Imagine sitting with friends, chatting about your dream vacation to Bali. A few hours later, you scroll through Facebook and—bam!—ads for tropical resorts and yoga retreats flood your feed. Coincidence? Maybe. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that someone—or something—is listening.

This unsettling experience is so common it’s almost a digital urban legend: Facebook spying on your conversations through your phone’s microphone. Denials from tech giants haven’t silenced the whispers of suspicion, nor have they stopped the steady stream of eerily accurate ads. Is it possible that algorithms have grown so sophisticated they can predict our desires before we’ve even typed them out? Or is there something more invasive at play?

In an age where every click, swipe, and search is tracked, the line between coincidence and surveillance feels increasingly blurred. Are we paranoid—or justified in our concerns?

The Ubiquity of Creepy Ads

We’ve all experienced that eerie moment: you mention something in passing—a new gadget, a dream destination, or even a quirky hobby—and within hours, your social media feed is flooded with ads tailored to that exact topic. It feels as if someone is eavesdropping on your every word. Stories of these hyper-specific ad appearances have spread like wildfire, with countless anecdotes fueling suspicions that platforms like Facebook are secretly listening through our devices. While some dismiss these occurrences as mere coincidences, the uncanny accuracy of these ads makes the theory hard to ignore.

What’s particularly unsettling is the personal nature of these advertisements. They don’t feel like random suggestions but rather intimate recommendations perfectly aligned with your recent conversations. It’s one thing to receive ads based on your browsing history or recent online purchases, but when it seems tied to words spoken aloud, it touches a nerve. It’s an experience that feels invasive, raising unsettling questions about how much of our private lives is truly private. Are these moments proof of advanced technological surveillance, or is there a less sinister explanation?

Facebook’s Official Stance

Despite the widespread belief that Facebook is secretly eavesdropping on users, the company has consistently denied these allegations. Facebook executives have publicly stated that the platform does not use microphones to listen to conversations for advertising purposes. In fact, the company has repeatedly emphasized that such practices would not only violate its own policies but also be impractical given the vast scale of its operations. According to Facebook, the notion of live audio surveillance for ad targeting is not only unnecessary but also inefficient compared to their existing data-driven methods.

Rob Goldman, Facebook’s VP of Ads, has categorically stated, “We don’t use your microphone for ads. Just not true.” Furthermore, Facebook’s privacy policy outlines stringent controls over user permissions, giving users the power to manage which apps have access to their microphones and other data. However, these reassurances have done little to quiet the public’s skepticism. For many, the coincidence of seeing ads that perfectly match their spoken words feels too specific to be explained away, making it harder to accept the official narrative without question.

The Role of Data Tracking in Advertising

The unsettling truth about targeted ads lies not in microphones, but in the immense power of data tracking and predictive algorithms. Every action users take online—whether it’s a Google search, a website visit, or a social media like—feeds into a vast network of data collection. This information is meticulously analyzed by algorithms designed to predict your preferences and behaviors with uncanny accuracy.

Platforms like Facebook don’t need to listen to your conversations; they already know more about you than you might realize. Advanced algorithms work behind the scenes to connect the dots, using everything from your browsing history to your social media interactions to predict your interests. For instance, if you recently followed a travel page, Googled flights, or liked a friend’s vacation photo, the system might deduce that you’re planning a trip and start serving ads accordingly.

Moreover, companies rely on external data sources, such as third-party brokers, to create even more detailed profiles of their users. These data-sharing practices allow advertisers to target users with astonishing precision, crafting ads that feel personal and timely. What might seem like an invasion of privacy is often just the result of incredibly sophisticated data analytics working exactly as intended.

Psychological Bias and Perception

Even when ads feel like they’re listening, the real explanation might lie in the quirks of human psychology. People are naturally inclined to notice patterns, especially when something unexpected or unusual occurs. This tendency, known as confirmation bias, leads us to focus on instances where ads align with our conversations while overlooking all the unrelated ads we see daily. Over time, this selective attention creates the illusion that platforms are constantly spying on us.

Another factor at play is memory distortion. The human brain is notoriously unreliable when it comes to sequencing events. You might recall discussing a product before seeing an ad, but in reality, the ad may have appeared first, subtly influencing your conversation. Combined with algorithms that deliver eerily accurate predictions, these psychological effects can make it feel like social media platforms are reading your mind—or worse, listening to your private discussions.

It’s also worth noting that advertising systems are designed to anticipate your needs before you’re even aware of them. This predictive capability, while impressive, can come across as invasive. To the average user, the timing of these ads feels too perfect to be coincidental, adding fuel to the fire of surveillance fears.

Third-Party Apps and Data Sharing

While Facebook itself may not be listening, third-party apps and their data-sharing practices introduce another layer of complexity. Many apps collect vast amounts of user data, often through permissions that users agree to without a second thought. These permissions can include access to your location, browsing activity, and, in some cases, even your microphone. Once collected, this data doesn’t stay within the app—it’s often shared with advertisers or sold to third-party brokers.

The interconnected nature of digital ecosystems means that data collected by one app can be used to influence ad targeting on another platform. For example, if an app with microphone access detects specific keywords, that data could theoretically be passed on to advertising networks. While there’s little concrete evidence to prove this practice on a widespread scale, it highlights the murkiness of digital privacy and the potential risks of granting broad permissions to apps.

These practices reveal just how deeply intertwined our digital lives have become. Even if Facebook isn’t directly eavesdropping, the vast web of third-party data collection can create the illusion that it is, blurring the lines between reality and perception in the realm of targeted advertising.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns

The debate over whether Facebook is spying underscores a much larger issue: the erosion of privacy in the digital age. Even if platforms aren’t actively listening, the sheer volume of personal data they collect and use for targeted advertising raises significant ethical questions. For many users, the realization that their online behavior is constantly monitored and monetized feels deeply invasive, even if it’s framed as a trade-off for free services.

This discomfort is compounded by the lack of transparency around how data is collected, shared, and used. While privacy policies outline these practices, the language is often so complex that most users don’t fully understand what they’re agreeing to. This dynamic creates an imbalance of power, where corporations wield enormous influence over personal information with minimal accountability.

Governments and advocacy groups are increasingly calling for stricter regulations on data collection and greater transparency from tech companies. However, progress has been slow, leaving users to grapple with the ethical implications of living in a data-driven world. The real question isn’t just whether platforms are spying—it’s how much control we have over our own digital identities and how far companies should be allowed to go in the pursuit of profit.

Are We Truly Being Spied On?

The uncanny precision of targeted ads—appearing just as you’ve discussed a topic with friends or mulled it over in your mind—can feel like undeniable proof of surveillance. Yet the evidence overwhelmingly points to advanced algorithms, predictive analytics, and our own psychological tendencies as the culprits, not direct eavesdropping by platforms like Facebook. These systems don’t need to listen to us; they rely on the data we willingly or unknowingly provide, weaving a remarkably accurate portrait of our behaviors, preferences, and desires.

However, the absence of direct spying doesn’t make these practices any less invasive. The real unease lies in how much of our personal information is harvested, shared, and monetized without our full understanding or explicit consent. Every click, search, or location ping feeds into a sprawling digital ecosystem that thrives on our data. It’s not just Facebook at the helm—third-party apps, data brokers, and advertising networks are all players in this complex web of surveillance capitalism. The result is a system that feels deeply personal, even if it operates on impersonal algorithms.

This raises profound ethical and societal questions. How much should corporations know about us, and where should the line be drawn? Is it enough to be passive participants in a system that capitalizes on our data, or should we demand greater transparency, stricter regulations, and more control over our digital identities? These questions touch on broader concerns about autonomy, consent, and the balance of power in an increasingly data-driven world.

Ultimately, the question of whether Facebook is “spying” might be the wrong one to ask. The real issue is how much control we’ve surrendered in the name of convenience and how little oversight exists for companies profiting from this exchange. While the ads in your feed might not be the result of microphones picking up your voice, they are a stark reminder of the trade-offs we make when navigating the digital landscape.

Beaches are a beloved destination for families seeking relaxation and fun, but beneath the sun-soaked sands can lurk unexpected dangers. For the Mattingly family, a rare vacation to Florida turned into an unimaginable tragedy when a seemingly innocent activity ended in heartbreak. The story of 7-year-old Sloan Mattingly has since captured the nation’s attention, shedding light on a hazard many don’t realize exists.

As we explore what happened that fateful day, this narrative uncovers not just the events, but also the profound impact it has had on Sloan’s family—and the important lessons it holds for anyone planning a trip to the beach.

A Family Vacation Turns Tragic

In February 2024, the Mattingly family from Indiana embarked on a rare vacation to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida—a much-anticipated break from their routine. Seven-year-old Sloan and her nine-year-old brother, Maddox, were brimming with excitement as they explored the sandy shores. Their parents, Jason and Therese, looked on, cherishing these precious family moments.

On February 20, the children engaged in a classic beach pastime: digging a hole in the sand. Unbeknownst to them, this innocent activity harbored hidden dangers. As they dug deeper, the walls of the hole became unstable. Without warning, the sand collapsed, trapping both children beneath its weight. Maddox was buried up to his chest, while Sloan was completely submerged.

Their parents sprang into action, desperately trying to rescue their children. Jason recounted the frantic moments: “It was kind of a blur… it just happened so fast. In my mind I had her in my hands, but the weight of the sand was too much.”

Beachgoers rushed to assist, and emergency services were called. Maddox was freed first, but Sloan remained trapped for over 15 minutes. Despite the valiant efforts of rescuers, she was unresponsive when finally extricated and was later pronounced dead at Broward Health Medical Center.

This heartbreaking incident underscores a peril that many beach visitors overlook: the potential for sand holes to collapse, leading to suffocation. Studies have shown that such accidents, though rare, can be fatal. A 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine documented 52 cases of sand hole collapses over a 10-year period in the U.S., resulting in 31 deaths.

The tragedy of Sloan Mattingly serves as a poignant reminder of the unforeseen dangers that can arise during seemingly harmless beach activities. It calls for increased awareness and caution to prevent such devastating accidents in the future.

Frantic 911 Calls

As the sand collapsed around Sloan and Maddox, panic ensued on the beach. Bystanders and the children’s parents urgently dialed 911, their voices filled with desperation. In the released emergency call recordings, one caller can be heard saying, “The father started yelling for help. He said his child is caught in a hole in the sand they were digging. The mom is yelling the daughter is in there.”

Background screams and cries underscored the chaos, with another caller describing, “There is a little girl buried under the sand and we cannot see her.”

These harrowing calls paint a vivid picture of the frantic efforts to save the children, capturing the urgency and fear that gripped everyone present.

Rescue Efforts

As the sand engulfed Sloan and Maddox, immediate action was crucial. Beachgoers and the children’s father, Jason Mattingly, sprang into action, desperately digging to free the trapped siblings. Witness Harry Defina recounted the scene: “I could see the boy a little bit, but all I can see… was the top of the girl’s head. I saw the father was just beside himself.”

Emergency responders arrived swiftly. Pompano Beach Fire-Rescue crews utilized shovels and support boards to stabilize the collapsing sand as they worked to extricate the children. Despite their rapid response, Sloan remained buried for approximately 20 minutes before being freed. She was unresponsive upon extraction and was immediately transported to Broward Health Medical Center. Tragically, she was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Maddox, who was buried up to his chest, was rescued and hospitalized in stable condition. The swift actions of bystanders and rescue teams were commendable, but the unpredictable nature of sand collapses posed significant challenges, underscoring the inherent dangers of such incidents.

Outcome of the Rescue

Despite the valiant efforts of rescuers and bystanders, the outcome was devastating. Maddox, who had been buried up to his chest, was successfully freed and transported to a local hospital in stable condition. Tragically, Sloan, who had been completely submerged under the sand, was unresponsive upon rescue. She was rushed to Broward Health Medical Center, where, despite exhaustive medical efforts, she was pronounced dead.

The sudden loss of Sloan left her family and the community in profound grief. Her mother, Therese, poignantly expressed, “A freak accident happened yesterday while we are here on vacation and it took away our greatest 7.5 years.”

This heartbreaking incident underscores the unpredictable dangers that can arise from seemingly innocent activities, casting a somber shadow over what was intended to be a joyful family vacation.

Investigation Underway

Following the tragic incident, authorities initiated a comprehensive investigation to understand the circumstances leading to Sloan Mattingly’s death. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO) confirmed that the children were digging a hole in the sand when it collapsed, trapping them. Detectives noted that the family was on vacation from Indiana at the time.

Initial reports suggested that the hole was approximately five to six feet deep. However, a BSO deputy later clarified that the hole was only about three feet deep. Additionally, rumors circulated that another individual had dug the hole prior to the children’s involvement. BSO addressed these claims, stating, “At this time, they have no evidence that suggests a man dug the sand hole where the children were trapped prior to the incident.”

The investigation remains active, with authorities reviewing all available evidence, including video footage of the incident. BSO emphasized that the circumstances surrounding the case are still under scrutiny, aiming to provide a clear understanding of the events that led to this heartbreaking accident.

Risks of Sand Collapses

While building sandcastles and digging holes are cherished beach activities, they can pose significant, often underestimated, dangers. The tragic incident involving Sloan Mattingly underscores the potential hazards associated with sand collapses.

Understanding Sand Instability

Sand may appear stable, but its structural integrity is deceptive. Dry sand can only maintain a slope of approximately 33 degrees; when this angle is exceeded, or when additional weight is applied near the edge, the sand becomes prone to sudden collapse. Stephen Leatherman, a professor at Florida International University, explains, “Dry sand can only hold a 33-degree angle, and people dig these holes almost vertically.”

Statistics Highlighting the Danger

Between 1997 and 2007, the United States recorded 52 incidents of individuals being submerged due to collapsing sand holes, resulting in 31 fatalities. The victims ranged from 3 to 21 years old, with holes typically measuring between 2 to 15 feet in diameter and 2 to 12 feet in depth.

Challenges in Rescue Operations

Rescuing individuals trapped in collapsed sand holes is fraught with difficulties. The unstable nature of sand means that attempts to dig out victims can lead to further collapses, complicating rescue efforts. Moreover, the weight of the sand can cause suffocation within minutes, leaving a very narrow window for successful rescue.

Staying Safe at the Beach: Essential Tips

Enjoying a day at the beach is a cherished pastime, but it’s crucial to be aware of potential hazards to ensure a safe experience. The tragic incident involving Sloan Mattingly underscores the importance of understanding and mitigating risks associated with common beach activities.

1. Limit the Depth of Sand Holes

• Keep Holes Shallow: Avoid digging holes deeper than the knees of the shortest person in your group. Deeper holes are more prone to sudden collapses, posing significant risks. Experts recommend not exceeding a depth of two feet.

2. Supervise Children Closely

• Active Monitoring: Always keep a watchful eye on children as they play, especially when they’re digging or tunneling in the sand. Immediate adult supervision can prevent accidents before they occur.

3. Fill Holes Before Leaving

• Restore the Beach Surface: Before departing, ensure all holes are completely filled in. Unfilled holes can be hazardous to other beachgoers and can destabilize surrounding sand.

4. Recognize Unstable Sand Conditions

• Assess the Environment: Be cautious of areas with dry, loose sand or spots recently disturbed by tides or construction. These conditions can lead to unexpected collapses.

5. Educate Your Group

• Spread Awareness: Discuss the dangers of deep sand holes with family and friends. Awareness is a critical step in preventing accidents.

6. Be Prepared to Act

• Emergency Response: If someone becomes trapped, call emergency services immediately. Attempt to remove sand from around the victim’s head and chest to facilitate breathing, but avoid causing further collapses.

Lifeguard Presence and Family Response

The Role of Lifeguards in Preventing Tragedies

The absence of lifeguards on Lauderdale-by-the-Sea beach during the incident involving Sloan and Maddox Mattingly has raised significant concerns. Experts assert that trained lifeguards could have identified and mitigated the dangers associated with digging deep sand holes. Tom Gill, a spokesperson for the U.S. Life Saving Association, emphasized, “Every USLA lifeguard…is going to know about the dangers of sand collapse and they are going to warn people immediately upon seeing that.”

Lauderdale-by-the-Sea does not employ lifeguards on its beaches, a decision now under scrutiny. In response to the tragedy, town commissioners convened to discuss the potential implementation of lifeguard services and the establishment of safety ordinances. Commissioner Theo Poulopoulos expressed his concern, stating, “I feel a tremendous amount of guilt over this little girl’s death…I’m sitting here saying let’s do it.”

