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The Arrow #279 Cancer, RFK, Fauci, Tankers, and AI

Greetings everyone.

As they say at the start of every medical convention I’ve ever been to…First, let’s go over a bit of housekeeping.

I get emails all the time from folks who aren’t getting their issues of The Arrow via email, or are having difficulty logging into their accounts online. Since I don’t know what’s causing all this, I forward these inquiries to the customer service department of beehiiv, the platform I use to write The Arrow.

I generally get the same response. It’s along the lines of “We checked out this subscriber’s issue. Seems the subscriber has blocked the delivery.” Or, that “the email provider has blocked the receipt of The Arrow.

I’m such a tech Luddite that I didn’t know email providers could unilaterally block an email address without the user of the email knowing it. I know when emails from a certain address are not opened after a while, the email provider often starts sending them to the spam folder. But apparently the providers can also block delivery.

Sometimes beehiiv can undo the block, but often it cannot.

So, if you’re not getting your issue of The Arrow, check to see if it is somehow being blocked.

I also want to discuss the Odds & Ends section.

I read a lot every day across a wide range of subjects. If I find something worth writing about at length in The Arrow, I save it. More often than not, I come across subjects that are mildly interesting, or even quite interesting, but aren’t really something I want to dig into and write a lot about. I save these articles for the Odds & Ends section.

I gather them over a week or so here and there. MD adds to the list; she also reads all the time, but on different subjects.

Without fail, after every Arrow, I get comments or poll responses (sometimes even emails) about something that appeared in the Odds & Ends. When I first see these responses, I have no idea what the writer is talking about. Then it finally dawns on me that they were prompted by something in the Odds & Ends. By the time I get these messages, I usually can’t even remember what I stuck in the Odds & Ends, so I’m baffled by the response until I finally figure it out.

Occasionally people want to argue with me about the info or opinions in these links. I can assure you I don’t have strong enough opinions about anything in that section to argue for or against it. If I did, I would write about it at length instead of just sticking it up with a brief comment and a link. There just there for readers to peruse if there’s something that strikes their fancy.

Questions and a comments in the poll responses.

First, someone wrote:

Sooo, if doing low carb will make you flunk a 5hr GTT [glucose tolerance test], how should a low-carber prepare so as to pass it so their PCP won’t screech at you?

As I wrote in the last Arrow, when people are fat-adapted, switching to being more carb-adapted is like flipping a switch. People who are carb-adapted have to go through a much longer process to become fat-adapted. Before taking a glucose tolerance test, eat carbs the day before the test. That should do the trick. Many times people going in for a GTT are told to eat carbs the day before. The above is why. If you want to be extra sure, eat carbs for a couple of days before.

I laughed out loud at this next one. Above the golf pic in the last Arrow, I wrote “Below is another photo MD snapped of my son and me at a golf tournament…”

The poll respondent wrote:

Also, you are to be complimented on your use of "me" in its proper context, whereas most people I hear today would incorrectly say "my son and I". A search for "me myself and I" will provide the grammar rules that most have abandoned today.

I had to laugh because the misuse of the words me and I is also one of my pet peeves. And it is pervasive even among educated people who ought to know better. Jesus wept!

In what I’m about to write, I’ll probably become a victim of Skitt’s Law, one of the inviolable laws of the internet. Skitt’s Law posits that “that someone who corrects another’s grammar or spelling mistake is bound to make such a mistake in the very post that makes the correction.”

So, with that in mind…

During language acquisition kids start out using “me” in the subjective sense. They say “me want food,” or “me want go,” etc. As their parents correct them, they begin to use “I” properly. They say “I want food,” or “I want to go.”

When they start school or before, they learn that if they want to include themselves in a group, they always put the “I” last. As in “Tom, Bill, Sally and I are going to the circus.”

Somehow that lesson gets glued into many many people’s brains, and they can’t get it out. They seem to think it is proper when listing a group of people to put the “I” last, even if it is in the objective.

They will say give the money to Tom, Bill, Eddie, and I when the correct thing to say would be give the money to Tom, Bill, Eddie and me.

