Long-term practice of FIML generates deep change in the human psyche.
Social relations, habitual traits and attitudes, as well as ingrained emotional responses may all be subject to profound transformation.
The reason this happens is the basic FIML technique provides consistently good counter-evidence to habitual mental and emotional reactions. In addition, the technique itself teaches the practitioner’s mind–or shows it by example–to apply similar kinds of reasoning to many other situations that are not open to FIML dialog.
The basic FIML technique is a deceptively simple stop-and-query technique designed for use in conversations between close friends or partners. In our How to do FIML post, we have described the basic technique as clearly and simply as we could. This description should work as an effective model for beginning FIML practitioners, but it is a bit like describing in words how to hit a baseball or dive into a pond. The experience of actually doing FIML in a real-life, dynamic, emotionally-charged conversation will draw on a wide variety of skills and emotions from both partners. These aspects of FIML cannot be well-described in words because they will be different for different people and in different situations.
FIML does not tell anyone what to think or feel, but rather provides a method for clarifying thought and feeling as they occur in real life.
FIML practice allows partners to expand their senses of who they are and access these areas through speech. Correctly done, FIML will keep partners from becoming lost in side-issues or emotional traps. FIML gives partners access to a shared meta-perspective that will help them gradually rediscover or redesign how they think of themselves and each other, and how they react in many different kinds of situations.
FIML is like yoga in that it uses no props. Yoga uses the body to exercise the body. FIML uses two minds working together on the basis of shared rules. With practice, FIML partners will find that they are able to leverage or gain access to many areas of themselves that cannot be reached by other means. After several years of practice, partners will discover that they have gained levels of mental and emotional strength and freedom that had been barely imaginable before.
The basic FIML technique depends on partners clearly remembering everything that is/was in their mind(s) at the moment a phrase in question was spoken and/or heard. By honestly comparing the contents of their minds under these circumstances, partners will gain access to the rich realm of secondary and tertiary meanings that accompany all utterances. At the same time, they will free themselves from habitual mistaken interpretations whenever they arise.
Their minds, thus, will gradually gain freedom from error (mental and psychological) while broadening the range of subject matter they are capable of entertaining. And this will have a far-reaching influence on both behavior and perception in many other areas.
Once partners are skilled in the basic FIML technique, they will find that it need not always be done immediately upon noticing an emotional or judgmental reaction. After a few months of successful FIML practice, partners will probably find that they can bring up events from hours before and both will still have a reasonably accurate memory of what was said and heard.
It is important not to jump to this level too quickly, though, because if the basic technique has not been mastered, partners will lose sight of the meta-perspective, without which deep understanding and transformation will not be possible. Experienced partners will know when they have good data and can proceed with a FIML dialog and when they don’t. If you don’t have good data (both partners remember exactly what was said and what they were thinking), don’t do a FIML dialog. Just drop the subject. Though retain the general sense of something having happened because the subject will almost certainly come up again. When that happens, try to get good data you both agree on and then proceed with a FIML dialog.
Artificial intelligence voice agents with various capabilities can now guide interrogations worldwide, Pentagon officials told Defense News. This advance has influenced the design and testing of U.S. military AI agents intended for questioning personnel seeking access to classified material.
Now, seven years after writing about physical torture in “The Rise of A.I. Interrogation in the Dawn of Autonomous Robots and the Need for an Additional Protocol to the U.N. Convention Against Torture,” privacy attorney Amanda McAllister Novak sees an even greater need for bans and criminal repercussions.
Two National Guard soldiers were shot in the head just yards from the White House during a possible terror attack by a lone gunman identified as an Afghan national.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, has been named as the alleged gunman in custody over the horror shoot-out at Farragut West metro station in the center of Washington, DC, which has left two soldiers in a critical condition.
Law enforcement sources initially told NBC News the gunman has been identified as an Afghan national and the shooting is being investigated as a possible act of terror.
He allegedly came to the United States during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 under Joe Biden‘s Operation Allies Welcome, sources told The New York Post.
X and the Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Market: Fraud in the Inception
When a contract party pays for a service under the presumption of equal access, yet is never informed that a throttling mechanism will be used to meter or diminish that service at the direction of a third, non-governmental entity, the contract is compromised at the outset. This hidden mechanism becomes even more problematic when the third party makes throttling decisions based on a social-conformance profile it has assigned to the buyer.
Under such conditions, users are charged as if they are receiving full, equal participation in a public commodity, while in fact experiencing discriminatory contract fulfillment and selective product impairment triggered by their identity, viewpoints, or classification — criteria determined not by the platform’s stated terms of service, but by an unaccountable external actor.
If the provider degrades or withholds the paid-for service — visibility, advertising utility, algorithmic distribution, or fair access to market by other paying parties who have an interest in the contracted party — not for violations of the terms of service, but because of external preferences, then the behavior becomes analytically indistinguishable from:
– throttling one customer at the behest of another,
– selling an inferior product at a full-price rate, and
– administering a concealed, criteria-dependent class system within the market itself.
The ethically salient question is not whether a platform moderates — as moderation is an operational requirement. The issue is whether the platform:
– covertly delegates moderation power to outside parties,
– without disclosure,
– and without transparent, appealable standards.
