DAY: MAY 20 2024
5-20-2024

Why nightmares and ‘daymares’ could be early warning signs of autoimmune disease

An increase in nightmares and hallucinations—or ‘daymares’—could herald the onset of autoimmune diseases such as lupus, say an international team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. The researchers argue that there must be greater recognition that these types of mental health and neurological symptoms can act as an early warning sign that an individual is approaching a “flare,” where their disease worsens for a period.
5-20-2024 Yoga and meditation-induced altered states of consciousness are common in the general population, study says
Yoga, mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and other practices are gaining in popularity due to their potential to improve health and well-being. The effects of these practices are mostly positive and occasionally transformational, yet they are known to sometimes be associated with challenging altered states of consciousness. New research by a team including investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital reveals that altered states of consciousness associated with meditation practice are far more common than expected. Although many people reported positive outcomes, that were sometimes even considered transformational, from these experiences, for a substantial
5-20-2024 Examining the benefits of out-of-network care for pediatric moyamoya
Total in-episode expenses and resource use before the index surgery (preop) and including/after the surgery (postop). The comparisons are separated for analysis into (A) single institution cohorts (1 and 2) and (B) multi?institution cohorts (3 and 4). Moyamoya disease is a rare condition that affects the blood vessels in the brain, especially in children. Narrowing and blockage of vessels significantly increases the risk of stroke and requires surgical revascularization for treatment. Although research shows that outcomes of revascularization are better
5-20-2024 Study explores links between social media use, mental health and sleep quality
The more time you spend on social media, the greater the likelihood of having unpleasant social-media related dreams that cause distress, sleep disruption and impact our peace of mind. Flinders University’s Reza Shabahang says that the vast and rapid adoption of social media has the potential to influence various aspects of life, including the realm of dreaming. “As social media becomes increasingly intertwined with our lives, its impact extends beyond waking hours, and may influence our dreams,”
5-20-2024 How are asthma and heart health linked?
Although the heart and lungs are neighbors in your chest, people may think of them as separate entities with unrelated problems. But a growing body of evidence suggests that asthma—one of the most common lung disorders—is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Asthma is a serious chronic disease in which airways are inflamed, often in response to specific triggers. It affects about 25 million people in the U.S., including nearly 5 million children, causing millions of annual visits to doctors’ offices and emergency rooms. “We call these major changes
5-20-2024 STUDY EXPLORES PATIENT TRUST IN PHYSICIANS
Trust in one’s physician drives positive health practices. In a scoping review, SUNY Poly Professor of Sociology Dr. Linda R. Weber discovered new developments in the measurement of trust, identified those measures of trust that have known reliability and validity, and compared those instruments’ conceptualizations, dimensions, and indicators. The paper is published in the journal PLOS ONE. Weber explains that 10 dimensions emerged from the study: fidelity, technical competence, communicative competence, interpersonal competence (i.e., caring), honesty, confidentiality, global, behavioral, fairness, and system trust/accountability. In addition, these findings provide the foundation
5-20-2024 TIMESAVING TIPS FOR COOKING HEALTHY MEALS
Living a busy, fast-paced life can make it hard to find the motivation to cook a healthy meal at home. However, learning some shortcuts in the kitchen can keep your healthy eating goals on track and help you avoid grazing on unhealthy snacks, grabbing the first thing you see in the fridge or going out for fast food. Why cook at home? Research shows that maintaining a healthy weight is challenging when you eat out too frequently. Restaurant portions often are super-sized
5-20-2024 UNDERSTANDING PERIMENOPAUSE VS. MENOPAUSE
Menopause marks a significant transition for women, yet understanding its precursor, perimenopause, and its symptoms can be complex. Dr. Stephanie Faubion, director of Mayo Clinic’s Center for Women’s Health and medical director of The Menopause Society, says experiencing perimenopause and menopause can be confusing for some. She says it is not only patients who may find it confusing, but medical providers as well, due to lack of training in menopause management. “Menopause is defined by no menstrual cycle for a year,” says Dr. Faubion.
5-20-2024 LOW-DOSE IRON SUPPLEMENTATION HAS NO BENEFIT FOR BREASTFED INFANTS, SHOWS STUDY
The American Pediatric Association recommends iron supplements to all healthy infants who breastfeed longer than four months, while its European counterpart, Society of Gastroenterology, Hepataology and Nutrition, does not recommend it. These deviating guidelines stimulated researchers to design a new study. Breastfeeding is strongly recommended, and the proportion of children are breastfed during the first half of life is high. The researchers wanted to determine whether breastfeeding babies could benefit from extra iron.
5-20-2024 ALLERGY MEDICATIONS COME WITH HAZARDS: BE AWARE
People with seasonal allergies often turn to over-the-counter and prescription medicines to relieve symptoms like coughing, sneezing, runny nose, congestion and itchy eyes, nose or throat. But they often aren’t aware that these meds—including antihistamines—have as much risk for potential side effects, drug interactions and overdose as other drugs. “All medicines have side effects associated with them even when they are taken appropriately and according to dosing directions on the label,”
5-20-2024 I CAN’T AFFORD OLIVE OIL—WHAT ELSE CAN I USE?
If you buy your olive oil in bulk, you’ve likely been in for a shock in recent weeks. Major supermarkets have been selling olive oil for up to A$65 for a four-liter tin, and up to $26 for a 750 milliliter bottle. We’ve been hearing about the health benefits of olive oil for years. And many of us are adding it to salads, or baking and frying with it. But during a cost-of-living crisis, these high prices can put olive oil out of reach. Let’s take a look at why
5-20-2024 Researchers uncover biological trigger of early puberty
Heather Brenhouse, associate professor of psychology, says disrupting the caretaker relationship can really traumatize a child or a developing rodent. Credit: Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University New research conducted by the Brenhouse Lab reveals how early life adversity triggers early puberty and late-life anxiety, paving the way for potential interventions. The onset of puberty has been creeping downward for decades. In the United States, the average age of girls reaching puberty ranges from 8.8 to 10.3 years old. The early start of puberty, which is associated with many health risks, can be
5-20-2024 Bioluminescence and 3D-printed implants shed light on brain–spinal interactions
Brain-spinal cord duet’s neurodynamic symphony is now accessible to scientists via novel multi-organ implants. Credit: Dmitrijs Celinskis A sensory process such as pain is no ordinary phenomenon—it’s a symphony of neural and vascular interactions orchestrated by the brain and spinal cord. Attempting to dissect this symphony by focusing on a single region is like trying to understand a complex melody by listening to just one instrument. It’s incomplete, potentially misleading, and may result in erroneous conclusions. Enter the Carney Institute’s team of visionaries. Their mission? To develop tools that allow
5-20-2024 New thesis explores cancer treatment that can prevent relapse
. What is the main focus of your thesis? Relapse following initial treatment efficacy remains a major clinical challenge for many cancers. The focus of my thesis has been to explore the therapeutic impact of immune cells in patients with blood cancer (leukemia), by first investigating which cells
5-20-2024 New study reveals health and social benefits of car-free living
Participating in a three-week car-free challenge has enhanced the health and well-being of Oxford residents, according to research conducted by The University of Bath’s Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), in partnership with climate charity Possible and Low Carbon Oxford North (LCON), conducted this research project. After ditching their cars for three weeks, 10 out of the 12 drivers across Oxford who participated said they plan to continue with reduced car use beyond the project. The findings of this research project show that: Day-to-day transport emissions were slashed
5-20-2024 Research shows linked biological pathways driving skin inflammation
A certain biological pathway—a set of linked reactions in the body—drives the inflammation seen in the skin disease psoriasis, a new study finds. The work could lead to improved therapies for all inflammatory skin diseases, including atopic and allergic dermatitis and a type of boil called hidradenitis suppurativa, say the study authors. The findings are published in the journal Immunity. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to irritation and infection, but when out of control, it can lead to the reddish, flaky, itchy lesions that
5-20-2024 Prescription co-payments linked to more hospital admissions in New Zealand, study finds
A new study from researchers cautions that bringing back the $5 co-payment for prescription medicines could see a jump in hospital admissions. The study analyzed health data for 71,502 people and found those who didn’t pick up a prescription because they couldn’t afford the $5 fee had a 34% higher rate of being admitted to hospital.
5-20-2024 How a simulation is informing COVID-19 vaccine policy after our ‘return to normal’
As the saying goes “There is no such thing as normal” and this has been especially true after the pandemic. Before the emergence of the omicron COVID-19 variant, countries like the U.K. had high vaccination coverage along with widespread exposure to COVID-19 in the population. This combination of vaccine and infection-derived immunity is termed hybrid immunity and is different to vaccine immunity or infection immunity alone. In contrast, other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and those in the Western Pacific, had a very different pandemic experience.
5-20-2024 Researchers find intriguing connections between Alzheimer’s disease and other common conditions
A study has found that while some medical conditions appear to increase our likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease, others appear to decrease the odds. The study, led by Dr. Yijun (Nicholas) Pan and Dr. Liang Jin, analyzed data from 2,443 older Australians living in Melbourne or Perth who are part of the Australian Imaging, Biomarker and Lifestyle (AIBL) study, an internationally recognized cohort for dementia research. “We found anxiety and other neurological disorders are associated with increased likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Pan said.
5-20-2024 Prepping autistic or sound-sensitive kids for cicada noise
As Chicagoans await the emergence of the cicadas, parents of children on the autism spectrum and/or who have sensitivities to sound can take a few steps to prepare for what is expected to be a loud summer. “Some children on the spectrum can struggle with loud or unexpected noises, such as toilets that automatically flush, fireworks around the Fourth of July or the emergence of a large number of cicadas,”
5-20-2024 Study highlights importance of screening for rare inherited iron metabolism defects
Over 40% of cases curated based on stringent clinical and laboratory criteria from the Indian subcontinent have an inherited iron metabolism defect on comprehensive genomic evaluation, report investigators in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. Although iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent form of anemia globally,
5-20-2024 Study finds tyrosine kinase Csk promotes germinal center B cell survival and affinity maturation
The authors found that Csk (a tyrosine kinase that attenuates B cell receptor signaling) is required for germinal center maintenance and efficient antibody maturation. The immune system strikes a fine balance by identifying and neutralizing disease-causing agents while carefully avoiding destruction of healthy tissues and cells. Now, researchers from Japan have shed new light on one of the processes that helps train immune cells to act only against genuine threats.
5-20-2024 Significant gaps between science of obesity and the care patients receive, say experts
As research continues to produce evidence about the underlying causes of obesity and optimal strategies to treat and manage obesity have evolved, there are disparities in application of the latest scientific advances in the clinical care that people with obesity receive. Widespread adoption of current findings, consistency of care and expertise in obesity care varies by health care professional and institution.
5-20-2024 Improving online depression treatment
Symptom course of depression for individuals who dropped out of treatment and those who completed treatment. In the dropout group, there is an initial decrease in symptoms while the patients were still in treatment, which tapers off as they drop out. For completers, there is close to a linear change over time. This suggests there is a relation between the more that an individual continues to participate in ICBT and their depressive symptom improvement.
5-20-2024 Women face worse chronic kidney disease management in primary care
Women receive worse primary care-based chronic kidney disease (CKD) management than men, according to a research letter adult patients with CKD receiving primary care at 15 practices using electronic health record data to examine sex disparities in guideline-based CKD management
5-20-2024 Bisoprolol does not reduce exacerbations in at-risk COPD patients
For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bisoprolol does not reduce the number of self-reported exacerbations treated with oral corticosteroids, antibiotics, or both, according to a study
5-20-2024 Anticancer potential of CLK kinase inhibitors 1C8 and GPS167 via EMT and antiviral immune response
The diheteroarylamide-based compound 1C8 and the aminothiazole carboxamide-related compound GPS167 inhibit the CLK kinases, and affect the proliferation of a broad range of cancer cell lines. A chemogenomic screen previously performed with GPS167 revealed that the depletion of components associated with mitotic spindle assembly altered
5-20-2024 Study sheds light on bacteria associated with pre-term birth
Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that multiple species of Gardnerella, bacteria sometimes associated with bacterial vaginosis (BV) and pre-term birth, can coexist in the same vaginal microbiome. The findings, published in mSystems, add to the emerging picture of Gardnerella’s effects on human health. Gardnerella is a group of anaerobic bacteria that are commonly found in the vaginal microbiome. Higher levels of the bacteria are a signature of BV and associated with higher risk of pre-term birth, but it is also found in women who have no sign
5-20-2024 New AI model uses federated learning for multi-organ segmentation based on medical image data
Researchers have successfully developed the technology that can accurately segment different body organs by effectively learning medical image data used for different purposes in different hospitals, which is expected to greatly contribute to the development of large-scale medical AI models in the future.
5-20-2024 Second Phase 3 clinical trial again shows dupilumab lessens disease in COPD patients with type 2 inflammation
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with type 2 inflammation may soon gain access to a new drug—dupilumab—that showed rapid and sustained improvements in patients in a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. This monoclonal antibody is the first biologic shown to improve clinical outcomes in COPD. The data supporting the use of dupilumab in COPD will be reviewed by the United States Food and Drug Administration in June. The disease improvements—as measured by a significantly lower annualized rate of acute exacerbations
5-20-2024 New AI model uses federated learning for multi-organ segmentation based on medical image data
Researchers have successfully developed the technology that can accurately segment different body organs by effectively learning medical image data used for different purposes in different hospitals, which is expected to greatly contribute to the development of large-scale medical AI models in the future.
5-20-2024 Second Phase 3 clinical trial again shows dupilumab lessens disease in COPD patients with type 2 inflammation
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with type 2 inflammation may soon gain access to a new drug—dupilumab—that showed rapid and sustained improvements in patients in a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. This monoclonal antibody is the first biologic shown to improve clinical outcomes in COPD. The data supporting the use of dupilumab in COPD will be reviewed by the United States Food and Drug Administration in June. The disease improvements—as measured by a significantly lower annualized rate of acute exacerbations