No one would ever say “give the money to I.” But throw another person or two or three in there, and the old lesson of always putting yourself at the end of a list of names takes hold.

I clearly remember my teacher in early elementary school teaching us how to use “me” vs “I.” She told us if we couldn’t remember the rule for listing multiple people in the objective sense to silently pretend it was just ourself alone. Would we say “hold the door for me” or would we say “hold the door for I”? It was obvious the former was correct.

The rule holds true when you add a bunch of names together. Hold the door for Tom, Bill, and me.

I had an acquaintance years ago who worked in a silk-stocking law firm. When I had the occasion to call him at home and got his message, it was along the lines of this: “Hi, this is Bob, you’ve reached the residence of the Smiths [not the real name], please leave a message for Melissa or I at the tone.” ARRRGGGHHH!

You even hear it from the very highly educated. Bill Clinton went to Georgetown University, was a Rhodes Scholar, went to Oxford University and Yale Law School. And yet I heard him on the campaign trail during his first run at the presidency (which he won) along with Al Gore. He implored the crowd to “Give Al and I a chance.” Jesus wept again!

Okay, I’ve probably violated Skitt’s Law as it applies to grammar a dozen times already, so I’ll quit. Just nice to know that others are as bothered by the “I-me” misuse as I am.

Another sharp eyed reader of the last Arrow noted that the paper I discussed and linked to did not include Tim Noakes as an author. That was my mistake. I had just read a paper by Dr. Noakes before I read the paper I referenced on how a keto-diet and high-intensity interval training could make you smarter. For those who are interested, here is the link to the Noakes paper.

This Arrow is going to be a bit different from most of the others. I’m working on a couple of longer posts on nutritional subjects, but they haven’t completely come together to my satisfaction. So I’m going to make the rest of this post kind of a longer version of the Odds & Ends.

As I’m sure most of you know, I like to read a lot. Although I always have a number of books going at any given time, I also spend a lot of time (probably more than I should) reading on the internet. I subscribe to way more Substacks than I have time to read, so I typically skim them and then read those that I find compelling. Same with long articles in various newspapers and news sites I subscribe to. Most of the time, I have some general knowledge of the subjects in these articles, but not always. I find those I know less about the most intriguing, because they allow me to learn something.

But I always keep Pommer’s Law in the back of my mind. Another of the many eponymous laws of the internet, Pommer’s law asserts that “a person’s mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”

I don’t believe Pommer’s Law holds universally, but I always keep it in the back of my mind when I am reading material I know little about.

Before I get into the posts I found fascinating (and hope you will, too), I want to start with a post I do know something about. I know a lot about it, in fact.

Another Cancer Story

There are three people I know who are fully on board with the metabolic theory of cancer. The first is Dr. Thomas Seyfried, who has written a technical book on the subject along with many scientific papers. I’ve seen him speak on numerous occasions and have socialized with him multiple times.

Another is Dr. William Makis, who is a Canadian radiation oncologist. He ran into issues with his home province of Alberta and is engaged in a lawsuit with the authorities there. He has obtained his license to practice in the US and is developing a cancer clinic in Florida. He advocates traditional radiation and chemotherapy along with repurposed drugs.

The third is Dr. Paul Marik, who was one of the – if not – most prestigious specialists in critical care medicine. He ended up getting canceled because he called out the whole COVID fiasco for what it was. Lately he has been directing his efforts toward using repurposed drugs and other alternative approaches for treating those with cancer,

I learned about the metabolic basis of cancer from Dr. Seyfried years ago. But when I came down with it myself, I was a distance away from him (he’s in Boston), so it would have been difficult to establish any kind of clinical relationship. And he is a PhD, not an MD, so he could not treat me. Plus he was using experimental drugs I wouldn’t have had access to.

I ended up forming a relationship of sorts with Dr. Makis. He provided the protocol I followed early on. As those of you who read my post on how I treated my cancer know, I eventually consulted with a number of other oncologists who helped me get to the No Evidence of Disease (NED) state I’m in now.

Dr. Makis’s Substack is basically an ongoing list of testimonials along with some explanation of the dosages of the various repurposed drugs used.

