Category: General Interest

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The Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne Effect

1. In 1924, researcher Elton Mayo conducted an experiment that many later tried to bury. He told workers they were being “observed for productivity.” And it was true — they were constantly monitored. Yet within weeks, they began to improve: more focus, higher output, greater initiative. A simple observation changed real behavior — as if the brain had received a “silent command.”

2. Years later, other researchers repeated the study with self-observation. One group was told they possessed an “internal monitoring ability.” The tasks were identical, but those who observed their own thoughts produced responses that were 94% more accurate. The scientists were clear: “We didn’t increase ability. We changed the way they observed themselves.”

3. One participant summarized it this way: “I just watched my thoughts… and then I controlled them.” Mayo explained that when the mind directs conscious attention toward itself, the body begins to act as if under direct command. The brain doesn’t respond to talent — it responds to self-observation.

4. The dark side is the opposite: when someone ignores their own thoughts and lives on autopilot, the brain acts chaotically. Lack of self-observation reduces mental control almost as much as chronic fatigue. The body operates without direction, aligning with the internal void that’s been created.

5. A Harvard psychologist put it plainly: “We become aware of who we are when we watch our thoughts — until we realize we never did.” By changing internal self-observation, the nervous system reorganizes. This is the moment you stop living on autopilot and start living consciously.

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First Blood

Sylvester Stallone

The producers wanted to kill him. Stallone refused. Then he sat down with twenty real veterans and wrote the scene that changed action movies forever.

When Sylvester Stallone signed on to star in First Blood in 1982, the ending was already written. John Rambo was supposed to die. In the original script, based on David Morrell’s 1972 novel, Colonel Trautman would shoot Rambo in the police station. Credits roll. The end.

Kirk Douglas, who was originally cast as Trautman, demanded that Rambo die. He believed it was the only artistic choice. Stallone disagreed. The two clashed so intensely that Douglas quit the production. Richard Crenna was brought in to replace him at the last minute.

But Stallone wasn’t just fighting over a plot point. He was fighting for something bigger.

He told the producers directly that if Rambo died, every Vietnam veteran watching the film would walk away with the same message: the only thing waiting at the end is death. He refused to let that stand.

So he rewrote the ending himself.

He sat down and conducted twenty interviews with real Vietnam veterans. He listened to their stories about coming home to a country that didn’t want them. About the nightmares that never stopped. About friends who died in their arms from booby traps and bombs. About the guilt of surviving when others didn’t.

Then he took everything he heard and compressed it into a single monologue. A stream of consciousness that would come pouring out of a character who had barely spoken a word for the entire film.

When the scene was filmed, Rambo — cornered in the police station, surrounded by armed men — finally broke. For four raw minutes, Stallone delivered one of the most emotionally devastating performances in action movie history. He talked about friends who never came home. A buddy named Danforth who dreamed about cruising Las Vegas in a red 1958 Chevy convertible. A shoeshine boy in Saigon whose box was wired with explosives. The moment everything changed and could never be put back together.

The producers didn’t want the scene. They told Stallone to cut it. He refused.

The first cut of First Blood was three hours long and more drama than action. Stallone hated it so much he reportedly tried to buy the negative just to destroy it. But they kept cutting, reshaping, tightening, until the film became a lean ninety-minute experience where Rambo’s near-total silence made that final monologue hit like a freight train.

When the film screened for a test audience in Las Vegas, they loved it. But when they screened the original ending where Rambo dies, the audience turned hostile. One voice reportedly said that if the director was in the theater, he should be strung up from the nearest lamppost.

The ending with the monologue stayed. Rambo lived.

Years later, the author of the original novel said something remarkable. He said that Rambo’s emotional breakdown in that scene had helped save the marriages of countless Vietnam veterans. Men who had never been able to express what they carried inside watched Stallone weep on screen and, for the first time, learned how to cry again.

Stallone didn’t channel his own Hollywood rejections into that scene. He channeled the real voices of men who had been silenced by a war and forgotten by their country. He fought the producers, fought the director, fought the original ending, and won — not for himself, but for every veteran who needed to hear that their pain was real and that someone was listening.

He later told The Hollywood Reporter that all he wanted was for people to leave the theater with some sense of hope. He said he didn’t want his heroes to die.

That’s why the scene still hits forty years later. It wasn’t acting. It was testimony.