• 5-20-2024GALLBLADDER CANCER RISES AMONG BLACK AMERICANS AS CASES DECLINE IN OTHER GROUPS
• 5-20-2024US PEDIATRICIANS REVERSE DECADES-OLD ADVICE AGAINST HIV-POSITIVE MOTHERS BREASTFEEDING
• 5-20-2024UK REPORT FINDS COVER-UP OF DECADES-LONG INFECTED BLOOD SCANDAL
• 5-20-2024ASTRAZENECA TO BUILD $1.5 BLN CANCER DRUG FACILITY IN SINGAPORE
• 5-20-2024CHEMO FOR GLIOBLASTOMA ENHANCED BY TAPPING INTO CELL’S DAILY RHYTHMS
• 5-20-2024RESEARCH SHOWS THAT FERROPTOSIS, A FORM OF CELL DEATH, OCCURS IN SEVERE COVID-19 PATIENT LUNGS
• 5-20-2024BODY’S ‘MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE’ DELIVERS TARGETED CANCER TREATMENT
• 5-20-2024EARLY BLOOD GLUCOSE CONTROL FOR THOSE WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES CRUCIAL FOR REDUCING COMPLICATIONS, PROLONGING LIFE
• 5-20-2024GRID CELL RESPONSES TO THE ILLUSION OF SELF-LOCATION
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHERS DISCOVER TOP-DOWN SIGNALS IN BRAIN CIRCUITS REGULATING DEPRESSION
• 5-20-2024BENIGN NAIL CONDITION LINKED TO RARE SYNDROME THAT GREATLY INCREASES CANCER RISK
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHERS REVEAL PROMISING TREATMENT TARGET FOR RESISTANT BRAIN CANCER
• 5-20-2024NEW MECHANISMS UNDERLYING TUMOR VARIETY IN BRAIN CANCERS DISCOVERED
• 5-20-2024STUDY EXPLORES PATIENT TRUST IN PHYSICIANS
• 5-20-2024MOTIVATED BY LACK OF DIVERSITY IN NEUROLOGICAL STUDIES, SCIENTISTS LOOK TO ENSURE EQUITY IN BRAIN RESEARCH
• 5-20-2024FLUORIDE EXPOSURE DURING PREGNANCY LINKED TO INCREASED RISK OF CHILDHOOD NEUROBEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS, STUDY FINDS
• 5-20-2024STUDY SUGGESTS BOTH STEP AND TIME-BASED EXERCISE TARGETS ARE EQUALLY BENEFICIAL
• 5-20-2024MEDICAID ‘UNWINDING’ DECRIED AS BIASED AGAINST DISABLED PEOPLE
• 5-20-2024TIMESAVING TIPS FOR COOKING HEALTHY MEALS
• 5-20-2024UNDERSTANDING PERIMENOPAUSE VS. MENOPAUSE
• 5-20-2024LOW-DOSE IRON SUPPLEMENTATION HAS NO BENEFIT FOR BREASTFED INFANTS, SHOWS STUDY
• 5-20-2024IS IT BIRD FLU JUST AN ANIMAL THING, OR CAN PEOPLE CATCH IT?
• 5-20-2024SCIENTISTS USE NEW APPROACH TO DISABLE BRAIN CANCER CELLS’ ABILITY TO SURVIVE
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHER FINDS MOTHERS LIVE LONGER AS CHILD MORTALITY DECLINES
• 5-20-2024U-SHAPED LINK DETECTED BETWEEN ADOLESCENT BMI AND MENTAL HEALTH
• 5-20-2024AI CHATBOTS SHOW HIGHER EMPATHY, READABILITY IN RESPONDING TO CANCER QUESTIONS, STUDY FINDS
• 5-20-2024ALLERGY MEDICATIONS COME WITH HAZARDS: BE AWARE
• 5-20-2024GENETICALLY ENGINEERED PIG HEARTS TRANSPLANTED IN TWO BRAIN-DEAD PATIENTS REVEAL MORE ABOUT IMMUNE RESPONSE
• 5-20-2024I CAN’T AFFORD OLIVE OIL—WHAT ELSE CAN I USE?
• 5-20-2024HOW NEWBORN CHICKS ARE HELPING TO SETTLE A CENTURIES-OLD DEBATE ABOUT COGNITION AND OUR SENSES
• 5-20-2024STOMACH PARALYSIS RISK MAY RISE IN PEOPLE TAKING OZEMPIC AND SIMILAR DRUGS
• 5-20-2024WHY AUTISTIC PEOPLE MUST BE AT THE HEART OF AUTISM RESEARCH
• 5-20-2024OUR BODIES DON’T JUST MAKE GALL AND KIDNEY STONES—FROM SALIVA TO TONSILS, THESE ARE OTHER ONES TO LOOK OUT FOR
• 5-20-20241 IN 4 PARENTS SAY THEIR TEEN CONSUMES CAFFEINE DAILY OR NEARLY EVERY DAY
• 5-20-2024EX-CIGARETTE SMOKERS WHO VAPE MAY BE AT HIGHER RISK FOR LUNG CANCER
• 5-20-2024DOING DAILY CHORES AROUND THE HOUSE IS BEST ACTIVITY FOR INDIVIDUALS RECOVERING FROM COVID-19, SAY SCIENTISTS
• 5-20-2024NEW AI ALGORITHM MAY IMPROVE AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE PREDICTION AND THERAPIES
• 5-20-2024ALCOHOL USE DISORDER CAN BE TREATED WITH AN ARRAY OF MEDICATIONS—BUT FEW PEOPLE HAVE HEARD OF THEM
• 5-20-2024VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY TIED TO WORSE OUTCOMES WITH EARLY KIDNEY DISEASE
• 5-20-2024NEGATIVE LINK SEEN FOR OXIDATIVE BALANCE SCORE WITH CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE
• 5-20-2024ANDEXANET YIELDS BETTER CONTROL OF HEMATOMA EXPANSION THAN USUAL CARE, FINDS STUDY
• 5-20-2024STUDY FINDS FAT CELLS INFLUENCE HEART HEALTH IN CHAGAS DISEASE
• 5-20-2024PEDIATRICIAN EXPLAINS WHY INFANTS NEED BABY FORMULA INSTEAD OF COW’S MILK
• 5-20-2024HOW TELEHEALTH HAS IMPROVED THE LIVES OF PEOPLE WITH SUBSTANCE DISORDERS
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHERS DEVELOP FIRST HUMAN MINI-BRAIN WITH FULLY FUNCTIONAL BLOOD-BRAIN BARRIER
• 5-20-2024FROM INFECTION TO CHRONIC ILLNESS: LEARNING FROM LONG COVID
• 5-20-2024PLATELET BIOMARKERS SHED LIGHT ON POTENTIAL RISK FACTORS FOR SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
• 5-20-2024DO PATIENTS WITH DEVICE-DETECTED ATRIAL FIBRILLATION AND PRIOR STROKE BENEFIT FROM ANTICOAGULATION?
• 5-20-2024CONTRACEPTION OPTIONS SHOULD BE GIVEN WITH ORAL RETINOIDS TO AVOID SERIOUS HARM TO UNBORN BABIES, SAYS STUDY
• 5-20-2024STUDY REVEALS INEQUITIES IN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES FOR JUSTICE-INVOLVED YOUTH AS THEY AGE
• 5-20-2024STUDY SHOWS EXERCISE SPURS NEURON GROWTH AND REWIRES THE BRAIN, HELPING MICE FORGET TRAUMATIC AND ADDICTIVE MEMORIES
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHERS DISCOVER BRAIN NETWORK THAT RECOGNIZES EMOTIONS
• 5-20-2024PHILLY HEALTH OFFICIALS DETECT A VETERINARY SEDATIVE MORE POWERFUL THAN XYLAZINE IN DRUG SAMPLES
• 5-20-2024PARC MODEL OF CARE ASSOCIATED WITH FEWER DEATHS AMONG VETERANS POST-ICU
• 5-20-2024CAR-T THERAPY IN PEDIATRIC LEUKEMIA
• 5-20-2024SPIROMETRY CLINICAL TRIAL ELIGIBILITY MAY DIFFER WITH RACE-NEUTRAL EQUATIONS
• 5-20-2024CAN PINK NOISE ENHANCE SLEEP AND MEMORY? EARLY RESEARCH DRIVES A COLOR NOISE BUZZ
• 5-20-2024NEW CRISPR SCREENING METHOD COULD REVEAL WHAT DRIVES BRAIN DISEASES
• 5-20-2024IS A GLOBAL PANDEMIC PREVENTION PACT WITHIN REACH?
• 5-20-2024NEW DEVICE HELPS PARAPLEGICS REGAIN PARTIAL USE OF HANDS
• 5-20-2024RELATIONSHIP STUDY SAYS PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE IN CHILDHOOD PREDICTS ABILITY TO FORGIVE AS ADULTS
• 5-20-2024SIMULATION-BASED TRAINING PROGRAM IMPROVES EVALUATION OF UNDESCENDED TESTICLES
• 5-20-2024UPTAKE OF FLU, WHOOPING COUGH, AND COVID-19 VACCINES REMAINS LOW AMONG PREGNANT WOMEN
• 5-20-2024NEW TOOL FLAGS HIDDEN SEXUAL STRUGGLES IN FEMALE PARTNERS OF PATIENTS WITH PROSTATE CANCER

While the title might sound ridiculous, this idea has some interesting things pointing towards it as a possibility.
https://chipstero7.wordpress.com/
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CERN, or the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an international organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN’s primary mission is to explore the fundamental nature of the universe by investigating the basic building blocks of matter and the forces that govern their interactions. This research often involves studying subatomic particles like protons, neutrons, electrons, and various other particles that make up matter. One of the most prominent achievements of CERN is the construction and operation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The LHC is a circular accelerator situated underground, spanning the border between Switzerland and France. It’s used to accelerate particles to extremely high energies and then collide them at incredibly high speeds. These collisions create conditions similar to those just moments after the Big Bang, allowing scientists to study the behaviour of matter in its most fundamental states. CERN was essentially created in order to recreate the conditions of the early universe after the Big Bang as a possible means of testing the Big Bang theory which has dominated physics since the middle of the last century. CERN’s experimental ‘test’ of the Big Bang theory has focused on the search for the elusive Higgs Boson (the “God Particle”) because the Big Bang theorists believe that the universe could not have been created without it. However, anyone who examines the Big Bang theory honestly and in sufficient depth can see that it does not hold water and contains holes in its logic so large that a galactic supercluster could be driven through them. It’s just like CAGW theory, but on a cosmic scale instead of merely a terrestrial one. No experimental ‘tests’ for this are needed and so it’s a wonder how this half-baked nonsense has become the holy cow of science. The experimental ‘tests’ provided by CERN are superfluous and the creation of their particle accelerator was not needed for the stated scientific purpose.
Investigative mythologist William Henry, who is a producer for the popular American TV show Ancient Aliens and author of over 18 books in alternative science, says: “If we take his [Leon Lederman’s] words literally, it suggests that the search for the “God Particle” and the creation of these amazing particle accelerators, such as the one at CERN, is actually a recreation of the Tower of Babel. Well, the Tower of Babel seems to have been humanity’s first attempt to blast open holes in Heaven, to open stargates and worm-holes”. Not many have made the connection, but the Shiva statue at CERN can be connected to the Tower of Babel. This is because Shiva is assumed by some to be the same person as Nimrod, and Nimrod was responsible for building the original Tower of Babel. According to Chris Relitz in his book ‘Antichrist Osiris: The History of the Luciferian Conspiracy’, Shiva and Nimrod are one and the same character. Quote: “By the time the character of Nimrod reached India, it seems he was known as Shiva. The legends of both are too similar to ignore. Both were associated with fire, destruction, wore bull’s horns, had profound phalluses and wore leopard skins. Both had a trident as a weapon, as the devil today is seen with a pitchfork”. This is also corroborated by Erica Nugent in her book ‘Clash of the Kingdoms’, where she says: “Nimrod became Shiva”. Could it be CERN’s goal to recreate the Tower of Babel, which might explain why they have a statue of Shiva (or Nimrod) as their mascot? Author of the book ‘Revising Reality’, Anthony Patch seems to think so, where he says: “Strangely, CERN constitutes a new Tower of Babel in several respects. The goal of CERN seeks to defy God, deify humankind, establish human supremacy, and create a stairway to Heaven”. Patch says that CERN is attempting to access the Saturn Polar Configuration and re-establish a worm-hole or link (he calls it a “plasma conduit”). Another name for this “plasma conduit” would be the Tower of Babel.
Similar to Patch, according to Nick Hinton, author of the book ‘The Saturn Time Cube Simulation’ and ‘The Aquarian Singularity’, CERN is attempting to access the worm-hole that existed during the Saturn Polar Configuration, as he explains in his Twitter article here (if that’s inaccessible to you) his Reddit article here. This worm-hole has been dubbed by some the “Saturn Stargate”. As Hinton says: “The Saturn Stargate is a theoretical celestial alignment (based on the Electric Universe theory) that supposedly causes a portal to open in the sky”. In the TechBubble article ‘How CERN plan to use the Large Hadron Collider to open portals to other dimensions’, researcher Adam Milton-Barker speculates (similar to Hinton) that CERN’s goal is to access the Saturn Polar Configuration, saying: “There are some very interesting theories connected to CERN. One theory is that there is a connection between CERN and Saturn. You may have heard of Jacob’s Ladder which is described in the Book of Genesis. One of CERN’s goals is to recreate Jacob’s Ladder and re-open a portal that is said to have existed between Earth, Venus, Mars, and Saturn, when the planets were in alignment many [thousands of] years ago”. As mentioned above, Talbott associates this alignment with the Tower of Babel. Various researchers have suggested that CERN are attempting to recreate the Tower of Babel, and some have speculated that the Tower of Babel was actually a worm-hole. The Saturn Polar Configuration (which Talbott associates with the Tower of Babel) was also represented by Atlas (see ‘Discourses on an Alien Sky#13’). In Greek mythology, Atlas bared the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. Curiously, CERN refers to the Large Hadron Collider as the “ATLAS EXPERIMENT” which connects them to the Tower of Babel, and may hint at their real objective.