Family’s Heartfelt Response

The Mattingly family has been profoundly affected by the loss of Sloan. Her mother, Therese, described the incident as a “freak accident” and reflected on Sloan’s impact, saying, “We experienced the purest human being and we are forever changed by her.”

Sloan’s father, Jason, shared his grief on social media, writing, “Our baby is in heaven, love you too much Sloan.”

Sloan’s Story as a Lifesaving Lesson

The heartbreaking loss of 7-year-old Sloan Mattingly serves as a poignant reminder of the unforeseen dangers that can lurk beneath the surface of seemingly innocent beach activities. As her family grapples with the profound void left by her absence, they channel their grief into advocacy, striving to ensure that no other family endures a similar tragedy.

Their mission underscores a critical message: while beaches offer joy and relaxation, they also demand our respect and vigilance. By adhering to safety guidelines, educating ourselves and others, and fostering a community of awareness, we can transform our shores into safer havens for all.

As we honor Sloan’s memory, let her story inspire a collective commitment to beach safety, ensuring that future generations can enjoy the sun and sand without peril.

At just 13 years old, Tim has already lived a lifetime of uncertainty. Shuffled between foster homes for most of his childhood, he’s grown used to packing his belongings into a small bag, never staying long enough to call anywhere “home.” But behind his quiet demeanor lies a hope as unshakable as it is simple: Tim dreams of being someone’s son.

For many children, having a family is an assumed constant—an invisible anchor that offers love, security, and a sense of belonging. But for Tim, who has spent years navigating the instability of the foster care system, the idea of being part of a family feels like a distant dream. His story is not just his own—it’s a poignant reminder of the thousands of children in foster care who share the same wish for stability and love.

The Reality of Foster Care: A System Stretched Thin

The foster care system was designed to provide safety and support for children who, for various reasons, cannot stay with their biological families. But in practice, the system is often overwhelmed and under-resourced. With more than 400,000 children in foster care across the United States, the demand far exceeds the available resources, leaving many children stuck in temporary arrangements that lack the emotional stability they desperately need.

For children like Tim, these temporary arrangements can feel like a revolving door. Moving from one home to the next creates a sense of instability that makes it difficult to form lasting bonds. Caseworkers, though well-meaning, are often juggling overwhelming caseloads, which means individualized attention is rare. As a result, children in foster care can feel like numbers in a system rather than individuals with unique needs and dreams.

The psychological impact is profound. Studies show that children who grow up in foster care are at higher risk for mental health challenges, such as anxiety and depression, as well as academic difficulties and struggles with self-esteem. Without the steady foundation of a permanent home, many children face an uphill battle to build a sense of identity and security. Tim’s story is just one example of how these systemic shortcomings can leave children feeling invisible and yearning for something more.

Tim’s Journey: A Life Without Roots

Tim’s life in foster care has been a series of transitions—new faces, unfamiliar rooms, and the lingering uncertainty of what comes next. Since entering the system as a young boy, he has moved from one foster home to another, carrying his belongings in a bag and bracing himself for the emotional toll of starting over yet again. For Tim, the concept of “home” is something he’s yet to experience, and the idea of permanence feels like a far-off dream.

Each move has left its mark. Tim has learned to adapt quickly to new environments, but this adaptability comes at a cost. Forming deep connections is difficult when you’re constantly preparing for the next upheaval. The lack of stability has created a void—an emotional absence that no temporary placement can fill. Tim has shared how birthdays and holidays, moments that should be filled with joy and family, often pass by like any other day, a stark reminder of what he’s missing.

Yet, despite the challenges, Tim remains hopeful. He dreams of a home where he can finally unpack for good—a place where he can hang up his coat, mark his height on the wall, and hear someone say, “I’m proud of you, son.” For Tim, it’s not about material comfort; it’s about belonging. He longs for the small moments most people take for granted: sitting down for a family dinner, cheering from the sidelines at a soccer game, or having someone to turn to when life gets tough.

Tim’s resilience is a testament to the strength that many children in foster care develop out of necessity. But his story also highlights the immense emotional toll of growing up without roots. While he’s learned to endure the instability, he’s never stopped wishing for a chance to experience the love and support that only a family can provide. His journey underscores a harsh reality for older children in the system—each passing year makes adoption less likely, and yet the need for connection becomes all the more urgent.

For Tim, the clock is ticking. At 13, he’s entering a critical time when the window for adoption begins to narrow even further. But in his heart, he believes there’s a family out there—a place where he can finally stop running, stop waiting, and simply be a son.

What He Wants: A Chance to Belong

For Tim, the idea of being someone’s son is not about grand gestures or extravagant dreams—it’s about the simple, everyday moments that make a house feel like a home. He yearns for a sense of belonging, a place where he can wake up each morning knowing that he’s loved and wanted, not as a guest or a temporary ward, but as a permanent member of a family.

When Tim talks about his dreams, they’re filled with the kinds of experiences most of us might take for granted. He imagines sitting at the dinner table, sharing stories about his day with people who genuinely care. He dreams of hearing the words “goodnight” before he falls asleep and waking up to the sounds of a bustling household. For Tim, these small, ordinary moments are what define a family—the steady presence of love and support that transforms a house into a home.

What’s particularly moving about Tim’s wish is how deeply he values the concept of being a son. To him, it’s not just a label; it’s an identity. He doesn’t just want a family to live with; he wants to be part of a family, to have a place in the story they write together. Tim envisions learning from a parent, whether it’s how to ride a bike or simply how to navigate the ups and downs of life. He wants to be cheered on during his victories and comforted during his defeats. These are the moments that build a child’s sense of self-worth, and for Tim, they represent a future filled with hope and possibility.

Yet, as hopeful as Tim remains, he understands the obstacles. He knows that older children in foster care often face more challenges when it comes to finding adoptive families. Many potential parents are looking to adopt younger children, leaving teens like Tim to wait even longer. But Tim is undeterred. His unwavering belief that a family is out there for him is a testament to his resilience and his faith in the possibility of love. For Tim, being someone’s son isn’t just a dream—it’s his deepest wish, and he holds onto it with a strength that inspires everyone who hears his story.

The Broader Picture: Children Waiting for Homes

Tim’s story is deeply personal, but it’s also representative of a much larger issue. Across the United States, over 100,000 children in foster care are currently waiting to be adopted. While the foster system provides temporary care, it often struggles to deliver the permanence and stability that children like Tim desperately need. For older kids and teens, the odds of finding a forever family diminish with each passing year.

Statistics reveal a stark reality: children over the age of 8 are significantly less likely to be adopted than younger children. By the time they reach their teens, many kids in foster care face the grim possibility of aging out of the system without ever being placed in a permanent home. For these children, life without a family can be an uphill battle. They’re more likely to face challenges such as homelessness, unemployment, and mental health struggles compared to their peers who are adopted or grow up in stable family environments.

Experts in child development emphasize the importance of a stable home life for fostering emotional and social growth. According to Dr. Sherrie Bourg Carter, a psychologist specializing in childhood trauma, “The love and support of a family can help a child heal from the scars of instability and uncertainty. It’s not just about providing shelter—it’s about creating a foundation for a thriving future.” For children like Tim, the absence of that foundation can make it difficult to form healthy relationships and establish a strong sense of self.

Programs and advocacy groups are working tirelessly to change this narrative. Organizations like AdoptUSKids and local adoption agencies aim to match children with families who are open to adopting older kids and teens. Campaigns like “Wednesday’s Child,” which highlights children waiting for adoption, also play a crucial role in bringing attention to kids like Tim. These efforts are making a difference, but there’s still much work to be done to ensure that every child has a chance to experience the love and stability they deserve.

Tim’s story reminds us that behind every statistic is a child with a unique set of dreams, fears, and hopes for the future. It’s a call to action—not just for prospective adoptive parents, but for communities as a whole—to support programs and policies that give children in foster care the best chance at finding their forever families.

The human body is an extraordinary machine, constantly working to maintain balance and protect itself from harm. However, when something as serious as cancer begins to develop, the body often sends subtle warning signals long before the disease progresses. These signals can be easy to dismiss—after all, who hasn’t felt unusually tired or experienced a minor ache and chalked it up to stress or aging? Yet, these seemingly insignificant changes can sometimes indicate that your body is fighting something far more serious.

Cancer, in its early stages, can often be silent, with symptoms that mimic everyday ailments. This is why awareness is so critical. Spotting early warning signs doesn’t just increase the chances of catching cancer before it spreads—it can also make treatment more effective and improve survival rates significantly. While not every symptom is a definitive sign of cancer, certain patterns or persistent issues deserve closer attention. Understanding these clues is a vital step in advocating for your health.

1. Unexplained Weight Loss

Shedding a few pounds without trying might seem like a welcome surprise, but it could also be one of the first signs your body is fighting cancer. Sudden and unexplained weight loss—typically defined as losing 10 pounds or more within a short period—can be caused by changes in your body’s metabolism. Cancer cells can hijack the body’s energy supply, causing a rapid breakdown of fat and muscle tissue. This process often goes unnoticed until the weight loss becomes significant.

Certain cancers are more commonly associated with this symptom, particularly those affecting the stomach, pancreas, lungs, or esophagus. For instance, pancreatic cancer can interfere with your body’s ability to digest nutrients, while stomach cancer may lead to a loss of appetite or difficulty eating. Lung cancer, on the other hand, may disrupt metabolic processes that lead to sudden weight changes.

It’s important to note that weight loss can happen for many reasons, including stress, changes in diet, or other health conditions. However, if the weight loss is rapid, persistent, and unaccompanied by changes in your lifestyle, it’s essential to consult a doctor. Catching this symptom early can help identify potential underlying issues, including the possibility of cancer, before it progresses further.

2. Persistent Fatigue

Everyone feels tired now and then, but cancer-related fatigue is different. This type of exhaustion doesn’t go away with rest and often feels overwhelming. Persistent fatigue can be caused by cancer cells draining the body’s energy or by the immune system working overtime to fight off the disease. This symptom is especially common in cancers like leukemia, where the body is actively battling abnormal blood cells, or colon and stomach cancers, which can cause internal bleeding and anemia.

The key distinction here is that this fatigue is unrelenting. It might feel like a heaviness in your body or an inability to focus or perform daily tasks. While fatigue is common in everyday life, when it persists without explanation and disrupts your normal routine, it’s worth getting checked out. Catching the cause early could uncover a hidden condition, including cancer.

3. Changes in Skin Appearance

The skin is one of the first areas of the body to show signs of internal issues, including cancer. Changes like yellowing (jaundice), darkening, redness, or a persistent rash can indicate something deeper is at play. For instance, jaundice is often linked to pancreatic cancer, while itchy, scaly patches might be associated with certain types of lymphoma.

Non-healing sores, particularly in sun-exposed areas, are another warning sign and could point to skin cancers like melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, or squamous cell carcinoma. Be especially cautious of new moles or changes to existing ones—such as irregular borders, multiple colors, or sudden growth—as these could indicate melanoma. Paying attention to these changes and seeking medical advice promptly can make a crucial difference.

4. Unusual Bleeding

Unexpected bleeding, whether it’s in the stool, urine, or from coughing, is a symptom that should never be ignored. Different types of cancers can lead to unusual bleeding. For example, colorectal cancer can cause blood in the stool, while bladder or kidney cancer might show up as blood in the urine. Persistent coughing with blood may indicate lung or throat cancer.

Sometimes, unusual bleeding is internal and not immediately noticeable, but symptoms like anemia, fatigue, or dark, tarry stools can point to hidden blood loss. If you notice any form of abnormal bleeding, even if it seems minor, seek medical attention. Early diagnosis can prevent further complications.

5. Persistent Cough or Hoarseness

A cough that won’t go away or a hoarse voice lasting for weeks might be linked to lung, throat, or thyroid cancer. Unlike a cold or seasonal allergies, cancer-related coughs are often dry and persistent. You may also notice blood-tinged phlegm, which should raise immediate concern.

Hoarseness, especially when accompanied by difficulty swallowing or persistent throat discomfort, could indicate cancer in the larynx or esophagus. These symptoms often overlap with other common conditions, so their persistence is a key warning sign to pay attention to.

6. Lumps or Swellings

Finding a lump or swelling in any part of your body—whether it’s the breast, neck, armpit, or groin—should prompt further investigation. These lumps could represent swollen lymph nodes, a common early sign of lymphoma or leukemia. In the breast, a lump could indicate breast cancer, particularly if it feels hard, immovable, and irregular in shape.

While not all lumps are cancerous, the texture, size, and location can provide critical clues. Regular self-examinations are vital for catching abnormalities early, as these growths are often painless in the early stages of cancer.

7. Changes in Bowel or Bladder Habits

Alterations in bathroom routines, such as chronic diarrhea, constipation, or blood in the stool, could signal colorectal cancer. Similarly, frequent urination, pain while urinating, or blood in the urine might indicate bladder or prostate cancer.

Sometimes, these changes occur gradually, making them easy to dismiss. However, persistent symptoms, especially when combined with pain or visible changes, should be assessed by a healthcare provider. Routine screenings like colonoscopies can be life-saving in catching these cancers early.

8. Difficulty Swallowing or Persistent Indigestion

Trouble swallowing or a constant feeling of food getting stuck in your throat could be linked to cancers of the esophagus or throat. Persistent indigestion or a burning sensation in the chest may point to stomach or gastrointestinal cancers.

While these symptoms can also be caused by conditions like acid reflux, the key difference is their persistence despite lifestyle changes or over-the-counter treatments. If eating becomes painful or you start avoiding certain foods due to discomfort, it’s time to seek medical advice.

9. Pain That Doesn’t Go Away

Pain that lingers without a clear cause is often the body’s way of signaling a problem. Persistent back pain, for example, may be linked to pancreatic or kidney cancer, while ongoing headaches might suggest a brain tumor. Bone pain, especially in the arms, legs, or pelvis, can be a symptom of bone cancer.

The nature of cancer-related pain is often deep, aching, and unrelieved by typical painkillers. If you’ve tried managing chronic pain without success, consult a doctor to rule out any underlying conditions, including cancer.

10. Fever Without Infection

A persistent fever with no obvious cause—such as a cold, flu, or other infection—can be an early sign of blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma. Cancer-related fevers often occur at night and may be accompanied by chills or sweats.

While fever is the body’s natural response to fighting illness, its presence without a clear explanation should be taken seriously. It might indicate the immune system is battling something more severe, such as cancer.

11. Mouth Sores or White Patches

Sores in the mouth that don’t heal after a few weeks or white patches on the gums or tongue could be symptoms of oral cancer. This is especially common in smokers, heavy drinkers, or individuals with a history of chewing tobacco use.

Painful or persistent mouth sores, especially when accompanied by difficulty swallowing or jaw stiffness, should prompt immediate evaluation. Oral cancer, when detected early, is highly treatable.

12. Night Sweats

Waking up drenched in sweat, even in cool temperatures, could signal certain types of cancers, such as lymphoma. Night sweats associated with cancer are typically more severe than those caused by hormonal changes or common illnesses. They often occur alongside fever or unexplained weight loss, making them a symptom that should not be ignored.

13. Unexplained Swelling in the Face or Neck

Swelling in the face or neck could be a sign of a tumor pressing against blood vessels, reducing blood flow. This symptom is often linked to cancers of the lungs or chest, where growths can obstruct major veins. While swelling might seem minor at first, its persistence or recurrence warrants medical evaluation.

14. Frequent Infections

Cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma weaken the immune system, making the body more susceptible to frequent or lingering infections. If you find yourself constantly battling colds, respiratory issues, or other infections that seem unusually severe or long-lasting, it may indicate an underlying condition affecting immune function.

15. Changes in Nails

Unusual changes in your nails can be an early cancer indicator. Dark streaks or spots under the nails may point to skin cancer, while excessively pale or white nails could be linked to liver issues or anemia, sometimes associated with underlying cancers. Clubbing of the fingers—where the tips enlarge and nails curve downward—can signal lung cancer.

16. Persistent Bloating

Persistent bloating, especially in women, is often associated with ovarian cancer. Unlike typical bloating that fluctuates, cancer-related bloating tends to be constant and accompanied by other symptoms like pelvic pain or changes in appetite. Men may experience similar issues if gastrointestinal cancers are present.