After I was in the early NED stage, I discovered Dr. Marik. He publishes a terrific Substack providing an in-depth discussion of all facets of cancer treatment, particularly his development of what he calls the Metabolic Trap . If I were just starting on my own treatment journey, knowing what I know now, I would work with Dr. Marik.

I had some bad reactions to the heavy doses of repurposed drugs I was taking on the Makis protocol. He reduced the doses in response, but I still had plenty of side effects. Dr. Marik’s protocol uses lower doses and alternates the repurposed drugs back and forth. Which, I suspect, would have not generated so many of the side effects I experienced. Of course, they may not have subdued the cancer as well as the higher doses. That’s the big unseen.

All three of the above recommend a ketogenic diet as a baseline to keep blood sugar levels low. All of the repurposed drugs are superimposed on the keto diet, which reduces the amount of glucose available to the cancer.

The first post I want to present is that of a woman who had a rare and aggressive ovarian cancer, and how she and her husband Chris challenged the system and ended up with her achieving NED. She just had her first PET scan showing no evidence of disease on June 13, 2026. (Incidentally, I had my 2nd PET scan showing NED a week ago myself. Yea!)

After Alex’s first surgery in June 2023 — a complete hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy — we quickly sensed that something about the process didn’t feel right. At the time, we believed this was standard ovarian cancer treatment. We were scared and wanted immediate action, and we were largely uninformed about what the typical sequence of care should be.

It was only later that we learned the more common approach would have been to do some chemotherapy first to assess how the disease responded, followed by surgery and then additional chemotherapy. The fact that surgery was performed first, without that initial response assessment, created an inconsistency that, in hindsight, made us question whether the care was being thoughtfully coordinated.

Decisions seemed to be made quickly, and Alex was largely being managed under standard protocols rather than receiving care that felt thoughtfully tailored to her specific situation. This experience became our first real wake-up call that the care being provided might not be as thoughtful or personalized as we had hoped.

These are the kinds of things you think of after the damage is done. And, unfortunately, there are no do overs.

About six months after Alex’s surgery, she got an independent pathology review of her tumor. Based on a reevaluation of the tissue sample, it was suggested that Alex undergo molecular profiling to determine specific mutations her tumor might have that could serve as therapeutic targets.

Despite this clear recommendation, more than two years would pass before comprehensive molecular profiling was finally performed. Looking back, we now see this delay as a significant gap in the care — one that left us navigating treatment without critical information during a time when better guidance could have made a meaningful difference.

In the meantime, follow-up imaging showed that the cancer was progressing. Additional rounds of chemotherapy, including Avastin, were given to test whether the tumors would respond. When scans showed roughly a 30% reduction in disease burden, the team determined that Alex was a candidate for HIPEC surgery — an extremely demanding procedure involving major abdominal surgery followed by heated chemotherapy circulated throughout the abdominal cavity, with a long and physically taxing recovery. The surgery was performed in August 2024.

Unfortunately, the disease recurred.

Alex and Chris pressed ahead with having the molecular analysis performed. They also began using AI to interpret all the lab tests, doctors’ reports, pathology reports, scans, etc. They kept querying AI until it gave them answers they understood.

As they wrote:

This experience reinforced something we came to believe deeply: when it comes to understanding and directing your own care, it is essential to maintain control of your own destiny rather than relying entirely on others for clarity.

Truer words were never written.

It is imperative that one take charge of one’s own health. No one else cares as much about you as you do. (The Bride adds — except maybe your spouse!)

The deep dive they conducted via AI on the various treatment options available ultimately persuaded them to pursue a treatment pathway specific to Alex instead of the Standard of Care (SOC).

They decided upon Dr. Marik’s Metabolic Trap approach.

This clarity gave us the confidence to make a full commitment. In March 2026, we decided to go all in on the Metabolic Trap approach. We made major lifestyle and dietary changes together as a permanent way of living, rather than as temporary measures aimed at achieving a specific result. These became non-negotiable parts of our daily life.

They jumped in with a full head of steam. Just as I did with my own ketogenic diet and repurposed drugs.