I sit alone in my room on the seventh floor, writing what will surely be my last will and testament. The heroin which allowed me to forget and to sleep for the last couple of years has lost its power to keep the screaming terrors away. The drug destroyed my body and mind, gradually eating away at them like a corrosive acid. Now I have become a slave to it. And yet, without it, I do not sleep for weeks, but instead continuously see the scenes from that terrible night running through my head on repeat as worsening waves of madness crash on the shores of my consciousness.
In the caverns under the town of Frost Hollow, I found the meaning of true madness. Ever since I escaped that den of horrors, it is difficult to tell what is real and what is only the feverish delirium of an unhinged mind.
Even now, they wait behind the door to this cheap, bare rented room. They drag their claws over the wood. I hear them hissing in that strange, ancient tongue, the one I first heard in the tombs of rock that had been undisturbed for countless millennia.
***
I had first heard rumors of an unexplored cavern from my friend, an experienced caver named Sonia who had explored caverns all over the world. I had been looking for some excitement in my life, some break from the constant monotony and boredom of simply working and sleeping. I had gone caving quite a few times over the year leading up to the trip, but I was not nearly as experienced and had never explored a supposedly virgin passageway of cavern before.
“How do you know no one’s gone down there?” I asked, curious. We sat across from each other at a local diner, getting some early breakfast before our planned descent. The sunrise was still another half-hour away, the sky flat and dark. We would be joined by Sonia’s husband, Phil, who would meet us there shortly after sunrise. I repressed an urge to yawn, chugging half of the steaming hot coffee in one long swallow. Sonia leaned close to me, her nearly colorless blue eyes reminding me of chunks of ice floating down a muddy stream.
“Phil’s friend just found it randomly,” she whispered before glancing around conspiratorially, as if she feared someone would care enough to eavesdrop on a conversation about a cave. “Well, it’s in the middle of a farm, and Phil’s friend, Jack Graysole, owns the entire property and surrounding woods. Jack says he noticed the cows kept going over to a certain spot in the field when it got really hot during the summertime. They would all gather around this little indentation in the grass. After seeing it a few times, Jack got curious and went to investigate what the cows were doing.
“He found a small hole in the ground, almost entirely covered by weeds and grass. He said he felt a cool breeze constantly blowing out of the hole, a breeze that smelled like burning matches and charred metal. After bringing out some shovels and digging down a couple feet, Jack realized that the hole wasn’t a hole at all, but the beginning of a steep passageway leading deep into the bowels of the earth.”
***
The owner of the land decided to unofficially call the newly-discovered cavern Graysole Caverns. Out of respect for him, this is also the name we all used. This is the story of how I found myself in the bowels of a strange subterranean tunnel, a tunnel where creatures beyond my comprehension slunk and hunted, skittering monstrosities who would be more at home in a nightmare.
After grabbing a couple coffees to take with us, Sonia drove over to Graysole Farms. Cows stood out in the grassy fields, huddled in tight circles as they repetitively chewed. The thin silhouette of Jack Graysole waited for us next to the herd. He had a face like a raisin, I thought to myself. I watched his thin, shaking body standing in the middle of an overgrown grassy field. Jack stared down blankly at something only he could see. Sonia and I started unloading some equipment from the car while we waited for Phil.
Once we had the backpacks loaded with some simple supplies, such as water, food, headlamps, rope, a couple extra batteries, some buck knives, and radios, we headed over to accompany Jack. We weren’t taking much, as we didn’t really expect to be down there for more than six or seven hours at the most.
Jack Graysole’s withered old face was as slack and expressionless as that of a corpse. He stared down at the ground as if he were in a trance, waving back and forth slowly on his feet like a plant in a light breeze.
“Jack?” Sonia called out as we approached. I could hear the man’s teeth chattering as we got nearer.
“Hey, what are you doing over here this early? You interested in accompanying us down there?” Sonia joked. But Jack might as well have been totally deaf for all the reaction he gave. Sonia glanced over at me with an anxious expression. I wondered if the old man was having a stroke.
I quickly walked over to where he stood, staring down at a black circular hole about three feet across directly in front of his feet. The entrance to Graysole Caverns stared up at us like a sightless pupil. As I drew within a few feet of Jack and looked straight into his blank eyes, I noticed something alarming.
His pupils were quickly dilating and constricting before my eyes. They would shrink to tiny pinpoints, then, a couple seconds later, rapidly expand until they became dark and serious. I could see his thready, rapid heartbeat pulsating in a vein on the side of his temple. Alarmed, I reached forward and put my hand on his shoulder.
Instantly, he came to life, like a man waking up from a nightmare. Shrieking, he looked at me with fully dilated pupils, reminding me of a panicked deer surrounded by wolves. His quavering old man’s voice shook with ineffable existential horror and mortal fear.
He took a step back away from us, seeming to realize where he was and what he was doing. He looked around, confused, then straight at me and Sonia. His eyes focused with anger and fear, as if we were demons here to drag him down to Hell. His eyes flicked back and forth between us constantly. Jack raised a trembling hand and pointed it straight at my heart.
“It’s you,” he said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. His teeth chattered despite the warm spring air. His skin looked deathly pale. “You’re the one who will bring an end to humanity, who will release the ruler of nightmares upon us.” He continued to point accusingly for a long moment at me, his face turning chalk-white. Then his eyes rolled up in his head. Slowly, he stumbled and fell backwards onto the soft grass of the field.
“Jack!” Sonia cried, running over to the old man. Jack’s breaths had started to come in slow, drawn-out gurgles, like a man with a slit throat trying to breathe. Frothy blood bubbled from his lips as they turned blue. Staring up at the endless expanse of cloudless sky, he exhaled one last shuddering breath and died.
***
Phil showed up only a couple minutes later. He found me and Sonia in a state of utter panic, both of us bent double over the still body of Jack. Sonia was on the phone with 911, and I was trying to give Jack chest compressions. The way his fingernails and lips shone with that cyanotic blue cast made me feel sick and weak. I knew it was futile, that I was simply playing with a corpse at this point, but I didn’t know what else to do. I felt if I didn’t do something, I might explode.
I heard the faint wailing of sirens approaching as Sonia’s panicked voice continued babbling to the 911 operator. Phil stood by her side, his tall, dark features searching and lost.
“Oh God, I think he’s dead!” Sonia cried over and over to the operator, as if she thought the operator could do anything about it. I didn’t hear what the operator said in response. As the ambulance pulled in, I gave up on chest compressions. I stood up and took a step back, looking sadly down on the kindly old man’s dead body.
The paramedics ran over. Phil, Sonia and I stood back while they worked on the corpse, trying to shock the heart back into life. But Jack’s open eyes stayed glazed as they stared sightlessly up into eternity.
***
The paramedics left. A couple police officers stayed behind to ask us a few routine questions. Eventually, after an hour or so, they left, too.
“What a fucked-up day,” Phil said, shaking his head grimly. “Do you guys still want to do this? Maybe it’s an omen from God telling us to go home.” Sonia and I exchanged a glance, then we both nodded at the same time.
“Definitely,” she said. “It’s sad what happened to Jack, but realistically, we don’t know what’s going to happen to this property now that he’s passed away. It might get sold or taken by the bank for all we know. This could be our one and only chance to explore this cave.”
“I don’t believe in omens. I’m still down,” I said, feeling slightly sick from the experience. I still remembered how Jack’s body had cracked under the weight of my chest compressions, how his ribs had snapped like bones shattering in greedy hands. “We’ll do it in memory of Jack. I plan to put this up on YouTube.” I pulled my GoPro out of my bag, turning it on. Phil groaned at that.
“Do we have any idea how far down this cave goes?” Phil asked. I felt a sense of relief now that the topic had changed from the death of the old man.
“I sent a little camera down on a rope, but it only went about a hundred feet,” Sonia responded. “It’s pretty steep at first, then it levels out. I couldn’t really see much after it leveled out, but it looks like it should be easy to climb down. There’s plenty of handholds, lots of jutting rocks.”
Phil put on his headlamp and small pack. As he crawled down into the hole, his tanned face looked up at us and gave us one last devilish grin. Once he had gone down a few dozen feet, Sonia started descending. She looked excited and happy. I noticed how she couldn’t stop smiling as she disappeared from view.
I watched their lights grow smaller and dimmer in the circular tunnel. I marveled at how perfectly circular the entrance was. It almost didn’t even look natural.
Taking a deep breath in, I followed my friends down into the dark.
***
“This isn’t too bad,” I said as I climbed down. The jutting rocks gave plenty of handholds and footholds for us. It wasn’t so tight that it felt like a coffin, either.
“It only gets easier from here!” Sonia called up.
“How do you know?” I asked. “You said you’ve never been here before.” She laughed.
“I know. Probably just wishful thinking,” she said. Far below us, Jack’s voice drifted up, faint and weak. He had already reached the bottom.
“The tunnel really opens up down here, guys,” he called. “It’s somewhat… bizarre, though.”
“What do you mean by that?” Sonia asked. I looked down, seeing Sonia and I would reach the bottom in seconds. “Forget it, I’ll let it be a surprise.” I heard her drop down. Slowly and carefully, I lowered myself down the last few feet. There was a short fall onto a smooth granite floor. I looked up, seeing what Phil and Sonia were so mesmerized by.
“Oh, wow,” I said, speechless. I blinked rapidly, wondering if the image would clear like a mirage. The tunnel was cut into a perfectly triangular shape, each side about seven feet long. The ceiling met in a point above our heads.
All along the smooth walls of gray rock, I saw thousands of black orbs peeking out. They looked similar to obsidian, but they were perfectly smooth and circular, each about the size of an orange. They were formed into interlocking diagonal patterns and followed the tunnel straight down as far as the eye could see.
“What is this place?” Sonia asked, taking a tentative step forward. I looked up, seeing the distant pinpoint of sunlight far above our heads. Our voices continued to echo off down the massive tunnels, disappearing in eerie waves into the thick curtain of shadows.
“Are you recording all this?” Phil asked me. I laughed, giddy.
“Of course! This is internet gold right here,” I said. “No one’s going to believe that this isn’t man-made, however. I can’t even believe it. Do you think Jack was playing a joke on us or something?”
“Jack had the sense of humor of a wet paper towel,” Phil whispered, shaking his head. “No, he wouldn’t do something like this.”
“Well, let’s go check it out,” Sonia said, taking a step forward. Her headlamp bobbed up and down rapidly, throwing dancing shadows through the triangular tunnel. It continued straight ahead, without the slightest deviation or curve, disappearing off into a dark point in the distance.
***
We walked as fast as we could, excited to see where, if anywhere, the strange tunnel led. Phil, always the conspiracy theorist, babbled excitedly.
“This has to be aliens, man,” he said, running his fingers through his dark hair. “I bet that scientists will find out this shit is millions of years old when we get back up and tell everyone. Maybe aliens came to earth in ancient times and made a bunch of stuff underground.” Gradually, as we walked, I noticed the tunnel opening up. The pointed triangular ceiling rose up higher above our heads and the walls moved outwards, as we were walking up a triangular funnel. At first, it was so subtle that I didn’t believe it when Sonia pointed it out.
“No, look,” she said, raising her hand above her head. “When we first started down this weird tunnel, my fingers were only maybe a foot away from the top. Now it’s a couple feet.” I was about to respond when our headlamps illuminated something standing in the middle of the tunnel.
“What the fuck is that?” I whispered, stopping cold in my tracks. Phil and Sonia looked up at the abomination at the same time. Its back was to us. It stood nearly as tall as the tunnel, which was now about twenty feet high.
The bottom half looked black and spidery with dozens of long, jointed legs. A bloody, white spine rose out of the mass of legs. Inhumanly long, skeletal arms stretched out in front of it. Its face was pointed away from us, but the back of its head resembled an enormous pointed skull with deep fissures like the cracks of an earthquake running through the bone. The abomination stayed as still as a statue, and for a long moment, I wondered if we were looking at some macabre work of art.
Then, suddenly, one of its insectile legs twitched. A moment later, the other legs started jerking and twisting. There was a sound like bones shattering as it rose up to its full height, turning around to face us.
Its face was like something from a nightmare, melting and reforming constantly like dripping candle wax. I would see a black eye appear on its forehead, then a grinning mouth on its chin, then the features would get sucked back into the folds of melting flesh. After a few moments, two enormous eyes appeared on its face, dark and cold like craters on the surface of the Moon. The mouths and noses disappeared back into the dripping skin, and only the two lidless eyes remained, emanating a cold, reptilian consciousness beyond the ability of my mind to comprehend. I felt terror radiating from its body like freezing waves.
“Free me,” it cried in a gurgling voice that seethed with insanity. It had a shrieking, metallic ringing behind every word that gave it an alien quality. “Free me, and I will give you the waters of eternal life. Within me, I contain the seeds of immortality. Within the nightmares, we live forever, always together, never alone.”
“Who are you?” I asked, terrified. The black reptilian skin of the enormous beast glistened as it knelt down, its massive face drawing near to mine. A sideways mouth burst out of the liquified flesh, showing hundreds of fangs growing like tumors from its white, bloodless gums. The fangs varied in size from only a couple inches to long, sword-like projections that stabbed into the creature’s flesh, causing white blood glittering with rainbows to fall like raindrops all around me.
“I have many names,” it hissed, its thousand voices rising and falling in crashing waves of sound. “I was present at the beginning, when this planet was no more than dead cliffs and endless freezing oceans. Those holy ones who search for us, the ancient ones, call me Niralahoth.”
“How do we free you?” Phil asked, looking terrified. He held Sonia’s hand tightly.
“By letting me into your mind and body,” Niralahoth cried, shaking the cavern. “I was thrown down here, cursed and forgotten. I cannot leave this place of shadows within this body. But in the body of another, my consciousness can be free, and the seeds of new life can spread beyond this prison.”
“There’s no way anyone’s going to do that,” I said, my eyes widening as Niralahoth’s reptilian skull turned towards me in fury. “I mean, you’re asking one of us to give up our individuality, our lives, right?”
“I am asking you to become one with me and gain power undreamt of by mortals,” it cried. “I have within me the fountain of life, the waters that send death away screaming.” I glanced anxiously at Phil and Sonia, wondering if we would have to run.
“The answer is no,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, we can’t do that,” Phil said, backing me up. “But, anyways, I think our trip has ended. It’s time to turn around…”
“You will never return,” Niralahoth cried, skittering away from us. “If you will not accept salvation, then you must accept death.” Within seconds, it slunk away from us, backpedaling on its many skittering legs into the shadows.
***
All around us, a rumbling started.
There was a pounding that crashed through the rock tunnel, as if an insane blacksmith were hammering on a massive anvil. The ringing of crashing rock started off slowly, with a few stones smashing down around us with heavy blasts of sound. Within seconds, the cacophony sped up, rising into a constant stream of destruction. The black orbs were spinning in place all up and down the tunnel, their glossy obsidian surfaces flashing with sparks of blue light.
“It’s collapsing!” Phil cried, running back in the direction we came, holding Sonia’s hand as she tried to keep up with him. I could only stare for a long moment, not sure what to do. It seemed that the direction Phil was heading stood closer to total collapse.
“Wait!” I cried, but my voice was drowned out in the destruction all around us. I felt a rock smash into my shoulder, sending me down to my feet. I heard Phil give a scream of pain, then another stone came down and smashed into my forehead. I remember seeing everything spinning around me as the world went black.
***
I awoke to find my headlamp still shining straight up in the dusty tunnel. Large chunks of the tunnel had slid out of place and crashed to the stone floor. The granite chunks that had fallen looked unnaturally smooth, most of them in the shapes of cylinders or cubes and varying in size from that of an egg to that of a small car.
My head throbbed. It felt as if a tight belt of fire were wrapped around my temples. Groaning, I put my fingers up to my forehead. They came away slick with blood.
Slowly, I started pushing myself up on my feet. I was relieved that nothing seemed broken. I had a deep gash running from the center of my scalp down to my left temple and some shallower cuts on my shoulders and back, but I knew none of that was life-threatening.
“Sonia?” I whispered, my voice coming out weak and strained. I reached into my pack and found a bottle of water. I chugged it quickly in one long swallow.
“Phil?” I cried again, this time stronger. I heard a soft weeping nearby. Staggering, I followed the sound.
Sonia was bloody and covered in cuts and scrapes, sitting next to Phil’s prone form. I saw Phil’s right arm pinned under a massive slab of granite. His arm disappeared from the elbow down in a spreading puddle of thick, dark blood.
“Oh God, Max, I think he’s hurt really bad,” she wept. Phil’s eyes rolled wildly in his head, his face pale and bloodless. I looked down the way we had come, seeing the entire tunnel blocked by large slabs of stone, many with strange, black orbs peeking out like the lenses of cameras.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. My phone died after a day, and then we were counting the endless darkness in breaths and tears.
Phil swam in and out of consciousness as his arm putrefied and blackened around the crush site. After a couple days, Sonia and I agreed that something had to be done. We told Phil we would need to amputate his arm. He was half-delirious, but he came back long enough to understand us and nod weakly.
We made a fire with Phil’s pack, trying to find fuel to throw in it to get it roaring. As it grew, I saw one of the black orbs near the flames abruptly ignite, as if it had been covered in gasoline. Blue, almost colorless flames rose from its surface. We started throwing the small black orbs on the fire until it rose high in the air. I sanitized the buck knife with the flames and pulled a rope tourniquet tight around Phil’s arm. He was conscious but seemingly insane, talking to himself more than anyone else.
“How are we going to get the car started without a key?” he gurgled to someone only he could see. “We need to look around. It has to be here somewhere.”
“Phil, can you hear me, bud? We need to fix your arm. We need to get you out of this mess. OK?” I said as comfortingly as I could. Phil’s eyes rolled wildly, but they didn’t meet my own. I sighed and looked over at Sonia.
“Let’s do it,” I said, giving a grim nod.
I pulled the buck knife out, slicing quickly down through the flesh next to the tourniquet. His veins throbbed like fat worms as the blackened, necrotic skin split easily under the blade, releasing a rancid-smelling gas that hissed out of the wound.
I couldn’t believe how hard it was to slice all the way through the arm. It felt like I was stuck in that hellish task forever. Phil’s eyes rolled in his head as his skin turned the color of clotted milk.
“God, Jesus, make it stop,” Phil whispered over and over, exhaling ragged, pain-filled breaths. The blood spurted from the blackened, dying tissue all over the dust-covered cavern floor, covering my hands in its warm, slick embrace.
After what was probably only three or four minutes, but felt like hours, I had sliced all the way down to the bone. The infected tissue of his arm spurted great gouts of orange pus mixed with rivulets of blood. The hard part was over.
Standing up, I took my steel-toe sneaker and stomped down on his arm as hard as I could. Phil cried out in a powerful voice, as if all the agony and suffering in the world was contained in that one shriek. The bone snapped under my weight with a sound like a tree branch cracking. A moment later, Phil rolled away from the rock that had pinned me in place for so long. Something alien and spongy was shoved into my face, a mass of destroyed red tissue pulsating in time with a runaway heartbeat. At first, shell-shocked and revolted, my mind couldn’t comprehend that I was looking at the stump of Phil’s mutilated arm. I hardened my heart and forced the giddiness and madness to the back of my mind. The time had come to cauterize the wound.
“Sonia, give it to me,” I said with a tremor in my voice. I reached out a hand towards her, a hand stained with Phil’s blood. It looked as if I were wearing a wet, crimson glove. Sonia only stared blankly at me for a long moment, however. A surge of anger ran up my chest.
“Sonia, toughen the fuck up! He’s going to die if you just sit there!” I swore at her, hearing my deep, angry voice bounce around the caverns. Sonia pulled back, as if she were struck. Inwardly, I cursed having a woman as my only able-bodied companion in this situation. She was a competent enough caver, but what would happen if violence and blood came over us? What would happen if, or more realistically when, we needed to fight?
Grimly, Sonia leaned forward and yanked the burning black orb out of the roaring fire, handing it to me on the end of a buck knife that had just barely pierced its hard, strange exterior. The handle of the knife felt coarse and splintery under my filthy skin. I put it to the spongy stump of Phil’s arm. The stump twitched violently. Phil tried to pull away as black smoke rose from the burning flesh.
There was a smell like bacon sizzling. The searing meat of Phil’s arm blackened and crisped under the heat of the orb, which had become no more than a cylinder of glowing blue embers by this point. I felt simultaneously sick and giddy. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or vomit. I felt like I was on the verge of some kind of madness, that the stress and insanity of the experience had started to shatter my mind.
His eyes rolled back in his head and he appeared to go into a seizure for a few seconds. With a long exhalation of breath, he finally, mercifully, lost consciousness. It’s hard to admit it, even this close to the end, but a small, sick piece of me was jealous of Phil. Most likely, he would be dead soon, maybe within hours, while Sonia and I would slowly starve and dehydrate like animals over a period of weeks. I looked at her lithe body and soft skin, seeing the feminine curves of her hips and chest. She was a beautiful woman. I knew Phil to be a lucky man. At least, before this trip, he was.
I watched her body, wondering if I had what it took to eat her or Phil if I had to. Did I have an iron heart that would allow me to slice into my friends and consume their raw, cold flesh? Perhaps, by that point, it would be hunger and madness driving me forward, and I wouldn’t even hesitate. I shuddered at the very thought.
***
I fell asleep that night, having strange dreams of massive gods with melting faces sitting in judgment in a circle around me. We had very little food or water left. No one knew we were down here. Rescue was not coming.
When I awoke, I found myself alone. Phil had died from his injuries while I slept, the black streaks of septic shock spreading up his arm towards his heart. His eyes stared sightlessly up at the rock ceiling.
“Sonia?” I called out, my heart racing as I sat up. “Where are you?” My headlamp was growing dim. I looked in my pack, realizing I was on the last of my batteries. I saw a silhouette walking out of the darkness, the thin, pale form of Sonia. She was trembling badly.
“I saw them,” she said. “Niralahoth and its priests. The priests aren’t human. They look reptilian with sideways mouths and too many eyes.” She shuddered.
“Why would you do that?” I asked. Her eyes grew distant.
“You know we’re not getting out of here alive,” she said. “Not on our own. I wanted to see what it offered. It says that if we take a piece of its nightmare into us, we will gain the power to leave this place, that it simply wants to see the surface and spread its nightmares there.” I shook my head.
“Insanity,” I muttered. “We’d be better off dead.” Sonia nodded.
“My thoughts exactly,” she responded grimly. I didn’t realize what she meant until the next day, when I woke up and found her hanging next to Phil’s body, her tongue swollen and blue as it poked out of her cyanotic lips. And then I was truly alone.
***
Soon after Sonia committed suicide, the last of the batteries for the headlamp died. I had run out of food and had only a small sip of water left. I don’t know how much time passed in the darkness, starving and raving, following the tunnel by running my hands over the walls. I heard many things skittering in the darkness, and a few times, I heard the demonic voice of Niralahoth as it split and distorted.
“You are on death’s door,” it hissed. “Will you not drink from the fountain of life?” I couldn’t tell where the voice came from in the maddening blackness. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I had lost nearly all of my sanity in that pit of shadows by this point. I tried laughing constantly to keep my spirits up, and when that failed, I simply cried.
“I’ll do it,” I wailed. “I’ll do it. Just let me see the sky again. Get me out of here, Niralahoth.” Everything went deathly silent all around me, then a laugh rang out like the grinding of glass.
In front of me, I saw a tornado of fire descending from the ceiling, surrounding the massive, spidery form of Niralahoth. It rose its skeletal arms upwards, as if it were Zeus calling down lightning. In the sudden brightness, I saw the fiery form of snakes slithering and centipedes skittering forwards in that tornado, each massive creature sculpted from flames in the spinning cyclone of energy. Niralahoth reached into the tornado of fire with its sharp points of fingers and plucked something small from it. The fire instantly dissipated. In its hand, I saw a tiny, swirling orb that looked like it contained a firestorm within it.
“The nightmare seed,” Niralahoth gurgled as it skittered forward towards me. I could only stare, open-mouthed and starving. I hadn’t slept for days, it felt like, and everything seemed slow and unreal.
In a blur, its skeletal arm shot out and forced the orb into my mouth. Despite the fire raging within it, it felt freezing cold. As it touched my tongue, it gave off a sensation like frostbite all throughout my mouth. I screamed and tried spitting it out, but it seemed to have a mind of its own. It started liquifying, dripping down my throat.
I felt something cancerous and sick spreading throughout my body, radiating out from my heart and stomach to every inch of it. I tried to scream, but it caught behind my teeth. I fell to my knees, clawing at my face as that insane, alien laugh continued resounding all down the tunnel. I fell unconscious and woke up under a beautiful sky in the fields of Graysole Farms.
***
Soon after, I realized that my life would never be the same. Everywhere I went, I could hear the wailing voice of Niralahoth. Behind the trees, I always saw skittering shadows, creatures with long, spidery legs that stalked me every day and night. I slept with every light in the house turned on, yet when I woke up, they would all be shut off, and I would find myself in darkness, next to something in the bed with far too many legs and a face that dripped like burning wax.
I sold everything I owned and tried to move far away, to give as much distance between myself and those cursed caverns as I could, but the nightmares followed me like a shadow. I realize what a fool I was in those ephemeral moments of madness. Sonia was much wiser than myself; I should have killed myself or died rather than allowing that thing inside of me.
Even now, I can feel it creeping through my heart, spreading through my blood. I feel it trying to crawl its way out of my throat, the thin, black legs peeking out at the back of my esophagus.
I only hope that, when I finally jump and feel my bones shatter against the concrete far below, I will kill whatever is inside of me. For I fear the consequences for the world if it were to escape.

