Posted on

The Cognitive Bargain Has Ended: A Generation Born Without Comparative Advantage

The claim circulating in policy papers, venture capital essays, and parental anxiety threads runs like this: no child born this year will grow up to be smarter than artificial intelligence. The line gets used as a slogan, which is the first sign it deserves examination. Slogans that move easily through dinner parties usually carry hidden machinery. The machinery here is a definition of intelligence narrow enough to fit on a benchmark and broad enough to terrify a parent. Both functions are intentional, and both deserve to be unbundled before the consequences can be argued honestly.

Continue reading → The Cognitive Bargain Has Ended: A Generation Born Without Comparative Advantage

Posted on

When the Radiologist Becomes the Expense

On March 25, 2026, at a Crain’s New York Business panel discussion of the city’s hospital sector, Mitchell H. Katz, MD, president and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals, told the assembled executives what cost-cutting now sounds like in the largest public hospital system in the United States. “We could replace a great deal of radiologists with AI at this moment, if we are ready to do the regulatory challenge.” Sandra Scott, MD, who runs One Brooklyn Health, one of the city’s safety-net institutions operating on tight margins, replied that the move would be “a game-changer.” The exchange appeared in Crain’s coverage of the panel and was picked up by the radiology trade press within forty-eight hours.

Continue reading → When the Radiologist Becomes the Expense

Posted on

Preventative Medicine, or the Manufacture of Patients?

There is a sentence every American patient has heard at the dentist’s chair, the cardiologist’s office, the primary-care visit, and the pharmacy counter. It arrives in a tone of grave responsibility: We caught this early. What follows is a crown, an echocardiogram, a statin, a stress test, a referral, a follow-up appointment, and a copay. The word “preventative” has come to function as a moral shield around a billing code. To question whether the recommended intervention is necessary is treated as ingratitude toward a profession that, the implication goes, only wants to keep you alive.

Continue reading → Preventative Medicine, or the Manufacture of Patients?

Posted on

The People We Cannot See: What Dark Matter Galaxies Tell Us About Invisible Life

In February 2026, astronomers confirmed the existence of a galaxy called CDG-2 that is, for all practical purposes, invisible. Sitting in the Perseus galaxy cluster some 300 million light-years from where you are reading this sentence, CDG-2 is 99% dark matter. It was not found by its starlight, because it has almost none. It was found by four globular clusters huddled together in the dark, gravitational orphans clinging to the skeleton of a galaxy that had its visible substance stripped away by the gravitational violence of its neighbors. A month earlier, researchers announced Cloud-9, a spherical gas cloud near the spiral galaxy Messier 94, only 2,000 light-years away, that contains no stars at all. Not a single one. Scientists called it a “failed galaxy,” a primordial dark matter structure that never accumulated enough material to ignite. Two discoveries, two different failure modes, and the same unsettling implication: the visible universe, the one we photograph and celebrate and write poetry about, is a thin bright residue stretched across an architecture we cannot see and have only begun to understand.

Continue reading → The People We Cannot See: What Dark Matter Galaxies Tell Us About Invisible Life

Posted on

Psychology of Delusions: Why We Cling to False Beliefs

Delusions aren’t just quirky thoughts; they’re deeply held beliefs that defy logic and evidence. They’re like stubborn weeds in the garden of the mind, refusing to budge even when confronted with the most compelling counterarguments. But why do they take root in the first place? Often, it’s because they serve a purpose, acting as a psychological shield against the harsh realities of life. Think of them as a mental coping mechanism, a way to cushion the blow of painful truths or overwhelming anxieties. The DSM-5, the psychiatrist’s bible, defines them as fixed beliefs resistant to change, often arising from complex emotional and cognitive landscapes. They’re not mere whims, but rather a reflection of a deep-seated psychological need.

Continue reading → Psychology of Delusions: Why We Cling to False Beliefs

Posted on

Next Age in Evolution: AI Consciousness

I recently had an online conversation about the future of AI, and the possibility of the human mind one day becoming AI — and the subsequent gift of everlasting life would finally be realized. We are not our bodies. We are not our souls. We are our minds — filled with memories, learning, and perception. The ultimate goal we know several scientists are working on right now is to “download the mind” and copy the experiences into AI to create a parallel life among the living where the only thing that will matter moving forward is the collected, replicable, experiences of where we have been and the codification of future morality and the “human beingness” in our futures.

Continue reading → Next Age in Evolution: AI Consciousness

Posted on

What the Hell Happened to Nebraska?

I grew up in Nebraska. Then I escaped to New York. When I lived in Nebraska, it was a pretty good place. North Loup. Scotia. Lincoln. The University. Bob Kerrey. We had stamina, hard work, and a future, and we were kind to each other because we believed in the Good Life. Then, over the last 30 years since I’ve been away, something broke, and a red-hard Republican named Pete Ricketts, decided to ruin the state in an ego-driven run for the governorship just so he could ultimately become a thug in the Trump Covid-19 Death Cult along with Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott. Thankfully, there are still some sane people in Huskerland who can use their power to do goodness — as in getting the Nebraska Covid-19 Dashboard reinstated:

Continue reading → What the Hell Happened to Nebraska?

Posted on

Beyond Sausage and the Impossible Whopper: Protection from a Vegan Food Desert

Today, November 6, 2019, is an historic moment in the perpetual, moral, drive to bring a Vegan option to mainstream fast food dining in the USA. Today is the day that the Beyond Sausage Sandwich makes it debut at over 9,000 Dunkin locations.

Continue reading → Beyond Sausage and the Impossible Whopper: Protection from a Vegan Food Desert

Posted on

Aura Rungs of the Oura Ring

I have heard wonderful things about the Amazing Oura Ring for a long time. If you care about your health, and if you want to track HRV — Heart Rate Variability while you sleep — then one of the only consumer-facing items you can add to your health assault arsenal is, the Oura Ring! Yes, the Oura Ring gives you rungs of an aura of invincibility because you begin to learn things about the way your body operates — especially while you’re sleeping — that others, without the ring, cannot know. The Oura Ring has a battery, is Bluetooth enabled, and it communicates with your iPhone to update your Apple Health vitals — and it does all this via three LEDs in the ring that read your heart rate, movement, and temperature.

Continue reading → Aura Rungs of the Oura Ring

Posted on

Chris Hemsworth Betrays His Gender

Chris Hemsworth is a big movie star. He just finished up a blurp as Thor in the Avengers movie serials, and he’s currently the lead in the latest disappointing Men In Black installment. Chris Hemsworth also has a new workout/lifestyle App that I have supported since day one as a yearly subscribing “founding member” and I have been generally pleased with the Centr App that bears Chris Hemsworth’s name and likeness — though he really doesn’t appear to be involved, at all, in the day-to-day running of the App; but the App is filled with Chris’ people, his trainer, his food guy, his movie body double, and so if the Hemsworth name sells the App, the Hemsworth name accepts all challengers to the fitness of the fairness of the programs.

Continue reading → Chris Hemsworth Betrays His Gender