INTERESTING: Do human brains synchronize during empathic connection?

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

<<FROM TWITTER>>
<< EDITOR ADDED DATE 2026-05-09>> 

https://x.com/TeeplesCY/status/2052951182025588797?s=20

Clint Teeples @TeeplesCY

*** begin quote ***

Someone praying for you in another building can change your brain in real time. There is a study that proves it.

Researchers at North Hawaii Community Hospital placed 11 people inside fMRI scanners, fully isolated. In a separate building, spiritual leaders who knew them personally sent focused intentions toward them at random two-minute intervals. The receivers had no way to know when. Their brains lit up at the exact moments the senders focused on them. Specific regions associated with attention and awareness activated on cue. The odds of this happening by chance were less than one in seven thousand.

Most people have never heard of this. Here are three more.

Hand-holding and pain. Researchers placed 22 couples under EEG caps. When the woman was in pain and her partner held her hand, their brain waves synchronized. The more empathy he felt for her, the more their brains coupled. The more their brains coupled, the more her pain decreased. Touch combined with focused care produced a measurable analgesic effect. The lead researcher got the idea while holding his wife’s hand during the birth of their daughter.

Two brains in shielded rooms. A Mexican neuroscientist named Jacobo Grinberg ran a series of experiments at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Two participants meditated together for 20 minutes. Then they were placed in separate electromagnetically shielded rooms more than 14 meters apart. One participant was shown 100 random flashes of light. The other, hooked to an EEG with no sensory contact of any kind, registered matching brain-wave responses one out of every four flashes. Pairs who had not bonded showed nothing.

Group prayer. Andrew Newberg at Thomas Jefferson University has spent more than two decades scanning the brains of praying nuns, meditating monks, and chanting Sikhs. His imaging work shows a consistent pattern. The frontal lobes activate. The parietal lobes quiet. The effect amplifies in groups. Brains in shared prayer entrain to one another the way two pendulums swinging in the same room eventually fall into the same rhythm.

These studies measure what physically happens to the human nervous system when people focus caring attention on each other, in the same room or at a distance. The findings are consistent across labs, methods, and decades.

The basic finding, that human brains synchronize during empathic connection, is now mainstream neuroscience. Newberg alone has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers.

People have been doing this for thousands of years and calling it prayer. Christians alone offer a window into the variety. Latter-day Saints kneel as families. Catholics pray the rosary. Protestants join hands in prayer circles.

What is actually happening when you pray? On the imaging, something measurable. On the EEG, something synchronized. On the pain scale, something diminished.

Prayer works.

*** end quote ***

Never heard of this before.

Like most of the “factoids” that cross the inet on XTwitter, Book of Faces, or other social media, I have no first hand knowledge of it’s “truth”.

YMMV

— 30 — 


INTERESTING: Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI) may make something happen

Saturday, March 14, 2026

https://thewalrus.ca/dream-engineering/

Science
Meet the Researchers Who Can Engineer Your Dreams
The tech is called “targeted dream incubation”—and it changes everything we know about sleep
by Karen van Kampen Updated 1:25, Mar. 2, 2026 | Published 6:30, Feb. 28, 2026

*** begin quote ***

What’s new, and what I set out to investigate, is Targeted Dream Incubation (TDI), which uses external stimuli to connect with a dreamer and encourage them to focus on a particular topic or theme. Adam Haar and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University developed this contemporary incubation method using sound and touch to reach a dreamer as they traversed through sleep onset, moving from waking to sleep. These first few minutes of sleep are characterized by hypnagogia: dreamy thoughts and images that are often related to recent waking experiences. As a montage of images, thoughts, and sensations flooded a person’s mind, a voice recording prompted them to focus on a chosen topic.

*** end quote ***

I’ve always been interested in “lucid dreaming” and what dreams could possibly mean.

Is it “nothing” or just the brain doing the biological equivalent of a computer’s garnage processing?

IDK!

I guess because I have “night terrors” as well as “very vivid dreams”,  I always have thought that is why my parents were functional alcoholics.   They had “night terrors” so bad that they were often afraid to go to sleep.  Hence the alcohol which seems to disrupt it.

Not wanting to be an alcholoic, I have trained myself to not take these too seriously.  The more I laughed at them and shared them, the less the impact they would have. 

A frequent one was being lost in a hotel where the room numbers were not sequential or there me four digit room number in between three digit ones. For example, 135 would be next to 1351 and 1352 then 136.  And on and on.

Strange?

— 30 —


INTERESTING: About preventing an American totalitarianism?