_______________________________________________
The Book of Harris-y
(Religion as it should be)
by Zachary Harris
(cc) (NC) (ND) by Zachary Harris
May be copied, distributed, or displayed, verbatim only. non-commercial, not derivative works nor remixes.
First edition May 2024
Chapter 1 - What's in a name
Chapter 2 - A bunch of rules
Chapter 3 - Secrete origins
Chapter 4 - The end
Chapter 5 - Everybody's favorite topic: SEX
Chapter 6 - The 2000 year war
Chapter 7 - Humans and gods
Chapter 8 - Parables
Chapter 9 - Feedback
Chapter
CHAPTER 1
What's in a name
Some religions are named after it's main prophet. Christianity is named after christ. Buddhism is named after Budda.
I, Zach Harris, dub this religion HARRISy.
Where is it written that a religion can't have a sense of humor?
HARRISy is not a spoof or sarcasm.
But any religion without a sense of humor, absolutely NEEDS to be ridiculed.
I was raised in christianity. So most of my criticism will be aimed at the Abrahamic religions.
I intend to build harrisy on logic and reason. Not the superstition, lies, and, threats that the Abrahamic religions are built on.
As an alternative for conscientious objectors caught in the religious wars (see chapter 6).
Deities are not really necessary for inspiration or religion. An all-powerful creator wouldn't need the help or adulation of puny mortals.
Only cults and human puppet masters need that. So we leave deities to their own devises. They ought to be up to it.
Harrisy is a religion about/for humans, as religions should be.
My leadership skills suck. So I will avoid leading, to avoid becoming a cult.
Chapter 2
A bunch of rules
Everybody hates rules. But let's establish what Harrisy stands for.
10 rules is a nice round number. But when the first four are about loyalty to the cult, You have to question who the rules are meant to benefit.
The christian 'commandments' only benefit the christian cult. The commandments don't even benefit their god.
A true all-powerful, immortal, creator god, would not need human worship or loyalty. The same as humans don't need the worship of ants.
We don't make rules for ants to follow. Just stay out of our way. The Abrahamic god treats us like ants. Either ignores or steps on us. It was his cults that made the 'commandments', not their god.
(more about that in chapter 7)
Harrisy has rules to live by, to benefit HUMANS:
A) Cause no harm.
B) Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Christianity calls this 'The Golden Rule' as if they invented it. But this was part of every culture and religion that humans ever created. (except Is-lame)
C) Do not kill. Do not kill humans.
Self preservation may override this, but killing is still a bad idea.
When killing animals for food, respect their sacrifice. Killing for sport is a bad idea.
D) People are not property.
Do not try to own others, in any sense.
You belong to yourself, do not give yourself away.
E) Do not steal.
You would not want to loose your stuff. (see B) Stealing harms others.
F) Do not lie. Avoid those who lie.
You would want to know the truth. To make better decisions. (see B)
G) Do not rape.
Do not force yourself on others. Your pleasures are not more important than other people's.
This applies to more than just sex. Do not force your religion on others. Do not force harrisy on others.
H) Do not shit wherever you please.
You don't want to slog through other people's shit.
(it's a metaphor.) Leave the world better than you found it.
I) Guard your privacy. Respect the privacy of others.
Beware of others who might use info against you. Or might unduly profit off you.
We have no rules about loyalty. We understand loyalties change. Just be honest (rule E)
We have no rule specifically about Adultery. Adultery might be considered loyalty, which changes.
Or adultery might be considered stealing, stealing affection. (rule D)
Chapter 3
Secrete origins
No one knows how/why it all began. Anyone who says they know, for certain, is lying.
The answer might as well be 42.
Most religions make it a crime to ask questions about their creation myths. This promotes ignorance. Helps the cult, not the people.
We understand the 'scientific method'. Scientists ask questions and are willing to test and adapt to new info.
So, for now, we trust scientific conclusions about the beginnings.
The current best theories from science:
The universe started from what they humorously call 'The Big Bang', about 13.8 Billion years ago.
Many are curious about what came before that. But we find that to be irrelevant to our everyday life.
Some religions say their god did it so they can claim payment/gratitude/worship for it. But we owe them nothing.
The earth was formed about 4.5 Billion years ago.
Humans evolved from other critters over many, many, many Generations (not years).
Some religions claim their god did it so they can claim payment/gratitude/worship for it.
We do not owe Harrisy or any religion for our existence.
Chapter 4
The end
How does it all end?
No one knows. Anyone who says they know, for certain, is lying.
Christinity predicts a bad acid trip. (See Revaluations) Any day now. So buy your ticket to heaven early.
It's an obvious con, You sacrifice this life you already have, for the promise of another life they can't prove.
Science predicts 'Entropy'. Every atom in the universe will drift away from every other till they can't react any more.
But humans will be dead or evolved into something we can't recognize, by then. Too distant, time-wise, to worry about.
Your personal end? What happens when you die?
Most probably nothing.
Seems like every religion has a different 'afterlife'. They can't all be right. (but they can all be wrong)
You can't pick the one you want. If an 'afterlife' exists it is what it is. WE can't control it. No cult can control it.
The cults are telling you what you want to hear. So you give your CURRENT LIFE to their cult. The life that is certain, in exchange for an empty promise.
No guarantees, No refunds, You won't get your old life back if they are wrong (or lying).
Pascal's gamble is a sucker bet. It never pays out.
Harrisy aims to make This Current Life better, worth living for it's own sake. We give priority to This Current Life over any theoretical 'afterlife'.
Chapter 5
Everybody's favorite topic: SEX
What's the point of Sexual Taboos?
Why would an IMORTAL (non-sexual, non-reproducing) being give a damn?
For example in the christian cult:
*Masturbation is sin,
*Spilling your seed outside the womb is sin,
*Marrying outside the church is sin,
*Divorce is sin,
*Birth Control is sin,
*Abortion is sin,
*Marriages without offspring are invalid.
*Brand (circumcise) your males, so your females know who they are allowed to mate with,
And in Is-lame, Women are just sexual slaves.
Taken as a whole,
The only purpose served by sexual taboos, is to help the CULT out-populate rival cults.
A REAL "creator god" wouldn't give a damn. Or Wouldn't need our cooperation. it would just create more of us, as needed.
A REAL creator wouldn't threaten us, it would just change us.
Sexual Taboos are serving a cult, not a god.
Harrisy has only one sexual taboo:
Rule G) Do not rape.
Do not force yourself on others. Your pleasures are not more important than other people's.
Chapter 6
The 2000 year war
The Abrahamic religions have been at war with each other for about 2000 years. Sometimes hot, sometimes cold.
But like some other religions, at all times attempting to be 'the one true religion'. And by their competition, doing more harm than good.
And the Abrahamic religions haven't even shown that the 'good' stuff needs their religion to get done.
They preach that it is somehow noble or their duty to spread their faith. ("Onward Christian Soldiers")
There are dangers associated with proselytism and/or evangelicalism:
(Please note - I had help with the following)
Focus on Conversion over Service:
Proselytism/evangelicalism prioritizes conversion goals over humanitarian or service-oriented activities.
This undermines the credibility and effectiveness of religious organizations engaged in charitable work,
as it is perceived as conditional or insincere.
Dogmatism and Exclusivity:
Evangelicalism/proselytism promotes a rigid, dogmatic interpretation of religious beliefs that excludes other perspectives.
This exclusivity leads to intolerance of differing viewpoints and hinders constructive dialogue and cooperation with people of other faiths or worldviews.
Coercion and Manipulation:
Proselytism/evangelicalism involves coercion, manipulation, or exploitation of vulnerable individuals,
such as offering material incentives or exploiting power differentials to induce conversion.
This raises ethical concerns about respect for autonomy and informed consent.
Political Activism:
Evangelicalism/proselytism has been associated with political movements that prioritize specific social or moral issues, leading to controversy and polarization.
this politicization blurs the lines between religion and politics, compromising the integrity of both.
Interfaith Tensions:
Proselytism/evangelicalism contributes to interfaith tensions and conflicts, especially when it is aggressive or disrespectful to members of other religious communities.
It will undermine efforts to foster mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation among different faith traditions.
Fragmentation of Communities:
Proselytism/evangelicalism leads to the fragmentation or division of communities, particularly in contexts where multiple religious groups coexist.
This creates social tensions and weaken social cohesion, especially when proselytism is conducted in a confrontational or divisive manner.
Proselytization and Missionary Work:
We are concerned about aggressive or coercive methods used in proselytization/evangelicalism efforts,
especially when targeting vulnerable populations or in multicultural contexts.
This leads to cultural imperialism or disrespect for the autonomy of individuals and communities.
Cultural Insensitivity:
Proselytism/evangelicalism disregards or disrespects the cultural and religious traditions of the target community.
This leads to cultural imperialism or colonialism, especially when proselytism/evangelicalism is conducted in contexts where there is a history of exploitation or marginalization.
Misrepresentation or Simplification of Beliefs:
Proselytism/evangelicalism involves oversimplification or misrepresentation of religious beliefs and practices in order to make them more appealing to potential converts.
This leads to misunderstandings or misconceptions about the beliefs and traditions of the proselytizing religion.
For these reasons we conscientious objectors to the religious war, need an uncompetitive religion like Harris-y.
But don't push it.
Chapter 7
Humans and gods
Why do human religions have gods that are all too human?
A creator of everything that needs humans to wright/publish a holy book?
An all powerful god who needs humans to promote him?
An all powerful god with a vindictive human sized ego?
An immortal who is obsessed with human reproduction?
An all powerful god who needs humans more than we need him?
Any actual god wouldn't need human religion.
Harrisy serves humans, not gods.
Chapter 8
Parables
Corn In A Cow Patty.
Finding truth in the Abrahamic holy books,
is like finding corn in a cow patty.
Sure there are some good kernels in there,
but is it really worth digging through the shit to find them?
You can find uncontaminated kernels of truth anywhere.
Chapter 9
Feedback
Feedback should be sent to: zachharris@mail2hell.com
Don't expect a timely reply.

Last night was a crazy ensemble of mystery, magic, lively characters, pure luxury high class dreaming, attention to detail you normally only see in the fanciest of places! And it all started very normal. Let's dive into the dream space!
I am standing on a platform at train station Haarlem Centraal, Netherlands. Trains came and went. When I look around, I see people standing, waiting to catch the next train. Looking up, a digital sign said: “Groningen”. The next train went to Groningen, it actually sounds pretty nice, so I wanted to go there.
As I'm reaching into my left pocket, I notice I have my phone with me. I turned it on, and it was open on the Contacts app. On the top of the list, there was a peculiar person I never heard of before: Ben. I decided to give Ben a call.
A robotic voice made itself audible on the speaker. The robotic voice said: “Hi, I'm Ben! A dream AI. I can change any dream for you just the way you like it.”
“Anything?”, I ask. “We do anything for our customers. Your deepest desires, your wildest wishes and your greatest adventures come true. With Ben, you are 100% in control”.
Eager to test that theory, realizing as I was getting lucid — I'm not just anybody! I'm not going to stand here and wait for public transport like normal citizens do! I want a private train!
And so I speak my wishes in a clear English voice to Ben on my phone. No reply. Ben wasn't saying a word.
But something is changing… Looking up at the sign, it starts to flicker, as if someone is hacking into the sign in my dream, and quickly, the sign updated, saying: “Do not board — Private train”.
Not long after, I hear the train rolling into view — and my dragons — was it a marvel to behold, easily 100 cars long. The entire exterior is a silvery white train with red stripes on it. The red stripes are made from precisely cut ruby that is so thin and so flat that it surprises me it doesn't chip or crack. Surrounding the ruby stripes was chrome lining that holds everything together.
It looks shiny and beautiful, modern yet classical, drawing its inspiration from late 80s diners in the United States, along with Sci-fi elements from “Snowpiercer” and “Hunger Games — Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”.
What really strikes me at this point is that, this all feels man-made. Engineered. My fantasy doesn't extend to these exquisite tastes without much research beforehand. And yet, that initial fear of the unknown made it all the more tantalizing to step in and roll the fast-lane of the dream world.
The car at the front opens its door, and to my surprise, nobody of the crowd steps in, automatically obeying what the sign says. In a split second, Ben had changed the normal aesthetic of a public train station into a capitalist class-divided private railroad for the ultra-rich to get their own private trains. In real life I'd hate this, but now I couldn't care less!
I got inside the train at the front, just before the conductors' car. The first cabin is relatively simple. It has a few chairs, tables that's it. Nothing too shabby. Each car has the same silvery white colour as the exterior, separated by red doors, mimicking the ruby stripes.
For the first time since my command, the AI spoke again: it said the train would be departing soon, but that I'm allowed to explore the train as I wish.
So, I go into the next car — and this one is a freaking tennis court! It was absolutely insane. There even is a small place for people to watch the game!
I walk into the next car — this seems to be a little restaurant, and quickly becoming my favourite car!
Stockpiles of candy and snacks and everything laid for people to grab for free!
There are Maltesers, Snickers, Bounty, and variations of it all!
Sitting on the floor (as the cabin where the candy was held was quite low), I start munching on everything. And I mean, everything!
I started eating the whole supply, there is even white Maltesers, and oh my god, they tasted so good.
Throughout this feast, I keep thinking of how grateful I am that it feels so real, the taste, the crunch, the feeling of getting full… My synapses are firing like crazy at this point to make this taste so real.
After the entire bar is emptied, and I feel almost like puking, I walk into the next car, this one is a literal petting zoo! It has a cow behind a small fence, and some chicken above in a cage.
It was an absolute monster of a train, and it just kept going, and going, and going! Everything stayed so consistent. I could always find my way back to the first cabin and I could even look at the screens inside the train and see how fast we are going.
I could look outside and see biomes consistent of that with the Netherlands… But something happened along the way. The more and more I drove towards Groningen. I started noticing that there are other people around, too.
First just a few, but later on, it starts to become more and more. And I began to ask myself: Where do these people come from?
This was intense and at this point I am a little annoyed because they weren't supposed to get on. We didn't stop in front of a station, so they couldn't have got on in the first place.
At some point, I even see my family. My mom and my sister… I ask my mom: “how did you get in?”
And she tells me that she doesn't know, but she is very happy to be here, there are so many things to do, and it is so special to spend time together with us on this train. I actually feel a little emphatic. Yeah, this could be special, let's ride it out!
I walked also towards other people, strangers… They say they are lucid dreamers and that they wanted the private train. But for some reason, the private train, was the same train for all of us.
I guess the AI made a mistake and thought that this train was the private train and just gave it to every lucid dreamer out there. I don't know, but the whole thing felt almost spiritual because all of these people, felt real. It added life to the scene. I see people hanging out in the restaurant car — just talking to each other about completely random subjects, relaxing. You know, just taking a cup of coffee or something. The train, the engineering, the people, everything was alive. It was so real.
It is even more alive than that. To each other and to me, these people were strangers at first. But riding this out together, starts to feel like days as time begins to drift. We began closing in on each other, some strangers became friends, and the friend groups started doing things together having activities. And the kids started patting the cow together.
Couple of more days in, people start setting up shops together, and they start making their own things. From just a means of luxury transportation it soon shifted into a meters long artist hub. And slowly, but surely, as the days pass, it becomes a city on rails. There are kids playing and everyone knows each other.
It is a crazy experience to see all this unfold, a life intermingled and yet so different all having their own characters and their own clothing, their own movements. Everything. Just… oh… it fell into place in this one thing.
And then I start to feel that I am going to wake up… Being so attached to this place. I don't want to just leave without saying goodbye. So, I walk to the front of the train, to the conductor. Strangely enough, no human is driving the train. In front of me there is a desk with nothing but a single microphone and a button. I activate the microphone to make an announcement.
A jingle starts playing, the same one as in Snowpiercer. I started having my speech, and I remember exactly what I said. It was that I was very happy to be here, and that sadly, it is my time to go, and I hoped that everyone remembers everything.
I let go of the mic and I walk back into the other cars, by now, things have so heavily evolved we have plants growing in every car, mostly food to eat.
But I didn't quite hear anything on the speakers when I made the announcement, so I ask random people if they heard the passenger announcement, but they all reply: “no we didn't hear anything”. So I guess that the microphone didn't work.
I then walk up to my mom. She is playing around with my nephews and nieces in a makeshift playground someone made. I tell her that I really loved everything about it and I hope that she remembers everything, but I am afraid that she won't remember anything. She asked if I will remember anything, and my answer was yes.
I explain to them that them forgetting, but me remembering is some kind of protection mechanism. To make sure that no strange, spiritual secrets about mysterious worlds reveal themselves. Yet that these people like my mum can still feel the positive vibes. Still, a really strange thing to say, but it was how I interpreted it at the time.
I walk back into the other coaches and say goodbye to a few other people that mattered the most to me here since there was no way I could say goodbye to everyone.
I woke up with full closure.
Once I got up, I realized I hit snooze on my alarm clock for maybe about 20 minutes. Which means that this whole thing happened in just 20 minutes. Possibly even less because I wouldn't sleep right away.
And that felt kind of crazy.

