…One of the most widely recognized side effects of vaccination is neurological damage (particularly to the cranial nerves and brain), and prior to the censorship which took over our medical journals, as I showed in this article, reports of vaccine brain and nerve injuries (e.g., encephalitis) were extensively reported throughout the medical literature—including many identical to what are seen in modern day autism.
In turn, what many do not know, is that it used to be widely recognized that vaccines could make you “mentally retarded” or “severely retarded.”
Texas officials have faulted Camp Mystic’s top medical officer for abandoning campers in the hours before 25 young girls and two camp counselors were killed in a devastating flood.
The Texas Board of Nursing announced the finding on Tuesday in an order temporarily suspending Mary Liz Eastland’s nursing license.
…the nursing board ruled that Mary Liz, who also served as the camp’s medical officer, ‘abandoned’ the campers and staff when the camp site began to flood … by evacuating herself and her children to higher ground without providing any assistance or direction to all of the other campers and staff.’
The order also faults Mary Liz for failing to develop and maintain adequate emergency plans and training protocols before the deadly July 4 floods, and failing to keep adequate shelter and evacuation protocols.
This is a complex case and there is more to it than just the flooding, but ‘abandoning’ campers to the flooding is the main reason her license has been suspended, and that we are hearing about this tragedy at all. That said, this case is analogous to the FDA and CDC combined abandonment of the American public to the unsafe and ineffective covid vaxxes, which have brought great harm to millions. I am sure many doctors and health officials did not take the vaxxes themselves, while abandoning their patients and the public, even openly coercing others to take the vaxxes. ABN
A new paper published last week in the Journal of Theoretical Biology mapped out what actually happens in your stomach when you eat processed meat, and offers something practical you can do about it.
Cured meats contain sodium nitrite, added as a preservative and to fix the pink color. In your stomach, that nitrite meets stomach acid and turns into a reactive form. That reactive form attacks proteins from the meal and produces a class of compounds called nitrosamines. NDMA, NDEA, and NMBA are the most studied. They are the same compounds that triggered the FDA recalls of valsartan, ranitidine, and metformin in recent years. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies them as probable human carcinogens, and they are a leading hypothesis for why processed meat consumption tracks with elevated risk of stomach and colorectal cancer in large epidemiologic studies.
Vitamin C disarms this reaction. It converts the reactive nitrite compound back into nitric oxide, which is harmless and diffuses away. This chemistry has been known since the 1970s, which is why the meat industry already adds ascorbic acid during processing. The question is whether you can do anything on your end, after the meat is already in your gut. That is what the new model addressed.
McNicol, Basu, and Layton at the University of Waterloo built a mathematical model that tracks how nitrite, vitamin C, and the resulting chemistry move through saliva, stomach, and intestine over the hours after a meal. They ran simulations across realistic dietary patterns and found two things.
First, when vitamin C is naturally present in the meal, as it is in leafy greens and most fruits and vegetables, the protective effect is substantial. The vitamin C is right there when the chemistry happens. This is likely why dietary nitrate from vegetables does not track with cancer risk the way nitrite from processed meats does.
Second, for meals where vitamin C is not naturally present, like a bacon sandwich or a charcuterie board, taking vitamin C after the meal produced a moderate predicted reduction in nitrosamine formation. Not transformative. Measurable.
A few important things to know. This is a modeling study, not a clinical trial. The model is calibrated against decades of published chemistry, but no trial has yet measured nitrosamine biomarkers in people randomized to take vitamin C after meals versus placebo. Treat the predicted effect as a reasonable hypothesis backed by mechanism, not as proven outcome.
Practical version. If you regularly eat vegetables with your meals, the vitamin C is already there and you are doing most of the work. If you eat cured meats without vegetables in the same sitting, taking 200 to 500 mg of vitamin C with water 30 to 60 minutes after the meal has a defensible mechanistic basis and a modest predicted effect. The dose matters less than the timing. Above about 200 mg in a single oral dose, absorption efficiency drops sharply, so megadoses are not the answer.
The bigger idea is that a meal is a chemical environment you can shape. The same food can be a problem or a non-event depending on what else is in the gut at the same time, and when.
McNicol et al., J Theor Biol, 2026 Tannenbaum & Wishnok, Am J Clin Nutr, 1991 Hord, Tang & Bryan, Am J Clin Nutr, 2009
I highly recommend these two videos. They provide an excellent explanation of Buddhist philosophy or world view without ever mentioning Buddhism.
The ‘small self’ of Buddhism is Kastrup’s ‘dissociated entity inside a Markov Blanket’. Kastrup’s ‘mind at large’ is Buddhist ‘ultimate reality’, ‘the Tathagata’, the ‘Buddha mind’, ‘enlightenment’, etc. The ‘doings’ of the entity inside the Markov blanket are karma. In this sense, those doings, or that karma (work), perpetuate a series of ‘rebirths’ rather than reincarnations. The Noble Eightfold Path is a concise way of describing the behaviors that lead to full realization of ‘mind at large’ or enlightenment.
Two of the (falsely understood) most ‘negative’ things in Buddhism are nicely cleared up in Kastrup’s description. The first is the mistaken notion that ‘nirvana’ or the ‘cessation of suffering’ is the cessation of being itself. Nirvana is ‘merely’ the return of the small self to ‘mind at large’, or the enlightenment of the small self to Buddha nature or ultimate reality. The second is karma is some kind of punishment administered by some kind of god thing. Karma is much more what Kastrup calls ‘doings’ and is simply a way to describe how what we do affects what we become.
