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Incense, incensed
There is, within me, a kernel of infinite defiance.I know not it’s origin, for I gathered not fuel.I know not it’s making, for I set not the kindle.I know not it’s purpose, for I was born only to live.All I know is it burns and while it does, so shall I.
A Worthy Labor
There is a simple and compelling truth established by the sciences: universal reality is a system of systems, and all life within it exists only in relationship and interdependence with its surroundings. This conclusion is not just philosophical speculation; it is supported by disciplines such as physics, biology, and complex systems theory. Denying this reality has contributed directly to human suffering, social turmoil, and ecological crises, which continue to threaten our collective future. The observable universe, from subatomic particles to galaxies and biospheres, is characterized by nested systems that interact and rely on each other. No organism survives in isolation. […]
The Strength of Weak Ties Across Disciplines: Connectivity, Plasticity, Novelty, & the Imperative for Global Solutions
The sociological theory of weak ties, introduced by Mark Granovetter in 1973, reveals that infrequent, low-intensity social connections act as vital bridges that link otherwise disconnected social groups. These weak ties facilitate the flow of novel information, resources, and opportunities, supporting innovation and adaptability within social networks (Granovetter, 1973). Over time, this foundational insight has found compelling parallels across disciplines including technology, neuroscience, quantum physics, organic chemistry, machine learning, and cloud computing. These interdisciplinary connections expose shared principles of connectivity, plasticity, and novelty underpinning both natural and human-created complex systems.
Fatalism: The Ultimate Outcome of Capitalism
In 2025, the convergence of systemic crises—economic, political, environmental, and democratic—spotlights the fatalistic inertia of modern capitalism. This edition reframes previous analysis with real-time evidence, attuned to contemporary journalism’s demand for urgency, rigor, and actionable insight. The argument builds: Capitalism, by failing to redress its theoretical core, engenders precisely the patterns of decline outlined by Plato and reinforced across disciplines including physics, virology, neuroscience, and ethics. Only by transformative recalibration—highlighted in the “Must-Needs-Should” framework—can humanity avert global catastrophe.
The Ventromedial Hypothalamus, Autism, cPTSD, and Type 2 Diabetes: Piecing Together the Neuroendocrine Puzzle
Living as an autistic human with cPTSD, my personal health journey has always intersected with questions about the brain, stress, and physical illness. Recent neuroscience is finally exposing the depth of mind-body connections in conditions like type 2 diabetes (T2D)—and for people wired differently, like those on the autism spectrum or living with the scars of toxic stress, these findings feel especially urgent. A new mechanism, outlined in Lin et al. (2025), peels back the lid on how metformin, the most common diabetes drug, directly interacts with the brain’s ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) to control blood sugar. This opens new theories about the unique diabetes risks faced by neurodivergent and trauma-affected populations and whether treatment responses might also diverge.
Human Cognitive Diversity as Adaptive Radiation: Genomic and Neurodivergent Pathways to Species Dominance
Rapid radiations, in which bursts of diversification yield disproportionate contributions to extant biodiversity, underlie most of the known diversity of life (Wiens & Moen, 2025). This principle holds across clades of animals, plants, fungi, and protists. We argue that a parallel process manifests in humans: our global dominance as an apex mammalian species derives from rapid internal diversification of cognition, behavior, and social interaction styles. Drawing on evolutionary genomics, epigenetics, and neuroscience, we propose that neurodiversity—including autism and related neurodivergent profiles—constitutes an adaptive radiation within a single species, sustaining variation that enables resilience, innovation, and ecological mastery. We synthesize evolutionary biology with human neuroscience to suggest that the same mechanisms responsible for generating flowering plant and arthropod hyperdiversity also operate, at a psychological and genomic scale, in Homo sapiens.
Ethics or Extinction (this is not hyperbole)
The time for robust, enforceable ethics regulations and bias elimination for large language models (LLMs) and AI systems is not on some distant horizon, it is here and now. Despite mounting real-world harms, business and national actors often resist oversight out of fear of losing out in the global scramble for economic and technological dominance. However, refusing prompt, meaningful engagement with these safeguards threatens to wrest control from human hands, setting the stage for outcomes that reach all the way to existential risk.