So I was listening to a podcast by comedian Andrew Heaton (X), and he had a very interesting episode examining people's nostalgia for the American 1950's complete with humorous skits. For illustration's sake he assumed 50's America was another country called "Fiftiesland" and compared it's stats like GDP or live expectancy to Modern America. He conclude that a lot of the nostalgia came from how many astonishing improvements happened between 1900-1950 vs 1950-2024, even though Modern America is superior in almost every metric.
At the end he had a long monologue where he was trying to explain to his fictional Grandma Edna Bickle, born in 1889 and elderly by the 50's, what it'd be like in the future compared to how she grew up. Imagine trying to explain Netflix to someone who grew up with a radio.
It really demonstrates, in a lighthearted way, just how far we've come in ~125 years.
So imagine how astonishing the world will be in another 100, 300, or 500 years...
Anyway, it's a bit of a read, but I thought some of you all might enjoy it and Mr Heaten was nice enough to send me the transcript. Enjoy!

My great grandmother, Edna, was born in 1889. My Dad and I were recently reminiscing about her, and he said, “Gramma Bickle, tough old bird, tough old bird. Went blind at ninety-two, quit driving at ninety-four, died at ninety-six. Almost lived in three different centuries.” I have some immediate questions about that chronology, and the realization that Gramma Bickle apparently drove her car blind for two full years before handing her keys in, but I digress.
In 1954 my great gramma Bickle was sixty-five years old. Think about how the country changed from her childhood to her golden years. From when she was born, to a little younger than my parents are today, she saw an entire country go from horse and buggies and pretty much nobody owning a car, to almost everybody has a car. Only six percent of the homes in America had electricity when she was a teenager. By the mid nineteen fifties, the whole country is throbbing with electricity.
In her lifetime, the country went from basically no light bulbs, radios, telephones, refrigerators, or washing machines, to a country where all of that stuff is ubiquitous.
In the year 1900, only ten percent of American households had a stove in them. By 1960,--when my great grandmother is the same age as my parents are now—95% of households do. When she was born, anti-biotics didn’t exist, and polio could cripple your baby. By the time she’s my age, penicillen—a miracle drug!—has been invented. By the time she’s my parents’ age, penicillen is widely available and some genius has recently invented a polio vaccine.
So, if we’re looking at Fiftiesland as a country around today, here’s what’s going on. All of the old people in this country, in their lifetime, went from a horse-and-buggy 19th century third world economy with polio and no electricity—something that, if it existed today, we would be sending anthropoligsts to—to a more modern second world economy perhaps akin to contemporary Guatemala. Which is no small jump.
And the people my age who live in Fiftiesland are still celebrating kicking the crap out of the Nazis, inventing the atom bomb, and enjoying an economy which is comparatively booming—because all of the neighboring economies are rubble.
If Gramma Bickle, at forty years old, my age now, could somehow visit me in contemporary America—she would think I made a pact with Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness. Or maybe, maybe her progeny somehow goes on to conquer Oklahoma as warlords, and all her great grandchildren become opulant Oriental sultans.
I have an icebox in my kitchen that’s powered by lightning that lives in my wall. I have another smaller box that makes my food hot by shooting it with invisible particles like the ray gun from War of the Worlds.
Not only do I let my dog sleep in a tiny bed inside my house, like a toddler, we just finished up a round of antiobitics from when he cut his foot. My great-grandfather—this is true—lived with tuburculosis for years before it finally killed him. Anyway, see that dog I make wear a necktie for my amuesment? Yeah, my dog takes miracle drugs unavailable to John D. Rockefeller. Last year Wallace got elbow cancer but the doctor fixed that, no problem, took a couple of months. Wallace literally has better medical treatment available to him a mile from my house than any human being alive in 1950.
Gramma, you wanna watch Netflix, Paramount Plus, HBO, Peacock, or Amazon Prime? It’s television. Well, television is sort of like radio, only much better, and with images, and I can watch it whenever I want, and there are thousands of options. Like, imagine Broadway, only, like, a few thousand of them, and they’re all inside of that rectangle.
Huh, yeah, I’m not explaining that very well. Right. Okay, so you know how in your time you know multiple people who were literally slaves at some point in their life? Like, you personally know some older people who were, at one point, legally a form of property?
So basically, I have this glass rectangle on my wall that a million of the world’s greatest comedians and dramatists live inside of as my slaves, and they put on plays for me when I’m tired after work. Except I don’t have to feed them or pay them because I use my friend Nick’s HBO account. They just eat the lightning that lives in my wall.
What? Oh yes, I get very tired from work, Gramma. Really get [sigh] worn out, you know? Well, you know how your dad was a wheatfarmer, who spent hours and hours plowing through dust and boneshards in Indian Territory, where he might literally be shot by a Commanche, and the threat of looming starvation for the entire family was never more than one drout away?
Right, so I… I talk for a living. Yeah, that’s right. No, a bunch of strangers just sort of send me money every month cause they enjoy hearing me talk. It’s actually very challenging. Because! Gramma, I do a lot research, you see. Like for this episode, I had to read a lot, and I had to do a lot of math. No, I did not personally do the math.
I have another magical rectangle that has several thosuand math slaves trapped inside that do the actual math for me. When I was a kid I had to perssonally punch the equations in myself, and the rectantle would crunch the numbers. Those were hard times. Now I have a smarter glass rectangle that I can just talk to. I just type in, “Hey, average these ten numbers, okay” and there’s, I dunno, like translater slaves that talk to the math slaves, and they all figure out whatever I’m trying to say, increasingly in lower case and with minimal punctuation, and then give me the answer.
But I have to do the research. Like, I have to read a lot. No, I don’t go to a library. I have another rectangle that has all of the world’s libraries inside of it, and also a lot of pornography, so I just stay at home and look at that particular rectangle, alteranting between research and pornography depending on my mood.
It sure is tough, Gramma. I don’t have any coworkers to keep me company. I’m all by myself here in my well-lit, smokeless, air conditionined home. That’s right, air conditioning! Not just in my house, either—in my camper—which is a tiny extra house I tow behind my armored, self-propelling buggy, which I feed fermented dinosaur juice they pump out of the ground. Oh yeah. It has a rectangle in it that plays music. I’d say I have roughly… three to eight million musician slaves who live in the rectangle in my car, so I don’t get bored when driving to the movies, which is a very large rectangle I go to when I’m tired of watching rectangles on my couch.
What? Good question. It’s called a “camper” because I go camping in it. It’s sort of my hobby. You see, Gramma, my life is so stupidly cushy and comfortable that I amuse myself by going out into the woods to forego wall lightning, air conditioning, and even pornography sometimes, when I can’t get a signal, and instead I sit in a hammock and shit in holes I dig for fun. We call that “roughing it.” For sport, I spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars doing what your entire family did their entire lives until they finally got indoor plumbing, except of course my camper has a propane stove built in, whereas your pioneer family had to dig a hole in the side of a hill and cower in it from the weather like cavemen while burning cow dung for warmth. I dunno where propane comes from. Probably dinosaur farts or something.
Anyway, I prefer to travel around in my camper rather than fly—that’s right, fly—yeah, like a spitfire pilot—which I do multiple times a year using frequent flier points. Which are sort of free, imaginary coupons that banks give me to thank me for using their credit cards, which are also rectangles, but these particular rectangles are small and flat and full of slave bankers that live in my pocket, next to my nine-billion dollar super computer I mostly use as a map, so I don’t have to go through the hassle of folding and unfolding maps, and also to send funny pictures to people in Scotland, in between watching porn in the woods.
I digress. Let’s all take a deep breath. Somebody from my great grandmother’s generation, who lived long enough to be an adult in Fiftiesland, would rightly think: We live in a golden age! We live in the future!
Back in contemporary America, my parents are in their early seventies. My parents today are about how old Gramma Bickle was at the end of the 1950s. And the jump isn’t bad, but it’s not nearly as mind-blowing. The developments they’ve seen since childhood are very impressive in terms of computers and telecommunications and medicine, but otherwise, the world they live in is a more efficient, clever version of the world they grew up in. Cars are safer and more comfortable and fuel efficient, but they’re still basically cars. LED lights are cheaper than incandescent bulbs, but they’re still essentially electric lights. Penicillan is better, but it’s still just clinical mold that strategically murders errant bacteria.
If Fiftiesland were a country, rather than our own history, we would pretty much look at it sort of how we see the poorer parts of Latin America or Eastern Europe: a very nice place with lovely people, wonderful to visit, try the food. Get some funky vintage clothes while you’re there.
But a comparatively poor economy to America or Western Europe. You wouldn’t want to immigrate there for the money. And also, not surprisingly, some views about gender, sex before marriage, having kids really young, having lots of kids, and skepticism about homosexuality that a globetrotter and even quite a few conservatives today might be tempted to call “quaint” or “traditional.”
Basically, if Fiftiesland were a country today, we would view it like Honduras or Moldova, or maybe Czechoslavkia after the wall came down.