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BREAKING: 98% of Excess Deaths in Highly Vaccinated Australian Regions Were NOT From COVID-19

Australian Excess Deaths 2021

Study finds four Australian regions with little COVID and brief lockdowns saw excess deaths surge after 90%+ COVID “vaccine” uptake in 2021.

Yesterday, Raphael Lataster published an ecological analysis in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine examining excess mortality in Australia during 2021.

Australia provided something rare: a real-world natural experiment. Several regions — Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territory — had very low COVID circulation in 2021, avoided prolonged lockdowns, yet injected nearly their entire adult populations with experimental shots.

By the end of 2021, vaccination coverage (≥1 dose, age 16+) was:

Queensland: 90.8%

Western Australia: 92.1%

South Australia: 92.5%

Northern Territory: 89.3%

These regions vaccinated rapidly and thoroughly — despite having little COVID spread. Then excess deaths surged.
Queensland

361 excess deaths in 2021.
Only 4 were classified as deaths “from or with COVID.”
99% of excess deaths were not attributed to COVID.
Western Australia

140 excess deaths.
0 COVID deaths.
100% of excess deaths occurred without COVID attribution.
South Australia

68 excess deaths.
4 COVID deaths.
94% of excess deaths were not COVID.
Northern Territory

76 excess deaths.
2 COVID deaths.
97% were not COVID-related.
Combined

Across these four regions in 2021:

Total excess deaths: 645

Total deaths classified as “from or with COVID”: 10

That means 635 of 645 excess deaths — 98.4% — were not attributed to COVID.

In these four regions in 2021:

COVID-19 mortality declined.
Lockdowns were brief and limited.
Vaccination rates exceeded 89% in every region.
Excess mortality rose sharply.

When high COVID burden and prolonged lockdown confounders are removed, what remains is mass vaccination. In these four regions, the sequence is unmistakable: rapid, near-universal vaccine rollout followed by a measurable spike in excess deaths.

This study helps to explain why the United States experienced an estimated 470,000–840,000 mRNA “vaccine” deaths:

US Covid Vaccine Deaths

Forcing an entire population to produce non-human, pathogenic proteins inside their bodies comes with consequences.

Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/petermcculloughmd/p/breaking-98-of-excess-deaths-in-highly

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Quote of the Day

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
Thomas Jefferson, Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd US President (1743 – 1826)

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“Billion Dollar Movie In One Prompt”: AI Disruption Crosshairs Hone In On Hollywood Studios

Seedance AI Meme

AI-driven equity disruption was everywhere this past week, spreading like wildfire beyond software into insurance, commercial real estate, financials, shipping, wealth management, and likely many more industries in the coming trading sessions.

One industry in the crosshairs of AI disruption is Hollywood. Some of the publicly traded studios include The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Sony Group Corporation, Netflix, Lionsgate, and others.

On Friday, Axios reported that the Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that the Chinese tech firm has been infringing on its films to develop Seedance 2.0 without compensation.

Disney’s outside attorney, David Singer, wrote a letter to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accusing the AI company of “pre-packaging its Seedance service with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art.”

Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/billion-dollar-movie-one-prompt-ai-disruption-crosshairs-hone-hollywood-studios

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Top Ten Truths About Alcohol That No One in the Industry or Government Wants You to Know by Ian Callaghan

Veteran here. 45 years of drinking. Over a year sober. Let me tell you some uncomfortable truths about alcohol that the £1.5 trillion industry and the governments taking tax money from your poisoning really don’t want discussed.

Buckle up. This gets ugly.

TRUTH 1: ALCOHOL IS A CLASS 1 CARCINOGEN – SAME AS ASBESTOS AND PLUTONIUM

The World Health Organisation put alcohol in Group 1. That means “definitely causes cancer in humans.” Not might. Not probably. Definitely.

You know what else is Group 1? Asbestos. Plutonium. Tobacco. Processed meat. Formaldehyde.

But you can’t buy asbestos at Tesco for £6. You can’t get plutonium on special offer at Sainsbury’s. They’re regulated, banned, and controlled because they cause cancer.

Alcohol? In every supermarket. Every corner shop. Every petrol station. Next to the crisps.

It causes seven types of cancer: mouth, throat, oesophagus, liver, breast, bowel, and larynx. That’s not disputed. That’s an established medical fact.