I want to add that Nathan Hawkins does a wonderful job of interviewing Kastrup. He contributes a great deal to this conversation, which overall is not only a good description of Buddhism (without ever mentioning Buddhism) but also an excellent example of how people should talk. At one point, Hawkins says he wants to create a something like a ‘proto-religion’ that does not rely on ‘sacred texts’. He also says he wants philosophy to be more in touch with people’s lives as they are really lived. I like that a lot. It’s basically what basic Buddhism already is.
The Buddha said he was just a man; that he should not be worshiped; that his words are not sacred; that his teachings should be conveyed mind-to-mind (as in the videos above) and not turned into scared texts; and that each of us should make the teachings our own; learn them in our own languages and convey them to others generously when and if they want to hear them. I bet the Buddha would thoroughly enjoy and approve of the discussion above.
In a deeply Buddhist sense, there is no need for a Buddhist tradition. The whole thing could be thrown away and recreated. But why bother? Buddhism today is not a clinging to some sacred past or god-like figure, but a present iteration of a long tradition (which is largely philosophical) that dates back 2,500 years to the Sage of the Scythians, Shakyamuni Buddha. Watch the videos above and see what you think. ABN
UPDATE: I do not want to detract at all from Kastrup’s vision, but would like to say that, imo, Mind at Large or Ultimate Reality is much more like Mahayana on steroids than the philosophically guarded position Kastrup holds. He himself says he is conservative and sticks to ordinary interpretations like time and space and probably the existence of other civilizations and realms. I appreciate that he does that and why. Another point worth mentioning is the Markov Blanket each of us is ensconced in is surely semi-permeable. In that sense, a great deal of religious practice, including especially the samadhi states in Buddhism, can be understood as ways to make the Markov Blanket more permeable, to invite Mind at Large into our little cocoons. Prayer and religious ritual do that as well as does calling on God or practicing the presence of God. Moral actions, no matter how they are understood, that make us receptive to powers much greater than us are fundamental to human being and our comprehension of who and where we are. If we can comprehend Mind at Large viewing our lives through our eyes and senses, we can also comprehend having a very rich relationship with Mind at Large. In Buddhist terms, that might be described as us being drawn to the Tathagata to the point of never wanting to turn back. ABN
I strongly believe a major cause of neuroticism, emotional agony, and mental illness is our minds are more complex than much of our thinking and most of our communication.
This causes us to be like prisoners trapped in small space when we are capable of much greater freedom.
A new study illustrates why this happens.
The study show how auditory hallucinations can be induced in people who are not otherwise prone to hearing them.
Pairing a stimulus in one modality (vision) with a stimulus in another (sound) can lead to task-induced hallucinations in healthy individuals. After many trials, people eventually report perceiving a nonexistent stimulus contingent on the presence of the previously paired stimulus. (Pavlovian conditioning–induced hallucinations result from overweighting of perceptual priors)
Since this effect can be induced fairly simply it shows that:
Note that these hallucinations “result from overweighing perceptual priors.”
A “perceptual prior” is, in these cases, a mistaken assumption about reality.
If our auditory and visual “realities” are susceptible to mistakes like these, how much more is our psychology?
Due to our generally very simple ways of interacting with other people, we are essentially forced to hallucinate who they are and at the same time who we are.
That is, our complex minds are essentially forced to see ourselves and others in simple, hallucinatory terms that cannot possibly be true.
I believe this is the cause of great mental and emotional distress for all people everywhere.
I also believe that this problem can be largely overcome by practicing FIML
FIML allows us to remove our psychological hallucinations about our FIML partner as they remove theirs about us.
FIML works because it allows partners to escape the simplicities and many hallucinatory traps of ordinary communication.
As far as I know, there is no other method for doing this. FIML is practical psychotherapy that will optimize your mind and psychology by providing the data you need to overcome hallucinating most of your life.
In this respect, FIML is a preeminent Buddhist mindfulness practice done by two (or more) people working together.
I hope the day comes when Buddhist Sanghas will practice FIML among themselves and teach it to lay followers when they have mastered the technique.
FIML is deeply human and not something AI will be able to do. It is very well-suited to this Human Realm because it shows us how delusions are formed, where they lie within us and how to extinguish them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clashed with Donald Trump in a furious phone call that left the Israeli leader with his ‘hair on fire’, a source has revealed.
On Tuesday evening, the two leaders held a difficult and lengthy phone call where they disagreed on the way forward in the Iran war.
Netanyahu increasingly doubts further negotiations with Tehran will yield a peace deal and wants to resume military strikes, according to Israel’s Channel 12.
Trump, meanwhile, wants to push harder for an agreement in which Iran abandons its nuclear weapons programme before any return to war.
Trump claimed that Netanyahu ‘will do whatever I want him to do’ on Iran, though adding that they had a good relationship
Looks like a planted story to show Trump controls Netanyahu and not the other way around. Interesting they choose to do this. Or it could be a true story. Whatever the state of the war or the world, it’s impossible to say what is really going on. ABN
American Buddhist Net 