There are 5 areals inside of which 5 elements reside. The five areals are: ● Mirage(hollow, reflective, refractive, instantanious, where psyche meets spirit). ● Woman (love, where spirit meets fire), ● Digitage( non-corporeal, energy storage where water meets fire) . ● Foilage(birthing, absorbing, growing, where animal meets water), ● Man(strife, where animal meets psyche)
(The elements between each areal are respectfully spirit, fire, water. animalia and psyche)
Inside animalia there are 6 distinct animals from which genesis occurs. Pachyderm (elephants, whales etc) Reptilian (lizards, snakes etc) Cephalapod (the sentient on the planet) Equine (horse, zebra etc) Canine (dog, wolf, jackal etc) Feline (cat, lion, cheetah etc)
Time is an illusion carried by humans (an amalgamation through time defying reproduction of the entirety of the cephalapods work in genesis on the planet earth.) The earliest intelligent animal on the earth was the vampyrapod. A ten tentacled species that landed here somehow flung from some rock or ejaculated by some larger animal. The vampyropods were fed upon by the local life here (trilobytes, bacteria etc) eating two of the tentacles (the mating tentacles (man(woman)) that began the genesis. The ten commandments themselfs biblically are the fossilized representation of one male and one female vampyropods. The ten tentacles arranged in their death explaining a meaning forever.
The 5 areals are where time is encased it is the job of humans to bear the weight of time while cephs continue the genesis.
If you imagine a star shape in which each point is an areal, and between each point is an element, than in the very center you will find salt, sugar, and vinegar (dry). With these base powders water, Nitrogen, And carbon can be formed. The basis of life on earth.
All the genesis of animalia as well as man made items were the creation of the cephs with intention. Mixing of animalia through time and genesis they have destroyed the dinosaurs and shifted them to aviaries. They did this through the tapeworm, an invention that not only makes up the organs of humans, (the intestines, the gallbladder etc) but was weaponized to destroy the dinosaurs en masse in preperation for the genesis plans of the cephs.
Modern octopus only live about 4.5 years and they have mastered the ability to transcend into the next through cannabalism as well as telepathy. They created the first language of enochian (the angels language) through tentacle and eye movements. Through many generations and reincarnations they developed telepathy as well as the ability to travel through time.
On genesis. An actuality has to occur from the cephs in time to create the genesis. Such as a ceph dying, killing. Being eaten. Eating. The laying of hands (tentacles in this case) or the travel through time to accomplish these. For example. A ceph intentionally was eaten by a komodo dragon, while conscious and being digested it telepathically sent the makeup from inside to another ceph. This ceph used that information to create the genesis of the tapeworm that would destroy the dinosaurs. After most reptilians were shifted to aviaries. There were remnants such as thr chameleon who is very fragile, has 2 penises that constnlantly prolapse and the female can hold sperm for years without self inseminating to create birth. If you take a pachyderm like an elephant an ld have it eat of a chameleon, perhaps with some other complicated genesis of elements and areals you will find you have a gnarwal. The main point is that once they mastered tome travel, they have had unlimited time to make use of their ability to create genesis on the planet. Every animal thay is alive today has been manipulated by the cephs to be exactly where it is in time to accommodate for a larger agenda.
Its my belief that there are only 3 unique cephs that survived the early devastation of trilobytes and other life feeding from these aliens. I call them Seth, Jack, and Claire. Seth is known for being cruel. Jack is more logical, Claire is more empathetic. Because they didnt have the gene popl to create offapring effectively they created this ability to utilize genesis to ensure their survival. This is why they are cannabls its because they must be in order to continue. The modern female octopus always feeds of the make after mating. The males always eat of the young ones after birth.
On 'man made' inventions Cephs proliferated through genesis all the tools to create the written word. From sea anemone to sea urchin to porcupine to bird feather, to quill. And you already know where the ink came from. These topls were provided to a banana pig infested with mutated tapeworms in order to solidify the structures of governance over time. Every iteration of every technology was also developed intentionally by the cephs in order to eatablish a relationahip with the digitage that is just now in our perception coming to power.
As a human, i am essentially just a warm blooded version of a ceph. (Make a bird with your hands, where are the beaks?) We exist inside this cage of time and bear its burden. Look at a shark it may sleep but it just keeps swimming. Humans cannot. We have to sleep. Which is close to the realm of death. We as humans are split and carry the weight of strife and love. This is gender and its roles. (This is not a politcal view of genders but a simplification for the idea that governs. Im positive that in infinite time, other genders maybe an option)
We are as a human race looking forward to scientific breakthroughs that happen when cephs accomplish the physical actuations in time that develop to possible situations we experience from that genesis. Such as. By 2027 scientists anticipate returning the wooly mammoth from extinction. It is my belief that we need an actualization of the 6th digit in the mammaths feet in order for a cephs agenda unknown.
Bird eating spiders are example of post genesis cannabalism that triggers another line of genesis to occur such as a poison tree frog or something. I beleive that venomous snakes were made that way because the egg is the fruit that the snake is tempted by. And if it ate of its own eggs it was cursed through genesis to bear the venom. A bovine has 4 stomachs. And udders that resemble somehwhat the tenacles of a ceph. Its my belief that a whale(pachyderm) that has 9 stomachs (the 9 circles of hell) consumed a ceph and in its 4th stomach met the remains of an equine and genesis occured. Resulting in a cud chewing cow. Precious ambergris is essential to perfumes and stimulated the olfactories in way unlike anything else in the world. It cannot be valued it unvaluable. Whales also sing ans produce music. The moder ceph has empirical hearing as well as oldlfactory experiences. Cephs love blueberries. Foe the antioxidants (ita okay its a joke you can laugh ) but really. They do. Modern octopus can be found in the pacific notherwest climbing trees. They dont eat and make their way up the rocky cliffs to the coniferous foilage in order to establish some genesis. That is a real human experience that is documented. They have cralwed in any form across every inch and again and again of this planet. A suction cup on the plastic window of a bill in the mail may have inadvertantly created the floppy disc.
On the macro and the myopic: We live in time where everything occurs simultaniously only on a different scale in a set of repeating patterns that run forwards or backwards in fractalization. Or so to say, the coast goes on forever. With innumurable bits of sand that outnumber the stars in the sky.
Youll find that rapa nui , or easter island is the end of time itself. A graveyard of sorts and a resting ground for the tired cephs who have labored throughout existence to provide the genesis for us to continue in this gestalt of a universe. Its not an end but also a beginning.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a biogas plant is, how it works or what they're actually used for allow me to educate you. A biogas plant produces natural gas, or rather a substitute for natural gas, from fermented corn silage as well as other agricultural waste products. Farmers, such as myself, would bring in silage which we would unload into a large concrete bunker silo, basically just a big walled in pit. The plant I delivered to used a modified snowcat to push the silage around and pack it down evenly in the pit. Once one pit filled up they would tarp it and leave it to ferment and move on to the next pit. Once a pit was fully fermented they would uncover it and use a large wheel loader to shovel the fermented silage into what's called an anaerobic digester. It's basically just a big tank with an agitator that you fill up with a bunch of organic matter and heat it up which produces methane gas as the microorganisms inside begin to break everything down. This gas is then captured and can be used for basically everything natural gas is used for already but it's supposed to be better for the environment or something. These plants are way more common in Europe but they have started to pop up here in North America as well. And yes, before you ask, these places smell worse than you could possibly imagine.
I always thought it was a little bit weird that they built one way up here in Northern Alberta but since the large dairy farm I worked at pretty much always had an excess of corn silage every year, we certainly welcomed another place to sell it to especially since they're not picky. Trying to sell to another dairy farmer is always a hassle because they're always concerned with the quality, as they should be if they're feeding it to their cows, but the biogas plant basically just needs organic matter, it doesn't really matter what it is. If it can decompose you can make gas out of it.
Last fall we had an exceptionally good corn harvest to the point where we still had 4 more fields still to harvest by the time we had enough to feed the cows for the next year. As I said this isn't uncommon. When you're harvesting corn for silage you use a totally different harvester. Rather than a combine that separates out the actual corn kernels from the rest of the plant you use a forage harvester which is essentially a giant woodchipper on wheels that takes in the whole crop and shreds it up. Since corn can easily grow 10 feet high and you spread that over a few thousand acres you get a crazy high volume of silage coming in. Upon realizing how much excess we had my boss did what he always did and called up the plant who as always agreed to take in what we didn't need. The next morning rather than trucking back to the farm we were instructed to head straight over to the plant once our trailers had filled up.
I arrived with my first load at the plant around 10 am. A man wearing a high vis jacket directed me onto the large scale they used to weigh the trucks coming in and out. "Good harvest this year Jim?" The friendly old lady in the scalehouse said as she took down the weight of my loaded truck. I felt bad as I had been delivering to this plant on and off for the last 8 years I had worked on Mr. Baker's dairy farm but I couldn't remember, or I'd just never learned her name. Oh well, I certainly wasn't going to out myself now. "Well if we're delivering here you know it's a good one," I replied. "And there's plenty more where this came from." "Glad to hear it!" She smiled back at me handing me my paperwork. "Now you just head right on down to the back there and the boys will show you where to dump" "Thank you," I said taking the papers from her and putting my truck back into gear.
I pulled off the scale and made my way to the back of the plant where the big concrete pits are. Some more men in high vis gear directed me to back into a specific one. The giant pit was only about half full at the this point but the mountain of silage in my rear view mirrors still looked to be about 30 feet deep at its highest point. As usual they had me back up until my trailer started to climb the pile a bit. this way there were no gaps in the pile and the snowcat wouldn't have to do as much pushing. As I watched the back wheels of my trailer roll on to the silage pile in my mirrors I heard the unmistakable sound of a tire blowing out. A loud pop and then a slow hiss that quickly dissipated. "Shit!" I thought to myself as I hopped out to inspect the damage. One of the workers had also come to see what had happened.
"Must be one of your inside tires" he said to me as I approached, "all the outside ones look fine." I bent down and looked under the truck, sure enough he was right. The inside tire on the right side of the rear axle was completely flat. "Well I suppose that's why semi trucks have dual wheels," I said trying to sound unfazed while simultaneously preparing myself for the ass chewing I was bound to receive for this later. I walked around to the back of the truck to inspect the damage further and saw what had punctured my tire. I stumbled back a bit as I realized it was what appeared to be a broken bone sticking out of the tire. "What the..." I said mostly to myself but the worker must've heard too as it caused him to look down at it as well. When he did his face went white for a second then he composed himself. "Well I'll be damned," he said, "I've been here since the plant opened and I ain't never seen that before, some uh, poor animal must've gone through the forage harvester, or uh, some farmer's dog must've dug it up and dropped it in their silo." He seemed real shifty as he said this and almost seemed like he was trying to convince himself of what he was saying but I brushed it off as I figured he was probably just as shocked as I was.
While I was still able to unload I did have to leave the truck and trailer at the plant that night. A mobile tire repair service would be out in the morning to get it all fixed up. I got a ride back to the farm with our next truck to arrive at the plant and finished out the day pressure washing the manure spreaders. No doubt a reward for my efforts that day. I had to take a good long shower at the farm office before getting in my truck to head home for the night. As I started the engine I went to pull my phone out of my pocket to plug it in to the charger and realized that I didn't have it. I padded all my other pockets, nope definitely not there. I then realized that I had likely left it in the semi which was now at the plant, probably locked behind a gate for the night. Logically I could have just waited till morning to go and retrieve it. I was probably just going to go straight to bed when I got home anyway so what did I need my phone for? But because humans now have separation anxiety from their phones burned into them at age 3 I found myself pulling out on to the road in the direction of the plant rather than home. I hoped there would be some friendly night security guard that would let me in to grab it and I'd be on my way in 5 minutes.
I reached the plant just as it was getting dark and indeed there was a security guard standing at the gate as I pulled up. A very heavily armed security guard. He had what looked like a military rifle slung over his back and I wondered what on earth he needed that for. They were very illegal for civilians to own here in the great white north so they must've had a damn good reason to arm their security like this for the government to let them do it. He looked rather intimidating but surprisingly was not at all antagonistic when I rolled down my window. "Are you lost partner?" He said in a rather friendly tone. "No, no, I work for one of the farms that delivers here," I said, "My truck blew a tire on the trailer earlier today and it's still sitting over by pit 3 and I think I left my phone in the cab, do you mind if I go check?" He gave me a suspicious look, then he peered into the pickup bed and generally looked over me and my truck, then he gazed off down the road and looked at his watch. "Alright you got 10 minutes, and try and stay out of the night shift's way" he said in a much less friendly tone.
A loud click and then a buzzing sound came from the gate as it began to move and I drove through it. By now it was almost completely dark but the large spotlights of the plant made it easy to navigate. I came around the corner and saw my truck still sitting across from pit 3 and I pulled up in front of it. As I got out I noticed that there was a large excavator up on top of the pile in pit 4. I knew it was digging into the silage but I couldn't really see what it was doing properly because the concrete wall that separated pits 3 and 4 partially obscured it. I could also see the roof of the snowcat peeking up over the wall. It must've been parked a little ways away on top of the pile and I figured it must've gotten stuck and they were using the excavator to try and get it out. I paid it little attention as I entered the cab of the semi truck and quickly found my phone in the cupholder. I grabbed it and just as I was climbing down a voice called out to me.
"Hey who the fuck are you?? And what are you doing here???" A disgruntled looking worker wearing the same high vis gear was running towards me. "I just left my phone in this truck here, the security guard let me in to grab it" I stammered backing up towards my pickup. "Of course he fucking did" the man grumbled and he snatched his radio out of his jacket pocket. "Peter what the hell did you let this dumbass in here for you can't be doing that!" He shouted into the radio. "Relax they're not even here yet" the guard's voice crackled through the radio. "Umm actually I see headlights if he's got his phone tell him to get out of there." The man looked back to me. "You heard him son get lost and don't come back here after delivery hours again you got it?" I nodded and climbed back into my pickup truck and began to drive back towards the gate. As I exited the guard waved to me from behind the big black GMC Yukon that had pulled up to the gate. He appeared to be talking to the driver. There was a large U-Haul truck behind it followed by another black Yukon. As I passed the last vehicle I noticed in my rear view mirror the 3 trucks enter the plant ad the guard shutting the gate behind them.
That whole situation did not sit right with me. On the drive home I contemplated everything that I had seen and heard from the guard and the other worker. They were up to something in that plant at night that maybe even the bosses didn't know about. My best guess was it was some kind of drug operation. If movies have taught me anything drug kingpins always drive black SUVs. I know I should have left it alone but life up here in Northern Alberta was so boring my curiosity ended up getting the better of me. I thought that I could help bring down some kind of criminal organization and be a local hero, and that worst case scenario nothing was happening and nothing would come of it.
After harvest concluded I had a couple of days off to rest as we'd been working pretty crazy hours lately. I however did not rest. I was trying to find out everything I could about the plant and the people who ran it. I really couldn't find anything about it, in fact it was as if the place didn't exist. You would think there would at least be a news story from when they built the place what with it being the biggest boost to the local economy and job market our town had ever seen and all but there was nothing. Finally I decided the only thing to do was to see if I could observe what those black SUVs and the U-Haul truck were doing in the plant at night. Maybe get some photos of the exchange and hand them off to the police. I did some poking around on Google maps and found an old logging road that ran across the ridge behind the plant. There was a little dirt area where people often parked to unload their ATVs to go riding in the woods up there that was maybe only a kilometre or so from the north side of the plant.
I drove up there just before dark and hiked down through the woods all the way to the north fence of the plant. It was just a chain link fence like you'd see around a schoolyard not a barbed wire prison fence or anything so I made quick work of climbing over it. Luckily for me there was a lot of equipment and old dumpsters and shipping containers in this part of the plant for me to hide behind as I made my way towards where the main gate was. I crouched down behind one of their company trucks parked near the gate and waited about 20 minute before I saw the black SUVs pull up. This time though they didn't have a U-Haul they had a much larger yellow Penske box truck. They must be hauling some serious product to be renting that thing. I watched as the trucks rolled through the gate and much like they had done with me a few days prior the plant workers in high vis gear directed them back towards the pits.
I began to sneak my way over there being careful to stay out of sight. I realized very quickly that I wouldn't be able to get very close while still remaining hidden. The area around the pits was largely wide open to allow to turn around and back in so there was nothing to conceal me as I approached. I noticed the office nearby and had an idea. I snuck over to it and tried the door. It was open but the lights were off inside. Luckily no alarms went off and I found what I came for quickly. A high vis uniform and a white hard hat laying on the break room table. I also grabbed some safety glasses and a dust mask as it wasn't uncommon for the workers to wear them, there was a lot of dust around the pits, and I figured it would help conceal my identity.
After putting on the uniform and sneaking back outside I observed the workers for a few minutes to see what they were doing and how best to blend in. Most of them appeared to either be standing around watching the trucks pull up or walking somewhere so I figured just walking like I was on a mission was good enough. Turns out I didn't need to fake it for long. As I neared the yellow Penske truck I saw some men getting out of the black SUVs. They were dressed in what looked like church robes but definitely not Catholic since they didn't have the collar. One of them turned to me and I froze. "Hey buddy, we got a pretty big load tonight, mind giving us a hand?" Realizing my cover was working I decided to play along and just leave the part about me helping the drug lords out of my statement to the police. I nodded and walked over with the other workers and awaited instructions.
I heard the sound of a diesel engine coming closer and looked over to see the excavator I had seen coming around the corner and begin to climb the silage pile in pit 4 again. The snowcat was behind it but instead of following the excavator up the pile it came towards us. It had some kind of large metal box attached to the blade that was about the size of a small car. The operator set the box down next to the Penske truck and hopped out. The same disgruntled man I had encountered the other night got out of the cab. "Jesus man, that's a big truck you got there, probably gonna take a couple trips to unload this thing," he said to the men in robes. One of them opened up the back of the box truck and where I expected to see a giant pile of cocaine bricks or something there was something I never expected.
Bodies, and lots of them just thrown haphazardly into the back of this truck. I had to fight the urge to fill my dust mask with vomit as I saw them. The workers began loading them into the box on the blade of the snowcat just tossing them on with little regard for how they landed. No one seemed to notice me just standing there so I slowly backed up into the shadows and made my way over to pit 3. It was almost full by now so I climbed up the pile to a spot where I could look over the concrete wall into pit 4 where the excavator was without being spotted. Once up there I saw the snowcat climbing up the pile towards a large hole the excavator had dug in it. There were some more workers up there who began throwing the bodies off into the hole as one of the men in robes climbed out of the passenger seat in the snowcat. He just stood on the track watching as the bodies were piled into this impromptu mass grave they had constructed. He stayed up on the pile while the snowcat went down for the second load.
This was all starting to make sense now. This was the perfect cover for disposing of bodies. They would get broken down in the piles same as everything else and because they were constantly being emptied into the digester the evidence would only be around for a few months, and the horrific smell of the plant would conceal any foul odours produced by the dead bodies. But there was one question left. Where were they coming from? This was way too many bodies for this to be the mafia or something killing off problematic individuals. By the time the truck was totally unloaded there must've been 100 dead people in that hole. No this had to be some cult activities of some sort and the robes the men from the black SUVs were wearing backed up that theory. Maybe these were just what was left over from some sort of ritual sacrifice or something? Whoever these people are they must have some kind of deal with the plant's owners because I could tell the workers had done this before. From the time the truck had arrived to the time the excavator started burying the corpses in rotting corn silage it had only taken about half an hour.
I didn't even bother ditching the uniform I got out of that plant as fast as I could. I sprinted up through those woods back towards my truck with my heart beating so fast I thought it would explode. As soon as I was in the truck I locked all the doors and dialed 911 on speaker as I peeled out of the forest. I told the operator everything that had happened over the last couple of days and what I had seen that night. I practically begged them to send someone there right away which the nice lady on the other end of the line promised they would. She asked for my name and contact information so they could get a hold of me for a statement which I gladly gave them. She assured me they would investigate the matter and I thanked her and hung up the phone. I then pulled over and got out of the truck and proceeded to finally let out all the vomit I had been holding in for the last hour or so. I ditched the plant uniform on the side of that old forest road and made my way for home.
As I was approaching my house I saw a car up ahead. As I drew closer I could make out the distinctive reflective tape they put across the back of police cars. I slowed down as I had come up on him pretty fast and I didn't want to get a speeding ticket after all I'd been through that night. I followed the cop a few more kilometres towards town. My house was on this road coming up shortly. As we approached my driveway the cop put his signal on to turn in. I breathed a sigh of relief as I guessed they had sent someone out to check on me and I was about to put my signal on as well when I noticed the black GMC Yukon parked in my driveway and the man in robes standing next to it with a gun. The cop turned in and parked next to him. Given that the cop had basically zero reaction to the man standing there with a weapon my heart sank as I realized whatever this is runs much, muh deeper than I thought and revealing who I was to that 911 dispatcher had just dommed me. I kept on driving praying that neither of them recognized me and thanking the Alberta government for not requiring front license plates that the cop would have totally seen on the drive over otherwise.
I just kept on driving, expecting at any minute to see police lights behind me or a big black SUV blocking the road ahead of me and men in dark robes coming out of the darkness to get me, but nothing happened. I don;t even know how long I drove for I just drove until I had to pee so badly I was forced to stop at a truck stop and realized I was somewhere in Saskatchewan. I've been on the run so to speak now for about 6 months. I don't know if anyone's even following me but I have to be sure. I'm writing this all out to get it off my chest and out there as a warning before I ditch this phone and start my life over in another province as far away from there as I can get. I don't know what's going on up there but there is something very dark happening in northern Alberta and I've probably only scratched the surface of it. Either way I want no part of any of it.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00331
This is the full peer reviewed version of the original article which detected H5 in wastewater back in April. It provides detailed methods, specificity experiments, and some conjecture as to the nature of these detections and their origin.
While we believe this to be environmental sources (cow milk), we still believe it provides a significant way to detect H5 in communities before it spreads to humans. We'll be expanding our monitoring to include H5 at all nationwide locations (190) this week.