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

https://www.malone.news/p/book-review-22-cells-in-nuremberg?publication_id=583200&post_id=188831026&isFreemail=true&r=3snn7d&triedRedirect=true

Book Review: 22 Cells In Nuremberg A Psychiatrist Examines the Nazi Criminals
Dr. Douglas M. Kelly’s psychological analysis that drives Sony Pictures’ Groundbreaking Docudrama
Dr. Robert W. Malone
Feb 23, 2026

*** begin quote ***

His four prescriptions for preventing an American totalitarianism are: universal and unrestricted voting rights; maximal voter participation; refusal to vote for politicians who exploit racial and religious divisions; and fundamental educational reform aimed at producing citizens capable of critical thought rather than emotional susceptibility. He acknowledges that these are simple to describe and extraordinarily difficult to achieve. His final note is not optimistic so much as it is unsentimental: the choice belongs to citizens, individually, and the alternative to making it wisely is visible in the rubble of Europe.

*** end quote ***

I am going to watch that Nuremberg Netflix movie and it may induce me to read the book.

Not that I have any way of influencing the future.  Maybe this post will encourage others.

— 30 —


INTERESTING: Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees?

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mystery-prototaxites-tower-fossils-may-represent-a-newly-discovered-kind-of/?_bhlid=b28c50ad6772e1dca2572e0b334b3909d5119e8a

January 21, 2026
Mystery tower fossils may come from a newly discovered kind of life

  • Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees—and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science

By Cody Cottier edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier

*** begin quote ***

Now, after comparing fossils from these cryptic organisms with fossil fungi from the same rock deposit, the authors of the new study, published today in Science Advances, conclude that Prototaxites was likely a distinct lineage. That would place it on an equal footing with the six currently recognized kingdoms of life: those of plants, animals, fungi, protists, bacteria and archaea.

*** end quote ***

I was familiar with plants and animals.  Didn’t realize that fungi was another branch. And, frankly, never heard of protists (a diverse group of mostly unicellular, eukaryotic organisms that do not fit into the animal, plant, or fungi kingdoms).  Also, never got the memo that bacteria and archaea were promoted; kind like the reverse of Pluto being demoted?

Referring to the Johari window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window, there seems no end to my personal Pane Two (what I can’t see) and an equally large Pane Four (what we both can’t see).

Hopefully something in Pane Four won’t wipe out the human race?

— 30 —


INTERESTING: They believe that their “ancestors descended from the clouds”

Thursday, February 5, 2026

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15503013/tomb-cloud-people-discovery-Mexico.html

Lost tomb of the mysterious ‘cloud people’ unearthed after 1,400 years in ‘discovery of the decade’
By STACY LIBERATORE, US SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR
Published: 14:57 EST, 27 January 2026 | Updated: 17:14 EST, 27 January 2026

*** begin quote ***

Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a 1,400-year-old tomb in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca that had been lost to history.

The stone structure, built by the Zapotec culture, known as Be’ena’a, or ‘The Cloud People’, is adorned with sculptures, murals and carved symbols that suggest ritual significance.

The Zapotec believed their ancestors descended from the clouds and that, in death, their souls returned to the heavens as spirits.

At the entrance sits a massive carved owl, its open beak revealing the face of a Zapotec lord, a symbol the National Institute of Anthropology and History said represented death and power.

*** end quote ***

Another demonstration of how little we humans “know”.

I’d never heard of these people.  Nor, do we know much about them or why they “disappeared” as a civilization.

Interesting to me is the “ancestors descended from the clouds”.  Is that more alien conspiracy theory?  Interesting in that it keeps coming up over and over again.

Sigh!

Anyway a great read and I hope some more dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) comes out of the research effort.

— 30 —


INTERESTING: Does chronic exposure to ‘low-frequency electromagnetic fields’ cause health issues?

Sunday, February 1, 2026

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/nfl/article-15497681/Super-Bowl-teams-NOT-use-49ers-facility-investigation.html

Super Bowl teams will NOT use 49ers’ facility as investigation into electric substation theory continues
By ALEX RASKIN, US SPORTS NEWS EDITOR and OLIVER SALT, US ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR
Published: 09:41 EST, 26 January 2026 | Updated: 09:55 EST, 26 January 2026

*** begin quote ***

Neither the New England Patriots nor the Seattle Seahawks will use the San Francisco 49ers’ practice facility ahead of Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, which might prove advantageous if injury concerns linked to a nearby electrical substation hold any validity.

Just as the NFL did a decade earlier when Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium hosted its first Super Bowl, the AFC and and NFC champions will once again practice on the Stanford and San Jose State campuses, respectively.