But the industry doesn’t want cancer warnings on bottles because it might affect sales. And the government doesn’t want to push too hard because they’re making £12 billion a year in alcohol duty.

So they let you buy carcinogens with your weekly shop and pretend it’s fine because of tradition, culture, and profit margins.

TRUTH 2: THERE IS NO SAFE LEVEL OF ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION

None. Zero. Not a glass with dinner. Not a pint after work. Not champagne at weddings.

The WHO published this in 2023. The Canadian government updated their guidelines: no amount of alcohol is safe.

But you won’t see that on billboards. You won’t see it in advertising. You definitely won’t hear it from your GP unless you specifically ask.

Why? Because if people genuinely understood that ANY amount is harmful, they might stop drinking. And we can’t have that. Think of the economy.

“Moderation” is a marketing term. It’s not a health recommendation. It’s the alcohol industry’s way of keeping you buying while pretending to be responsible.

There is no safe dose of poison. You’re just choosing how much poison you’re willing to accept.

TRUTH 3: ALCOHOL IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN HEROIN AND CRACK COCAINE

In 2010, Professor David Nutt published research ranking drugs by harm. Alcohol came out on top. More harmful than heroin, crack, meth, and cocaine.

Not just harm to the user. Total harm—including harm to others, harm to society, harm to families, economic cost, and healthcare burden.

Alcohol wins. It’s the most dangerous drug we have. And it’s legal, available everywhere, and actively promoted.

Heroin? Illegal. Prison time. Addiction services. Social stigma.

Alcohol? Sponsored sports events. TV advertising. “Drink responsibly” as if that makes it fine.

Professor Nutt lost his government advisory position for publishing this research. Because truth is less important than protecting an industry worth trillions.

TRUTH 4: ALCOHOL IS A NEUROTOXIN THAT KILLS BRAIN CELLS

Every time you drink, you’re poisoning your nervous system. That’s not metaphorical. That’s literal biochemistry.

Alcohol crosses the blood-brain barrier. It damages neurons. It kills brain cells. It impairs cognitive function. It shrinks your brain over time.

“But I feel fine!” Yeah, because brain damage is gradual. You don’t wake up after one night of drinking and forget your name. You slowly lose cognitive capacity over the years, so gradually you don’t notice.

Until you’re 50 and can’t remember words. Can’t focus. Can’t think as clearly as you used to. And you put it down to ageing.

It’s not ageing. It’s decades of voluntary exposure to neurotoxins.

The alcohol industry knows this. They just don’t put “BRAIN DAMAGE IN A BOTTLE” on the label because, shockingly, that doesn’t sell.

TRUTH 5: MODERATE DRINKING IS NOT GOOD FOR YOUR HEART

Remember that? Red wine is good for your heart? The French Paradox? Resveratrol and antioxidants?

All bollocks. Industry-funded research. Cherry-picked data. Correlation mistaken for causation.

Independent research shows that alcohol increases your risk of cardiovascular disease. Even moderate drinking raises blood pressure, increases the risk of atrial fibrillation, and contributes to heart disease.

The “heart healthy” myth was created and promoted by alcohol companies. And it worked. Millions of people still think a glass of wine a day is medicinal.

It’s not. It’s poison. There’s nothing in wine that you can’t get from actual grapes without the ethanol.

But “eat a grape” doesn’t sell bottles. “Heart healthy wine” does.

The industry made billions on this lie. And people are still drinking for their health. Unbelievable.

TRUTH 6: ALCOHOL IS MORE ADDICTIVE THAN YOU THINK

About 10-15% of people who drink will develop alcohol use disorder. That’s not a small number. That’s millions of people.

But it’s presented as a personal failing. “Alcoholics” have a problem. Everyone else is fine. Drinking normally. In control.

Except alcohol is physically addictive. It changes your brain chemistry. It creates dependency. And the line between “social drinker” and “problem drinker” is thinner than anyone wants to admit.

The industry loves the “alcoholic” label. It puts all the blame on the individual. It’s not the product. It’s not the marketing. It’s not the availability. It’s YOU. You’re the problem. The alcohol is fine.

Except it’s not. It’s an addictive substance. That’s what it does. That’s its nature.

But if we acknowledged that alcohol is inherently addictive, we’d have to question why we’re allowing an addictive drug to be sold everywhere with minimal restriction.