In March, April, and May of 2026, we worked hard to implement the Metabolic Trap approach as a complete way of life. This required real dedication. There were difficult moments, and it became clear that this could not be done half-heartedly. We made major lifestyle and dietary changes together as a permanent way of living. These changes — including careful attention to food choices, nutrition, and daily routines — became non-negotiable parts of how we lived.

We also committed to a structured, Marik-inspired Metabolic Trap protocol that combined repurposed medications and nutraceuticals, using cycling strategies to maintain effectiveness while supporting overall health. Supportive therapies such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), red light therapy, and regular exercise were incorporated as consistent parts of the routine. The goal was to apply pressure on the cancer from multiple angles while strengthening the body’s resilience.

Then came the June 2026 PET scan showing NED. And the huge, overflowing sense of relief that came with it. (I know exactly how they felt!)

There is much more to their story, and I would encourage you to read it.

If you have any interest at all in the metabolic theory of cancer and how Dr. Marik’s metabolic trap works, I would strongly encourage you to subscribe to his Substack and support his work. If you have cancer, or are interested in the metabolic theory of cancer and its treatment, his Cancer Library is well worth your time.

Links to all the above.

Moving along…

Say It Ain’t So

Not long ago, Dr. Robert Malone published a short Substack post alerting his readers that he had heard rumblings through the HHS grapevine that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would be stepping down as the head of the HHS shortly after July 4th. Malone is pretty much an insider, so I value his opinion on this.

I know some people who know some people in RFK’s sphere in Washington. I checked with them, and they say it is true.

Since I’m not privy to RFK, Jr’s thinking, I don’t know specifically why he would be leaving. But assuming he is, I have a few guesses.

When he took charge of the HHS, he did so with one overarching goal: Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). He wanted to get to the bottom of the huge prevalence of chronic disease in America. He promised to examine the validity of the current childhood vaccine schedule. He wanted to ensure that going forward all vaccines were properly tested. He believed none should be mandated. He also aimed to clean up the US food supply by getting rid of all kinds of additives, dyes, and artificial flavorings. And to address all the pesticides and herbicides making their way into it.

Everything he has tried to do has more or less blown up in his face.

The courts have hobbled him in many of his vaccine efforts. The military ended the mandate on flu vaccines, which was a minor victory. Now the military has since reinstated it, so a short-lived victory it was. The HHS has forked over more than a billion dollars to Big Pharma to work on more mRNA vaccines, presumably over Kennedy’s objection.

He’s persuaded Big Food to remove a few artificial dyes from their ultra-processed foods, but that’s about it.

He succeeded in getting whole milk put back into student lunches. And incorporating full fat dairy and animal foods into the dietary guidelines, however those guidelines still imposed a 10 percent cap on saturated fat, which is irreconcilable with the broader recommendations. He also managed to sign “COVID-19 determinations terminating the COVID-19 Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) declarations for drugs and biological products and for medical devices.” It’s a day late and a dollar short, but he did manage to pull that one off.

RFK, Jr used to appear frequently with Trump, but I haven’t seen the two of them together in ages. Especially after Trump broke with him on the glyphosate issue. (I understand Trump’s position on the issue. He had to balance the farm, pesticide, and herbicide industries – which would have been devastated had there been a ban of glyphosate – against the MAHA movement.)

Now RFK’s relegated to obviously rehearsed back and forth public announcements with Mehmet Oz on Obamacare fraud. Oz may end up taking over RFK’s role. Who knows?

My guess is that RFK, Jr. is tired of seeing all his plans thwarted. He may even be considering a presidential run of his own on the Democrat ticket in 2028. If the Dems take him back, he could be a frontrunner.

All this is total speculation on my part.

He may still be in his position after July 5. So don’t make book on it.

The Arrow is a reader-supported guide to nutrition, medicine, books, critical thinking & culture. Both free and paid subscriptions are available. If you would like to support my work, the best way is by taking out a paid subscription.

Tulsi Drops a Bomb

June 19, 2026 was Tulsi Gabbard’s last day as Director of National Intelligence. She stepped down early allegedly to be with her husband, who had just received a serious cancer diagnosis. I say “allegedly” because she had already planned to leave at the end of June. I assume her early departure was due to her husband’s health. But as it is with governments of all kinds, one never knows.