*** and ***

The theory is grounded in the litany of health concerns the team has faced over the last decade or so. In 2025 alone, the Niners lost a staggering $95million in salary cap value to injuries – more than any other NFL team.

And according to researcher Peter Cowan, a board-certified quantum biology practitioner, San Francisco’s injury issues may be the result of chronic exposure to ‘low-frequency electromagnetic fields’ from the electrical substation located right next to their stadium and practice facility.

*** end quote ***

I find this interesting because there have been many tin foil hat’s asserting that electricity can cause health problems.  As usual, they were always dismissed as kooks, crazies, or “tin foil hats”.  

But now that the NFL’s “livestock” (i.e., high priced players) seem to be hurt, now “everyone” is really concerned?

If I was one of the “livestock”, then I’d be very concerned.  Just as I should be about head trauma and CTE.

Argh!

— 30 —

— 30 —


INTERESTING: A genius idea that should come to the USA

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

https://medium.com/@tomwhitwell/52-things-i-learned-in-2025-edeca7e3fdd8

{tip of the old tin foil hat to Tom Whitwell for the lead!}

52 things I learned in 2025
Tom Whitwell

*** begin quote ***

Every receipt for every purchase in Taiwan includes a lottery number worth up to £250k. It’s a tax compliance scheme with benefits. [Pablo Musumeci]

*** end quote ***

https://www.pablomusumeci.com/p/taiwans-receipt-lottery-the-genius

{tip of the old tin foil hat to Pablo Musumeci for the idea!}

Taiwan’s Receipt Lottery: The Genius Tax Trick on Desperation

  • Gambling is illegal in Taiwan. And yet, every receipt is a lottery ticket. Here’s what it taught me about luck, dreams, and the price we pay for hope.

Pablo Musumeci
Feb 03, 2025

*** begin quote ***

I buy a black tea at 7-Eleven, grab my receipt, and instinctively crumple it into a ball. To me, it’s trash. But in Taiwan, even trash can be worth a fortune.

The cashier stops me. “Wait,” she says, pointing at the numbers printed at the top. “Maybe lucky.”

Turns out, every receipt here is a ticket for the tǒngyī fāpiào, the bimonthly national lottery. But this isn’t just a game, it’s a tax system in disguise. Businesses must issue receipts to prevent under-the-table deals. To ensure customers actually demand them, the government adds an incentive: every receipt could be a winning ticket.

It’s genius. And strange. Gambling is illegal in Taiwan, yet the government runs its own lottery. Funded by the very taxes it’s designed to collect, it’s a perfect loop: sell hope to the poor, then use their losses to build the roads they’ll keep driving to dead-end jobs—with neatly folded receipts in their pockets.

*** end quote ***

As much as I think “taxes are theft” and that “tax evasion” is a problem, I can’t let a “good idea” be a complete enemy of my idea of the “perfect society”.  (That would an completely voluntary Anarcho-capitalist State.)

“What do you call it when someone steals someone else’s money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else’s money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else’s money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social justice.” — Thomas Sowell

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. — attributed to Voltaire 1770

(Literal translation: The best is the enemy of the good. Better translation: The perfect is the enemy of the good. Variant translation: The better is the enemy of the good. Better known translation: The perfect is the enemy of the good.)

So until the USA becomes what I see as Utopia, this would be an excellent compromise along the way to being the “shining city on the hill”.

The various Gooferments run lotteries now.  Why not one like this that has minimal cost to society and might even be fun!

— 30 —


INTERESTING: The convergence of singular talent and profound disability confounds scientists

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

https://aeon.co/essays/historys-shaming-fascination-for-the-so-called-idiot-savant

The puzzle of the ‘idiot savant’

  • The convergence of singular talent and profound disability confounded scientists eager to place humans into neat categories
  • The chess prodigy Samuel Reshevsky in a simultaneous chess exhibition match, 6 April 1922. The 10-year-old won 1,491 of the 1,500 games he played against experts during his US tour. 

by Alamy Violeta Ruiz

*** begin quote ***

On 25 November 1915, the American newspaper The Review published the extraordinary case of an 11-year-old boy with prodigious mathematical abilities. Perched on a hill close to a set of railroad tracks, he could memorise all the numbers of the train carriages that sped by at 30 mph, add them up, and provide the correct total sum. What was remarkable about the case was not just his ability to calculate large numbers (and read them on a moving vehicle), but the fact that he could barely eat unassisted or recognise the faces of people he met. The juxtaposition between his supposed arrested development and his numerical facility made his mathematical feats even more impressive. ‘How can you account for it?’ asked the article’s author. The answer took the form of a medical label: the boy was what 19th-century medicine termed an ‘idiot savant’. He possessed an exceptional talent, despite a profound impairment of the mental faculties that affected both his motor and social skills.