Can’t have that conversation. Bad for business.

TRUTH 7: THE GOVERNMENT MAKES MORE MONEY FROM ALCOHOL THAN IT SPENDS ON ALCOHOL HARM

UK government takes in about £12 billion a year in alcohol duty and VAT.

The cost of alcohol harm to the NHS, police, courts, social services, lost productivity? Around £27 billion a year.

So the government makes money, but society pays the real cost.

And the government knows this. But they can’t ban it or heavily restrict it because:

a) Political suicide—people would riot

b) They’d lose £12 billion in easy revenue

c) The alcohol lobby is incredibly powerful

So they do token gestures. Minimum pricing. “Drink aware” campaigns funded by the industry itself. Guidelines nobody follows.

Meanwhile, 3 million people die globally every year from alcohol. But tax revenue is more important than public health.

TRUTH 8: ALCOHOL CAUSES VIOLENCE, CRIME, AND SOCIAL HARM ON A MASSIVE SCALE

39% of violent crime involves alcohol. Domestic abuse, assault, murder—alcohol is a factor in nearly half.

But we don’t talk about it like that. We talk about “drunk and disorderly.” We talk about “lads on a night out.” We minimise it. Normalise it.

If any illegal drug caused this level of violence and social harm, there’d be a war on it. Armed police. International task forces. Billions spent eradicating it.

Alcohol causes the same harm? “Well, people need to drink responsibly. It’s not the alcohol’s fault.”

Yes it fucking is. Alcohol reduces inhibitions and increases aggression. That’s pharmacology. That’s what it does.

But we can’t acknowledge that because then we’d have to do something about it. And doing something would affect profits.

So we accept thousands of violent crimes every year as the price of keeping booze legal and available.

TRUTH 9: THE ALCOHOL INDUSTRY ACTIVELY TARGETS YOUNG PEOPLE AND VULNERABLE GROUPS

Despite saying they don’t. Despite “responsible marketing” codes. Despite industry self-regulation.

They sponsor sports that kids watch. They use social media influencers. They create sweet, candy-flavoured drinks that appeal to young people. They advertise near schools and universities.

Why? Because they need to recruit new drinkers. Because older drinkers either quit, cut back, or die.

The industry needs young people to start drinking early and drink often. That’s their customer pipeline.

And they do it while claiming they’re against underage drinking. While funding “drink aware” campaigns. While pretending they care.

They don’t. They care about profit. And young drinkers are profitable for decades.

TRUTH 10: YOU’RE BEING MANIPULATED BY THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MARKETING IN HUMAN HISTORY

The alcohol industry has convinced entire societies that their product—a toxic, addictive, carcinogenic poison—is essential for:

Celebration. Commiseration. Socialising. Relaxing. Success. Sophistication. Confidence. Fun. Romance. Culture. Tradition.

They’ve made it so embedded in every aspect of life that NOT drinking is seen as weird. As extreme. As something that requires explanation and justification.

Think about that. You have to explain why you DON’T want to consume poison.

That’s the power of marketing. That’s generations of propaganda so effective that the absence of their product is now abnormal.

They’ve normalised poison. They’ve made it sophisticated. They’ve made it essential. They’ve made it so you defend their right to sell it to you even after knowing what it does.

That’s genius. Evil genius. But genius nonetheless.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Alcohol is a toxic, addictive, carcinogenic neurotoxin that causes cancer, brain damage, violence, and massive social harm.

It’s more dangerous than illegal drugs. It has no safe consumption level. It’s not good for your heart or any other part of you. It’s designed to be addictive and is marketed to keep you drinking.

The industry knows all this. The government knows all this. They just don’t want YOU to know all this. Or think about it too hard.

Because if you did? If everyone did? The whole £1.5 trillion house of cards collapses.

So they keep it vague. They keep it about “personal responsibility.” They keep the truth buried under marketing, tradition, and cultural normalisation.

And people keep drinking. Keep getting sick. Keep dying. Keep defending the substance that’s killing them.

After 45 years of drinking and over a year sober, I finally see it clearly:

Alcohol is the most successful con in human history. They convinced us to pay them to poison us. And we did it happily. Repeatedly. For our entire adult lives.

Then when it damaged us, we blamed ourselves. Not the poison. Not the industry. Ourselves.

