I don’t often talk about things like the reviews of my books. For a start, there aren’t many, and a few years ago when Facebook was revealed to be selling people’s personal information I deleted my accounts and pages even though that page contained even more reviews than what are otherwise available on the internet. But there is one review in particular that has always really stuck, that lives rent free in my head, and I just had to talk about it for the following reasons.
Read MoreThe internet is a great place to learn. But it is also a great place to become confused. Or to learn incorrect things. If you’re like me, a great deal of content you might see in places like YouTube, Instagram, and other content sites that will not be named, might actually just be confusing, or even demoralizing. What do you mean, tesseract?
Read MoreWhenever I think back on my younger life and the problems I used to deal with, the one that always sticks out prominently is sitting down to my laptop in an apartment in Los Angeles at the age of 27 and practically trembling with fear at the spectre of having to look at my bank account. I could not avoid it because my debit card had just been declined, even though I was sure there had been money in the account…
Read MoreUnlike many who get migraines, mine occurred only infrequently, on average about once a month. But when they did happen it was usually so intense that an entire day or more would be lost just sitting on my couch, being unable even to lay down which would only worsen then pain and suffering, with all light and sound extinguished just wishing for the pressure and nausea to swiftly vanish.
Read MoreNo one feels more silly talking about astrology than myself. In one moment I will be discussing the role of opportunistic microbial pathogens like Porphoromonas gingivalis or parasitic Trichomonas protists in the etiology of cystic fibrosis and chronic immune dysfunction and then in the next moment discuss how the influence of Saturn shapes our experiences of structure and responsibility.
Read MoreSeveral days ago it was reported that a young man committed suicide after being encouraged to do so by ChatGPT, one of the most prominent “AI” (it’s not actually Ai, but a large language model) products on the market and widely used by many people. While it is clear the AI played a major role in this young man’s suicide we have known since its inception that “AI” is a notoriously unreliable product
Read MoreSeveral months ago I met someone who wanted to put my books into their AI client so they could discuss my book with the software. This initially confused me because Ai is not Ai, at the moment, it is actually only just a large language learning model which parrots or mimics human patterns of speech.
Read MoreWe live in some pretty wild times. Rent across the entire country is too expensive for people to afford while more millionaires and billionaires have been created in the last few decades than even seemed possible. Governments start wars but chastise other governments for starting their wars, genocide remains ongoing in Palestine and Sudan…
Read MoreGrowing up in a large, conservative family it never occurred to me the future could hold such loneliness as I often experienced as an adult. Yet while loneliness often seems a very personal experience the majority of our generations have been uncommonly plagued by an epidemic of loneliness, which is most ironic considering there have never been so many humans on the planet.
Read MoreMany times in the zeal to implement scientific progress for the benefit of humankind we end up actually causing harm instead. For instance as I discuss in my other article on Fluoride and Dental Health, fluoride was shown to lower rates of tooth decay but does not actually do it by much (maybe about 25%) nor does it in a way that is proven to be healthy—arsenic would also lower rates of tooth decay, but we wouldn’t add that to dental products…
Read MoreSince the dawn of civilization mankind has been plagued by sociopolitical conflict, corruption, and other problems borne from the very institutions which help organize and shape society. This occurs because it is human nature to respond to fear and trauma by seeking greater control and resources, so many people strive for riches and power in order to better resist the realities of life (it doesn’t work though, which is why even the rich become old, sick, and deranged).
Read MoreIt has been a full decade now since I began my descent out of near death experience with cancer…although I would come to find out years later it wasn’t really cancer that nearly killed me, but the fact that I also had cystic fibrosis which is a disease that affects immunity and electrolyte transport (this is not the deadliest cause mentioned in the title…keep reading),
Read MoreUtah is about to become the very first state in the USA to ban fluoridation of public water. But I’m not mad about this. To understand why, it first helps to understand exactly what the facts are about fluoridation and oral health. Fluoridation of water is praised by the CDC as being “one of the 10 greatest public health interventions of the twentieth century.” But the CDC also says that water fluoridation only reduces childhood cavities rate by about 25%.
Read MoreHaving received therapy from about seven different therapists in my life (including couple’s counseling), I was shocked at the age of thirty-six to first learn about the Stephen Karpman “Drama Triangle” model of trauma and conflict psychology because it is a well established and accepted model that not a single therapist had ever mentioned or even addressed it in any of our sessions.
Read MoreWhile my family was never wealthy growing up, from my teenage years and on we lived in communities that could comfortably be described as upper-middle class. My father was a talented architect and general contractor, and aside from a brief detour pursuing his lifelong dream of having a restaurant his business consisted mostly of building homes on spec, meaning there was no buyer at the outset, then selling those homes once they were finished…
Read MoreOne reality of life that many people are not aware of is that things we think happened a long time ago did not, in fact, happen a long time ago. When I was a child (like around six or seven) and saw old movies or TV shows in black and white I literally thought that people somehow only saw in black and white back then and that somehow we had color in our modern life, having never been told how film and television actually work.
Read MoreHey readers, if you’re on bluesky go follow me there @nathanhatch.bsky.social
Read MoreSaying the last decade has been chaotic is quite the oversimplification, as many of us have been through quite a lot of stress, upheaval, loss, and inconvenience. Several years prior to the pandemic my life fell apart as I became sick with cancer, abandoned by the love of my life, and began recovery from alcoholism and addiction. Yet even in the midst of that tumult I naively thought every year that good times must be just around the corner,
Read MoreIn 2016 the campaign slogan of the disastrous Hilary Clinton ticket was “I’m with Her.” While it would have been nice to finally have a woman in the White House I was not even a little bit surprised when Trump won the Presidency, but to this day Hilary Clinton refuses to accept any responsibility for her loss to Trump, which is especially egregious considering she actively funded his campaign
Read MoreDiet is a complex topic with as many opinions as there are foods to eat, and part of the problem is deciding what is food and what is not food or, more specifically, what is appropriate for the human diet. Because of our long history of agriculture our ancestors have bred a long list of unique plants and animals which do not actually exist in nature which provide plenty of available nutrition for our needs as human beings...
Read More