17. Persistent Headaches

Chronic headaches that don’t respond to over-the-counter medication could be a symptom of a brain tumor. These headaches often worsen over time and may be accompanied by nausea, vision changes, or difficulty focusing. While not all headaches are linked to cancer, their persistence and severity should be monitored.

18. Vision Change

Blurred vision, double vision, or sudden vision loss can indicate certain types of cancers, particularly brain or eye cancer. These changes often occur due to tumors pressing on nerves or interfering with the brain’s visual processing centers.

19. Persistent Itchiness

Chronic, unexplained itching might be more than just a skin condition. Certain cancers, like lymphoma or liver cancer, can cause systemic itching due to the release of chemical compounds in the bloodstream. This itching is often intense and doesn’t respond to typical treatments.

20. Difficulty Breathing or Chest Pain

Shortness of breath, chest pain, or wheezing can be an early sign of lung cancer or cancer that has spread to the chest cavity. These symptoms may also occur if tumors press against airways or blood vessels. Persistent respiratory discomfort, particularly if it worsens over time, is a clear signal to seek medical advice.

Stay Vigilant, Stay Empowered

Cancer doesn’t always shout; often, it whispers through subtle, persistent symptoms that are easy to dismiss. By tuning into your body and recognizing these warning signs early, you’re taking a crucial step toward protecting your health. Awareness is the first line of defense, and knowledge empowers you to act swiftly when something feels off.

Remember, not every unusual symptom is a sign of cancer, but persistence and patterns matter. If you’ve noticed unexplained changes—whether it’s weight loss, fatigue, or something as simple as skin discoloration—don’t ignore them. Trust your instincts and consult a healthcare professional. Early intervention saves lives, and what might seem like a minor concern could hold the key to catching a condition early.

Your health is your greatest asset, and staying informed is the best way to safeguard it. By understanding these early signs and advocating for yourself, you’re not just reacting—you’re taking charge. Pay attention, ask questions, and don’t hesitate to seek answers. When it comes to your well-being, every moment counts.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is hailed as a key to self-awareness and meaningful relationships, often overshadowing IQ in importance. Defined by Psychology Today as the capacity to “identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others,” it encompasses skills like empathy, self-regulation, and awareness of emotional dynamics. While EQ is typically nurtured through experience and introspection, some believe that your zodiac sign might influence how these abilities manifest.

Astrology enthusiasts argue that celestial alignments at birth could shape emotional tendencies, affecting how individuals connect with and understand emotions. For instance, water signs like Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces are often described as naturally empathetic, while fire signs are known for their passion and intensity. But is there any merit to the idea that the stars could predispose someone to excel in emotional intelligence? Exploring this possibility sheds light on the intersection of personality, astrology, and psychological traits.

Water Signs and Emotional Intelligence: Why Pisces Stands Out

If emotional intelligence had a zodiac league, water signs—Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces—would dominate the podium. These signs don’t just understand emotions—they practically live in them. Each brings its own flavor to the mix. Cancer, for example, is like that one friend who always knows when you’re down and shows up with comfort food. Then there’s Scorpio, who seems to have an emotional radar that picks up truths no one else can see.

But Pisces? That’s a whole different level. Imagine someone who can sense your mood before you’ve said a word and offer the perfect response—not because they’re trying, but because it’s second nature. As the zodiac’s final sign, Pisces seems to have absorbed the lessons of all the others, giving them an almost uncanny knack for emotional wisdom. They don’t just listen; they feel. It’s like they’ve cracked the code on what it means to truly connect with others.

Of course, emotional intelligence isn’t exclusive to Pisces—you don’t need to be born under this sign to master your emotions. But let’s face it: Pisces seems to start with a head start, almost as if the universe whispered a cheat code to them at birth.

The Depths of Pisces Empathy: A Natural Emotional Compass

Pisces, symbolized by the cosmic fish, seem to swim effortlessly through the vast ocean of emotions. Their connection to water—a universal symbol of feelings and intuition—reflects their remarkable ability to sense emotional undercurrents that others might overlook. Ever notice how some people just seem to “get it” without you having to explain? That’s Pisces in a nutshell.

What makes their empathy so unique is the way they instinctively tune in to the emotional energy around them. A slight change in tone, a look, or even just the vibe in the room is enough for Pisces to pick up on what’s going on beneath the surface. And it’s not just about noticing—Pisces genuinely care. They don’t just hear your struggles; they feel them, offering comfort and support that feels deeply authentic.

But it’s not just about how they connect with others. Pisces also have a profound relationship with their own emotions, diving into their inner worlds with the same intensity they bring to understanding others. This duality—the ability to explore both their own feelings and those of others—makes their empathy feel almost like a superpower. If empathy is the heart of emotional intelligence, then Pisces are leading with a rhythm that few can match.

Pisces and Emotional Wisdom: A Jupiter-Guided Gift

Pisces aren’t just emotionally attuned; they bring a level of emotional wisdom that feels almost otherworldly. Their water-sign sensitivity is beautifully enhanced by the influence of Jupiter, the planet of expansion and higher learning. It’s this unique combination that allows Pisces to navigate emotions—not just their own but others’—with a rare mix of depth and insight.

Think of Jupiter as the wise guide behind Pisces’ compassionate heart. Its energy encourages them to see the bigger picture, even in the most tangled emotional situations. This isn’t the kind of wisdom that preaches or judges—it’s the quiet understanding that life can be messy, emotions are complex, and sometimes, the best thing you can do is simply be present. Pisces excel at this, showing up for others with both empathy and grace.

What really sets Pisces apart is their ability to embrace what they can’t control. Instead of fighting emotional currents, they flow with them, often helping others find calm in the chaos. This blend of sensitivity and mature acceptance turns their emotional intelligence into something almost magnetic. People gravitate to Pisces for their warmth, their wisdom, and their uncanny ability to make even the toughest feelings seem a little lighter.

Pisces and Relationships: Masters of Emotional Harmony

When it comes to relationships, Pisces seem to have an almost magical ability to create emotional harmony. Their emotional intelligence isn’t just about sensing feelings; it’s about using that awareness to nurture deep, meaningful connections. In partnership, Pisces bring a rare mix of thoughtfulness and attentiveness that makes others feel truly seen and understood.

Interestingly, Virgo’s influence over Pisces’ partnership zone adds a unique layer to their relational skills. It gives Pisces a detail-oriented edge, allowing them to notice the small things that often go overlooked—like a subtle change in mood or an unspoken need. This attentiveness makes their care feel intentional, as if they’re always one step ahead in anticipating how to make someone feel valued.

But what truly sets Pisces apart is their openness. They don’t shy away from emotional conversations; instead, they create a safe space where vulnerability feels natural. Their genuine interest in understanding others, paired with their ability to communicate compassionately, makes Pisces exceptional partners—whether in romance, friendship, or family ties. With Pisces, relationships aren’t just connections; they’re sanctuaries of trust and understanding.

Boosting Emotional Intelligence: Tips for Every Zodiac Sign

Emotional intelligence isn’t limited to Pisces—it’s a skill that everyone, regardless of their zodiac sign, can develop and refine. With a little effort and self-awareness, anyone can enhance their emotional toolkit and deepen their connections with others. Here are some practical ways to boost your EQ, no matter where your sun sign lies.

• Practice active listening: Slow down and really hear what others are saying. Don’t just wait for your turn to talk—focus on understanding their perspective. This builds trust and shows genuine care.

• Enhance self-awareness: Spend time reflecting on your own emotions. Journaling or meditating can help you identify patterns in your feelings and reactions, giving you better control over how you respond.

• Strengthen empathy: Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Imagine how they might feel and why—it’s a powerful way to connect on a deeper level.

• Communicate thoughtfully: Choose your words with care. Be clear and kind in expressing your emotions, and avoid jumping to conclusions during heated moments.

• Seek constructive feedback: Ask those you trust how you can improve your emotional interactions. Honest feedback is a valuable tool for growth.

Whether you’re an adventurous Aries learning patience or a sensitive Pisces refining your boundaries, these strategies can help you unlock your emotional intelligence potential. After all, it’s not about where you start—it’s about where you’re willing to grow.

Emotional Intelligence: What Your Zodiac Can Teach You

Emotional intelligence is a skill that transcends zodiac signs, offering everyone the chance to connect more deeply with themselves and others. While signs like Pisces may naturally excel in the emotional realm, the journey to a higher EQ is open to all. By embracing the unique traits of your sign and cultivating self-awareness, empathy, and adaptability, you can foster stronger relationships and personal growth.

Astrology provides a fascinating lens to explore our emotional tendencies, but it’s ultimately our willingness to grow and learn that shapes our emotional intelligence. Whether you’re a fiery Aries, a grounded Taurus, or a sensitive Cancer, the path to emotional harmony is yours to walk. Lean into the strengths of your sign, embrace opportunities for growth, and create meaningful connections that resonate far beyond the stars.

Superstitions are like hidden threads woven into the fabric of cultures around the world. They may seem strange, quirky, or downright bizarre, yet they offer a fascinating glimpse into the fears and hopes that people have carried for centuries. From ancient rituals to unusual habits passed down through generations, these beliefs are more than just old wives’ tales—they reveal how deeply tradition influences everyday life, even in the modern world.

Why do people still avoid walking under ladders, refuse to open umbrellas indoors, or cringe at the sight of black cats? These customs may seem arbitrary, but each one holds a piece of cultural history, rooted in stories of protection, fortune, and misfortune. In fact, many superstitions developed from practical beliefs, such as the need to ward off evil spirits or protect one’s family from harm. Passed along through generations, they remain as curious yet persistent elements in everyday life.

Europe’s Old Wives’ Tales and Fears of the Unknown

Europe, with its deep-rooted history and folklore, is a treasure trove of superstitions. These traditions reveal much about the continent’s collective fears and hopes, many of which have been passed down over generations. While some superstitions may seem like playful quirks, others reflect age-old concerns about fate, safety, and luck.

• Birthday Wishes in Germany – In Germany, wishing someone a happy birthday before the actual day is considered bad luck. This belief comes from the idea that demons or evil spirits could hear the early wishes and try to prevent them from happening.
• Eye Contact When Toasting – Germans also believe it’s essential to make eye contact when clinking glasses during a toast. This custom originates from historical concerns about poisoning and is said to prevent seven years of romantic misfortune if ignored.
• Greeting a Lone Magpie in Great Britain – In the UK, it’s common to greet a lone magpie with, “Good morning, Mr. Magpie. How is your lady wife today?” Because magpies are often seen in pairs, a solitary magpie is seen as a symbol of sorrow. The greeting is thought to ward off bad luck associated with seeing a lone magpie.

These customs, while unique to each culture, echo universal themes of respect for unseen forces and the desire to shape one’s own fortune. From avoiding early birthday wishes to greeting lone magpies, European superstitions are enduring reminders of the continent’s fascinating cultural heritage.

Latin American Beliefs: Rituals and Symbolism in Everyday Life

In Latin America, superstitions are a blend of indigenous traditions and colonial influences, creating a rich tapestry of beliefs aimed at offering protection and balancing luck and misfortune. These superstitions reveal how intertwined cultural heritage and spiritual practices are in everyday life.

1. Crossing Oneself When Passing a Graveyard in Brazil – In Brazil, it’s customary to make the sign of the cross when passing a graveyard. This gesture, adopted from European Christian customs, is believed to protect against bad spirits or misfortune.
2. Avoiding Pointing at Stars – Another Brazilian superstition warns against pointing at stars, as it’s thought to bring misfortune in the form of warts, particularly on children’s fingers. This belief has its roots in indigenous traditions, where stars were seen as symbols deserving of respect.
3. Tuesday the 13th in Spain – Unlike the widely known Friday the 13th, in Spain, Tuesday the 13th is considered an unlucky day. Linked to Mars, the god of war, it’s seen as a day to avoid major events, such as weddings or travel. The superstition is so prevalent that some Spanish buildings skip the 13th floor altogether.

These beliefs, shaped by local traditions and religious symbolism, continue to influence Latin American culture. They demonstrate a strong sense of reverence for forces beyond one’s control and a belief in taking steps to ensure safety and fortune.

Asian Superstitions: Spirits, Numbers, and Symbolism

Across Asia, superstitions often reflect a deep spiritual connection to ancestors and beliefs in the power of numbers, colors, and actions to influence fortune. These customs highlight the region’s unique way of interpreting and respecting unseen forces.

1. Avoiding the Number 4 in Japan – In Japan, the number 4 is avoided because it’s pronounced similarly to the word for “death” (shi). As a result, the number is often skipped in hospital rooms, apartment floors, and even gift sets to avoid associations with bad luck. The number 9 is also shunned, as its pronunciation (ku) sounds like the word for suffering or torture.
2. Whistling at Night in South Korea – In South Korea, whistling at night is believed to attract ghosts and malicious spirits. This superstition likely comes from the association of nighttime sounds with summoning unwanted forces.
3. Writing Names in Red Ink – In South Korea, writing someone’s name in red ink is highly taboo. Red is traditionally used for names on graves and tombstones, so writing a living person’s name in red is seen as inviting misfortune or death upon them.

These superstitions continue to shape everyday behavior in Asia, where respect for spiritual traditions runs deep. They serve as reminders to honor cultural beliefs about fortune and to navigate life cautiously.

The Middle Eastern and Eastern European Perspectives on Curses and Protection

In the Middle East and Eastern Europe, many superstitions focus on protection and respect for the dead. These beliefs, passed down through generations, reveal a shared cultural emphasis on safeguarding oneself and honoring spirits.

1. Handing Sharp Objects in Turkey – In Turkey, it’s believed that handing someone a knife or scissors directly may lead to conflict or even enmity. Instead, people place these items on a surface rather than passing them hand-to-hand, as sharp objects symbolize division and the severing of relationships.
2. Planting Fig Trees as a Curse – Another Turkish superstition holds that planting a fig tree outside someone’s home is a curse, believed to bring bad fortune to the household. The fig tree is thought to symbolize unwelcome intrusion and disruption.
3. Delaying Funerals in Poland – In Poland, it’s thought that delaying a funeral past the following Sunday may bring about another death in the family. This belief underscores the importance of prompt respect for the deceased and is rooted in a fear of misfortune resulting from neglect.
4. Returning for Forgotten Items in Russia – In Russia, going back for something forgotten after leaving the house is seen as bad luck unless you look in a mirror before leaving again. This action is thought to confuse lurking spirits, preventing them from following you out and bringing misfortune.

These superstitions reflect a deep cultural respect for protective customs and beliefs about unseen forces, serving as both practical and symbolic ways to ensure well-being and harmony.

A Modern Take on Superstitions: Cultural Relevance in a Globalized World

In today’s world, superstitions continue to fascinate and often thrive, despite modern advancements and a general move toward scientific reasoning. Interestingly, globalization has spread and transformed these beliefs, making them accessible to people from different backgrounds who find them both intriguing and strangely relatable.

Even with widespread education and technological development, superstitions still offer comfort to people, acting as rituals that give a sense of control over uncertain situations. This is especially true in global cities where diverse cultures intersect, bringing their unique superstitions along. For instance, tourists in Japan might adopt the avoidance of the number 4 out of respect for the local customs, while some people in Western countries may start saying “good morning” to magpies as a playful nod to British lore. The internet and social media have also popularized superstitions, creating a sort of virtual folklore that adds to the allure of these age-old beliefs.

Additionally, these superstitions often reflect universal concerns: the desire for health, love, prosperity, and protection. It’s this timeless relevance that helps them endure, reminding us that, no matter where we come from, superstitions offer a sense of connection to something larger than ourselves.

Why We Cling to the Bizarre—Superstitions as Cultural Windows

Superstitions may seem strange on the surface, yet they connect us to our history, values, and cultural identity. Despite being centuries old, these beliefs continue to thrive as symbolic gestures and cautionary tales, passed down through generations. They remind us that, regardless of scientific progress, the human desire for control and protection in the face of life’s uncertainties remains universal.

In exploring these superstitions from around the world, we gain insight not only into cultural diversity but also into shared human experiences. We’re all, in a way, united by these quirks—these seemingly odd habits that reflect our hopes and fears, our desire to bring good luck, and our wish to ward off misfortune. Perhaps superstitions, no matter how bizarre, are simply humanity’s way of saying: “Better safe than sorry.”

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, yet the mainstream media continues to stumble in its coverage, leaving the public inadequately informed. At a time when every day brings news of intensifying natural disasters, rising temperatures, and shifting ecosystems, the role of media in shaping our understanding—and urgency—around climate action is vital. Yet, the reality is that many media outlets still aren’t giving this issue the spotlight it deserves.