That’s the real genius. They sold us poison, we developed problems from the poison, and we took the blame.

Fucking brilliant when you think about it.

Veteran. 45 years drinking. Over a year sober. Finally seeing the con for what it is.

The truth is ugly. Uncomfortable. Inconvenient.

But it’s still the truth.

And no amount of marketing, lobbying, or tax revenue changes it.

Alcohol is poison. Always has been. Always will be.

Everything else is just expensive packaging and lies.

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Cholesterol Truth

Cholesterol Truth

Did you know that one of the most rigorous cholesterol trials in history was kept hidden for 40 years?

I didn’t either and when I learned about it, I was stunned.

Between 1968 and 1973, researchers conducted what should have reshaped nutrition science:

THE MINNESOTA CORONARY EXPERIMENT.

It was a gold-standard, blinded, randomized controlled trial involving 9,423 men and women across six mental institutions and one nursing home. A rare setting allowing precise dietary control

The question was simple:

If saturated fats like butter and beef are replaced with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid, will lowering cholesterol reduce heart disease and save lives?

The intervention worked exactly as intended.

Cholesterol fell by 13.8%.

On paper, this should have been a success but the outcomes shocked researchers.

Lower cholesterol did NOT reduce mortality.

In fact, for every 30 mg/dL drop, the risk of death INCREASED by 22%.

Even more unsettling, autopsy-confirmed data showed heart attacks were nearly twice as common in the low-saturated-fat, high-vegetable-oil group (41% vs 22%).

Let that sink in.

This wasn’t observational data or food questionnaires. It was controlled feeding, randomization, and autopsy-confirmed outcomes.

And then the data disappeared.

Stored on nine-track tapes, forgotten in a basement, it remained unpublished for 40 years until it was finally recovered and published in The BMJ (2016).

To confirm the findings, researchers went further, running a meta-analysis of similar randomized trials (10,800+ participants) that specifically replaced saturated fat with linoleic-acid-rich vegetable oils.

The result?

No reduction in heart disease

No reduction in all-cause mortality

A trend toward worse outcomes

So why didn’t this change the narrative?

Some argue the linoleic acid dose was too high. Others point to possible trans fats. But the uncomfortable truth remains:

Cholesterol fell and outcomes worsened.

Even more striking, the relationship held across both groups: the lower cholesterol dropped, the higher mortality rose, regardless of diet.

The takeaway isn’t that cholesterol doesn’t matter. It’s that biology is more complex than a single biomarker.

Before demonizing foods like butter and beef or issuing sweeping dietary guidelines, we should ask:

What does the totality of evidence really show?

Who benefits and who might be harmed?

Because sometimes, science doesn’t fail.

Sometimes, it just gets buried.

<p>Walter White on Canivore Rx on Facebook</p>

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Doctors Die Differently

Doctors Die Differently

1. Hospice workers see a clear pattern: ordinary people in their final months choose chemotherapy until the end. Resuscitation, tubes, machines. Death in a hospital surrounded by equipment. Families spend tens of thousands on the final weeks. Meanwhile, 80% of doctors facing the same diagnosis refuse aggressive treatment. Almost none agree to resuscitation. Most die at home with family.

2. Here’s why doctors choose differently: they know what actually happens. One oncologist said: “I’ve treated cancer for 30 years. If I get stage four, I won’t do chemotherapy.” Stage four chemo extends life 2-3 months, but those months are nausea, pain, weakness. He’d rather have two good months at home than three terrible months in a hospital. Doctors aren’t choosing death. They’re choosing quality over quantity.

3. A Johns Hopkins study found doctors are three times more likely to sign DNR orders than the general public. They don’t want resuscitation because they’ve performed it. Movies show two minutes and a hug. Reality is broken ribs, brain damage, months on machines, then death anyway. Survival rate for hospital cardiac arrest is 18%. Survival without brain damage is 3%. Doctors know these numbers. Patients don’t.

4. Medical industry won’t emphasize this because end-of-life care is massively profitable. The average American spends more on healthcare in their final year than in the previous 80 years combined. Hospitals profit from aggressive intervention. Doctors who’ve seen the outcomes choose hospice and dignity instead.

5. You’ve probably never considered that the people who understand medicine best choose to die without it. After seeing this pattern for five years, I signed a DNR. No aggressive chemotherapy at stage four. Hospice, family, dignity.