1-1 Gunfire Battle
1-2 Gunfire Battle With Car
1-3 Gunfire Battle With Traffic
1-4 Motorcycle Passing At 55mph
1-5 Motorcycle Passing At 100mph
1-6 Chopping With An Axe
1-7 Chopping With Fallen Tree
1-8 Newspaper Leafing Through
1-9 Newspaper Ripping
1-10 Children Giggling
1-11 Drinking Through A Straw With A Gulp
1-12 Saltwater Fishing Casting Reeling And Catching Fish
1-13 Slot Machine Pull And Pay-Off
1-14 Lion Roars
1-15 Lion Growls Close Perspective
1-16 Bacon Frying
1-17 Swiss Yodel Call
1-18 Helicopter Start Up And Take Off Int Perspective
1-19 Helicopter Flying By Vers. 2
1-20 Helicopter Coming In And Landing Vers. 2
1-21 Grating Carrots
1-22 Heavy Breathing
1-23 Pay Phone Sequence
1-24 Tearing Paper Short
1-25 Tearing Paper Long
1-26 Baby Crying
1-27 Crickets At Night
1-28 Jet Taking Off
1-29 Jet Passing Overhead And Landing
1-30 Cracking Eggs
1-31 Beating Eggs In A Bowl
1-32 Horse Whinny And Neigh
1-33 Horse Gallops By
1-34 Horse Walks Up And Snorts In Stable
1-35 Man Coughing
1-36 Water Splash
1-37 Loud Large Group Applauding
1-38 Witches Evil Laugh
1-39 Pigs Grunting In A Sly
1-40 Church Clock Strikes 1 O'Clock
1-41 Church Clock Strikes 12 O'Clock
1-42 Car Won't Start
1-43 Car With Dead Battery
1-44 Car Start And Rev Engine
1-45 Car Start Rev Engine And Drive Away
1-46 Car Approach And Fast Stop
1-47 Car Approach Skid And Medium Crash
1-48 Eating Crisp Potato Chips
1-49 Shoveling Dirt On Concrete
1-50 Car Wash Interior Perspective
1-51 Referee Type Whistle
1-52 Thunder Clap Vers. 3
1-53 Wind Howling Lightly
1-54 Thunder Wind And Rain
1-55 Thunder And Heavy Down Pour
1-56 Man Screaming
1-57 Small Crowd Booing
1-58 Small Crowd Sighing Relieved
1-59 Small Crowd Gasp Astonished
1-60 Small Crowd 'Yeah' Happy
1-61 Grandfather Clock Strikes 12 0'Clock
1-62 High Performance Car Start And Idle
1-63 High Performance Car 160mph Pass R To L
1-64 Champagne Cork Popping
1-65 Millitary Jet Fast Flyby
1-66 Stirring In A Cup
1-67 Truck Horn 1 Blast
1-68 Truck Horn 2 Blasts
1-69 Truck Passing With Horn
1-70 Boxing With Punching Bag
1-71 Woman Shrieking
1-72 Vacuuming
1-73 Hydraulic Lift In Operation
1-74 Chicken Coup Atmosphere
1-75 Diving And Swimming Past
1-76 Small Group Applause
1-77 Propeller Airplane Start And Idle
1-78 Machine Gun Burst
1-79 Machine Gun Burst With Returned Fire
1-80 Wooden Bat Hitting Ball
1-81 Aluminum Bat Hitting Ball
1-82 Weight Lifting
1-83 Rocket Launching With Countdown
1-84 Taking A Shower
1-85 Electric Shaver
1-86 Brushing Teeth
1-87 Flushing Toilet
1-88 Police Car Passing With Siren
1-89 Police Car Approach And Stop With Siren
1-90 Police Car Departs With Siren
1-91 Police Radio In Operation
1-92 Kiss
1-93 Cannon Blast
1-94 Patchinco Continuous Play
1-95 Paper Bag Put On Head And Removed
1-96 Tuning Radio AM
1-97 Tuning Radio FM
1-98 Electronic Radio Alarm Sounding
1-99 Crystal Glass Ping
1-100 Rock Concert Applause With Shouts
2-1 Explosion Bang With Falling Debris
2-2 Explosion Medium Bang
2-3 Explosion Small Bang With Falling Debris
2-4 Fire Alarm
2-5 Crack Of A Whip
2-6 Elephant Trunk Noise
2-7 Angry Elephants
2-8 High Performance Car Start Drive And Stop
2-9 High Performance Car Start Up And Burn Out
2-10 High Performance Car Burn Out Vers 2
2-11 Sneeze
2-12 Crowd At A Horse Track
2-13 Water Dripping
2-14 Water Dripping With Reverberation
2-15 Filling Sink With Water
2-16 Emptying Sink
2-17 Handsaw Sawing Wood
2-18 Jigsaw In Operation
2-19 Circular Saw In Operation
2-20 Chains Rattling
2-21 4 Boings
2-22 Scissors Cutting Hair
2-23 Hair Dryer In Operation
2-24 Carnival Atmosphere
2-25 Gavel Hammering In Court
2-26 Rotary Dialing Telephone
2-27 Telephone 1 Ring / Pick Up
2-28 Hanging Up
2-29 Ship Horn 2 Blasts
2-30 Evil Male Laugh
2-31 Evil Male Laugh With Echo
2-32 Male Laugh Hysterical
2-33 Tray Of Glasses Rattling
2-34 Carbonated Water Fizzing
2-35 Airplane Jet Take Off (Jumbo Jet)
2-36 Airplane Jet Landing Vers 2
2-37 Airplane Jet Landing With Tire Squeal
2-38 Burp
2-39 Small Group Applauding With Cheers
2-40 Applause Polite Medium Group
2-41 Cow Moo
2-42 Pool (Billards) Break
2-43 Pool (Billiards) Combination Shot
2-44 Town Clock In Distance Striking 1 0'Clock
2-45 Town Clock In Distance Striking 12 0'Clock
2-46 Party Horn
2-47 Party Noise Maker
2-48 Cave With Water Dripping
2-49 Ice Cubes In A Glass
2-50 Ice Cubes In A Bucket
2-51 Jogging Past Right To Left
2-52 Jogging Past Left To Right
2-53 Car Honk
2-54 Car Long Honks
2-55 Car Several Honks
2-56 Traffic Jam Honks
2-57 Car Passing With Horn
2-58 Angry Crowd
2-59 Panic Stricken Crowd
2-60 3 Gun Shots 45 Automatic
2-61 Shotgun 1 Shot
2-62 M14 Rifle Several Shots
2-63 Elevator Door Opening
2-64 Elevator Door Closing
2-65 Elevator Lift Rider's Perspective
2-66 Bees Buzzing Around Hive
2-67 Alarm Clock Bell Sounding
2-68 Electric Fan In Operation
2-69 35mm Camera Shutter Sound
2-70 35mm Camera Auto Motor Drive
2-71 35mm Camera Automatic Sequence
2-72 Camera Flash Charge And Pop
2-73 Hammering Nails Into Wood
2-74 Door Bell Several Rings
2-75 Knocking On Door And Door Opens
2-76 Heartbeat
2-77 'Surprise' At Party
2-78 Car Fast Approach And Stop
2-79 Car Approach Skid And Crash
2-80 Car Approach Long Skid And Big Crash
2-81 Car Skid And Tire Squeal
2-82 Writing On Blackboard
2-83 Fingernails On Blackboard
2-84 Velcro Ripping
2-85 Propeller Airplane Taking Off Ext Perspective
2-86 Air Pump
2-87 Movie Camera Old Clockwork Type
2-88 Donkey Hee Haws
2-89 Newsroom General Atmosphere
2-90 Coins Dropped On Table
2-91 Coins Being Counted
2-92 Coins Jingling
2-93 Duck Quack
2-94 Scrubbing Floor With A Brush
2-95 Rain Continuous Downpour
2-96 Thunder Clap Vers 2
2-97 Thunder And Rain Storm
2-98 Wind Blowing Through Trees
2-99 Rocket
2-100 Wolf Howling Human Simulation
3-1 Bowling Alley General Atmosphere
3-2 Bowling Gutter Ball
3-3 Bowling Strike
3-4 Soda Can Opening
3-5 Soda Pouring In Glass
3-6 Telephone 3 Rings And Pick Up
3-7 Telephone Slammed Down
3-8 Rooster Crowing
3-9 Woman Screaming
3-10 Sipping Coffee
3-11 Cork Pulled With Reverberation
3-12 Crowd 'Oh' Disappointed
3-13 Crowd 'Ahh' Satisfied
3-14 Crowd Urgh Disgusted
3-15 Steam Train Passing By
3-16 Bugle Call Outdoors - Charge
3-17 Bugle Call - Post Time
3-18 Bugle Call - Fanfare
3-19 Bugle Call - Parade Dismiss
3-20 Bugle Call - Fall In
3-21 Bugle Call - Lights Out
3-22 Bugle Call - Military Taps
3-23 Bugle Call - Retreat
3-24 Bugle Call - Revue
3-25 Bugle Call - Reveille
3-26 Belch
3-27 Baby Laugh
3-28 Domestic Car Alarm
3-29 Domestic Car Door Opening
3-30 Domestic Car Door Clossing
3-31 Domestic Car Crash With Yell
3-32 Domestic Car Approach And Skid
3-33 Horse Trots Up And Snorts Outside
3-34 Horse Whinny And Neigh Outside
3-35 Horse Canters By Outside
3-36 Hellcopter Start Up And Take Off Vers 1
3-37 Helicopter Flying By Vers 1
3-38 Helicopter Coming In And Landing Vers 1
3-39 Applause Concert Crowd With Cheers
3-40 Drinking Fountain Turned On And Off
3-41 Drinking Fountain Taking A Drink
3-42 Roller Coaster In Operation
3-43 Fight Bell 2 Strikes
3-44 Cuckoo Clock Strikes 1
3-45 Cuckoo Clock Strikes 12
3-46 Record Needle Scratch
3-47 Ambulance Passing With Siren
3-48 HiFi Store With Radios And TV's
3-49 Sizzle Light
3-50 Sizzle Heavy
3-51 High Performance Car Start, Idle, Rev, And Stop
3-52 High Performance Car Burn Out
3-53 High Performance Car High Speed Pass 150mph
3-54 Coffee Grinder
3-55 Coffee Perculator
3-56 Ball Bouncing
3-57 Ball Bouncing Away
3-58 Thunder Clap
3-59 Thunder Continuous Claps And Rumbles
3-60 Wind Howling Heavily
3-61 Thunder And Rain In The City
3-62 After Storm Atmosphere
3-63 Bicycle Bell
3-64 Shuffling Cards
3-65 Dealing Cards
3-66 Fireworks General Atmosphere
3-67 A Glass Clinking In A Toast
3-68 Many Glasses Clinking In A Toast
3-69 Game Show Buzzer
3-70 Sweeping The Floor
3-71 Broom Dropped
3-72 Submarine Sonar
3-73 Mantal Clock Clicking
3-74 Many Clocks Ticking
3-75 Cats Meow 3 Types
3-76 Cash Register Ring Up
3-77 Social Gathering Party Crowd
3-78 Tray Of Dishes Dropped
3-79 Zipper Zipped Up
3-80 Zipper Zipped Down
3-81 Dog Many Barks
3-82 Dog Growling And Barking
3-83 Dog Chasing Man And Barking
3-84 Ratchet Tightening Nut
3-85 Wind Chimes
3-86 Door Opening
3-87 Door Closed
3-88 Door Slammed
3-89 Many Party Horns
3-90 Balloon Being Inflated
3-91 Balloon Let Go Flying
3-92 Balloon Popped
3-93 Balloon Popped With Reverberation
3-94 Video Archade Atmosphere
3-95 Opening An Envelope
3-96 Crumpling A Letter And Throwing Away
3-97 Airplane Jet Taking Off
3-98 Airplane Jet Flyby Overhead Right To Left
3-99 Airplane Jet Interior With Cabin Announcements
3-100 Airplane Jet Landing Vers 1

Having seen many cringeworthy “analysis” from various armchair warriors dissecting IDF’s actions (usually ending with a backlink to their idea of “poof” of Israel’s “war crimes”), I figured I’d offer a more detailed perspective on things from someone more familiar with the topic than an average redditor.
This started as a response to a comment “what would you do different with unlimited budget” but then grew beyond a simple response – hence I’m making it into a couple lengthy posts.
I’m going to break it into two parts:
1. General perspective on urban war, what it’s like, and things to keep in mind when analyzing reports from the ground (Today).
2. More technical thoughts on urban combat, analysis of IDF’s operation, etc. (that I’ll probably do tomorrow)
About me: 10 years military (U.S.), intimately familiar with urban battlefield. Ethnically I’m part Moroccan, Bedouin, Jewish, and Finish. Born in USSR of all places. Immigrated to the US as a teenager. Third-generation military (the first two were in Soviet forces). Lots of formerly professional (and now, personal) interest and experience with all relevant aspects of this topic. Curious student of history – especially of the military variety.
Also of relevance – I’m an atheist, though baptized as Christian… but the only religion practiced in my family is Islam (about a quarter of my family is Muslim). I love my Muslim family members. I have no problem with "normal" Muslims or Arabs (as I’m part one myself). But I really, really f-ing hate Islamists and wish each one of them a slow, painful death – as soon as possible. Their ideology is the most insidious form of evil I’ve ever encountered personally. And it’s incompatible with modern civilization.
Ok… part one.

The realities of War (killing sacred cows)

1. War is fun. There – I said it. It’s not fun if you’re the one getting your rear end kicked. But when you’re the one doing the kicking – truth is… it can be a lot of fun. It’s taboo to say, but it’s true.

2. Reasons it's fun: clarity – routine concerns of peaceful life drop off. Your daily objectives become crystal clear. Basic human emotions become amplified. The highs are really high. The lows are really low. And, if you survive the lows, even they take on a special, perversely-nostalgic meaning later on.
3. Why this matters.
(a). The reasons one goes to war are critically important. Because war is fun – it’s stupid easy to enlist young men full of testosterone to fight. Most young men feel invincible until they aren’t – and by that point, bullets are already flying.
(b.) Hence, drawing moral equivalence between a side that responds to violence and the side that deliberately provokes violence is absurd. As the saying goes – old men start wars and young men die in them. These “old men” already know what war entails. Thus, provoking a war is a far more insidious act than reacting to it… all other circumstances being equal.
4. Side note (a personal theory of mine) – the energy of war begins with a lot of testosterone (until it takes on its own velocity). Which leads to a personal observation – societies where young men get laid, typically fight a lot less wars. Islamist ideologies are breeding grounds for wannabe jihadis. Primarily, due to the ideology itself. But also, by prohibiting the mating energy of young men and channeling it into rage and violence instead. If you think can change my opinion on it – feel free.
5. War is absurd. Each day consists of hours of boredom followed by minutes of terror and exhilaration. It’s a bipolar environment. The whole thing is absurd. And when you stumble upon trivial, idiotic things following hours of combat – the only way to stay sane is to embrace dark humor and laugh at things you’d never laugh at in normal life.
(a). Imagine a scenario – you just survived an hour-long close-proximity firefight. An Apache finally swoops in and takes the roof off the building you were unable to suppress for the past 30 minutes. You move in to investigate – stepping over dead bodies, trying not to slip on blood, cracking stupid jokes because you’re still terrified. You walk into a child’s bedroom and see spent shell casings, dead bodies, weapons, a copy of Quaran among children’s toys on the floor. You make your way through the house trying to ID who it belonged to, etc. You start opening drawers and what-dya-know – red, sexy lingerie of the former lady of the house. The ONLY sane reaction to this absurdity is uncontrollable laughter. Grown men will put the bra over their plate carrier, pose for pictures like idiots, etc.
(b). Is posting such pictures on social media a breach of discipline? Of course it is. But the idiotic joy of it – it’s a normal reaction. In fact, it’s a weirdly healthy reaction. People who post pictures of soldiers acting like idiots and claim them to be “proof” of some…idk… animal character of IDF soldiers are clueless. If you’re one of those – you have no idea what you’re talking about.
c. But I’ll tell you what I don’t see. I don’t see pictures of IDF dragging bodies of Hamas fighters and spitting on them. I don’t see pictures of IDF running behind detainees and yelling “Moses is Great”, etc. For those of you drawing moral equivalence between IDF behavior and that of Hamas – I’d like to congratulate you on being an idiot.

6. Controlled Violence.
(a). Fundamentally, the objective of a well-executed war is controlled violence in order to achieve political/strategic goals. How the violence actually plays out is very difficult to fully control. Therefore, INTENTIONS MATTER. A LOT.
i. A force intent on minimizing unnecessary casualties and failing is still far superior morally to a force intent on inflicting unnecessary casualties. IDF is the former. Hamas is the latter.
(b). ~Violence (once initiated) is extremely difficult to control~. That’s why a professional military (a real one) is much different in executing violence than a militia.
i. A militia (any militia) will inevitably escalate violence beyond necessary. The most “alpha” characters usually rise to the top. Often, via sheer brutality and fighting prowess. Human emotions (anger, revenge, pride) take over. And they’re difficult to control.
ii. A professional military operates by objectives and command structure. It will inevitably make errors and even commit war crimes – again, war is chaos that one never fully controls. However, “emotional” decisions rarely rise above tactical necessities. And conduct “unbecoming” is typically punished promptly by your own – because (almost) everyone understands the necessity of structure, rules, and strict moral code.
iii. Are there professional military units that end up committing crime deliberately or behaving in unbecoming manner? Of course – it only takes a few bad apples in key positions of command. But that’s rather an exception that proves the rule.
(c). ~Not all military units are made equal~. IDF, for instance, consists of some professional elements and a whole bunch of citizen soldiers. Everyone has a role to play. Some units are designated as more combat-focused than others. And even within designations, there is a hierarchy of combat readiness. It’s not always formal, but commanders have a good sense of it. Less combat-ready (even when combat-designated) units will usually be assigned more passive roles. “Better” units will be the ones moving forward and seeking contact with the enemy (provided that command has this luxury (i.e. enough options at their disposal).
i. IDF, however, has very few luxuries – it’s mostly citizen soldiers in a nation of only 8 million people. Their more “professional” units are world class – it really doesn’t get much better. But there aren’t a lot of them.
ii. IDF’s “citizen soldiers” are also quite good. Much better than any other conscripted military I’ve ever seen (and I happen to be intimately familiar with the Soviet and Russian militaries – once deemed the “scariest” conscripted forces).

7. War is Chaotic. Every unit will make mistakes. Through a combination of fear, fatigue, lack of clarity, and a very narrow “field of view” for each individual and most line units. That’s why things like Rules of Engagement, “Commander’s Intent”, etc. are critical. Yet, mistakes will happen. And the “citizen soldiers” will commit more errors than more “professional” units.
(a). The chaos is exacerbated by urban environment. In a city, each sub-element lives in its tiny “world” – at any given point, it’s rarely larger than a city block. When they hear gunfire – rarely do they have the context behind it unless they’re engaged in it. The information coming through is sparce and, often, it’s by design.
(b). Among this chaos and close proximity, these units operate in silos, trying to accomplish their objectives and not shoot each other while at it.
(c). Inevitably, someone gets jumpy – think of IDF shooting Israeli hostages a couple months back. Under the circumstances – I’m surprised things like that don’t happen more often. Truth is, most armchair generals who like to issue judgements on such things, would’ve been scared sh*tless themselves and probably would’ve pulled the trigger even quicker than the unfortunate idiot who killed those hostages.
8. The Soldier’s Field of View is very narrow. Rarely do you see the people shooting at you. Rarely do you know if you killed the person who was shooting at you or if someone else did. Rarely do you know that there are civilians somewhere in the house you’re taking fire from – usually you find bodies after the fact. Etc., etc. When you hear that a professional military unit killed a civilian in an active combat zone – if your first reaction is “they meant to do it” – congratulations again - you’re a clueless idiot.
9. The Islamist Enemy is Insidious. I can’t think of a more insidious enemy to fight than a bunch of Islamist lunatics with a plan, terrain knowledge, and very lose command structure. Every horror story you’ve heard about Hamas is true. How do I know? Because we’ve seen it all before. You don’t have to take IDF’s word for it – just ask any Amercian soldier who’ve seen sh*t in any other Islamist dumpster fire of a country. (Or any former Russian soldier who've fought in Chechnya or Afghanistan back in their day).
(a). Child rape – rampant
(b). Abuse of own population – daily. They’re straight-up thugs. Antisocial meatheads with a holy book, drunk on power, and convinced of their moral superiority.
(c). None of them can actually string together a coherent sentence explaining their grievances – but they can all recite a few sentences they heard from an imam… mostly some variation of “Americans are dogs” (they really f-ing hate dogs).
(d). Ultimately, it’s a death cult. But very few of them actually want to die. Most join militia groups because it’s what passes as “cool” in their neighborhood. Sure, they’ll yell something about Allah… but mostly it’s a “I belong to a group that has guns, and guns are fun” type thing.
(e). When push comes to shove – some of them will fight in a suicidal manner. But, when their leadership is dead and the group cohesion is broken – a surprising number will want to surrender. The whole “martyrdom” thing is just an obscure aspiration that many learn that they didn’t really mean it when they signed up for it.
(f). The truly ideological ones are a whole different type of evil. It’s a special kind of evil – one convinced of its own righteousness. They really do use civilians as human shields – especially children. Why children? Because kids are innocent – thus, by sacrificing a child, a truly lunatic Jihadi is doing them a favor… he’s sending them straight to paradise. It’s a shortcut, really. Wrap your head around that one and then imagine staring this evil, bearder, toothless f-ing monster in the face and watching him grin as he explains why he just shot up a building full of school girls. And then imagine what it takes not to drag this creature outside, douse him in fuel, and light a match.
So, these are some general thoughts on war for those unfamiliar. Tomorrow, I will post a more technical “play-by-play” breakdown on urban combat tomorrow, analysis of IDF actions, etc.