While some publications have increased their climate coverage, they often fail to convey the scope of the crisis or the solutions that could help mitigate it. From downplaying the severity to avoiding uncomfortable truths about root causes, media coverage has often missed the mark.

Downplaying the Crisis—Language and Framing Tactics

The way the media talks about climate change can have a huge impact on how we feel about it—and whether we feel like it’s something we need to act on. Words matter. For example, calling it a “climate crisis” gives off a sense of emergency. But saying “climate change”? It sounds almost gentle, like it’s just a shift in weather, nothing we need to worry about. This kind of language can make it easy for people to think it’s not a real, immediate threat.

Then there’s the way stories are framed. We often see headlines like “unexpected weather” or “unusual events” without any link to long-term climate trends. Headlines like these don’t tell us that these events are part of a bigger, ongoing problem. Or take the term “natural disaster”—it sounds random, right? But many of these disasters, like wildfires or floods, are now happening more frequently because of human-driven climate factors. If the media doesn’t make that connection clear, it’s easy for people to think these are isolated incidents, rather than seeing them as part of the bigger picture of climate change.

And this kind of language doesn’t just shape how we think; it affects how we act. When the media uses softer, vague words to describe what’s happening, it makes the crisis feel distant, even unimportant. If the news made it clear that these are urgent problems tied directly to climate change, people might feel a lot more inclined to push for action. The media has a huge influence here—they can help people understand that this is a serious, immediate crisis. All it takes is clearer, more straightforward language that doesn’t downplay the stakes.

False Balance and the Myth of “Both Sides” in Climate Reporting

One big way that climate reporting often goes wrong is by trying to give “both sides” of the issue equal airtime, even when there really aren’t two valid sides. You’ve probably seen this before: a climate scientist, someone who’s dedicated years to studying the crisis, is paired with a climate skeptic, as if their opinions are equally credible. But here’s the thing—more than 99% of scientists agree that climate change is real and mainly caused by human activities. There’s no real debate among experts.

So why does the media keep presenting it like there is? Giving skeptics the same platform makes it look like the science isn’t settled, like there’s still doubt about what’s causing climate change. But the science is as clear as it can be. This “both sides” approach just confuses people, making them think that climate change is still an open question, which can lead to inaction.

And this confusion has real consequences. Studies show that when people see climate change framed as a “debate,” they’re less likely to trust climate science or feel that urgent action is needed. If the media treated climate science the same way they treat topics like gravity or smoking, we’d probably see a lot more support for climate solutions. Climate reporting doesn’t need to give equal weight to skeptics—it needs to show the reality of what scientists know so people can see the full picture.

Missing Narratives—Underrepresented Voices and Stories

Another big gap in climate reporting is whose stories we actually hear. When we talk about climate change, the voices that often get the spotlight are from big cities or wealthier countries. Meanwhile, the people who are already dealing with the worst effects—communities in the Global South, Indigenous groups, and others on the frontlines—don’t get nearly as much attention. These are the people facing things like rising sea levels, intense droughts, and food shortages right now, but their stories don’t always make it into mainstream media.

This lack of coverage matters. When we don’t hear from people who are directly affected, it’s easy to think of climate change as a future problem or as something happening somewhere far away. But for many communities, climate change is already reshaping their daily lives. Hearing these stories would help everyone understand the crisis as something real and immediate, not just as an abstract idea.

There’s also a big piece missing when it comes to climate activists, especially young activists and those from marginalized communities. These are the people leading movements and pushing for real change, but they’re often sidelined or reduced to quick soundbites. By focusing more on these voices, media could give a fuller picture of both the problem and the solutions being fought for right now.

The Role of Individual Action Narratives and Fossil Fuel Advertising

One thing you’ll notice in a lot of climate coverage is how much it talks about what we, as individuals, should be doing—like recycling, using less plastic, or driving less. Now, those things do help, but when the focus is only on personal actions, it misses a huge part of the picture. Climate change isn’t just about individual choices; it’s mainly driven by a handful of big industries and companies with massive carbon footprints.

This is where fossil fuel companies get pretty crafty. They put out ads that make them look like they’re helping to fight climate change, with messages about renewable energy or planting trees. But the truth is, those “green” projects are often a tiny part of what they actually do. Most of their money is still poured into oil, gas, and coal. These ads make them look like climate heroes, even though they’re some of the biggest contributors to the problem.

So when the media focuses too much on what individuals can do, it can almost feel like a distraction. It makes us think that if we just bring our own bags to the store, we’re doing our part, while the real drivers of climate change keep on doing business as usual. If we’re going to get serious about climate solutions, we need media coverage that puts more pressure on these big polluters, not just on everyday people trying to make a difference with small changes.

Shaping a New Climate Narrative

If we’re serious about tackling climate change, the media has to get serious about how it covers it, too. Right now, a lot of climate coverage is falling flat. We see a focus on small personal actions, or we get stories that make it sound like the science isn’t totally clear—when it actually is. This type of coverage doesn’t just leave people confused; it makes the whole issue feel less urgent than it really is.

The media has a huge role to play in getting people to understand that climate change isn’t some distant, abstract problem—it’s here, and it’s impacting us now. By putting more focus on the big drivers of climate change, lifting up voices from communities on the frontlines, and stopping the fossil fuel ads that just muddy the waters, the media could give us a way clearer view of what’s really going on. People deserve reporting that’s upfront about the stakes, that doesn’t sugarcoat the problem or treat it like it’s just one of many issues we face. When the media is clear, honest, and talks about real solutions, it gives people a sense of direction—and shows that taking action is not only possible but necessary right now.

And hey, we can help push things in the right direction, too. We can support the outlets that take climate coverage seriously, call out misleading stories when we see them, and keep asking for better, more honest reporting. The more we demand transparency, the harder it’ll be for the media to ignore the real story.

Imagine entire communities moving not because they want to, but because they have to. Climate change is quickly reshaping our world, and for many people, staying in their homes is becoming a distant dream. Rising sea levels, harsher droughts, and unpredictable storms are making certain places less livable every year, pushing people to pack up and leave.

Experts predict that by 2050, up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced due to climate impacts. These aren’t just numbers—they represent real people facing a difficult reality. This article dives into the predictions for our climate future and explores which regions are most at risk for mass migration. From small island nations to urban centers in developing countries, we’ll look at the looming challenges and what might be done to help those caught in the path of climate change.

How Climate Predictions Point to a Migration Crisis

To see why climate change might force so many people to move, let’s look at the science behind these predictions. Scientists use climate models—basically, advanced simulations—to forecast how things like temperature, rainfall, and sea levels will change over time. These models rely on years of data and reveal the patterns that give us a glimpse into the future.

But it’s not just about numbers. When scientists study these models, they’re seeing real-life consequences. Rising sea levels threaten to swallow coastlines, and severe droughts are already drying up farmland in some areas. For the people living in these places, that could mean losing their homes, jobs, and access to basic needs like food and water. Many will have little choice but to leave.

For example, some low-lying areas along coastlines are expected to experience frequent flooding, while other regions will face recurring droughts that make farming almost impossible. As more of these areas become unlivable, people may be forced to pack up and find somewhere safer. These climate predictions are painting a picture of what could be one of the biggest migration waves we’ve ever seen.

Global Hotspots of Climate Migration

Certain regions around the world are emerging as climate migration hotspots, where environmental degradation is driving mass displacement at alarming rates. Vulnerable due to geographic exposure, socio-economic challenges, or both, these areas serve as critical case studies for understanding how climate change forces entire populations to move.

1. South Asia: Rising Seas and Floods

In South Asia, the impacts of climate change are severe, with flooding and sea-level rise posing significant threats. Bangladesh, for instance, sits less than five meters above sea level on average, making it highly susceptible to the encroaching waters. A study by the World Bank predicts that by 2050, around 13 million people in Bangladesh alone could be displaced by rising sea levels and intensified flooding. As the original article notes, “Bangladesh floods caused by cyclones have increased the salinity of 53 percent of farmland,” leading to crop failures and forcing farmers to either adapt or relocate. To counter these challenges, initiatives like the Dutch Salt Solution project are teaching farmers to grow salt-tolerant crops, though resources for such adaptive solutions remain limited.

Another South Asian country facing growing climate displacement is India. Severe droughts in central India have repeatedly led to crop failures, forcing many agricultural workers to abandon their farms and migrate to urban centers for employment. These shifts place considerable strain on India’s urban infrastructure, raising concerns about unplanned urbanization and the spread of informal settlements in flood-prone areas. Studies indicate that as many as 40 million Indians could be displaced by climate impacts by mid-century if current trends continue.

2. Sub-Saharan Africa: Desertification and Water Scarcity

Sub-Saharan Africa is another region heavily impacted by climate-induced migration, primarily due to desertification and water scarcity. In areas like the Sahel, rising temperatures and prolonged droughts have drastically reduced agricultural output and livestock survival rates. This phenomenon is particularly evident around Lake Chad, a vital water source that has shrunk by over 90% in recent decades. According to the United Nations, “When temperatures rise in a country, it can reduce water availability and water quality… This may increase the likelihood of drought leading to crop failures that will reduce incomes and food supplies.”

As arable land diminishes, communities in countries such as Nigeria, Niger, and Chad are compelled to move, either to urban centers or across borders in search of sustainable living conditions. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) warns that the Sahel’s environmental degradation, combined with socio-political instability, is fueling a migration crisis that affects millions. A study published by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) underscores this, projecting that up to 86 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa could become climate migrants by 2050 if climate resilience measures are not put in place.

3. Pacific Islands: Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Erosion

In the Pacific Islands, where much of the land is situated mere feet above sea level, climate migration is becoming inevitable. Countries like Kiribati and the Maldives are on the front lines, facing an existential threat as rising oceans steadily encroach on their territory. Kiribati’s government has even taken the extraordinary step of purchasing land in Fiji as a potential relocation site for its people, a stark indication of the seriousness of the situation. A report by the United Nations University suggests that the entire population of some low-lying island nations may need to relocate within decades if current sea-level rise projections hold true.

Efforts are underway to stabilize vulnerable land by planting fast-growing trees to slow down coastal erosion and reduce landslide risks. However, while helpful, these solutions don’t fully address the longer-term threat of rising seas for island nations.

4. Latin America: Drought and Agricultural Collapse

In Latin America, climate migration is driven by recurring droughts and the decline of traditional agricultural livelihoods. Countries such as Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, which are part of the Central American “Dry Corridor,” face prolonged dry spells that have devastated crop yields. As livelihoods disappear, many residents are forced to migrate northward in search of stability and food security. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), up to 17 million people in Latin America may be displaced by climate impacts by 2050, with the majority migrating internally or across borders.

In South America, the Andes region faces its own unique climate challenges. Melting glaciers, which have shrunk significantly over the past 40 years, threaten the water supply for cities and agricultural zones. A study conducted by the Andean Development Corporation found that over 30% of Andean glaciers have disappeared, jeopardizing the drinking water and irrigation sources for millions in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. These changes, compounded by temperature increases and extreme weather, could lead to substantial rural-to-urban migration.

Understanding the Global Patterns

While these regions face unique climate pressures, the patterns of migration they exhibit reveal broader global trends. Resource scarcity, compounded by socio-political instability, drives people from rural areas to urban centers or across borders, often resulting in informal settlements with inadequate infrastructure. Rahman’s observation that “climate change knows no borders” aptly captures the interconnected nature of these challenges, underscoring the need for coordinated international responses.

What Happens When Climate Migrants Move In

When people are forced to leave their homes because of climate change, they usually don’t go far—they head to nearby towns or cities hoping to start over. But when large numbers arrive at once, the places they move to can feel the impact in big ways.

Crowded Cities and Limited Resources

Imagine a city already dealing with limited housing, crowded schools, and busy hospitals. Now add thousands of newcomers who also need homes, jobs, and places for their kids to learn. Suddenly, everything feels squeezed. There aren’t enough houses, jobs become harder to find, and public services get stretched thin. When resources are tight, both locals and newcomers can start to feel the strain.

With so many new faces, some locals worry about how their town is changing. When people from different backgrounds mix, it can lead to misunderstandings. But it doesn’t have to. If cities get the support they need, they can help newcomers settle in and thrive, making communities stronger and more vibrant.

The Bigger Picture

The effects of climate migration can ripple out, especially in places already struggling. Competition over resources like land and water can create real tension. It’s a reminder that to handle climate migration, we need smart planning—policies that support both migrants and the communities welcoming them. With the right steps, we can help everyone have a fair shot at a safe, stable future.

The Legal and Humanitarian Gaps for Climate Migrants

When people have to leave home because of climate disasters, they often find themselves with little support and few rights. Right now, most countries don’t recognize “climate refugees,” so people forced out by floods, droughts, or rising seas are often left without the legal protections that other refugees get.

No Official Status, No Help

Under current refugee laws, only people fleeing war or persecution qualify for certain protections, like asylum or legal residency. Climate migrants, however, don’t fit into those categories, which means they don’t get the same rights or support. For them, it’s like being stuck in a legal limbo—they’re escaping a life-threatening situation, but without official status, they’re often on their own.

Even within their own countries, many climate migrants face tough conditions. Some end up in makeshift camps or crowded areas with limited access to basics like clean water, food, and healthcare. With so many people in need, local resources often fall short, leaving migrants to live in challenging, sometimes unsafe, conditions.

As climate-driven migration grows, there’s a real need to rethink how we protect and support these migrants. Some experts suggest changing refugee laws to include climate migrants, while others push for new visa options or temporary protections. If nothing changes, millions will be left navigating an uncertain future—caught between a home they can’t return to and a new place that doesn’t recognize their need for safety.

Preparing for a Future of Climate Migration

As climate change reshapes the world, more people are finding they have no choice but to leave their homes. For some, it’s the rising seas; for others, it’s relentless droughts or devastating storms. And while the impacts are felt most immediately in certain hotspots, the ripple effect touches us all. From crowded cities to strained resources, climate migration is becoming an issue we all share.

To face this reality, we need to think ahead. This means updating our laws to protect climate migrants, supporting communities that welcome them, and helping at-risk areas adapt so people can stay if they choose. The way we respond now will shape the lives of millions and define how we handle the challenges ahead. With smart planning and compassion, we can build a future where everyone—whether staying put or starting fresh—has the chance at a safe, stable life.

Bindi Irwin, celebrated for her dedication to wildlife conservation and carrying on her father Steve Irwin’s legacy, is no stranger to facing challenges in the public eye. From working with dangerous animals to maintaining her family’s work, she has always shown strength. Yet, behind her contagious smile and commitment to the natural world, Bindi has quietly been fighting a personal health battle, away from the limelight, for over ten years.

Recently, Bindi revealed her struggle with a condition that affects millions of women. This courageous step not only exposed the reality of her own experience but also opened up critical discussions about a topic that often remains misunderstood.

As she continues her journey to recovery, Bindi’s story has become one of hope and resilience. It’s a powerful reminder of the importance of raising awareness and advocating for those who suffer in silence. So, what has this journey been like for her, and how has it shaped the person she is today?

Bindi’s Ten-Year Battle for Diagnosis

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For over a decade, Bindi Irwin quietly endured overwhelming pain, fatigue, and nausea, all without knowing the real cause. Like many women, her symptoms were brushed off by doctors, with some telling her that the pain was just “part of being a woman.” One doctor even told her to simply “deal with it.” These dismissals left her struggling not just physically but emotionally, as she was left without answers and continued suffering.

Bindi didn’t give up, though. She underwent numerous tests for everything from tropical diseases to cancer, but nothing explained her pain. It wasn’t until a close friend encouraged her to see a specialist that she finally found some clarity. In 2022, after another intense episode of pain left her curled up in a fetal position, Bindi had a laparoscopy—an important procedure that allows doctors to get a clearer look inside the abdomen. What they found was shocking: 37 lesions, some deeply embedded, and a “chocolate cyst” on one of her ovaries.

Hearing her doctor say, “How did you manage to live with this much pain?” was a moment of validation. Finally, she had the answers she had been seeking for so long. Sadly, Bindi’s story isn’t unique—many women with endometriosis face years of being ignored or misdiagnosed before getting proper help.

