Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Psychedelic Drug May Slow Aging

Could magic mushrooms hold the key to slowing down aging? New research from Georgia’s Emory University suggests they just might.

A new study has found that psilocin—a compound produced in the body after consuming psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms—extended the lifespan of human skin and lung cells in the lab by more than 50 percent.

The researchers also found that mice treated with psilocybin lived 30 percent longer—not to mention more healthily—than their peers.

“This study provides strong preclinical evidence that psilocybin may contribute to healthier aging—not just a longer lifespan, but a better quality of life in later years,” Dr. Ali John Zarrabi, Director of Psychedelic Research at Emory University’s Department of Psychiatry said in a statement.

“As a palliative care physician-scientist, one of my biggest concerns is prolonging life at the cost of dignity and function. But these mice weren’t just surviving longer—they experienced better aging,” added Zarrabi, who co-led the study.

As part of their study, the researchers ran the first long-term assessment of psilocybin’s systemic effects in living animals.

They treated aged, 19-month-old mice—which is something like 60–65 in human years—with an initially low psilocybin dose of 5 mg, followed by a high dose of 15 mg every month for 10 months.

The team found that psilocybin-treated mice survived around 30 percent longer than their untreated peers. Moreover, the treated mice also looked healthier for it, with better fur quality, fewer white hairs and even hair regrowth.

While psilocybin is usually studied for its mental health benefits, the findings suggest that the compound may also tackle key drivers of aging.

According to the team, the psilocybin treatments reduced oxidative stress, improved the cells’ ability to repair DNA and helped preserve the length of telomeres—the protective caps on chromosomes that guard against damage leading to diseases like cancer, neurodegeneration and heart disease.

“Most cells in the body express serotonin receptors, and this study opens a new frontier for how psilocybin could influence systemic aging processes, particularly when administered later in life,” said senior author and former Emory professor Louise Hecker in a statement.

Though psilocybin may be best known for its hallucinogenic effects on the brain, most cells in the body have serotonin receptors, suggesting it could have much wider impacts.

Keep reading

7,000-year-old Village Sites Reveal Thriving Life on Remote Alaskan Island

Archaeological discoveries on Shuyak Island in Alaska’s Kodiak Archipelago have unveiled a remarkable chapter in Native American history, with the identification of what may be the island’s oldest known settlement dating back approximately 7,000 years.

The groundbreaking findings, announced by the Alutiiq Museum’s archaeology team, have dramatically expanded our understanding of ancient Indigenous settlement patterns across Alaska’s rugged coastal landscape. Led by Patrick Saltonstall, the museum’s curator of archaeology, the multi-year survey has uncovered dozens of previously undocumented village sites, particularly on the island’s lesser-studied eastern shores, reports Alaska Public Media.

Shuyak Island, known in the Alutiiq language as Suu’aq meaning “rising out of the water,” has long been considered sparsely populated throughout its history. Today, the island is largely encompassed by Shuyak Island State Park, attracting kayakers and wildlife enthusiasts to its pristine wilderness. However, the recent archaeological evidence tells a different story.

“Shuyak Island has always sort of been a place where I think it seems like there were fewer people up there,” Saltonstall explained. “But finding that, you know what your preconceptions are and what you actually find often don’t match” reported Archaeology Magazine.

The survey identified one remarkable village site featuring 11 house pits that researchers believe housed between 200 and 300 people approximately 300 years ago. Even more surprising was the discovery of the 7,000-year-old settlement, which represents the earliest evidence of human habitation ever found on the island.

Keep reading

Dershowitz Claims He Saw Full Epstein Client List While Defending Himself In Giuffre Case

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz claimed he’s seen Jeffrey Epstein’s full client list — but said confidentiality rules prevent him from naming names in a March 19 interview.

The resurfaced clip from “The Sean Spicer Show” has fueled new scrutiny of Epstein’s alleged connections, even as newly released FBI and Justice Department memos say no list exists and rule out foul play in his 2019 death.

“But I’m bound by confidentiality — from a judge and cases — and I can’t disclose what I know,” Dershowitz said. “Hand to God, I know the names of the people whose files are being suppressed in order to protect them, and that’s wrong.”

Dershowitz alleged that key documents in the Epstein case are being “deliberately, willfully suppressed” to protect certain individuals. He claimed to know both the names and the officials suppressing the information.

Pressed by Spicer on whether those individuals were politicians or business leaders, Dershowitz replied, “They’re everything.” He went on to argue that some alleged victims named in the files may themselves have been perpetrators, accusing judges of shielding false accusers from scrutiny.

“If the accusation is allowed out, so should the material that diminishes the credibility of the accuser,” he said, reiterating his call for “total transparency” with no redactions. Dershowitz added that he has waived any privacy rights over his own records, insisting, “I know I haven’t touched a woman other than my wife from the day I met Jeffrey Epstein.”