When she left, she went out with a bang. A major bang. An atomic-bomb-sized bang if you are Anthony Fauci.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.

Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.

I’ve taken a cursory look at the released documents, and they are still too heavily redacted to make much of. At least from my perspective. But they do appear to show that Anthony Fauci lied to congress on multiple occasions. (You can read them yourself. Just click on the press release above and download them from there.)

The documents are notable in a couple of respects.

First, they are filled with emails showing that Fauci tried desperately to hide the fact that he had funded the Wuhan Lab to perform gain of function research. And he worked his little bureaucratic rat’s tail off to ensure his secret wouldn’t be revealed by the intelligence agencies; the members largely seemed aware of the situation, but did not disclose it.

Second, and perhaps most striking, there has been a near-complete blackout by traditional media of these disclosures.

I searched the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times using multiple search terms. I couldn’t find a single mention of this fairly momentous document drop. That absence reinforces a view I’ve held for a long time.

The media is less biased in how it covers stories than what it chooses to cover. Critics often deride FOX News as “Faux News,” implying that it distorts facts. I am not convinced that is generally the case. Rather, it tends to omit stories that do not align with its audience’s preferences; what it does report is often mostly accurate.

The same dynamic applies to MSNBC, the NY Times, and other more progressive outlets. When they report, the reporting is typically generally accurate. The issue is that they often do not cover stories their audience may find unwelcome.

Getting back to Fauci, what do all these recently released documents actually imply?

I’ve got to admit that I have only skimmed them. My patience for bureaucratic gobbledygook is limited. I hate reading any kind of government documentation. And reading through these thousands of redacted emails is not my cup of tea.

But from ones I’ve seen singled out by others, Fauci is in a fix.

Before these materials were released, he agreed to voluntarily appear before congress. After their release, he backed out of the deal. Senator Rand Paul, who has a real animus against Fauci, subpoenaed him, so he is obligated to appear.

Fauci was pardoned by Biden (or possibly the autopen) in the final moments of Biden’s presidency. Since I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know for certain how his pardon will hold up in light of the emerging evidence.

One of the other laws of the internet (I don’t know the name of this one) says that if you want to find out the truth about something, simply make a statement on the internet. If you are wrong, a throng of people will point out your error.

With that in mind, and based on my limited knowledge, here is why I think Fauci is between a rock and a hard place.

According to my sources, he appears to have two primary options. He can come clean, or he can continue to lie through his teeth.

If he chooses the former, he may avoid legal liability, because of his presidential pardon. But he will be shown publicly to be the liar he probably is. The alternative is to continue to brazen it out and deny everything. If in doing so, he ends up lying again to congress under oath, his pardon won’t help him out. Presidential pardons apply to past conduct, not future actions. Lying to Congress could therefore expose him to criminal liability, including potential imprisonment.

A third possibility I just thought of is that he could plead the Fifth. Doing so would allow him to avoid both self-incrimination and making false statements. The more I think about it, the more likely that outcome seems.

We’ll see soon enough.

If I’ve botched my legal analysis of how this could go, I’m counting on lawyers out there who are in the know to obey whatever internet law that is and set me straight.

Speaking of straight…

The Strait of Hormuz has been much in the news lately. (How’s that for a segue?)

Tanker Map of the World

I’ve been getting all kinds of mixed messages about what’s going on in Iran and what’s happening in the Strait of Hormuz. The opinions are all over the place. On one day, the Iranian media says nothing is going through the strait, whereas the same day our government says tankers are going through the strait.

I figured there had to be some industry group that tracked the tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. It took some digging, but I did find the site. It covers not only the Strait of Hormuz, but the entire world. I spent more time than I should studying this site. It’s incredibly interesting. If you’re interested in such things.

Whenever I read or hear a report on the status of the Strait of Hormuz, I head to the site for clarification.

Here is what the site looks like when you open it.

I have a trackpad, so I use my fingers to navigate to the Strait of Hormuz.

Here’s what it looks like right now.