How Endometriosis Affected Bindi’s Life and Career

Bindi Irwin’s battle with endometriosis didn’t just cause physical pain—it impacted every aspect of her life. For more than ten years, she dealt with exhaustion, constant discomfort, and nausea. Despite these struggles, she continued her work as a conservationist, public figure, and a new mom to her daughter, Grace. But behind the scenes, things were far more difficult than most people knew. As Bindi once said, “Every part of my life was being torn apart because of the pain.”

The symptoms of endometriosis—like severe pelvic pain, painful periods, and fatigue—were always present, making it hard for her to keep up with her busy career. Her days at Australia Zoo, where she works alongside her family, became more challenging as she struggled to manage both her work and her health. Even simple social events had to be put on hold, as she funneled every bit of energy into just getting through each day. This invisible battle made it difficult for others to truly understand how much she was suffering.

Beyond the physical toll, the emotional burden was just as heavy. Like many women with chronic conditions, Bindi often felt isolated and frustrated by the lack of understanding from the medical community. One doctor even told her to “just deal with it,” a common experience for women whose pain is often dismissed.

Bindi’s story mirrors the experiences of many women dealing with endometriosis—struggling in silence while trying to maintain their personal and professional lives. It’s not just a physical condition; it affects your entire world.

Speaking Up: Turning Pain Into Purpose

After years of silently struggling, Bindi Irwin made the courageous choice to open up about her experience with endometriosis. In March 2023, just after her surgery, she shared her story on social media, letting the world in on her personal battle. Her message was heartfelt and honest, connecting deeply with women who had faced similar challenges. “There’s a stigma around this awful disease,” Bindi wrote. “I’m sharing my story for anyone who’s quietly dealing with pain and still searching for answers.”

By speaking out, Bindi didn’t just shed light on her own pain—she highlighted an issue that affects millions of women but often goes unnoticed. Endometriosis is more than just bad cramps; it’s a condition that can take over your life. Bindi’s openness helped start important conversations about how we need better education, awareness, and support for those dealing with this condition.

When Bindi received the Endometriosis Foundation of America’s Blossom Award, she made her mission clear: “I’ll spend the rest of my life raising awareness and helping others who are fighting this same battle.” Her willingness to speak up has given a voice to so many who feel overlooked or misunderstood.

Bindi’s story is a powerful reminder that sometimes, sharing your pain can help others find their own strength. She’s not just fighting for herself—she’s fighting for every woman who’s been told her pain doesn’t matter.

Coping with Endometriosis

Dealing with endometriosis is tough, but there are little things you can do to make life more manageable. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking a break to breathe deeply or stretch. Even a few minutes of calm can help ease stress, which often makes the pain worse. Writing down how you feel each day can also be helpful—it lets you spot patterns and helps your doctor find better ways to treat your symptoms.

Moving your body, even if it’s just taking a short walk or doing some light stretching, can help a lot. It gets your blood flowing and can make you feel a bit better. Eating more fresh foods—like fruits, veggies, and whole grains—may also lower inflammation, which could ease some of the symptoms. And on those really rough days, using a heating pad or soaking in a warm bath can bring quick relief.

But above all, don’t go through this alone. Talk to someone—a friend, a family member, or even a support group. Just having people around who understand what you’re going through can make a huge difference when things get hard.

Bindi’s Journey of Healing and Advocacy

Bindi Irwin’s journey with endometriosis is a story of strength and determination. After years of quietly enduring pain, she’s now using her experience to help others. By opening up about what she’s been through, Bindi is giving a voice to so many women who’ve felt ignored or brushed aside. Her message is clear: your pain is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

Bindi’s honesty is already making a difference. She’s sparking conversations that are much needed, shining a light on how often women’s health issues get overlooked. And she’s showing that speaking up can lead to real change—not just for herself, but for so many others.

As Bindi moves forward, she’s balancing her life as a mom, a conservationist, and now, an advocate for women’s health. Her story is a reminder that, even when things seem impossible, there’s always hope. By sharing her journey, she’s letting others know they’re not alone and that better days are ahead. No matter how tough the fight, Bindi’s courage shows us that healing is possible, and there’s always hope on the horizon.

(TMU Op-Ed) — Since most of us were kids we’ve heard the phrase Reduce, Reuse, Recycle repeated ad nauseam everywhere from on TV to ads plastered on the sides of buses, on recycling bins, on coloring pages, and a host of other places.

However, over the years it seems something was lost in translation. With less focus placed on reducing and reusing, our recycling bins are overflowing week after week. Sure, it might be better to have an overflowing recycling bin than it is to have an overflowing trash bin, but how much better is it really?

At the same time we’re finally seeing an increase of recycling outside of the home at places like schools, gas stations, airports, etc. we’re also seeing a dramatic cutting back of the acceptance of recyclables created in the United States. China recently started restricting the import of recyclable waste including mixed paper and most plastics. The news of this happening was the first time that many people in the United States became aware that a lot of our recycling isn’t actually recycled here. For an act billed as a necessity to saving the environment, the fact that it uses an overwhelming amount of time and resources including fuel to ship it overseas is a little concerning.

But more than that, recycling is only a thing because recyclables are valuable. According to a press release, “The global waste management market size is expected to reach $484.9 billion by 2025.” This means that when you toss something into your recycling bin and it is not able to turn a profit it won’t be recycled. Unfortunately this isn’t rare.

Then there’s also the people that are too hopeful about the abilities of the recycling industry and as a result they toss everything in the bin regardless of what the code on the bottom of the item says or what their local rules say. It only takes a little bit of the wrong thing from a “wishful” recycler to ruin an entire batch of recyclable material. And this too isn’t rare. In fact, according to Waste Management one out of every four items that ends up in recycling bins doesn’t actually belong there.

Here are 11 things that “wishful” recyclers tend to toss in the bin:

1. Plastic Bags — To some it may be common knowledge that plastic shopping bags, bubble wrap, cereal bags, food wrap, and more cannot be recycled in your home bin but they still find their way into municipal recycling facilities far too often. These bags can clog up machines and workers must remove them by hand. Thankfully plastic bags are accepted at many stores including local co-ops and chains like Target and Trader Joes.
2. Receipts — Unfortunately, most receipts that you receive while shopping are coated in Bisphenol A (BPA). While yes they are paper, the fact that they are coated in BPA means that it contaminates the paper product being made when they get mixed in with the pulp. If you don’t need a receipt just decline it at the store since you can’t recycle it and more importantly because the BPA coating comes off onto your hands and other surfaces. This is especially important information for parents who often hand receipts off to antsy kids during shopping trips. Skip the receipts if you can and if you can’t be sure to wash your hands after handling them.
3. Pizza Boxes — Takeout and delivery pizza boxes can’t be recycled, despite their obvious cardboard construction. Any paper product with even the smallest amount of food strains cannot be recycled and this always includes pizza boxes. Thankfully many pizza boxes are now made to be compostable and will say so on the box but remember: compostable does not equal recyclable.
4. Bits of Food — Just because you can recycle something doesn’t mean you can recycle it dirty. Rinse out glass and plastic before tossing it in the bin and if the container is still greasy use some soap and water. Even a little bit of food can ruin an entire load of recycling.
5. Coffee Cups — Even the greenest among us find ourselves out and about without our own cup when we crave a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, while those cups are paper, they’re lined with plastic film to keep the liquid from soaking into and then out of it which makes them impossible to recycle. The lids and the paper sleeves are recyclable but the cups never are. Next time you’re out without your own reusable cup, ask the barista for a “here” cup and finish your drink before leaving.
6. Wrapping Paper — Some municipalities accept wrapping paper but it is important to check your local rules. However, the popular shiny and metallic papers are never recyclable. If you are able to recycle basic, matte wrapping paper be sure to remove ribbons and bows. In lieu of using store bought gift wrap, try transitioning into using newspaper, paper bags, or the brown paper that sometimes comes inside of shipping packages.
7. Shredded Paper — There are good reasons to shred certain documents at home but unless you compost it’s better to stick to shredding only that which must be shredded because recycling centers just can’t handle those tiny strips of paper. In fact they can clog up the equipment because they’re so small! Thankfully shredded paper can be composted but make sure not to include envelopes with plastic windows or anything else that isn’t paper. However, some municipalities will accept shredded paper but only if it’s placed in a paper bag and stapled close so please check your local rules for this one.
8. Broken Things — Broken plates and glass shouldn’t be placed in your recycling for various reasons. One of the biggest is that they pose a hazard to sanitation workers. If you have broken items wrap them in plastic and carefully put them in the trash.
9. Old Dishes — Plates and glassware are not recyclable. If you have items that are in good condition take them to a thrift store instead of throwing them away. Bakeware has a much different melting point and chemical composition than normal recyclable glass.
10. Bits of Metal — Some things are too small to recycle. Just like how a piece of paper is recyclable but shredded paper is not, the tab from a metal can isn’t recyclable by itself even though an entire can is. And it’s for the same reason—these small things can clog up the machinery and slow down the entire recycling process. If a soda can tab does fall off, place it inside the can when you’re done. If you have little bits of tinfoil, keep it somewhere safe and add to it until it becomes a big ball.
11. Food Boxes and Containers — Most freezer food boxes are coated in plastic, much like coffee cups. And just like coffee cups it makes these otherwise paper products not recyclable. Unfortunately this is the same for cartons that contain nut milk, oat milk, juice, soups, and more. Some municipalities currently accept these cartons but it is not the norm. You can find out more about how to recycle those containers here.

Remember: when in doubt, throw it out. It’s better to mistakenly throw something away that could be recycled than be an aspirational recycler and ruin an entire truck load of recycling. And always check with your local municipality at least once a year to stay up to date on the rules where you live.

Reduce, reuse, recycle—in that order.

By Emma Fiala | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

(FEE Opinion) — There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith’s varicose ulcer, apparently a symbol of his humanity (or something), which always seems to be “throbbing.” Gross.

None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it’s not the worst thing in 1984. To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn’t keep Big Brother out of your head.

Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in 1984 aren’t that interested in controlling behavior or speech. They do, of course, but it’s only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.

“When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will,” O’Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith near the end of the book.

We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.

Big Brother’s tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved thoughts. We see how this works when Winston’s neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.

“It was my little daughter,” Parsons tells Winston when asked who it was who denounced him. “She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?”

Who Are These Thought Police?

We don’t know a lot about the Thought Police, and some of what we think we know may actually not be true since some of what Winston learns comes from the Inner Party, and they lie.

What we know is this: The Thought Police are secret police of Oceania—the fictional land of 1984 that probably consists of the UK, the Americas, and parts of Africa—who use surveillance and informants to monitor the thoughts of citizens. The Thought Police also use psychological warfare and false-flag operations to entrap free thinkers or nonconformists.

Those who stray from Party orthodoxy are punished but not killed. The Thought Police don’t want to kill nonconformists so much as break them. This happens in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are re-educated through degradation and torture. (Funny sidebar: the name Room 101 apparently was inspired by a conference room at the BBC in which Orwell was forced to endure tediously long meetings.)

The Origins of the Thought Police

Orwell didn’t create the Thought Police out of thin air. They were inspired to at least some degree by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a complicated and confusing affair. What you really need to know is that there were no good guys, and it ended with left-leaning anarchists and Republicans in Spain crushed by their Communist overlords, which helped the fascists win.

Orwell, an idealistic 33-year-old socialist when the conflict started, supported the anarchists and loyalists fighting for the left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, which received most of its support from the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin. (That might sound bad, but keep in mind that the Nazis were on the other side.) Orwell described the atmosphere in Barcelona in December 1936 when everything seemed to be going well for his side.

The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing … It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle,

he wrote in Homage to Catalonia.

[E]very wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle … every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized.

That all changed pretty fast. Stalin, a rather paranoid fellow, was bent on making Republican Spain loyal to him. Factions and leaders perceived as loyal to his exiled Communist rival, Leon Trotsky, were liquidated. Loyal Communists found themselves denounced as fascists. Nonconformists and “uncontrollables” were disappeared.

Orwell never forgot the purges or the steady stream of lies and propaganda churned out from Communist papers during the conflict. (To be fair, their Nationalist opponents also used propaganda and lies.) Stalin’s NKVD was not exactly like the Thought Police—the NKVD showed less patience with its victims—but they certainly helped inspire Orwell’s secret police.

The Thought Police were not all propaganda and torture, though. They also stem from Orwell’s ideas on truth. During his time in Spain, he saw how power could corrupt truth, and he shared these reflections in his work George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943.

…I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.

In short, Orwell’s brush with totalitarianism left him worried that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”

This scared him. A lot. He actually wrote, “This kind of thing is frightening to me.”

Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe,” Rudyard Kipling once observed.

The struggle to remain true to one’s self was also felt by Orwell, who wrote about “the smelly little orthodoxies” that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a “power of facing unpleasant facts”—something of a rarity in humans—even though it often hurt him in British society.

In a sense, 1984 is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power.

More Prophetic Than He Knew?

It might be tempting to dismiss Orwell’s book as a figment of dystopian literature. Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Modern history shows he was onto something.

When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, had a full-time staff of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what’s frightening is that the organization had almost double that in informants, including children. And it wasn’t just children reporting on parents; sometimes it was the other way around.

Nor did the use of state spies to prosecute thoughtcrimes end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, it’s still happening today. The New York Times recently ran a report featuring one Peng Wei, a 21-year-old Chinese chemistry major. He is one of the thousands of “student information officers” China uses to root out professors who show signs of disloyalty to President Xi Jinping or the Communist Party.

The New Thought Police?

The First Amendment of the US Constitution, fortunately, largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found in 1984, East Germany, and China; but the rise of “cancel culture” shows the pressure to conform to all sorts of orthodoxies (smelly or not) remains strong.

The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in 1984, but the next generation will have to decide if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE’s Dan Sanchez recently observed that many people today feel like they’re “walking on eggshells” and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation.

That’s a lot of pressure, especially for people still learning the acceptable boundaries of a new moral code that is constantly evolving. Most people, if the pressure is sufficient, will eventually say “2+2=5” just to escape punishment. That’s exactly what Winston Smith does at the end of 1984, after all. Yet Orwell also leaves readers with a glimmer of hope.

“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad,” Orwell wrote. “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

In other words, the world may be mad, but that doesn’t mean you have to be.

By Jon Miltimore | FEE.org | Republished with permission

The views in this article may not reflect editorial policy of The Mind Unleashed.

(FEE) — Childhood exuberance is now a liability. Behaviors that were once accepted as normal, even if mildly irritating to adults, are increasingly viewed as unacceptable and cause for medical intervention. High energy, lack of impulse control, inability to sit still and listen, lack of organizational skills, fidgeting, talking incessantly—these typical childhood qualities were widely tolerated until relatively recently. Today, children with these characteristics are being diagnosed with, and often medicated for, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at an astonishing rate.

The ADHD Medical Dragnet

While ADHD may be a real and debilitating ailment for some, the startling upsurge in school-age children being labeled with and medicated for this disorder suggests that something else could be to blame. More research points to schooling, particularly early schooling, as a primary culprit in the ADHD diagnosis epidemic.

Over the last several decades, young people are spending more time in school and school-like activities than ever before. They are playing less and expected to do more at very young ages. When many of us were kids, kindergarten was mellow, playful, and short with few academic expectations. Now, 80 percent of teachers expectchildren to learn to read in kindergarten. It’s not the teachers’ fault. They are responding to national curriculum frameworks and standardized testing requirements that over the past two decades have made schooling more oppressive—particularly for young children.

The youngest children are the ones most often caught in the ADHD medical dragnet. Last fall, Harvard researchers found that early school enrollment was linked to significantly higher rates of ADHD diagnosis. In states with a September 1 school enrollment age cutoff, children who entered school after just turning five in August were 30 percent more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than children born in September who were about to turn six. Immaturity, not pathology, was the real factor.

The ADHD Fallacy

Marilyn Wedge, author of A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became An American Epidemic, sounds the alarm on ADHD overdiagnosis. In a Time Magazine article called “The ADHD Fallacy,” she writes:

By nature, young children have a lot of energy. They are impulsive, physically active, have trouble sitting still, and don’t pay attention for very long. Their natural curiosity leads them to blurt out questions, oblivious in their excitement to interrupting others. Yet we expect five- and six-year-old children to sit still and pay attention in classrooms and contain their curiosity. If they don’t, we are quick to diagnose them with ADHD.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percent of very young children (ages two to five) who were diagnosed with ADHD increased by over 50 percent between 2007/2008 and 2011/2012. As of 2016, data show that 9.4 percent of all American children, or over six million kids, had been diagnosed with ADHD, and almost two-thirds of current ADHD-diagnosed children were taking medication for it. A March 2019 report on ADHD by Blue Cross and Blue Shield found that among commercially insured children of all ages, ADHD diagnosis rates increased 30 percent in just eight years.