This is where the covenant of good faith and fair dealing is breached, and where the transaction shifts from a simple service agreement into a form of inception-level fraud.
Great point, this is the kind of legal reasoning that may eventually protect free speech.
Social media companies may be able to dodge this legal problem by reducing user fees if users are throttled; and/or refunding user payments, with fines added, after the fact if the company is caught.
If that were included in terms of service, not throttling or being milder about throttling would be a big selling point.
X is already working that angle.
It’s bad that advertisers can influence public discourse as much as they do, especially as advertising itself is often a bribe or payoff for doctored information.
This is all fixable if handled well. Legal skills backed by open source AI monitoring. ABN
Drone manufacturer Quantum Systems and the Lithuanian electronics company ADV Defense have signed an agreement for future cooperation.
The agreement lays the foundation for industrial partnership in the Baltic region, focusing on the use of unmanned systems in Lithuania and along the eastern flank.
The memorandum of understanding was signed at the German-Baltic Defense Industry Conference in Vilnius.
The partnership aims to combine German and Lithuanian expertise with technological innovations to create mission-proven unmanned systems and strengthen the defense-industrial base of the region.
Lithuanian company ADV Defense. Photo credits: company website
The agreement supports Quantum Systems’ long-term strategy of establishing a strong industrial presence on NATO’s eastern flank. Currently, the company is building a large electronics manufacturing facility in Lithuania, which is set to double the production capacity of ADV Defense.
In the trial of Linda Sun, the former aide to New York governors who is accused of acting as a Chinese agent, the court has heard evidence that Sun forged the signature of Gov. Kathy Hochul, had close contact with Chinese consular staff, and purchased luxury items with payouts from China.
The former aide to Hochul and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was indicted in 2024 over allegedly using her position to push the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party in return for millions of dollars paid to her husband’s business. Sun has pleaded not guilty.
Sun is on trial in federal court in the Eastern District of New York in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, with former colleagues and coworkers taking the stand to testify.
After almost two weeks of a trial that is expected to run until mid-December, here are some key takeaways so far.
Delegation Invitation Letters Allegedly Forged
Federal prosecutors alleged that Sun put together an official invitation letter to help Chinese officials travel to New York state. Without approval, she allegedly signed then-Lt. Gov. Hochul’s signature on the letter, which was on official letterhead. According to the prosecution, officials from Henan Province, China, used that letter to apply for visas to travel to the United States.
Multiple National Guard soldiers have been shot near the White House, sparking a security lockdown at the president’s residence.
Early reports suggest the shooter is in custody after multiple people were shot down the street from the White House in the center of DC.
An image has emerged online showing a national guard troop laying injured on the pavement as blood pours from his head while Secret Service agents give him medical attention.
Two National Guard members are in critical condition after being gunned down while on duty near the White House.
An unidentified trooper in uniform was seen on a stretcher inside an ambulance receiving medical attention at the scene of shooting.
Colombian authorities just rescued17 underage girls and boys (some of them American children) from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish cult known as Lev Tahor, one of the most notorious and nomadic extremist sects operating today.
This latest operation comes after years of cross-border investigations into the group’s abuse of minors, its systematic control of families, and its ability to relocate from country to country in an effort to evade prosecution. According to Colombian police, early reports suggest the possibility of kidnapping, forced confinement, and human trafficking, all carried out under the protective guise of religious practice.
Lev Tahor, founded in the 1980s in the state of Israel, has long been described as the “Jewish Taliban”. Its roughly 300 members have migrated between Israel, Guatemala, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, the Balkans, and Colombia, usually fleeing investigations, court orders, or criminal charges. Each time, the group arrives in a new country presenting itself as a persecuted religious minority. Each time, the pattern repeats: children disappear from schools, medical care is denied, marriages are arranged for children, pregnancy is forced, adults are violently controlled, and children are malnourished, uneducated, and neglected.
In December 2024, authorities rescued 160 children from a farm occupied by Lev Tahor. These children reported rampant abuse, coercion, and sexual violence. The Colombian prosecutor overseeing the case said the raid was launched due to credible suspicions of:
forced pregnancy
mistreatment of minors
sexual abuse and rape
child disappearance and parental separation
transnational movement of children without documentation
This is the kind of behavior we see every single day from that cult. The same arrogant, entitled mindset that has created friction with every society they’ve tried to dominate. It’s naïve to pretend this mentality suddenly appeared in 2025. The pattern has been consistent for centuries: the same supremacist rhetoric, the same hostility toward outsiders, the same inability to coexist without trying to control the narrative.
What people like Levine say openly today is so grotesque and dehumanizing that it’s waking up more and more people to the reality of this ideology and the damage it causes. The more they double down on this misanthropic superiority complex, the more resistance they will create.
MS NOW, citing three unidentified people with knowledge of the situation, said in an online report that Trump and his top aides had grown increasingly frustrated by the unflattering headlines Patel has generated.
They have confided to allies that the president is weighing removing Patel and considering top FBI official Andrew Bailey as his replacement.
American Buddhist Net 