I recently moved to a quaint, quiet little cottage on an old farm in the south west of England last year, and it had been my dream to someday build it back up to be the farm it once was, ever since I laid eyes on it. After weeks of research and negotiation, I managed to firmly put my price on the property and was accepted; being 29 with two small children meant it was a very daunting task but luckily the resistance wasn't too gritting, and they accepted my very reasonable offer. After packing all of our belongs and moving in within a month, I decided to take my boys (6 and 3) on a little adventure around the farm; thick forest paved what would've been our 'backyard', cows, sheep, pigs in near by fields filled the silence of the thicket with gentle coos and sniffles, and the boys couldn't soak it up enough. My oldest is the shy, much prefer to observe than get stuck in type, whereas my youngest has the thirst for adventure that even Evel Knievel would admire, so it meant the adventuring was more of making sure the youngest didn't get caught up trying to ride a cow, and less actually letting both boys feel the hay between their toes for the first time. After an hour of said 'exploration', we headed in and as I set up the first fire, the boys played with their new house warming gifts from grandmother. Whilst I was wrestling with the clearly never cleaned before chimney, I heard a large crashing sound come from upstairs, after glancing to make sure both boys were out of harms way, I told them to sit tight as I went to investigate.
As I reached the top of the old staircase, I was greeted by the strangest animal I have ever witnessed. It's eyes so dark, no light reflected off of them, it's meer presence chilling my bones to their marrow, it's legs all manageabled into a pile, at which it still stood nearly 5feet tall from the ground. Sitting on a pile of cloth that was blood soaked, and grinning it's half broken teeth a me, all I could muster was a 'good boy' from my lips. This wolf hybrid had clearly been nesting here for a few nights, and when we had opened the door to come in it was startled and tried to flee, only to be caught on an old bear trap that had been placed under the windowsill from long ago. I could see the blood glistening off the rusted teeth of the trap, and how more than half of both back legs had been entangled in it. I froze and didn't know which way to flee. Do I try to chuck an old, heavy blanket over it's face like they do to horses when ushering them into the horse box to disoriente it into submission, do I flee to my boys and leave it where it lays and pray that by the time the authorities come to rescue us it doesn't do a Cujo on our asses? Do I try to slip our dogs slip leash onto it to secure its position? I was at a loss, whichever option I chose had it's downfall, but I had to act fast. I decided to slowly walk backwards, closing the door and use myself as a human blockade, whilst shouting for my oldest to fetch my phone. I rang grandmother and insisted she leave the rest of the boxes of books and come retrieve the boys as fast as she could. I told them to wait in the toilet downstairs and close the door behind them, only opening to either me or grandmother uttering our family password. I tried the local authorities 3 times before someone answered, and even after hearing my frantic plees to come sort this monster out, and officer huffed down the phone in a gritty, disinterested voice,
"Welcome to farm land lady, this is what happens. I guess I'll come take a look at the mangey mutt."
I couldn't believe it, an officer being so completely disinterested in a wild wolf residing in my soon-to-be bedroom, potentially bleeding out, whilst I had two small children downstairs.
After an hour of waiting and grandmother coming to rescue the children, and overweight, middle aged officer with salt and paper beard came cursing his way through my front door.
"For fuck sake, where's this mutt then? How hard can it be to shoot a damn dog in the fucking head these days."
"This damn dog is upstairs, can't you hear it howling officer?" I snapped back.
After waltzing his way through my front room, kicking over my children toys and shuffling himself up my stairs, almost out of breath already, he told me to 'step aside city girl.' I stepped away and held my breath, knowing that what he was about to see wasn't any normal dog, I parted my lips to warn him of the scene he was about to step into when suddenly I saw him run into the room, almost crying, falling to his knees.
"DALLAS! MY FUCKING BABY! WHAT HAS THIS BITCH DONE TO YOU?!"
Dalas. The deputies fucking dog. Of course. But how could this monster be a dog?! I grew up around alsatians and this was no fucking dog.
"HOW THE FUCK DID YOU MANAGE TO CAPTURE HER LIKE THIS?! SHES AN ANGEL AND YOUVE FUCKED HER LEGS UP! HOW DARE YOU! ILL HAVE YOU SENT DOWN FOR THIS!" He screamed, hurling his arms around this beast and kissing it's face, trying to pry the bear trap with his own two hands away from the managed flesh and bone that was his Dalla's' legs.
"Excuse me? How the HELL was I meant to know that thing was a dog, let alone YOUR dog?! I've just moved in. I heard a crash and came to investigate and there it was, snarling at me."
"You'd snarl too if some fucking cunt trapped you in a bear trap! MY POOR BABY!"
I stood there, astonished. I saw him reach in his holster and immediately slammed the door shut. I screamed to him I was unarmed and that shooting me wouldn't solve any issues.
"I'm getting my knife you fucking idiot. I need to get out of this. Here girl it's okay, daddy's here. Daddy's going to help."
After what felt like an eternity of him rustling, crying, shouting and howling alongside Dallas' screeches, he finally kicks the door away and stands there, holding his blood drenched hound in his arms.
"Get in the fucking car." He demands, storming past me, nearly knocking me to the floor. I adhere to his command and follow him to his patrol car parked bumper to bumper with my truck.
"You're paying for this. You're paying for whatever Alks says the bill is."
Apparently Ashley Alkaine was the resident vet in the nearest town, and of course, his very own cousin. The officer proceeded to push me into the car and threw the carcass of the wolfdog ontop of me, and proceeded to speed his way into town to where the vets resided. This was no dog, my legs were half dead by the way we reached our destination, and the sheer amount of blood dripping from this beasts mouth and hind was enough for 3 dogs to bleed out by now, at least. Without the car even fully coming to a hault, the officer jumped out of his door and came clambering to mine to retrieve his prized pet, half punching me in the side of the head whilst doing so.
I solemnly followed, pondering my conviction for the heinse crime of moving into my new home and inadvertently hurting an animal by simply entering a room, I was greeted by the foulest smelling human I'd ever encountered. This vet was covered head to toe in excrement, I almost couldn't believe my watering eyes. This apparently didn't phase the officer because he forced his way past her and daintily laid the animal on the metallic table.
"You have to save her. You fucking have to."
The vet took off her coat and donned a new, white overall coat, which in hindsight made little to no difference regarding the sheer amount of shit hanging off of her, but the officer acknowledged the gesture with a nod.
"Jesus Christ....a bear trap? This big? Poor Dallas. Why would you do this to such a poor, defensesless creature?!"
Both parties staring into my soul as if I had a target on it, and their eyes winning the bull's-eye shot.
"I...I..." I stammered. "I just moved in. I didn't even get to explore upstairs yet when I heard a crash. Maybe she was asleep up there and fell on the trap?"
"BULL. FUCKING. SHIT." The officer shouted as he started stomping towards me. I backed into the wall, causing some equipment to fall to the ground with an ear shattering cry. Hearing this, Dallas jumped from the table onto the floor and tried to run away, but both back legs being incapacitated meant they slid from underneath her, causing her to flail on the floor, ricocheting blood all over the tiny, porcaline office.
"GET THE FUCK OUT!" I was shoved from the office and the door forcefully slammed behind me by both the vet and the officer. I ask the receptionist if I should stay, or go, as I didn't want to make matters worse but also didn't want to be rude if I was indeed, the one paying for bill.
"Don't worry about it, go home m'love. He gets like this everytime she wonders off for a few days. She usually comes back beaten and bruised from fighting wild animals in the thicket, and he has a temper tantrum all the time about it. Go get some rest and welcome your new home, newbie.' The sweet, frail receptionist said with kind eyes, and a gentle hand on my arm. Conflicted wasn't even the word to describe how the last hour and a half of my day had been, but I reluctantly thanked her and set back home.
Grandmother picked me up from outside the vets and took me and the boys both back to hers for ice-cream and cuddles, I just couldn't face spending our first night in the blood soaked room, not just yet anyway. The morning came and we geared up to tackle the sepsis filled floorboards with marigolds and bleach, whilst the boys enjoyed their first day back at school after the weekend. After a few hours of scrubbing the floors, and disposing of 3 more beartraps scattered throughout my new bedroom, we headed into town to grab some food. That's when I saw the town littered with posters of Dallas, with the words "FIND MY BABY, PLEASE. CONTACT ×××××× IF FOUND." strewn across every shop window and every lamppost. I asked grandmother if I should make an appearance at the police station to see how Dallas faired at the vets, but was met with a shaking head and a pat on my shoulder.
"Best not dear, leave it a few days. He knows where you live if he wants to give you the bill."
I gulped down my milkshake and agreed to give it space to breath for the both of us.
That night, after getting home with the boys and helping them redecorate their room with Spiderman decals and Pokémon plushies, we heard another crash, but this time coming from the front door.
I crept down the stairs and peaked through the bannister to find the officer stood in my open doorway, with an axe in one hand, and Dallas hobbling, still spitting blood from her fangs beside him.
"Leave this place. NOW." He swang the axe so it landed beside Dallas, stucking firmly into the naked floor boards, whilst staring into the deepest depths of me. "You're not the woman I married. GET OUT!"

A research letter was published on May 3, 2024 titled Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus Infection in a Dairy Farm Worker. (The picture is from the letter, look at the guy’s eyes! Yikes!!)
If you scroll all the way down to “Supplemental Material” you can download the full Supplementary Appendix, because it is in this Appendix that even more information is provided.
For example, page 6 of the Appendix mentions the mutations found in the farmworker virus, as compared to the current candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs). Note: The cross-references to other literature are my own. I maintain a timeline of events for my research into avian influenza, which includes outbreaks, past pandemics, scientific studies, basically anything avian-influenza related that I found noteworthy. I found that three of the four the mutations from were mentioned in prior studies and I thought that might be of interest here:
V210A:
-V210A mutation was in the H5N1 strain from the recent human case in Chile. See April 17, 2023 CDC Update - Human Infection with highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus in Chile, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/chile-first-case-h5n1-addendum.htm (There are only three amino acid changes (i.e., L104M, L115Q, V210A) between the HA of the virus from the Chilean case and A/Astrakhan/3212/2020-like candidate vaccine, and they are not in major antigenic epitopes strongly suggesting that antibodies elicited by the [vaccine] would be expected to have good cross-reactivity. . .”).
-V210 amino acid “with binding affinity for avian a-2-3” receptors, as noted in a November 2022 study of wild waterfowl feces in South Korea. See Novel Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Clade 2.3.4.4b Virus in Wild Birds, South Korea, Emerging Infectious Diseases (July 2023), https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/29/7/22-1893_article. So presumably, the V210A change could indicate a switch in receptor binding preference?
L115Q:
-The same Chilean human case noted above, as shown in the text, also carried the L115Q mutation. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/chile-first-case-h5n1-addendum.htm)
L104M:
-The same Chilean human case noted above, as shown in the text, also carried the L104M mutation. (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/chile-first-case-h5n1-addendum.htm)
T195I: did not find in timeline.
I found it interesting that three of the mutations in the recent dairy farmworker in Texas were also found in the human case from Chile. The latter case was not a farmworker but was a man who lived near a beach where dead sea lions had been found, and so the authorities presumed some type of environmental exposure (although I don’t know if that was ever confirmed for sure). So it may be that these mutations in the HA gene are generated upon the virus entering a new host, like a human.
In the Appendix the authors also speculate about the exact manner in which these cows are becoming infected. The various scenarios they propose here clearly shows no one has any idea what is happening, but it was interesting to see it all in print.
The appendix also notes multiple times the difficulties in obtaining full information on these cattle outbreaks. There are several references to the inability to conduct an epidemiological investigation on the dairy farm where the worker was infected, and the authors note several times how a sample of the cattle on that farm was “not available” for comparison with the human strain. So there are some glaring gaps here that hopefully won’t be gaps forever. The more information we have the better.

Foreword: Because I'm sure some hand-wringer is already copy+pasting a removal post about violating the rules:

suggest harm against a specific person

Nothing in this post is specific to any individual, even if specific individuals may come to mind because their actions fit the subject of this post. It follows the letter of the law, and so I intended to present it.
Equal accountability under the law is one of the largest chunks of bedrock upon which all functional and healthy societies rest: that no matter the qualities of the defendant, whether they be rich or poor, young or old, ubiquitous or exotic, they are held to the same standards, afforded the same benefits and suffer the same consequences as any and all people of the same circumstances and culpability. As fundamental, however, is the recognition that the law and its apertures are neither perfect nor omniscient, as is the nature of the men who create and operate them. Prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, perjury from witnesses, biases from jurors or a plain and simple lack of awareness of evidence have condemned many an innocent person to incarceration and even execution for crimes they did not commit or punishments cruel, unusual or excessive compared to others who committed the same crimes with the same intent and same degree of responsibility, and so the appeals system exists as a check against these miscarriages.
As the appeals system acts as a technical check upon the legal system, so does the pardon system of many governments act as a humanist check of such. While the legal system can be tainted by human weakness and should strive to improve upon itself, so too do those that commit crime and the ideal society focuses upon and fosters self-reflection, self-improvement and remorse from the convicted. The pardon power held by many heads of state allows them to intervene not only in cases where there is reasonable suspicion of failure of the legal system at both levels but also to grant mercy upon those who have thoroughly and exceptionally demonstrated reformation during their incarceration. Pardons for nonviolent drug offenses are a common example, due both to their historic excessive punishment for an offense that is oftentimes self-inflicted and the rehabilitation efforts offenders may undertake while serving said excessive sentences.
In recent years, however, we have seen a brazen and coordinated effort to abuse the power of the pardon and wield it not as a check upon human failures and success but as a weapon against the ideological opponents of the state and as a shield for allies who have committed crimes for the benefit of the state and its leaders. Obstruction of justice, perjury, bribery, fraud and embezzlement, even murder and insurrection: those convicted or even merely charged have had pardons offered to or granted by ideologically-aligned heads of state, many of who were direct beneficiaries of the criminal acts those pardons were issued over. In many cases, those pardons were issued immediately upon or even before conviction, a blatant run-around of the rule of law and an open declaration that allies of the state have free reign to do as they please and opponents are free game to be victimized.
If the people use the soapbox to to rally and galvanize against this abuse, the state through its allies will brutalize them to cow dissent or drown them in propaganda funded through illicit means. If the people use the ballot box to cast out their abusers, the state through its allies will interfere and tamper with those polling places used by their opponents to disenfranchise them and simply ignore the results if their efforts aren't enough to stem the tide. And the jury box, needless to say, has already been thoroughly neutered and rendered powerless by the state.
The only recourse left to the citizenry is the ammo box: to take the law into their own hands and carry out the only sentence the average citizen has the means to enforce and that the state cannot undo by illegitimate decree.
I won't lionize or rose-tint vigilantes or pretend it isn't a blight upon a healthy, functional society: mob "justice" has been used as a Trojan horse for bigotry, hate, vendetta and opportunism since the dawn of history. In the United States which is the most relevant (but far from only) applicable context of this post it's served as the conduit for the absolute worst of humanity in its mindlessness, cruelty and depravity, and for every instance where its executors could resist the urge to indulge in bloodthirst against their target and carry out a swift and efficient sentence, a hundred, if not a thousand, gleefully devolved into savage monsters who relished in their inhumanity. In many cases, those vigilante killings were themselves given tacit approval by the state and history books are filled with accounts and photos of mobs who took no shame in their actions, made no effort to hide themselves - and faced no consequences.
To act within and comply by the rules of a thoroughly-corrupted system, however, is to capitulate and surrender to those who so thoroughly corrupted bad benefit from the system, and the only way to expunge this corruption is to act outside of those rules. A farmer does not fight an infestation of his crop by waiting to see if the crop can fight it or not: he introduces countermeasures brought from outside the system, be they artificial like pesticides an fungicide or natural like certain species of insects which deter locusts and other pests. A programmer does not fight a virus by working within the restrictions of the malware: he introduces anti-malware, decrypters, back-up rollbacks and Operating System reinstalls and even disassembles the machine to remove and replace an irreversibly-tainted component. A doctor does not treat a malignant disease by relying upon the body's own natural responses: he introduces medicines, therapies, even invasive surgery and excision or transplant if the malady is serious enough.
While vigilantism is the last bastion of any form of accountability for crimes, it must never be embraced as a parallel or equal to the rule of law or as a reaction to an unpopular result from an independent and qualified arbiter dealing with evidence and facts: it suffers from all the vulnerabilities of the law and enjoys none of the checks and balances of such, and as stated can be just as easily used as a weapon of tyranny as a weapon against it. It vitally serves, however, as a stark, ugly, undesirable and most importantly ever present alternative to the rule of law and that to make civil justice impossible is to make uncivil "justice" inevitable. The state may save its criminal auxiliaries from fine and incarceration, but in doing so it condemns them to at best a quick death or, far more likely, the same inhumane viciousness and brutality that the state encouraged and gained from. The choice between being subject to the best or the worst of human concepts of "justice" will hopefully discourage those auxiliaries from accepting an offer to circumvent the law and the probable futility of attempting to circumvent the law will hopefully force the state to abandon such plans and abide by the rule of law.
If they don't and instead choose to double down, however, then the worst of all remedies becomes the only available remedy and the malignancy of vigilantism will become but the most minor of ailments compared to what will come. In so embracing its tyrannical defiance of the rule of law in the face from pushback by the people, however, the state demonstrates that worst of all possible future was an inevitability.
How to CMV? I frankly don't know, not for lack of willingness to do so but because the patterns seen time and time again throughout human history show that, as terrible and brutal and inhumane as vigilantism has often been, the alternative of not employing it to push back against a state that embraces crime against the citizenry to empower itself inevitably leads to an end result just as terrible if not far worse. Take the law into your own hands and there is the possibility that the state will retreat, or comply and there is the certainty that the state will become emboldened until mere state approval of crime that favors it becomes official state policy.

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