While the symptoms of ADHD may be troublesome, looking first at the environment, rather than the child, may be an important step toward curbing the ADHD diagnosis epidemic. In his book, ADHD Does Not Exist, Dr. Richard Saul, a Chicago behavioral neurologist, explains that individuals diagnosed with ADHD either have external factors that exacerbate normal symptoms or have some other underlying condition that should be identified and treated. In the latter instance, he finds that once the underlying condition is discovered and treated, the ADHD symptoms usually disappear. In the former instance, changing the environment is a key step toward improvement. This is true for both children and adults with an ADHD diagnosis. Dr. Saul writes:

Like many children who act out because they are not challenged enough in the classroom, adults whose jobs or class work are not personally fulfilling or who don’t engage in a meaningful hobby will understandably become bored, depressed and distracted. In addition, today’s rising standards are pressuring children and adults to perform better and longer at school and at work.

An Environmental Mismatch

Addressing an environmental mismatch for ADHD-diagnosed adults could mean switching one’s job or field of study or pursuing a true passion. Maybe you’re an accountant who wants to be a carpenter or a nurse who wants to be an entrepreneur. For ADHD children, changing the environment could mean removing children from restrictive schooling altogether. As Boston College psychology professor Peter Gray writes:

What does it mean to have ADHD? Basically, it means failure to adapt to the conditions of standard schooling. Most diagnoses of ADHD originate with teachers’ observations.

Jennifer Walenski saw firsthand how transformative removing her ADHD-diagnosed child from standard schooling could be. She shares her family’s journey at The Bus Story and told me:

Our kids were actually in public school originally. Our son also was diagnosed with both ADHD and autism while he was in the school system. And they wanted to medicate him. But we said no. Then we took him and his sister out of school and began homeschooling them. Fast forward several years, he has absolutely no need at all for medication. He is just a normal boy who did not belong in that kind of environment. And most of us don’t. Think about it.

Walenski’s experience echoes that of other parents who removed their ADHD-diagnosed children from standard schooling. In an informal survey analysis, Gray discovered that when ADHD-labeled children left school for homeschooling, most of them no longer needed medication for ADHD symptoms. Their ADHD characteristics often remained but were no longer problematic outside of the conventional classroom.

Self-Directed Learning

Gray’s analysis also revealed that the ADHD-labeled young people who fared best outside of standard schooling were those who were able to learn in a more self-directed way. He found that the

few kids in this sample who were still on ADHD medications during homeschooling seemed to be primarily those whose homeschooling was structured by the parent and modeled after the education one would receive in a conventional school.

Replicating school-at-home can also replicate the problematic behaviors found at school, whereas moving toward unschooling, or self-directed education, can give young people the freedom to flourish.

Ending the ADHD overdiagnosis epidemic depends on a societal reality check where we no longer pathologize normal childhood behaviors. Much ADHD-labeling originates from forced schooling environments with learning and behavioral expectations that are developmentally inappropriate for many children. Freeing young people from restrictive schooling and allowing them to learn and grow through their own self-directed curiosity can lead to happier and healthier families and children.

By Kerry McDonald | FEE.org

The views in this article may not reflect editorial policy of The Mind Unleashed.

Back in October of 2017, astronomers at the University of Hawaii spotted something bizarre passing through our solar system and they named it ‘Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout or messenger. ‘Oumuamua was the first interstellar object to ever be detected in our solar system.

One year later, in October of 2018, the chair of Harvard’s astronomy department co-wrote a paper examining the object’s acceleration, which they described as “peculiar.” The two, Harvard professor Avi Loeb and Harvard postdoctoral fellow Shmuel Bialy, suggested that the object “may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth’s vicinity by an alien civilization.” That’s quite the claim and the pair instantly received significant backlash for their controversial theory.

Loeb said of the potential for making contact with alien civilization:

“As soon as we leave the solar system, I believe we will see a great deal of traffic out there. Possibly we’ll get a message that says, ‘Welcome to the interstellar club.’ Or we’ll discover multiple dead civilizations — that is, we’ll find their remains.”

In a recent interview in The New Yorker, Loeb attempts to shed on some light on the object, the paper he co-authored and the controversial theory that his paper presented.

So what’s so unusual about ‘Oumuamua anyway? Loeb explains that astronomers can calculate the rate at which rocks are ejected in space and how that calculation leads one of many peculiar facts about ‘Oumuamua:

“When you look at all the stars in the vicinity of the sun, they move relative to the sun, the sun moves relative to them, but only one in five hundred stars in that frame is moving as slow as ‘Oumuamua. You would expect that most rocks would move roughly at the speed of the star they came from. If this object came from another star, that star would have to be very special.”

The object was observed spinning every eight hours while it’s brightness changed significantly, leaving the astronomers puzzled.

“When it was discovered, we realized it spins every eight hours, and its brightness changed by at least a factor of ten. The fact that its brightness varies by a factor of ten as it spins means that it is at least ten times longer than it is wide. We don’t have a photo, but, in all the artists’ illustrations that you have seen on the Web, it looks like a cigar. That’s one possibility. But it’s also possible that it’s a pancake-like geometry, and, in fact, that is favored.“

‘Oumuamua is shaped like a pancake, another bizarre and significant observation. Why a pancake and why is that abnormal? Objects that orbit the sun have a shape influenced by the gravitational force of the sun, the same force that results in their orbit. Deviation from that rule happens in objects like comets. Evaporation of ice from the surface of a comet creates gasses that push it, sort of like a rocket, and also cause the tail of evaporated gas that most stargazers are familiar with. ‘Oumuamua doesn’t have one of those.

“We don’t see a cometary tail here, but, nevertheless, we see a deviation from the expected orbit. And that is the thing that triggered the paper. Once I realized that the object is moving differently than expected, then the question is what gives it the extra push.“

‘Oumuamua is unlike any comet we have ever seen in our solar system, so it probably isn’t one. Could it be an asteroid?

“Its brightness varies by a factor of ten, and the maximum you typically observe is a factor of three. It has a much more extreme geometry, and there is some other force pushing it.”

So the question remains, what is making ‘Oumuamua move?

“The only thing that came to my mind is that maybe the light from the sun, as it bounces off its surface, gives it an extra push. It’s just like a wind bouncing off a sail on a sailboat. So we checked that and found that you need the thickness of the object to be less than a millimeter in order for that to work. If it is indeed less than a millimeter thick, if it is pushed by the sunlight, then it is maybe a light sail, and I could not think of any natural process that would make a light sail. It is much more likely that it is being made by artificial means, by a technological civilization.”

Loeb, who has “long been interested in the search for extraterrestrial life,” according to The New Yorker, took the opportunity to elaborate on just that:

“I should say, just as background, I do not view the possibility of a technological civilization as speculative, for two reasons. The first is that we exist. And the second is that at least a quarter of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy have a planet like Earth, with surface conditions that are very similar to Earth, and the chemistry of life as we know it could develop. If you roll the dice so many times, and there are tens of billions of stars in the Milky Way, it is quite likely we are not alone.“

If ‘Oumuamua did originate from an alien civilization, it didn’t come from our solar system. According to Loeb, it would have originated from somewhere in our galaxy instead, but there’s a chance “that the civilization is not alive anymore.”

“Imagine another history, in which the Nazis have a nuclear weapon and the Second World War ends differently. You can imagine a civilization that develops technology like that, which would lead to its own destruction.”

Loeb insists the point is simple:

“[T]his is the very first object we found from outside the solar system. It is very similar to when I walk on the beach with my daughter and look at the seashells that are swept ashore. Every now and then we find an object of artificial origin. And this could be a message in a bottle, and we should be open-minded. So we put this sentence in the paper.”

In response to those criticizing his paper and in summary of why ‘Oumuamua is worth paying attention to, Loeb had this to say:

“The point is that we follow the evidence, and the evidence in this particular case is that there are six peculiar facts. And one of these facts is that it deviated from an orbit shaped by gravity while not showing any of the telltale signs of cometary outgassing activity. So we don’t see the gas around it, we don’t see the cometary tail. It has an extreme shape that we have never seen before in either asteroids or comets. We know that we couldn’t detect any heat from it and that it’s much more shiny, by a factor of ten, than a typical asteroid or comet. All of these are facts. I am following the facts.”

Speaking of the facts, Loeb drew a grand distinction between his curiosity of and the facts surrounding ‘Oumuamua and popular ideas such as the multiverse and extra dimensions:

“The multiverse is a mainstream idea—that anything that can happen will happen an infinite number of times. And I think that is not scientific, because it cannot be tested. Whereas the next time we see an object like this one, we can contemplate taking a photograph. My motivation, in part, is to motivate the scientific community to collect more data on the next object rather than argue a priori that they know the answer. In the multiverse case, we have no way of testing it, and everyone is happy to say, “Ya!”

Another mainstream idea is the extra dimension. You see that in string theory, which gets a lot of good press, and awards are given to members of that community. Not only has it not been tested empirically for almost forty years now but there is no hope it will be tested in the next forty years.“

In the end, Loeb’s questioning is simply a part of science:

“We have seen an object from outside the solar system, and we are trying to figure what it is made of and where it came from. We don’t have as much data as I would like. Given the data that we have, I am putting this on the table, and it bothers people to even think about that, just like it bothered the Church in the days of Galileo to even think about the possibility that the Earth moves around the sun. Prejudice is based on experience in the past. The problem is that it prevents you from making discoveries. If you put the probability at zero per cent of an object coming into the solar system, you would never find it!”

In conclusion: “If these beings are peaceful, we could learn a lot from them.” 

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” ~Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

“Well-armed” doesn’t necessarily need to mean militantly locked and loaded. It can just as easily be a higher consciousness metaphor for knowledge. Indeed, a well-armed lamb is a knowledgeable lamb. As Doctor Who said, “You want weapons. Go to a library. Books are the best weapons in the world.”

A well-armed lamb can eventually transform into a lion. In a world of blind obedience to authority, it takes a particular flavor of courage (mostly the courage to question authority) to wake up the blindly obedient (sheep) to the extent of their ignorance, and to poke holes in the unhealthy, unsustainable and violent power constructs (sick society) built by entrenched authority.

The blindly obedient are the lambs. The entrenched authority are the wolves. And the uncommonly courageous are the lions.

As stated in the movie Robin Hood, “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions.”

MAGA is MAFA:

“Beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves.” ~Nietzsche

Making America Great Again is Making America Free Again. The only thing that is truly anti-American is anti-freedom. Lambs and wolves are afraid of freedom for different reasons.

Lambs are afraid to lose their comfort, security and safety, and thus cling to it at the expense of freedom. Wolves are afraid to lose their power and are intent upon keeping everyone divided and afraid so that they can maintain their overreaching power. The lion breaks the vicious cycle with small and large acts of courage by checking the entrenched (and thus corruptible) power of wolves.

But how does a lamb transform fear into courage and thus become the brave lion who is capable of keeping wolves in check? The lamb must first put itself in check by questioning why it believes what it believes about the way the world works.

The lamb must ask itself: Are my beliefs merely culturally conditioned by a sick society? Have I been brainwashed into believing a certain way by a religion or political party? Do I just blindly obey out of fear of losing my comfort, safety and security? And, most importantly of all, once I realize I’ve been mistaken, will I cease being mistaken or will I cease being honest?

It’s a tricky tightrope between fear and courage, and the menacing maw of the abyss is ever-present beneath it. The way toward freedom is not for the faint of heart. Which is probably why there are so few lions among men.

A lamb that can manage to question its fear-based lifestyle –which is built upon blind obedience, addiction to comfort, and reliance on wolves to keep them “safe”– is a lamb that has the potential to become, at least, a well-armed lamb, if not a courageous lion.

If a lamb can manage to become a well-armed lamb or to transform itself into a courageous lion, then the next step is to show its teeth (knowledge/courage) to the world.

Shove the first amendment down everyone’s throat:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” ~John F. Kennedy

The First Amendment gives every American the right to “petition his government for a redress of grievances.” No matter the seeming “goodness” or “righteousness” of that government.

Freedom begins with individuals being free to express themselves. An individual who chooses to remain blindly obedient and silent to unchecked power is an unfree lamb. An individual who chooses to question the chain of obedience with the knowledge it has gained is a well-armed lamb contesting power. An individual who is willing to put everything on the line to maintain freedom in the face of tyranny is a courageous lion.

The beauty of the first amendment is that it maintains the essence of freedom: free expression. Without it, there can be no liberty. Without it, there can only be tyranny.

Well-armed lambs and courageous lions are able to take advantage of the first amendment as a platform for speaking truth to power.

Whether through peaceful protests (Thoreau’s civil disobedience), or revolutionary speeches (MLK jr./ JFK), or hard-hitting political articles, or even radical eye-opening art; the first amendment is a platform for freedom. It must be protected at all costs.

Free speech should never be controlled by an authority. No matter how popular that authority. Free speech is paramount for freedom to exist at all. As John W. Whitehead said, “If the government can control speech, it can control thought, and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.”

Lest we become a nation of mindless sheep, free speech must be protected at all costs against the wolves who seek to muzzle lambs. It is protected by well-armed lambs and courageous lions with the mettle and the wherewithal to speak truth to power.

Don’t kowtow to the chain of obedience (but don’t be violent either):

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” ~Henry David Thoreau

Never confuse patriotism with blind obedience. Many a cowardly lamb makes this mistake. And many a cowardly wolf uses it to lord power over lambs.

Sometimes being a true patriot means questioning power. Especially if that power is violent, unjust, and overreaching. As Barbara Ehrenreich said, “Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”

Don’t allow yourself to be brainwashed into believing that everything the government does is for the good and anyone who opposes the government is an enemy.

The government is made up of people. And people are fallible. Likewise, the state. Likewise, the chain of obedience. As Edward Abbey wisely stated, “Since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”

There must be checks and balances. Fallible individuals checking the power of systems made up of other fallible individuals is the only way to prevent the power within those fallible systems from becoming corrupt. Let alone from corrupting absolutely.

It is vital that whatever we are freeing ourselves for, and whatever freedom we are advocating for, does not violate the nonaggression principle. A truly virtuous system is never directly violent. It is only ever violent in self-defense. The moment a so-called virtuous system becomes directly violent it ceases to be virtuous.

The only moral exception to this fact is when violence is necessary to defend against direct violence –and, even then, only as a last resort. Any attempt to use violence to force others into compliance is a violation of the nonaggression principle and therefor unvirtuous and unfit for either well-armed lambs or courageous lions.

Only cowardly lambs would ever advocate violence as a means toward solving problems. And only cowardly wolves high on power would ever use it to solve problems.

Don’t be a cowardly lamb or a cowardly wolf. Rise above the “need” for safety and security at the expense of freedom and liberty. Become a well-armed lamb contesting all votes and proactively voting with your feet. Better yet, become a courageous lion and dare to become a brave David in the face of the hyperviolent Goliath of the state.

“To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.” ~Karen Horney

Find the nearest mirror. Look deeply into it. There, hidden within that fabulously flawed human being staring back at you, is the greatest teacher you will never know.

Yes. It’s yourself. And yes, you will never really know it.

The famous inscription at the Temple of Delphi, “know thyself,” is ultimately unattainable. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to obtain it. Enlightenment is equally unattainable, but there’s nothing wrong with striving for it. Self-improvement is still healthy regardless of the fact that you will never be perfect. Socrates’ dictum still stands: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Examining your own life is always going to begin with your interpretation of it. So it behooves you to align your interpretation of it with reality. Easier said than done. Because examining the self is a tricky proposition. The Self is an elusive mystery. It’s masks all the way down perceiving illusions all the way up.

The trickiest part is that only you can experience these masks and illusions. Nobody else can experience them for you. They are subjective. Your experience of them will always be primary to anyone’s interpretation of them. Not even the best shrink in the world can know them as well as you can.

That’s what makes self-examination, and the self-realization that comes from it, so important. Therapists are, at best, guides. Self-therapy is what a therapist directs you towards anyway. So, you might as well make that attempt to begin with. A therapist is good for keeping you on track and preventing you from getting stuck, but there’s nothing saying you cannot learn strategies to do it yourself.

