Category: Manipulation

Brain, Health, Manipulation, Psychology, ScienceLeave a comment

Inside your dreamscape

Fernando Kaskais

Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation Adam Haar Horowitz is a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces group at MIT, whose research focuses on sleep and embodied cognition. Robert Stickgold is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is the co-author of When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep (2021) (with Antonio Zadra) and co-editor of The Neuroscience of Sleep (2009). Antonio Zadra is a sleep and dream researcher at the Hôpital du … Continue reading Inside your dreamscape

Activism, Big Food, Eco, Manipulation, Planet, PoliticsLeave a comment

Beware the ‘Climate-Stupid Agriculture’ of Bill Gates and His Allies

Fernando Kaskais

Bill Gates is just plain wrong when he says the only way to grow food is with synthetic fertilizers. by TIMOTHY A. WISE As world leaders wrap up the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, new scientific research shows that there is still a great deal of magical thinking about the contribution of fertilizer to global warming. Philanthropist Bill Gates fed the retreat from science in his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster earlier this year. “To me fertilizer is magical,” he confesses, nitrogen fertilizer in particular. Under a photo of a beaming Gates in a Yara fertilizer distribution warehouse in Tanzania, he … Continue reading Beware the ‘Climate-Stupid Agriculture’ of Bill Gates and His Allies

Big Food, Globalization, Health, Manipulation, MoneyLeave a comment

OBESITY MACHINE: HOW THE PROCESSED FOOD INDUSTRY PROFITS FROM EATING DISORDERS

Fernando Kaskais

Dr. Tim Coles, New Dawn Waking Times Scientists, politicians, media, and health professionals note that Western countries face obesity and fatness epidemics. Large numbers of poor, malnourished children are obese because the cheap, processed, low-nutrient food bought by their parents – bread, cereals, snacks, etc. – contains high concentrations of sugars. In addition to the systemic factors explored below, there are darker, more secretive reasons for our addiction to what the late philosopher-comedian George Carlin called “slow death by fast food.” But it is not just fast food. To save money on raw materials, sell innovation to other companies, and hook … Continue reading OBESITY MACHINE: HOW THE PROCESSED FOOD INDUSTRY PROFITS FROM EATING DISORDERS

Curiositys, Manipulation, Media&Culture, PsychologyLeave a comment

Fear not

Fernando Kaskais

You might think that horror movies are a delicious, trashy pleasure. But watching them has surprisingly wholesome effects Mathias Clasen is associate professor of literature and media and director of the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark. He has written many articles and books on horror, including Why Horror Seduces (2017) and A Very Nervous Person’s Guide to Horror Movies (2021). Edited byChristian Jarrett I’m a full-time horror researcher with my own lab. I read Stephen King novels at bedtime, watch slasher movies on the weekends, and play survival horror video games whenever I have a spare moment. But it wasn’t always like that. … Continue reading Fear not

Big Food, Freak U.S.A, Future, Manipulation, Money, PoliticsLeave a comment

BILL GATES AND THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF FOOD SECURITY

Fernando Kaskais

Dustin Broadbery, The Cogent Waking Times As we approach a winter of discontent and global food systems go from bad to worse, there’s trouble in paradise. At the root of these problems, government responses to COVID-19 have contributed to a six-fold increase in famine-like conditions as global supply chains collapse, and field trials for gene-edited crops and farm animals begin in the UK. Against this perfect storm, the UN’s World Food Systems Summit convened last month, with Member States joining the private sector, civil society groups and researchers, to bring about “tangible, positive changes” to the world’s food systems, and as the story goes, “drive recovery from COVID-19.” But even … Continue reading BILL GATES AND THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF FOOD SECURITY

Curiositys, Freak U.S.A, Manipulation, Media&Culture, TechnologyLeave a comment

Are Universities On The Wrong Side Of History?

Fernando Kaskais

by Ann Kirschner earching for answers to this and other mysteries of Planet Academe, I found some excellent responses in a new book, The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present, and Uncertain Future, by Arthur Levine and Scott Van Pelt.  I’ve been waiting for someone to write a book like this for a long time. That said, almost all of it could have been written ten, even twenty years ago. Higher education was in trouble before the pandemic;  Covid provided the unexpected receding tide that exposed our naked academic body politic.  The authors’ warning that American colleges and universities are heading for a … Continue reading Are Universities On The Wrong Side Of History?

Big Pharma, Drugs, Health, Manipulation, Money1 Comment

THE SICKNESS INDUSTRY: HOW BIG PHARMA INVENTS CRISES & NORMALISES DEPENDENCY

Fernando Kaskais

by Dr. Tim Coles, New Dawn Waking Times The pharmaceutical industry is worth $1 trillion, half of which comes from US-based sales. The alternative health industry, by comparison, is worth just $59bn. Big Pharma bribes doctors, dominates advertising, and drives the anti-natural health narrative. The biggest, multibillion-dollar companies are Pfizer (US), Novartis (Switzerland), Roche (Switzerland), Johnson & Johnson (J&J US), Merck & Co. (US), Sanofi (France), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK UK), AbbVie (US), Takeda (Japan), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden). The bulk of their profits come from prescription drugs. Big Pharma kills people in two ways: 1) pricing life-saving drugs out of the market and … Continue reading THE SICKNESS INDUSTRY: HOW BIG PHARMA INVENTS CRISES & NORMALISES DEPENDENCY

Health, Manipulation, ScienceLeave a comment

‘TIME MACHINE’ REVERSES PANCREATIC CANCER PROGRESSION

Fernando Kaskais

 BY KAYLA WILES-PURDUE What makes pancreatic cancer so deadly is its covert and quick spread. Now, a “time machine” has shown a way to reverse the course of cancer before it spreads throughout the pancreas. “These findings open up the possibility of designing a new gene therapy or drug because now we can convert cancerous cells back into their normal state,” says Bumsoo Han, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University and program leader of the Purdue Center for Cancer Research. Han has a courtesy appointment in biomedical engineering. The time machine that Han’s lab built is a lifelike reproduction of a … Continue reading ‘TIME MACHINE’ REVERSES PANCREATIC CANCER PROGRESSION

Animals, Manipulation, Media&Culture, PsychologyLeave a comment

You Are Not the Boss of Your Dog

Fernando Kaskais

Cesar Millan popularized the idea that every pack needs a stern leader. It’s misguided—but so appealing. BY MARGRET GREBOWICZ The idea that dogs are pack animals who require a pack leader was introduced in the 1940s. It became known as dominance theory, and eventually alpha theory. But it wasn’t until many decades later that the idea of the pack leader became a staple of the American dog owner’s vocabulary and conceptual scheme, thanks to the “Dog Whisperer,” Cesar Millan. Millan’s enormously popular TV show ran from 2004–12 and brought dog training before American audiences like no other show has, before or … Continue reading You Are Not the Boss of Your Dog

Eco, Freak U.S.A, Hypocrisy, Manipulation, PoliticsLeave a comment

The Hero Myth of Wildland Firefighting

Fernando Kaskais

It’s not heroic to fight a problem that could have been averted with responsible policy. It’s tragic. BY EMILY SHEPHERD  IN 2017, Columbia Pictures released a box-office film called “Only the Brave.” The film is an emotional, fictionalized account of the Yarnell Hill Fire of 2013, during which 19 firefighters — the entire Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew except for one lookout — were tragically entrapped by wildfire. In their last hour alive, with the fire racing toward them, the Granite Mountain Hotshots inexplicably left a safety zone — in this case, a ridgetop that had already burned to ashes. Why they did … Continue reading The Hero Myth of Wildland Firefighting