*** end quote ***

This essay tees up another outstanding problem in human understanding.  Is it a genetic heritage or something else?  I have no idea.  Other than to marvel what Nature’s God has created.  Humanity, for all its dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) still has no understanding or explanation for simple concepts.  An “idiot savant” has talent but we can not understand it. It has the concept of “gravity” but we can’t do more than quantify it. For all our efforts to “shrink” Unknown area in Pane 4 (what is known neither to self nor others) of the JoHari window, we just seem to enlarge it further and further.

— 30 —


INTERESTING: How to memorize unfathomably long lists of information

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

https://bigthinkmedia.substack.com/p/memory-champion-explains-how-she?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Febe8de59-170a-4391-9882-82e66a8b2f37_1200x675.webp&open=false

Memory champion explains how she memorizes 1,080 numbers in 30 minutes

  • Katie Kermode — a memory athlete with four world records — tells Big Think about her unique spin on an ancient technique to memorize unfathomably long lists of information.

Big Think and Stephen Johnson
Aug 05, 2025

*** begin quote ***

What image does the number 693 produce in your mind? For Katie Kermode, who holds four world records in memory championships, the answer is a theatrical showman. She has a mental image handy for all numbers between 1 and 999. The number 522, for instance, makes her visualize red lentils “spilling everywhere.” And 711 conjures a cat.

These images aren’t arbitrarily selected. If you’ve ever wondered how it’s humanly possible for someone to recite 70,030 digits of pi from memory, as Suresh Kumar Sharma did in 2015, the answer is that they’re almost certainly using a mnemonic technique — a strategy that helps you remember and retrieve long lists of information by simplifying it into more relatable or easily visualized concepts.

*** end quote ***

Quite amazing to me.  I can usually remember a phone number.  BUT, (and there is always a BIG butt), a credit card number … …  nah.  I may try this system.

— 30 —


INTERESTING: I believe that ESP / PSI  —  parapsychology — exists

Monday, July 21, 2025

https://www.boredpanda.com/things-science-cant-explain/

Curiosities, Science & Technology
Jul 13, 2025
“Accurate Premonitions”: 35 Things That Still Stump Scientists Interview With Expert
Austeja Zokaite and Rugilė Žemaitytė

*** begin quote ***

Scientists have done a lot of good for our society that we should forever be grateful for, like generating enough knowledge to invent vaccines, electricity, the camera, and the Internet, among other things. They also help us answer important questions, such as who our ancestors were, why it rains, and how we can see colors. However, some things still baffle scientists, ranging from mundane ones like why we yawn to more complex ones like what’s inside a black hole. 

*** and ***

In the simplest way possible, quantum entanglement is a kind of relationship between two particles that makes them connected even when they are separated by billions of light-years. A change in one instantly influences the other, no matter how far apart they are. Talk about one seriously long-distance relationship.

*** and ***

This odd connection seemingly breaks a fundamental law of the universe. Albert Einstein even famously called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance.”

Not so long ago, in 2022, the Nobel Prize in physics recognized three scientists who made groundbreaking contributions in understanding this most mysterious natural phenomenon, quantum entanglement.

*** end quote ***

I’ve heard “time” described as a river.  And, where it “bends” like a horseshoe, sometimes people can “see across the bend”.  

I believe that ESP / PSI  —  parapsychology  — exists.  (Faith = belief without evidence?)

Discipline concerned with investigating events that cannot be accounted for by natural law and knowledge that cannot have been obtained through the usual sensory abilities. Parapsychology studies the cognitive phenomena often called extrasensory perception, in which a person acquires knowledge of other people’s thoughts or of future events through channels apparently beyond the five senses. 

I believe this because my sainted wife Evlyn had some sort of gift / curse of clairvoyance, and precognition.  (1) When she was young, she was always very lucky at carnival games, especially if there was a ball or a wheel involved.  She played strange names or numbers with no rhyme, reason, or pattern. When she’d win against all reasonable expectations, she’d explain that “she just saw the winner”.  (2) When I was going to go o a business trip, she was very melancholy, which was very unlike her.  She was weeping, had no explanation why, and insisted that I go on this trip  — it was important to my career.  The next morning I was sent home because her father had passed away that night.  Sigh!  (3) She was incredibly intuitive with people and always drew them into “friendship” even when there was little in common,

As I read the list of “unexplained unexplanables” I felt there has to be a reason.