There’s nothing saying you cannot be your own greatest teacher. The autodidact inside you is calling.

Learn your own nature by learning about Mother Nature:

“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” ~Rumi

The most powerful way to hear the “voice that doesn’t use words” is through solitude and meditation. Out away from the things of man, where No-mind is free to remind you that you are a force of nature first and a human being second.

This is perhaps the most powerful strategy for teaching your Self to yourself. Solitude and meditation teaches a particular flavor of humility that gets you over your own ego (codependence) and puts you in touch with the interconnectedness of all things (interdependence). It teaches you how not to take yourself too seriously. When you unbecome yourself, you become everything. You’re free to experience interdependence despite culturally conditioned codependence.

Allowing Nature to become your teacher cuts the uninitiated ego out of the equation and then sneaks in the initiated ego, which utilizes Soul as a tool to leverage a heightened state of awareness. From this heightened state comes the deep interdependent realization that everything is connected to everything else.

In this heightened state of eco-melting your third eye opens, your crown chakra blooms in full flutter, and your oneness with all things becomes paramount. You are suddenly out of your own way. You are free to learn what you must learn. You are free to become what you must become.

The cure for the pain is in the pain:

“Doctors study medicine. Teachers study education. Healers study darkness.” ~Mark Lundy

Just as you are your greatest teacher, you are also your greatest healer. Know thyself and heal thyself are reciprocal properties. Mother Nature teaches you this first. Pain teaches you this second.

Pain is inevitable. It’s a part of life. Avoiding pain just causes more pain. Ignoring or repressing pain just causes unnecessary suffering. Although pain is inevitable, unnecessary suffering is avoidable.

As long as you’re able to learn from the pain, it can be a steppingstone. Seen in this way, pain can be an initiation into wisdom (a sacred wound), and a flourishing into Eudaimonia. Which can be quite pleasurable.

Growth is painful (think: exercise and endurance training). Change is even more painful (think: puberty and vicissitude). But being stuck is arguably the greatest pain of all (think: the unnecessary suffering of unhealthy and inauthentic living).

Pain is a guide, a powerful teacher. And if you can gain the capacity to recognize the guideposts and learn the lessons that Pain provides, you will be more adept at adapting and more likely to grow into a healthier version of yourself.

The Daemonic and the Demonic:

“To learn to creatively live with the daemonic or be violently devoured by it. We will decide our own destiny. Let us choose wisely.” ~Stephen Diamond

The daemonic is the hidden genius within you: your latent creativity. The demonic is the hidden shadow within you: your repressed darkness. Ignore them at your own peril.

The daemon harbors vital knowledge and deep numen. It is your genius loci, your inspiring force, your attendant spirit, your guiding power. It is the quintessential teacher inside you.

It dwells in the fire of your passions, in your love and your anger, in your longing and your jealousy, in your happiness and your sadness. If you conform to your cultural conditioning and ignore or suppress its presence, these passions will eventually transform from a daemonic passion into a demonic rage, with potentially devastating results.

Hence the importance of reconciling the shadow. You do this by making the darkness conscious. By paying attention to your deepest wounds. Becoming curious with your deep wounds is honoring them with your attention. If you’re able to honor your wounds, then you will be more likely to reconcile your demons.

It’s not so much that you’ll suffer less but that you’ll suffer better. You will become healthier in the ways that you suffer. And with the demon as your diamond-backed ally, you add a streak of fierceness to your teaching/learning that can be revolutionary.

Have a good sense of humor about your own fallibility:

“Life is a matter of oscillation. Life is vibration. The question is: how are you going to interpret that. Is it tremble, tremble, tremble; or is it laugh, laugh, laugh?” ~Alan Watts

Laughter is the best medicine. It’s salve for the soul. Laughter reduces pain, forms deep social bonds, fosters brain connectivity, acts as an effective antidepressant, and protects the heart. Besides all these scientific benefits, laughter is flat out enjoyable.

It usually happens when you are having fun. But it is also a vital tool to use in the face of tragedy, fallibility and mortality.

Nothing is more powerful and courageous than laughter in the face of that which seeks to destroy you. Allow your humor to shine even as your soul is breaking under the heavy weight of cosmic nihilism. Allow it to blaze through the cracks of having fallen apart and come back together again. As Charlie Chaplin said, “Smile, though your heart is aching.”

Embrace the fact that you are a stumbling naked ape, fumbling over your barely evolved brain. You’re an anxious mammal with a mortal coil. You’re an insatiable beast with improbable reach. You might imagine that you are a mature, evolved being who is above baser animal instincts, but you’re not.

When it comes down to it, you represent a laughably young species attempting to evolve on an extremely old planet which is hurtling through an unfathomably ancient universe. In the grand scheme of things, you are a member of a floundering baby of a species.

Having a good sense of humor is embracing your own fallibility. It’s accepting that you are prone to mistakes; that you are imperfect, and always will be. It’s injecting a little humility into your human-biased disposition.

Mastering the self is mastering humility and humor. It’s embracing absurdity in a heroic sense. One is both humbled and empowered by a good sense of humor. The shadow’s “gold” and the “secret elixir” are then more easily excavated, and brought forth to others, despite the absurd experience of being a creature torn between spirit and flesh, mortality and eternity, tragedy and comedy.

If, as Karl Frei said, “Attitude is the difference between ordeal and adventure,” then having a good sense of humor is the ideal attitude to have, as your own greatest teacher, going on the greatest adventure you will ever experience: the hero’s journey.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an activist, or even just a person who speaks out against injustice on social media in China?

You might end up stripped of your ability to do every basic thing you need to do to survive.

One man is restricted from owning property, unable to board flights and many trains, and worse because he got on the wrong side of an Orwellian “social credit” system in China.

The system is already a real life example of an age old conspiracy theory that a digital or one world currency would be used as a means to control people, and remove them from the right to use money if they get on the bad side of the state (like having your “chip turned off,” as the theory goes).

Liu Hu was an activist in China for 20 years, pushing a hard line against the rigid censorship they are subjected to. He was like the independent journalists we know, using his own blog to point out the corruption and immorality of high-level officials and publish info about tyranny.

In 2013, he was imprisoned and accused of “fabricating and spreading rumors.” A not so speedy trial, in late 2016 he was found guilty of defamation.

The court ordered him to apologize on his own social media account with 740,000 followers. He was unwilling to do that, so the court said he could pay $115 to publish his fake apology on an “authorized website.” He paid the money, but the judge raised the fee to $2,900: because f**k rules, the state can just do whatever it wants?

Now at the beginning of last year, he was rebuilding his life and he discovered he had been stripped of many of his most basic rights. Without any notice, China’s new social credit system (which even mainstream media describes as a “pervasive new tool for social control”) struck him hard.

According to the Globe and Mail:

“Without any notice, he had been caught up in the early reaches of a social-credit system that China is developing as a pervasive new tool for social control – one expected to one day tighten the state’s grip on its citizens. Critics have called it an Orwellian creation – a new kind of “thought police.””

When Mr. Liu tried to buy a plane ticket, the booking system simply refused it, saying he was “not qualified.” He was banned from buying property, traveling on the country’s main trains, and taking out a loan from a bank.

The activist said:

“There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to. What’s really scary is there’s nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

This is a brother of the truth in a land much different from the West.

The system of “social credit” was first officially envisioned in the mid-1990’s. It assigns a ranking to each person in the country of 1.4 billion people: it is an “all encompassing” system of judgement basically based on how obedient a person is to the government, plus their basic responsibilities, like a US credit score.

Far from a Western credit score however, it’s a full blown judgement based on every single piece of data the government can collect about a person. A 2014 Chinese government document about its plans says: “trust-keeping is insufficiently rewarded, the costs of breaking trust tend to be low.”

China is a real life example of the technocracy that many suspect the US and countries all over the world are becoming. Looking into China, we’re peering into our own future if we don’t stand up for what we believe in.

The article from Globe and Mail continues:

“It is the most ambitious attempt by any government in modern history to fuse technology with behavioural control, placing China at the forefront of a new kind of authoritarianism, one that can mine a person’s digital existence – shopping habits, friends, criminal records, political views – and judge them according to the state’s standard of reliability.

It was only months later that Mr. Liu discovered what had happened. A friend pointed him to a website run by China’s Supreme People’s Court called the List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement, a formalized catalogue of exclusion. In Mr. Liu’s case, the reason states: “This person refuses to fulfill the duties listed in the verdict even though he is able to do so.””

This Chinese blacklist currently contains over 7.49 million people, and uses any kind of surveillance data that can possibly be harvested to judge a person’s social, moral, political and commercial life.

It’s an introvert’s worst nightmare: constant, all encompassing judgement made possible by surveillance.

One girl was put on the blacklist as a toddler. Another man was blacklisted for stealing a couple packs of cigarettes, but the worst crime in the eyes of a state that seeks to use and manipulate its unarmed citizens is dissent.

A Beijing lawyer spoke on Liu’s case:

“I can’t say that Liu Hu’s outspokenness led directly to his troubles. But we have to admit that Liu’s is not a rare case. Many people who are, like him, similarly controversial are very likely to endure the same ordeal,” Zhu Xiaoding said.

“And the lack of an appeal mechanism has made these people unable to seek the help they really need. That leaves them in despair, because their social relations, as well as their material lives, have been ruined,” he continued.

Certain Chinese cities even change the sound you hear on the phone when a blacklisted person calls you, blasting them as some kind of criminal from the start.

Last year, we reported on one of the world’s first “smart cities” in China. The city of Hangzhou became a “smart city,” in which cameras and microphones on nearly every block closely monitor everything, sending the police to the scene of anyone breaking a law as petty as they want to enforce.

What really makes it technocracy however, is the fact that artificial intelligence is linked up to Hangzhou’s surveillance grid.

Reading from the article:

“Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited is aiding the Chinese police state in catching people who break the law, tracking criminals in real time in their new “smart city” of Hangzhou, home to 9 million people.

They are using video feeds and artificial intelligence, tracking things as petty as illegal parking in real time, putting the city under total surveillance.

Using hundreds of thousands of cameras located across the city and artificial intelligence, they were able to do a lot: for the people who control the city, not the residents.”

Imagine being for instance, a free thinking, cannabis smoking regular person in China. You’d be put in prison for a long time for using cannabis and you’d actually get caught with the surveillance grid they have.

To further explore exactly what “technocracy” is and how a government might aim to achieve it, this documentary is very insightful. It is a second part to this documentary.

Image credit: Consumer Voice, CDN Wallpapers, JDR

“There is no bad guy in this,” Sgt. Joseph Corrigan propitiated of an unforgiving crackdown targeting do-gooders with the nerve to voluntarily feed people in need — part of wider law enforcement action to quash the act of feeding houseless people throughout Atlanta — to the Associated Press.

There is no bad guy in this.

Activists and advocates for homeless people everywhere in the United States opine ever-tightening legal strictures regarding ‘sharing food’ in public — how feeding houseless people is classified under the law.

According to Georgia State University Police Sgt. Corrigan, a chaplain and head of the department’s homeless outreach, and a plethora of detractors, giving people food serves an acute need, but does little if anything to solve the twin crises of hunger and shelterlessness in the long term — even exacerbating such issues as left-behind refuse, communicable disease, lack of sanitation and restrooms, and more, if allowed to continue.

Indeed, as the AP reports, “About 40 cities nationwide had active laws to restrict food sharing as of November 2014, and a few dozen more had attempted such restrictions, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. Interim Director Megan Hustings said she doesn’t have updated numbers but that she’s heard about more cities considering such regulations.”

However, The Nation painted a more appropriately dismal if albeit embarrassing picture on the status of feeding houseless people — nearly three years ago, in February 2015 — reporting,

“According to a survey of more than 180 cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, anti-homeless laws pervade urban spaces nationwide. Roughly a third of cities barred public ‘camping,’ for example, up 60 percent since 2011. Restrictions range from prohibiting sitting on sidewalks to imposing steep fees or regulations that effectively criminalize actions of charity groups, often using antiseptic ‘quality of life’ terms (a tent pitched under a bridge becomes an unauthorized ‘camp’). Palo Alto has banned sleeping in parked cars. Mobile has imposed zero-tolerance on ‘aggressive panhandling,’ which could involve just ‘request[ing] a donation from a person standing in line…no matter how mildly the request was made.’ Last year, ThinkProgress reported, Fort Lauderdale authorized police to bust people who ‘store possessions’ on public property — suggesting that homeless people don’t deserve to have what little they carry with them, let alone ‘quality of life.’”

Notably, it isn’t as if these cities have implemented far-reaching and successful programs to replace the lost assistance of do-gooders.

In essence, critics of public charitable food-giving adhere to two problematic mainstays of thought: that people must ‘pull themselves up by the bootstraps’; but, failing that, ‘teaching them to fish’ — pointing them in the direction of assistance and having them enroll, for example, in return for food — rather than simply ‘giving them fish,’ is the only valid means of assisting the neediest of individuals.

Our way or no way, they seem to suggest. There is no bad guy in this.

“We don’t want anybody to stop feeding people. We just want it done in a way that’s connected to social services providers,” George Chidi, social impact director for nonprofit community development organization, Central Atlanta Progress, averred to the Associated Press, “and not on the street corner because we can’t make sure those connections are being made in these street corner feedings.”

Thus, Atlanta joins a shamefully lengthening list of cities choosing to declare a de facto war not only against the condition of being homeless, but against anyone willing to offer the stopgap assistance of an immediate meal.

Case in point, volunteer Adele MacLean with Food Not Bombs — who takes issue with the whole of Chidi’s position — landed a citation and court summons from another University of Georgia law enforcement officer on November 19, after the awareness and advocacy group refused to cease feeding houseless people in a downtown park when threats to obtain a permit were ignored. Although the offense was ultimately tossed by a judge, she feels the incident and the fallacious premise of her supposed transgression symptomatic of the crackdown on homelessness, telling the AP,

“Food is a human right, and you don’t force people to do what you want them to do by withholding food.”

Atlanta and other cities added to obstacles between houseless people and those who would provide them nourishment, predicating any immediate assistance on their entrée into the impoverishment assistance complex — while simultaneously frustrating activists and advocates with a deluge of impossible red tape making the act of sharing food a laborious chore for those attempting to work within its confines.

Indeed, shady tactics apparently land within the purview of enforcing the law.

According to the AP, attorneys for MacLean say police have gone so far as to disseminate a “misleading pamphlet” emblazoned with the city seal and a statement indicating a permit is required to feed homeless people in public — but it isn’t true. A previously unenforced county law exists, notes Reason — which only saw enforcement beginning around Thanksgiving — but none does explicitly for the City of Atlanta.

Southern Center for Human Rights attorney Gerry Weber, representing MacLean, explained restaurants, food trucks, and festival vendors may indeed require permits from the city — people voluntarily sharing food in public without charge, not so much.

Food Not Bombs was forced to challenge a similarly callous ordinance in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, arguing before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August such crackdowns on feeding houseless people infringe on the group’s constitutional right to free speech, since members share food “as an expression of their political message that hunger and poverty can be ended if society’s resources are redirected from the military and war.”

A decision in the matter has yet to be rendered.

In the interim, charity workers advocating for homeless people in cities across this putatively Great (or, perhaps, Getting There) nation will have to contend with an ambivalent public, ludicrous restrictions, and an eagerly authoritarian body of law enforcement in order to give hungry people food in a public setting.

“I salute genuinely the good will and good nature of all these people,” Sgt. Corrigan insisted to the Associated Press.

“There is no bad guy in this.”

Image: Public domain.

Sizable factions of the scientific community have railed against the EPA for continuing to allow the imprudent and widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides on the nation’s crops before extensive testing can determine if the substances pose as deleterious a risk as that found in multiple studies — several of which were conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Such as ongoing analysis and the government’s latest assessment of four neonicotinoid pesticides (often referred to for brevity as ‘neonics’), two of which, EPA scientists conclude, directly threaten not only indispensable pollinators like bees and butterflies, but birds, aquatic life, other insects, and some small mammals, as well.

“The EPA’s assessments confirm neonicotinoid pesticides are extremely harmful to birds and aquatic life at the very center of our ecosystems,” asserted Center for Biological Diversity director of environmental health program, Lori Ann Burd, in a statement Friday. “With bird, aquatic invertebrate and bee populations in decline, the only way to prevent further catastrophic damage is to follow Europe’s lead and ban these dangerous pesticides.”

