain were able to recognize words he tried to speak, and A.I. helped produce sounds that came close to matching his true voice" (NYT)(free access link).

"Fetterman’s health has improved more and faster than expected, and in what may not be a coincidence..."

"... the more his brain damage recedes, the less he agrees with lefty activists and the Democratic Party’s functionaries. Speaking at Yeshiva University’s commencement, Fetterman dramatically stripped off his Harvard hood and announced he was 'profoundly disappointed' at his alma mater’s refusal to address the antisemitism rampant on its campus, a discontent he extended to the entire antisemitism-enabling Ivy League. Quoth Fetterman: 'As an alum of Harvard — look, I graduated 25 years ago, and of course, it was always a little pinko. But now, I don’t recognize it....' When pro-Palestinian protesters showed up at the senator’s house (no dogpiling in his defense from lefty activists over this) and told him he had 'nowhere to hide,' Fetterman defiantly got on his roof with an Israeli flag....."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, in "Mea culpa, Fetterman: I was wrong about the senator and his illness" (NY Post).

Small worm the size of a large worm.

RFK Jr. is my presumptive choice for President, so I'm keeping track of what the mainstream media has to say about him. They seem to be heightening the scrutiny, so let's take a look:

New York Times: "R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain/The presidential candidate has faced previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain."

In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor.... Several doctors noticed a dark spot on [his] brain scans.... The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in [his 2012 divorce] deposition.... In the interview with The Times, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and fogginess and had no aftereffects from the parasite, which he said had not required treatment.... Several infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons said... they believed it was likely a pork tapeworm larva.... Though it is impossible to know, [one doctor said] it is unlikely that a parasite would eat a part of the brain.... 

Washington Post: "RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test/A line-by-line dissection shows he’s often echoing Russian talking points" (by Glenn Kessler, the "fact checker")(free access link). Excerpt from a long piece:

A reader asked us to fact-check a four-minute “history lesson” posted by presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on YouTube. International events — and the causes of war — are often open to interpretation. But Kennedy’s lecture, about how the United States allegedly provoked the Ukraine war, was filled with so much misinformation and Russian talking points that it seems worthy of a detailed look....

“When the wall came down in the Soviet Union and Europe, [Soviet President Mikhail] Gorbachev destroyed himself politically by doing something that was very, very courageous. He went to [President George H.W.] Bush. He said, ‘I’m going to allow you to reunify Germany under a NATO army. I’m going to remove 450,000 Soviet troops. But I want your commitment. After that, you will not move NATO one inch to the east.’ And we solemnly swore that we wouldn’t do it.”

A once-avoided topic is suddenly everywhere: the problem of women's hormones.

Right now, on the front page of The Washington Post, there are 3 separate headlines:

1. "No need to fear menopause hormone drugs, finds major women’s health study/A landmark women’s health study scared women and doctors away from menopause hormone treatments. A 20-year follow-up found that fears were largely overblown."

“Women in early menopause with bothersome symptoms should not be afraid to take hormone therapy to treat them, and clinicians should not be afraid to prescribe them,” said JoAnn Manson, chief of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the paper’s first author.

2. "'Menopause brain' is real. Here’s how women’s brains change in midlife. Brain imaging studies of women — conducted before and after menopause — reveal physical changes in structure, connectivity and energy metabolism."

For decades, some doctors have told women that the brain fog, insomnia and mood swings they experience in midlife are “all in their heads.” Now, emerging brain research shows they’re right....

 3. "Senators, Halle Berry to unveil $275 million bill to boost menopause care"

Congressional leaders will unveil Thursday a $275 million bill to boost federal research, physician training and public awareness about menopause, a campaign led by prominent female lawmakers and boosted by the star power of actor Halle Berry.

"Actor Halle Berry" — that's how we're supposed to talk now. Wouldn't want to call attention to her womanhood. She's just endorsing and promoting supplementing and fine-tuning women's hormones.

Powered off.

I'm reading "Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies/Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural selection" (NYT).

According to Mr. Dennett, the human mind is no more than a brain operating as a series of algorithmic functions, akin to a computer. To believe otherwise is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific,” he told The Times.

For Mr. Dennett, random chance played a greater role in decision-making than did motives, passions, reasoning, character or values. Free will is a fantasy, but a necessary one to gain people’s acceptance of rules that govern society, he said.

Do you take offense at my post title?