It looks like a handful of tankers are making it through at this point.

If I zoom out a bit, I can see the tanker situation on both sides of the strait.

It’s pretty obvious that most of the tankers are still clustered on one side of the strait or the other. Which, to my way of thinking, indicates the strait is not completely open.

Looking at the analytics, it is clear that more traffic is moving through the strait than when it was at a standstill, but not nearly in the numbers that were chugging through prior to the US attack on Iran.

You can click on any of the ships you find and learn their names, where they’re from, and whether they are loaded or unloaded.

If you’re like me and skeptical of media reports, you can go to this site and make your own determination as to whether or not the strait is open and how tanker traffic fluctuates in real time.

Most of you probably won’t have the excitement level I do over this. I love it because it allows me to verify the media reports, which I find gratifying. Others may not give a flip. But I posted it just in case there are a few obsessives out there.

Is AI the End of the World as We Know It?

You would think so if you believe most of the media. Reports are rife with estimations of how unemployment will skyrocket as a consequence of AI taking the place of traditional workers. A few reports here and there naysay it, but based on my compulsive reading, most are promoting the idea that AI will create an unemployment crisis of enormous proportions.

A recent post by one of my favorite philosophers has assuaged any angst I might have had on the issue. (The truth is that I had no angst about it in terms of how it might impact me, but I did worry a bit about the effect it might have on others.)

Michael Heumer, a professor of philosophy at University of Colorado in Boulder, writes a great Substack titled Fake Noûs. You may remember him from a post I wrote years ago in which I recommended one of his books Understanding Knowledge. This book delves deeply into how we know what we think we know. He discusses how philosophers determine what is real knowledge and what is opinion. Much of what we think we know is not really knowledge in the philosophical sense, but is opinions we’ve formed over life. Understanding Knowledge shows readers how to differentiate between the two. It’s a tough read for the first 50 pages or so, but really worth the effort if one really wants to understand knowledge.

I get a lot from Heumer’s writings, both from his books and his Substack. He uses strict philosophical reasoning to make his points. You might think a professor of philosophy from Boulder would have predictably liberal perspectives on everything. But he doesn’t. He goes where his reasoning takes him irrespective of politics. I pretty much agree with him on everything except for one. He is a vegetarian, and I think he is using motivated reasoning on that subject.

In a recent Substack titled In Praise of Job Destruction, he goes through the reasoning process elucidating why AI is not likely to be the end of the world employment-wise.

He kicks his post off with a section called The Naive Concern in which he writes:

Nearly any beneficial technology can be attacked for “destroying jobs.” The latest suspect: AI. Many are now worried that computers will destroy white collar jobs. I, on the other hand, am only worried that it might not be good enough to destroy many jobs. I think the current round of hand-wringing about AI job-destruction is similarly fallacious to worries about other technological advances, such as machines that harvest food or manufacture cloth.

He goes on to lay out the step-by-step proof of his point.

In his second section, he starts thusly:

In the Middle Ages, over 90% of the population were farmers.

Since then, we developed harvesting machines, fertilizers, better crop breeds, etc., that vastly increase food production, so that one farmer of today can produce the output of something like 100 medieval farmers. Today, under 5% of the population are farmers, and we have a lot more and better food. Presumably, a lot of farmers were forced to stop farming along the way.

If you follow the reasoning of section 1 above, this must have been a disaster. Why aren’t 85% of the population now unemployed? Somehow, we found new things for people to do. And we keep finding things for people to do, through every wave of technological advancement. The increased mechanization of factories did not lead to mass unemployment, nor did the computer revolution that occurred during my lifetime; they just made our society richer. There is no observed trend toward unemployment as technology advances.

He then describes how the situation comports with Bastiat’s Broken Window theory of economics. Frédéric Bastiat is my favorite classical liberal theorist and political economist, so I’ve got to admit that when anyone quotes him or his theories, I’m sold.

And Heumer describes the situation in terms of Say’s law, which holds true.

Unlike the first 50 pages of his book I discussed above, this Substack post is easy to read and understand. No philosophical symbols (which I struggle to remember), just a plain textual explanation positing why AI won’t destroy our lives, but will instead probably make them better.

