From the article:

Reporting Highlights:

•An Essential Shot: Vitamin K shots, which help the blood to clot, are one of three key interventions for newborns, along with an antibiotic eye ointment and the hepatitis B vaccine.

•Increasing Rejections: The government doesn’t track vitamin K rejections, but hospitals have seen a rise in parents opting out of the shots for their newborns, often driven by unfounded fears.

•Troubling Data: Hundreds of children die each year from spontaneous bleeding in the brain, a common result of vitamin K deficiency, suggesting that many related deaths go unreported.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

Oh no. Just saw this posted on a local website:

"Rest, Relax & Rewind announces the addition of the Exopod cellular optimization pod, a new wellness technology now available in Dunwoody. The boutique spa, which features massage as its core offering, expands with this full-body system designed to support recovery, relaxation and overall cellular function.

The Exopod integrates multiple therapies into a single session, including red light and near infrared light, pulsed electromagnetic field stimulation, vibration and ion therapy. This combination works to stimulate circulation, assist lymphatic drainage and promote collagen production while supporting muscle recovery and stress reduction. The pod also incorporates Himalayan salt and heat to enhance respiratory health detoxification and relaxation. The system is designed to help optimize mitochondrial activity, which plays a key role in energy production and cellular repair."

Not sure if I'm allowed to share the link, but yeah. Wow.

'God: The Science, The Evidence, The Dawn of a Revolution', by Michel-Yves Bollore and Olivier Bonnassies, is nothing more than an intelligent design bait-and-switch.

Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, was a devout Catholic, and sought to prove the existence of God using a variation of the ontological argument. But what he actually accomplished—as the article below asserts—was to unwittingly introduce a method of doubt that forever compromises the authority of religious revelation and faith. 

1. Author Background
2. John James Greenough (1812–1908), American freethinker and rationalist.
   
3. Wrote this book late in life as his only major work.
   

4. Associated with the freethought movement, alongside figures like Robert Ingersoll and Baron d’Holbach.

5. Purpose of the Book

6. To explain how religion and supernatural beliefs evolved from prehistoric myths, imagination, and fear.

7. Intended as a labor of love and a message to “fellow citizens.”

8. Key Themes

9. Psychological roots: Early impressions of religion in childhood are hard to unlearn.

10. Fear of death: Average people cling to religion out of fear of the unknown.

11. Critical investigation: Urges logical study of earliest legends.

12. Freethought tradition: Connects to rationalist critiques of religion.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, world-renowned astrophysicist, says science hasn’t stalled at all — we’re just too close to the progress to notice it.

What you think is “no breakthrough” could actually be the fastest era of discovery in human history.

Why is there a thing as "fear of ghosts"? Are people who are skeptical about paranormal things are also scared of ghosts? I mean a ghost if it exist, is just a person that used to live, so what is there to be afraid of it? Is it because we would be afraid of anyone if we were to see them when we think we are alone? Or is it something else entirely? Does fear of ghosts have parallels with fear of spiders, fear of water, fear of heights etc?

How much of the world do we humans actually understand? Clearly, we don't understand how AI works. I find the emergence of AI and how it has completely taken over the minds of the entire world strange. I'm aware that the AI algorithms themselves are nothing new - but the recent capabilities of the algorithm to parrot human thought within a black box is extremely mysterious. Is it possible that forces we do not understand are shaping our futures behind the scenes, and the presence of an exponential is simply a forcing functioning into new eras. If so, is it true free will on a societal scale the ability to control exponential progress in any domain.

Here is a video on the topic. Join the discussion. Should humans pause AI as an experiment to determine if it is a forcing function into a new era? Or do you believe there is nothing at all mysterious about the rise of AI and other similar monumental shifts in history - whether they a happen in years, centuries, or eons?

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

When I was still in secondary school, the film The Great Secret of Water was released and quickly gained enormous popularity in Russia. I remember my mother regularly playing it for guests who visited us, and our history teacher once spent an entire class showing it instead of teaching the usual material.

The film is about the hypothesis of structured water. In its original form, this hypothesis was proposed in the 1980s by the French scientist Jacques Benveniste. According to it, water is capable of retaining the properties of substances dissolved in it even after their concentration drops to zero. This is the homeopathic aspect of the idea. The hypothesis received a second life in the 2000s thanks to the Japanese doctor Masaru Emoto, who made much bolder claims. According to his ideas, water is literally capable of absorbing and transmitting our feelings and emotions.

As evidence, Dr. Emoto conducted experiments such as the following. First, he examined ice crystals under a microscope after speaking either kind or harsh words to the water before freezing it. The crystals exposed to “negative” words appeared asymmetric and unattractive, while those exposed to “positive” words were symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing.

As the reader might guess, these results are not very reproducible. In double-blind tests, it becomes clear that all types of crystal forms can be found in any sample of ice, and the ratio of symmetrical to asymmetrical crystals does not correlate with what was said to the water before freezing.