Keep reading

Bipartisan Senators Agree To Delay Planned Federal Hemp Product Ban For One Year

A powerful Senate committee has approved a bill that contains provisions hemp industry stakeholders say would devastate the market by banning consumable hemp products with any “quantifiable” amount of THC. However, bipartisan members agreed to delay the implementation of the ban for one year.

On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA spending legislation that covers the next fiscal year—and also includes provisions that would significantly revise hemp laws following the crop’s legalization under the 2018 Farm Bill.

The bill “closes the hemp loophole that has resulted in the proliferation of unregulated intoxicating hemp products being sold across the country,” a committee summary says.

Ahead of the panel vote, several sources told Marijuana Moment that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who championed hemp legalization through that 2018 legislation while serving as majority leader, was behind the restrictive cannabis language, vying to redefine his legacy by recriminalizing intoxicating cannabinoid products such as delta-8 THC.

At Thursday’s hearing, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) said he appreciates McConnell’s concerns but worries that the new prohibition would be overbroad and impact even non-intoxicating products, saying the language “addresses one very important issue, but causes another problem.”

“It’s been a privilege to work with Senator McConnell on hemp,” he said. “We first brought to this committee the idea that research should be done on hemp, and then later we put in an amendment that proceeded to allow seeds to be transferred across states, and now there is a hemp industry.”

“The important issue it addresses is not allowing hemp to be grown to produce hallucinogenic products, and that, unfortunately, due to the magic of laboratories, has occurred,” Merkley said. “But then there are other products that come from hemp such as CBD that has, in fact, been a significant factor as a healthcare supplement in many, many products across America that does not have a hallucinogenic effect.”

“I would like to continue to work with Senator McConnell to see if we can develop, in the course of this year, a definition that addresses hallucinogenic factors but does not eliminate the CBD product that is non hallucinogenic [and] that is valued by many Americans across the land,” he said.

“I know that there’s important work to be done on the hemp, but this one year [delay] will enable our farmers who are growing hemp currently to produce this year’s crop within the existing framework, and we’ll have a conversation over the coming year,” Merkley said.

McConnell appeared less interested in using the year to establish an alternative regulatory framework, saying that he’s simply agreeing to “give our hemp farmers ample time to prepare for their future.”

“The 2018 Farm Bill federally legalized hemp as an agricultural product,” the senator said. “This language had an unintended consequence that has allowed for intoxicating hemp-derived synthetic products to be made and sold across our country.”

“These intoxicating products have flooded the market in the absence—no regulatory structure, and [businesses] often use deceptive and predatory marketing towards children with packaging and logos similar to existing food products such as Oreos, candy, gummies and cereals,” McConnell said.

“The way I see it, the language I helped secure takes us back to the original intent of the 2018 Farm Bill, and closes this loophole,” the former Senate majority leader said, adding that the hemp provisions prior agriculture legislation “sought to create an agricultural hemp industry—not open the door to the sale of unregulated, intoxicating lab-made, hemp-derived substances with no safety framework.”

The hemp language in the new Senate spending bill is nearly identical to what the House Appropriations Committee passed late last month, with noted cannabis prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) leading the charge.

Keep reading

School board chairman set to resign after ‘please shoot Republicans’ post surfaces

A school board chairman in Northern Kentucky has allegedly submitted his resignation amid revelations that he commented “please shoot Republicans” on social media years ago came to light.

The Erlanger-Elsmere Board of Education was slated to accept the resignation of chairman Jeffrey Miller at a meeting Thursday night, according to the board’s agenda posted online. The district includes eight schools and learning centers in Kenton County, including Lloyd Memorial High School, and has an enrollment of 2,399 students. It’s located about 11 miles south of Cincinnati.

The revelation comes after state Rep. Steve Doan, an Erlanger Republican, received complaints from constituents about Miller’s online comments.

The Enquirer reached out to the school district and Miller for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Doan called for Miller’s resignation

Doan received the complaints this spring while he was working to reopen a track at the district to the public in the evenings. He emailed officials, attended a few school board meetings, and posted about his efforts online.

That’s when he was sent screenshots of some of Miller’s Facebook comments.

One comment was posted to Facebook on Aug. 28, 2018, the day after a mass shooting killed at least three people at a Madden 19 video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, USA TODAY reported at the time.

In response to another commenter, Miller said on Facebook he would be OK with the National Rifle Association if “these psychos were just once the victims of a mass shooting.”

He followed that statement with “WINK WINK: please shoot republicans.”

Doan shared the screenshot with The Enquirer. Miller also made a comment on Facebook at some point that said “f— the police” and added that police are interested in oppressing people instead of serving the public.