Dangerous, to say the least, in terms of impact to ecosystems and the broader environment — but, in particular, to the species and pollinators responsible for much of the nation’s agricultural acreage.

“In today’s assessment the EPA found that risks posed to certain birds from eating neonic-treated seeds exceeded the agency’s level of concern — the level at which harm is known to occur — by as much as 200-fold,” the Center for Biological Diversity statement continues. “In addition to killing birds, a recent scientific study also found, neonic pesticides significantly impair the migratory ability of seed-eating songbirds.

“Today’s analysis found that if neonic-treated seeds make up just 1 percent to 6 percent of a bird’s diet, serious harms could result.”

As Burd and the Center note, similar results abroad led the European Union to institute a temporary ban on neonics, while agency regulating pesticides in Canada recommended a ban for one of the most widely used neonicotinoids due to depredation of aquatic life — yet, these sobering findings from the government agency putatively tasked with protecting the environment do not necessarily secure a ban in the United States.

“The EPA’s own research leaves no question that neonicotinoids pose unacceptable risks,” the environmental health expert opined. “But while other developed nations wisely restrict use of these dangerous poisons, the United States has refused to take even the most basic steps to protect our wildlife from neonics.”

Four neonicotinoid pesticides — clothianidin, thiamethoxam, dinotefuran, and imidacloprid — are under investigation by the EPA after a growing body of evidence pegs the insidious substances responsible for sharply declining honey bee, butterfly, and other pollinator populations, as well as slumps in numbers of endangered species, in the U.S. and overseas.

But it’s the latter, imidacloprid, which is of exceptional concern to environmentalists and vigilant scientists — posing an “acute risk,” finds the EPA, to bird populations when sprayed directly onto crops. Indeed, the pernicious substances also threaten birds and animals eating neonic-treated seeds — which is one common method of delivery to treat plants, like cotton, with these pesticides.

“Neonicotinoids are a class of pesticides known to have both acute and chronic effects on honeybees, birds, butterflies and other pollinator species, and they are a major factor in overall pollinator declines,” the CBD press statement from December 15 explains. “These systemic insecticides cause entire plants, including pollen and fruit, to become toxic to pollinators; they are also slow to break down and therefore build up in the environment.”

And, as Truthout notes, “In 2016, the EPA also found that imidacloprid ‘potentially poses risk to [bee] hives when the pesticide comes in contact with certain crops that attract pollinators,’ according to a preliminary assessment released at the time.”

This November, Futurism reported on a stunning analysis of two of the world’s most popular pesticides, the neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, and the organophosphate, chlorpyrifos — widely suspected of causing brain and nerve damage, and in a class of substances which indeed do, although the assertion remains technically unproven — a long-temporarily banned pesticide removed from consideration for permanent prohibition by Trump EPA-appointee, Scott Pruitt, in March 2017, under highly suspect circumstances.

“Studies on the risks of neonicotinoids have often focused on bees that have been experiencing population declines. However, it is not just bees that are being affected by these insecticides,” Christy Morrissey, a biology professor at the University of Saskatchewan, warned in a press release announcing the study, at the time of publication.

Post-doctoral fellow and leader of that research team, Margaret Eng, added, “These chemicals are having a strong impact on songbirds. We are seeing significant weight loss and the birds’ migratory orientation being significantly altered. Effects were seen from eating the equivalent of just three to four imidacloprid treated canola seeds or eight chlorpyrifos granules a day for three days.”

She noted that although recovery from the effects was possible, “the effects we saw were severe enough that the birds would likely experience migratory delays or changes in their flight routes that could reduce their chance of survival, or cause a missed breeding opportunity.”

Futurism elaborated on the findings, “The insecticides have devastating and quick-acting effects on songbirds. They lost up to 25% of both their body mass and fat stores in addition to becoming lethargic and not eating as much (both signs of acute poisoning). They also became confused when attempting to migrate, unable to successfully orient themselves.”

Yet, the Trump administration’s EPA appears less than reluctant to allow the prolific use of all of the aforementioned pesticides.

In fact, just before press time, the Center for Biological Diversity issued yet another media statement pertaining to neonicotinoids, specifically in re, thiamethoxam, whose application for expanded use was surreptitiously slipped into the Federal Register on Friday — altogether unannounced by the dubious Environmental Protection Agency. Should the application garner approval, the substance — currently allowed to be applied as a seed coating — would be sprayed directly onto food crops, as well.

“For years the EPA and pesticide companies bragged that by using treated seeds they were avoiding spraying insecticides, and despite the science showing that these treated seeds were deadly to birds, claimed that they were environmentally beneficial,” Burd averred. “But we can expect the Trump EPA to now ignore the risks to birds and bees and approve these ultra-toxic pesticides to be sprayed across hundreds of millions of U.S. acres.”

Neonicotinoids indeed remain under ostensive review by the agency, with a determination to be delivered within the next two years.

While waiting without bated breath for government agencies to render verdict for or against an immense and ballooning body of scientific research admonishing of the dangers of neonicotinoids, consider the altogether ominous concluding thought from the Center’s newest press release — and the potentially tragic ramifications of erstwhile flippant, myopic decisions,

“A large and growing body of independent science links neonicotinoids to catastrophic bee declines. Twenty-nine independent scientists who conducted a global review of more than 1,000 independent studies on neonicotinoids found overwhelming evidence linking the pesticides to declines in populations of bees, birds, earthworms, butterflies and other wildlife.”

Image: Siam Teewareecharouen/Shutterstock.

Less than two weeks after the Department of Defense announced it would finally subject itself to a first-ever audit, a new report puts into perspective precisely why the Pentagon so sorely needs a thorough analysis of where its trillions upon trillions in taxpayer funds have gone — because a stupefying $21 trillion cannot be accounted for by just two government agencies, including the gargantuan DoD.

That sum is indeed $21 trillion — tens of trillions of dollars — spent by the DoD and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on … well, no one really knows what.

Not just that, but this rather bewildering amount slipped through cracks in only seventeen years — from 1998, the year legislation passed mandating annual audits of every government agency, through 2015.

Michigan State University Professor of Economics Mark Skidmore, who specializes in public finance, authored the study, which became his brainchild after hearing Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, remark on a report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) revealing no less than $6.5 trillion unaccounted for, but spent, by the DoD.

Skidmore, flabbergasted, had presumed from experience with previous public financing matters the astronomical figure too high not to be a mistake.

“Sometimes you have an adjustment just because you don’t have adequate transactions,” he explained of what typically happens when funds aren’t accounted for, in an interview in early December, “so an auditor would just recede. Usually it’s just a small portion of authorized spending, maybe one percent at most. So for the Army one percent would be $1.2 billion of transactions that you just can’t account for.”

Except, the erstwhile ‘missing’ monies didn’t total in the billions, and Skidmore soon confirmed the preposterous sum published in the OIG report, “Army General Fund Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported,” on July 26, 2016. On December 8 — the day following the Pentagon’s audit announcement — he and Boston University Economics Professor Laurence Kotlikoff co-authored a column for Forbes explicating the research and expanding on the problematic OIG report, stating,

“The report indicates that for fiscal year 2015, the Army failed to provide adequate support for $6.5 trillion in journal voucher adjustments. According to the GAO’s Comptroller General, ‘Journal vouchers are summary-level accounting adjustments made when balances between systems cannot be reconciled. Often these journal vouchers are unsupported, meaning they lack supporting documentation to justify the adjustment or are not tied to specific accounting transactions … For an auditor, journal vouchers are a red flag for transactions not being captured, reported, or summarized correctly.’”

He continues, “Given that the entire Army budget in fiscal year 2015 was $120 billion, unsupported adjustments were 54 times the level of spending authorized by Congress.  The July 2016 report indicates that unsupported adjustments are the result of the Defense Department’s ‘failure to correct system deficiencies.’ The result, according to the report, is that data used to prepare the year-­end financial statements were unreliable and lacked an adequate audit trail. The report indicates that just 170 transactions accounted for $2.1 trillion in year-end unsupported adjustments. No information is given about these 170 transactions. In addition many thousands of transactions with unsubstantiated adjustments  were, according to the report, removed by the Army. There is no explanation concerning why they were removed nor their magnitude. The July 2016 report states, ‘In addition, DFAS (Defense Finance and Accounting Service) Indianapolis personnel did not document or support why DDRS (The Defense Department Reporting System) removed at least 16,513 of 1.3 million feeder file records during the Third Quarter.’”

Affirming the jaw-dropping anomalous figure led Skidmore promptly to enjoin Fitts for a collaboration with graduate students examining thousands of additional Inspector General reports, dating from 1998 through 2015, the last year for which data was available at the time of the project — concentrating solely on the Defense Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is incomplete,” Skidmore advised, “but we have found $21 trillion in adjustments over that period. The biggest chunk is for the Army. We were able to find 13 of the 17 years and we found about $11.5 trillion just for the Army.”

Although even the preliminary numbers would sound nearly anyone’s alarm bells, Skidmore refused to propound on the nature of the unaccounted funds — whether it could have been allotted toward covert but legitimate projects, misallocated, brazenly wasted, or otherwise — but did characterize the raw findings as profoundly telling of a dearth in transparency in funding and parallel evisceration of due process in budgeting at the federal level of government.

Whether the Pentagon’s vanishing funds will ever be matched to tangible ends in its first or future financial post-mortem seems optimistically unrealistic; however, that the ball is finally rolling presents to the disgruntled public a momentous opportunity to pressure officials to be held accountable for squandering such embarrassing sums of taxpayer income.

After all, they’re listening — Skidmore’s interview with USAWatchdog came out on December 3 — with the Pentagon’s announcement following just four days later, on the 7th. Further, Skidmore noted peremptorily that, as he and Fitts scoured figures online, they observed something suspicious on the website for the Office of Inspector General, asserting in a side note,

“[A]fter Mark Skidmore began inquiring about OIG-reported unsubstantiated adjustments, the OIG’s webpage, which documented, albeit in a highly incomplete manner, these unsupported ‘accounting adjustments,’ was mysteriously taken down. Fortunately, Mark copied the July 2016 report and all other relevant OIG reports in advance [available at this link]. Mark has repeatedly tried to contact Lorin Venable, Assistant Inspector General at the Office of the Inspector General.  He has emailed, phoned, and used LinkedIn to ask Ms. Venable about OIG’s disclosure of unsubstantiated adjustments, but she has not responded.”

In fact, as noted previously by The Mind Unleashed, the Department of Defense also recently edited its original audit announcement in a superficially innocuous yet potentially insidious detail — halving the total number of auditors to descend on the military, as seen in an internet archive of the page, to just 1,200 — without explanation, notation of adjusted figure, nor any other remark explicating the adjustment a simple mistake or otherwise.

Despite a remarkable $21 trillion essentially having evaporated from just two albeit notoriously thriftless governmental agencies, Skidmore fears public apathy will reign — with predictably wearisome results.

“If the American people don’t stand up and say this is unacceptable,” the economist admonished, “nothing is going to happen. This is just wrong.”

Image: DOD, fnr.

Legislation from the 1990s obligating each and every government agency to undergo an audit annually notwithstanding, the Pentagon — with its obscenely bloated allocation in the hundreds of billions eclipsing the defense spending of the next several nation-states, combined — managed to escape the nightmarish prospect of accountability in an audit, entirely.

To reiterate, the United States Department of Defense — whose Fiscal Year 2018 budget hovers near a profane $700 billion despite heinous bookkeeping wherein no on is entirely sure what happened to over $10 trillion allotted it in annual budgets over the past three decades — has never faced an audit, ever, in departmental history.

Until now.

“The Defense Department is starting the first agencywide financial audit in its history, Pentagon officials announced today,” a statement on Thursday explained.

Defense Department Comptroller David Norquist told the press he had received notification from the Office of the Inspector General announcing the first-ever audit of the Pentagon beginning this month — an endeavor so momentous in scope, no less than 1,200 auditors will be unleashed across the department to help ensure its completion. [Notably, the original DoD statement cited the number of auditors to execute the probe at 2,400 — a figure which changed remarkably and without additional notation or explanation from the Pentagon as to the nature, typo or otherwise, of the error.]

For good reason — the colossal undertaking will delve into every facet of the Pentagon’s inner workings — from weapons and personnel, to supplies, property, and bases, of which purportedly the exact number remains unknown.

“Starting an audit is a matter of driving change inside a bureaucracy that may resist it,” Norquist told members of the House Armed Services Committee during his tenure as CFO at the Department of Homeland Security, on the feasibility of carrying out an audit, when the time came for DHS to endure its own government-mandated, fine-toothed comb.

While this will be the Defense Department’s first audit in its history, it won’t be the last — Norquist tacitly acknowledged coming somewhat into compliance with the 90s-era law, announcing the Pentagon would undergo audits annually, “with reports issued every November 15.”

“With consistent feedback from auditors, we can focus on improving the processes of our day-to-day work,” the comptroller stated, championing the efficacy of the process. “Annual audits also ensure visibility over the quantity and quality of the equipment and supplies our troops use.”

For years, Defense officials proclaimed the infeasibility of auditing the Pentagon and its myriad branches, asserting without irony that, because an audit would be so massive, one could never be effectively or thoroughly performed.

“Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when an audit would be completed,” Rafael DeGennaro, director of Audit the Pentagon, told the Guardian at the beginning of the year. “Meanwhile, Congress has more than doubled the Pentagon’s budget.”

Indeed, the lack of collective bookkeeping and, in essence, oversight have left DoD records in such disarray, it has been said no one at the Pentagon knows where some $10 trillion went — from supplies to weapons to bases to personnel to munitions stockpiles — and an audit proffers no guarantees the sum total will ever be ‘found.’

This stems from a plethora of terrible business practices — some, fomented directly as a stopgap when relevant information lacks.

For instance, a report from Reuters more than three years ago divulged, among a sizable laundry list of additional eyebrow-scratchers, the anything-but-ordinary, yet standard operating procedure, termed, “plugging,” as explained by dedicated 15-year Pentagon employee, Linda Woodford — whose entire career quite literally entailed “inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts.”

According to Reuters, at crunch time, Woodford and her colleagues — who were required to reconcile U.S. Navy ledgers with those of the Treasury — regularly compensated for missing numbers, errant figures, and information without context with plugs. Straight lies, some, while other plugs were used to account for time discrepancies with financial institutions clearing checks.

However, although employees would attempt to reckon numbers afterward by entering updated and corrected information, such edits were not the rule, according to sources speaking with Reuters, and adding “unsubstantiated change actions” to the books was in 2013, if not still, par for the course at the Pentagon.

Beyond bookkeeping legerdemain, the DoD apparently harbors as much an issue with consumerism as the rest of the U.S. government — at least, judging by a single, telling glance into the ludicrous arrangement that are the Pentagon’s supply stockpiles and protocols for ordering, a morass of red tape courtesy of the Defense Logistics Agency.

If you want to find the missing trillions, one pertinent starting point would be the DLA, about which Reuters deadpanned, “keeps buying more of what it already has too much of.

“A document the Pentagon supplied to Congress shows that as of September 30, 2012, the DLA and the military services had $733 million worth of supplies and equipment on order that was already stocked in excess amounts on warehouse shelves. That figure was up 21% from $609 million a year earlier. The Defense Department defines ‘excess inventory’ as anything more than a three-year supply.

“Consider the ‘vehicular control arm,’ part of the front suspension on the military’s ubiquitous High Mobility Multipurpose Vehicles, or Humvees. As of November 2008, the DLA had 15,000 of the parts in stock, equal to a 14-year supply, according to an April 2013 Pentagon inspector general’s report.

“And yet, from 2010 through 2012, the agency bought 7,437 more of them — at prices considerably higher than it paid for the thousands sitting on its shelves. The DLA was making the new purchases as demand plunged by nearly half with the winding down of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The inspector general’s report said the DLA’s buyers hadn’t checked current inventory when they signed a contract to acquire more.”

Though the manipulation of trillions of tax dollars in part through ‘plugs’ and the hoarding of absurdly excess Humvee parts might provide superficial if nihilistic entertainment in print, that the United States Department of Defense — and its war machine apparatus squeezing its tentacles around the planet — hasn’t found mandatory audits necessary until this late date should particularly offend those opposed to an imperialist agenda.

Empire isn’t hidden in such smaller-scale erroneous numbers, Humvee parts, bullets, airplane parts, zippers, or pens — but without a shred of accountability, it might.

Image: Pentagon/Globalresearch.ca.