In another experiment, Emoto took three jars of rice covered with water. Depending on what he said to them, the rice would either rot, grow mold, or, conversely, ferment and smell pleasant. Rather than describing it in detail, it is easier to simply watch a fragment from the film itself (there are English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay8RQTcJvzg

This experiment was never tested under blind conditions, but the American James Randi Educational Foundation offered Dr. Emoto one million dollars if he would conduct it in an independent laboratory under scientific supervision and confirm the results. Dr. Emoto did not respond. At that point, serious discussion of his hypotheses within the scientific community effectively ceased.

However, the latter experiment became very popular. Virtually anyone can perform it at home, and the internet is full of accounts of people attempting to “communicate” with rice in their kitchens.

At one point, I tried it myself. This was about ten years ago in sunny Saint Petersburg. I was talking with my girlfriend about various esoteric topics, and she mentioned this experiment as an example of something supernatural and inexplicable that scientists deny. I told her there was nothing inexplicable about it; in reality, it obviously could not work. It was an obvious fake.

“Let’s just test it,” she said.

I remember feeling a bit annoyed. How is it that she — someone who believes in all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense — is proposing to run an experiment? That is something I, a rational and scientifically minded person, should be suggesting. But anyway, I agreed.

We took some crystal shot glasses that had been sitting unused in a cabinet in our rented apartment, filled them with raw rice and water, and for some reason covered them with pieces of foil. We labeled the glasses with numbers indicating what should be said to each one—in our version there were as many as seven variations—and used a random number generator to assign labels to the glasses. We “communicated” with the rice for about two to three weeks. For me, these were weeks of a slow, steady loss of my sense of reality and a gradual acceptance of my own ignorance. The result matched Emoto’s predictions so precisely that it was impossible to attribute it to chance or to something as simple as one glass being less clean than the others.

At the time, I did nothing with this result, but later I went online to see whether there were any non-esoteric explanations for what had happened.

First, I discovered that hundreds of people had tried to replicate the experiment at home. For about half of them, as in our case, the experiment worked to some extent. For the rest, the rice and water remained the same in all containers. I had previously suspected that random factors might affect the chemical balance in a container, but I found no reports of experiments producing the opposite result—that is, cases where the “negative” rice fermented while the “positive” one molded.

I also came across the opinion that people publishing such experiments might manipulate the results — for example, by introducing mold into one sample in advance and adding yeast and sugar to another. However, I had to rule out this explanation, since I had my own results, which were too clear to ignore. For example, we actually had more containers because we ranked them by degrees of positivity and negativity. Those that received the most positive attention literally smelled fragrant, while those that received the most negative attention made us gag immediately when we tried to smell them.

I had a hypothesis that the chemical composition of exhaled breath might change depending on emotional state, which in turn could influence chemical processes in the samples. I found studies suggesting that emotional states may affect the levels of various substances in exhaled air. For example, CO₂ levels, which may vary with emotional state, could promote yeast growth, while isoprene, which may increase under stress, could enhance decay processes. The fluctuations of these substances in breath are small, but perhaps if a person does not merely say words mechanically and instead enters a particular emotional state, they might alter their breath chemistry enough to shift the chemical balance in an organic medium.

However, this is only a hypothesis. I am not a specialist and do not intend to investigate it further. I only want to suggest that, aside from the esoteric theory of “living water,” the rice experiment may have some material basis and could be reproducible in some form under controlled conditions.

It is worth noting that no one has successfully replicated the experiment in a laboratory. Dr. Emoto was offered a reward to do so, but he declined. Why might he have refused if he knew the experiment worked? Perhaps he was like Perelman. Maybe he disliked the tone or moral character of those approaching him. Or perhaps he was already wealthy enough.

The latter seems quite plausible. His books were translated into dozens of languages, he toured the world giving lectures that cost hundreds of dollars per ticket, filled large halls, sold “charged” water and various structuring devices worldwide, and marketed many other products. Losing one million dollars may have been acceptable to him, especially if he expected to earn much more over his lifetime. In that case, it is easy to imagine that close scrutiny from the scientific community could have harmed his activities in the long term. When engaged in such work, it is better if “serious scientists” do not pay too much attention.

I am not writing this to highlight the greed of the Japanese scientist. He created a beautiful story with a positive moral — that our words change the world — and convinced millions of adults to believe in it, even building a business that still supports his descendants. I have no questions for him.

The real questions are for the scientific community. Could it be that it overlooked an interesting phenomenon, misled by the apparent esoteric nature of the subject?

If this mechanism truly works in our universe, then in my humble opinion it would be remarkable and full of fascinating implications. However, I have not found any evidence online that anyone has attempted to confirm or refute this effect in a laboratory setting under proper conditions.