Give it a look if you’re worried about the alleged coming unemployment apocalypse. You’ll be reassured.

Why You Can’t Believe Most Studies

Here is a video from a recent talk my good friend Emily Kaplan made to a group in Florida. Emily is a investigative reporter, and her talk is about the lack of actual science behind many of the ‘scientific’ papers published today. Her talk is excellent, though it will leave you perturbed as to the state of science. As you should be.

Emily is a founder of a group called the Broken Science Initiative that is working to change all this. I, too, am a member of this group. You should give it a look and join if you’re interesting in changing how science has been corrupted.

Indigenous Bullsh*t

I read a great post with the above title. The subtitle is “History Doesn't Care Who Got Here First.” I’m not going to excerpt it, because it doesn’t lend itself to a paragraph here and one there. The whole piece needs to be read as one. I hope you will.

Right now I’m in the process of reading about a wagon train trek across the western US in the early 1800s. There is much discussion of the internecine warfare between the various tribes of American Indians. Many of the lands native to one tribe passed back and forth via conquest by other tribes. Then the white man moved west and conquered all. Is that any worse than one tribe overthrowing another while stealing horses and taking women? All of which was common along with some pretty brutal torture.

Anyway, read the post. You may find it as interesting as I did.

And, finally…

Look What Happened After MD and I Left

Little Rock, Arkansas was recently crowned with a most dubious title. MD and I tried our best, but we skipped town almost 30 years ago. The results speak for themselves.

I’m nearing the end of my character limit on this post. I have a handful of other subjects I intended to include. Two articles in particular I wanted to write about involve radical Islam. I kept putting them off till I ran out of space. Let me know in the comments if you would like me to post on these at some point. Also let me know if you would like these eclectic posts from time to time instead of just a steady diet of nutritional topics.

Odds and Ends

Newsletter Recommendations

I made a cameo appearance in MD’s latest Substack. She was describing the treatment of wounds incurred from a purported bear attack. She compared the repair of these wounds to my repair of a chainsaw accident experienced by a guy who showed up at our clinic dripping blood everywhere.

When my husband and I owned our first outpatient urgent care center years ago (about 1983 or so) we had a man come in with a very similar injury, incurred when he was up on a ladder using a chain saw to cut a limb. The ladder slipped and down he fell, running chain saw and all. The saw didn’t automatically shut off immediately and the teeth gouged dozens of cuts of varying depth across his chest and abdomen very much like what the tskili yona did to John Quincy (though even the deepest of them didn’t look not quite as deep as the ones the evil bear spirit clawed).

The man adamantly didn’t want to be sent to the emergency room and after a series of abdominal x-rays and a good cleaning, my husband locally anesthetized the cuts and meticulously repaired them. It took him almost two hours and 18 packages of suture material (that would amount to about 30 to 40 feet of it in total) to close all the lacerations. And the gentleman went on his way after a shot of antibiotics with a prescription for more to take by mouth during the coming week to prevent infection and a follow up appointment the next day. (I fictionalized a scene based on this true-life encounter for my protagonist to handle in her rural clinic in Rising Sun, the third book of my Caddo Bend romantic fiction series, if you’re interested.)

I have another Substack recommendation this week as well. I just discovered my good friend Peter Ballerstedt has a Substack called Grass Based Health. He’s been a reader of mine for years, but never let me know he had his own newsletter. I found out only because Substack forwarded it to me based on my reading history. Peter is a PhD forage agronomist and writes about agriculture, grasslands, meat, and how it all applies to diet and nutrition. Great stuff.

Video of the Week

The VOTW is kind of a follow on from Emily’s video above. Another friend of mine, Matt Briggs, who is a renowned statistician, created a humorous, but accurate, video on how P-values came into being and what they really mean. He calls P-values, which are used in almost every scientific report you might read Wee ps. They are written as the lower-case p, and are truly meaningless. Dr. Brigg’s tells you why. Enjoy! And BTW, Dr. Briggs often speaks at Broken Science Initiative conferences.

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That’s about it for this week. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

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This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.

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