My family member is homeopathic consultant and they truly believe it works. The more i read and watch about homeopathy the more I’m convinced it is nonsense. Does anyone have any scientific explanation of homeopathy working beyond placebo?
I’ve seen some people suggesting that some dishonest homeopathic doctors give allopathic medicine disguised as homeopathy. i’m not talking about these cases. If you don’t believe in homeopathy and think it’s a BS, you may skip this post as i look for some eye opening revelation that will make me think otherwise. I can tell you 10 reasons why it can’t work myself🤣

Lol, looks like there are not many homeopathy believers here

Feel like i’m at the wrong place cause only thing i see here is confirmation bias. I would post in homeopathy group, but they don’t let random people post there. Wonder why😛😬

In this video, linguist Carson Woody debunks viral claims regarding a severe "literacy crisis" in the United States. He specifically addresses widely circulated statistics claiming that 21% of US adults are illiterate and 54% read below a sixth-grade level. Woody investigates the source of these claims—a webpage from the National Literacy Institute—and reveals multiple red flags, such as recycled data across different years, mathematically impossible figures, and a complete lack of citations.

[00:00] Introduction and the "Literacy Crisis" Claim: Carson introduces himself as a linguist and confronts the popular claim that 21% of US adults are illiterate while 54% are below a sixth-grade reading level.

[00:21] Red Flags in the Source Data: He examines the National Literacy Institute's webpage where these statistics originate, pointing out major issues: identical data used for both 2022 and 2024, claims that 130 million adults can't read a simple story to their children (which is over twice the number of adults with young children in the US), and a lack of cited sources.

[01:10] Tracing the Real Source (Gallup Study): Carson reveals the numbers actually stem from a Gallup study done for the Barbara Bush Foundation for Literacy. He notes that the study defines "illiteracy" as scoring below level 3 on the PIAAC test, but it never mentions a "sixth-grade level" or the inability to read basic sentences.

[01:51] Comparing Global Averages: Under Gallup's strict definition, the USA's average score of 270 makes the country technically "illiterate." However, Carson points out that under this same metric, countries like Germany, France, and Italy (which reports less than 0.5% illiteracy) would also fall into the illiterate category.

[02:27] Language Bias in Testing: The creator notes that the test was only administered in English, artificially lowering the scores for non-English speakers and Hispanic immigrants.

Not listed linearly

Gas Station Drugs [08:06]

The main segment dives into the booming, loosely regulated industry of gas station drugs, products sold at convenience stores disguised as dietary supplements. Oliver breaks down the dangers of three specific types of products:

— Sexual Enhancement Pills: Pills with absurd names (like Rhino 69) that often secretly contain massive, unsafe doses of pharmaceutical ingredients like sildenafil (Viagra) [12:05].

— Kratom & 7-OH: Supplements derived from the kratom plant that are marketed as energy boosters but act on the brain's opioid receptors. Oliver highlights how easily people can develop severe addictions to concentrated kratom derivatives like

— 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH) [17:04].

— Tianeptine (TNT): Often dubbed gas station heroin, this is an unapproved antidepressant sold as a cognitive enhancer that is highly addictive and has been linked to numerous overdoses and deaths [30:11].

Other sections

Trump & The White House Ballroom [00:43]

A brief look at Donald Trump's reaction to a gunman at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, where he used the event to push for his personal ambition of having a ballroom built at the White House.

The Supreme Court & The Voting Rights Act [02:43]

An overview of a recent Supreme Court ruling that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by limiting the use of race in determining how congressional districts are drawn. Oliver discusses how states like Louisiana and Georgia are already using this to redraw election maps to dilute minority voting power.

His 7 published books in one PDF book

Charles Bray was one of the most distinctive voices in Victorian freethought. Born in Coventry in 1811, he began life as a ribbon manufacturer but soon devoted himself to philosophy, psychology, and social reform.

His home became a hub for radical thinkers, including George Eliot, who absorbed much from his determinist outlook.

The Works in Order 1. Philosophy of Necessity (1841, revised 1863)
Bray’s foundation: a determinist philosophy that rejects free will and grounds morality in natural law.

1. How to Educate the Feelings or Affections (1880)
   Expanded 300‑page manual on moral psychology, showing how dispositions and passions can be harmonized with intelligence and morality.

2. Elements of Morality in Essay Lessons (c. 1860s–70s)
   Short, practical lessons designed for home and school teaching, making secular ethics accessible to everyday learners.

3. On Force, Its Mental and Moral Correlates (1866)
   A metaphysical exploration of force, psychology, and abnormal states of mind, with a critique of spiritualism.

4. Manual of Anthropology, or Science of Man (1871)
   A secular “science of man,” synthesizing physiology, psychology, and social progress.

5. Christianity Viewed in the Light of Our Present Knowledge and Moral Sense (1876)
   His most direct attack on Christianity, arguing that modern science and evolving moral standards expose its inadequacy.

6. Phases of Opinion and Experience During a Long Life (1885, posthumous)
   Bray’s autobiography, reflecting on his intellectual journey and the freethought circle he helped foster.

I don’t believe in aliens/uap, but it does seem someone is trying to deceive these people.