Doan said it became clear that Miller is “definitely a loose cannon” so he looked into him further and found that Miller was found guilty of driving under the influence in 2017, after he had been elected to the school board in 2016.

A police officer said in Kentucky court records that Miller was “highly intoxicated” and nearly struck the back of a patrol car. Miller’s license was suspended for 90 days and he was sentenced with a $250 fine and 14 days of conditional jail time.

Keep reading

UK: Ofcom-Backed Study Could Be Part of a Push to Extend “Impartiality” Rules to Online Media

A government-funded research campaign spearheaded by Ofcom and Cardiff University will raise red flags among free speech advocates, as it aims to scrutinize the so-called impartiality of political news coverage across UK media.

This expansive project, backed by £755,625 ($1,028M) in public funds from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), specifically includes online and broadcast outlets and coincides with the run-up to the 2024/25 general election.

Though framed as an academic endeavor, the collaboration involves not only researchers but a cadre of mainstream broadcasters with longstanding ties to government regulation.

These include the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky News, and ITN. Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator and enforcer of the wide-reaching and controversial online censorship law, the Online Safety Act, is a central partner.

The project description emphasizes “challenging but urgent questions” about how political coverage is presented to the public and hints at future interventions under the pretense of raising editorial standards.

Cardiff University, which is leading the study, openly states that it intends to “identify where editorial standards can be raised to better inform…audiences.”

While no explicit call for regulatory changes is made, the language closely mirrors the justification often used to extend oversight, particularly toward newer or nonconforming media platforms.

The announcement states that “accusations of so-called media bias abound, often fuelled by edited clips circulating across online and social media platforms rather than scientific studies of news reporting.”

Impartiality rules enforced by Ofcom have repeatedly been used as tools to investigate and sanction broadcasters like GB News and TalkTV which have a large online presence.

Keep reading

Prince Andrew free to travel abroad as FBI ends probe into royal’s Jeffrey Epstein links

Prince Andrew can finally end his self-imposed travel ban after a leaked memo revealed that the FBI is closing its investigation into the royal’s Jeffrey Epstein links.

The disgraced Duke of York, 65, has left the UK once in the last six years over fears of an arrest, civil lawsuits or being subpoenaed.

Now, it appears as though the scandal-scarred prince — who has been kept at arm’s length from the royal fold — is able to venture out of the UK without fear of repercussions.

“He has been abroad once since the scandal erupted,” a source alleged to the Sun.

“He has always been very nervous about going abroad and felt he’d always be looking over his shoulder as he could be subject to civil action or at worst, being arrested.”

Keep reading

Medical Marijuana Reduces Anxiety And Depression, New Federally Funded Study Shows

Medical marijuana was associated with “significant decreases in self-reported anxiety and depression” compared to before patients began treatment with cannabis, according to a new study funded in part by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The observational study, published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders, looked at 33 adults in Maryland with “clinically significant” anxiety and/or depression over a six-month period, evaluating them at baseline, and then again after one, three and six months from when patients began using medical cannabis.

“Significant decreases from baseline in anxiety and depression were observed, with mean scores dropping below clinically significant levels within three months of initiation,” the study says. Participants also reported sustained reductions in anxiety and/or depression symptoms over the six-month study period.

Most patients chose THC-dominant cannabis products. In addition to self-reported benefits to mental health, they also reported a decline in their perceived driving ability and an increase in feeling high.

“Acute effects were dose-dependent,” authors wrote: “10–15 mg of oral THC and at least 3 puffs of vaporized cannabis yielded the most robust reductions in anxiety and depression.”

Among participants, three-quarters said they had previously used marijuana. Just over a third (37 percent) said they’d used cannabis within the past year.

At the time of the study, medical marijuana was legal in Maryland but the substance remained illegal for nonmedical use.

The six-person team behind the new study represents the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the university’s Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, as well as the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research in Melbourne, Australia.

A conflict of interest section of the report notes that some members have received funding or currently work for companies involved in medical marijuana.

In addition to NIDA funding, the project also received support a pilot grant from the Lambert Center for the Study of Medicinal Cannabis and Hemp at Thomas Jefferson University.

Authors said that while the findings of the new study were promising, “controlled clinical trials are needed to further investigate the efficacy and safety of medicinal cannabis for acute anxiety and depression symptom management.”

Keep reading

COVID boosters correlate with worse survival rates for cancer with third-most deaths: study

The Trump administration is getting pulled in opposite directions on its COVID-19 vaccine policy, sued by mainstream American medical associations for removing jab recommendations for healthy children and healthy pregnant women and pressured by jab opponents to further restrict the novel therapeutics, which continue to be mandated in some settings.

Now public health officials are faced with new evidence the jabs accelerate the cancer with the third-most deaths in the U.S and a five-year relative survival rate of 13.3%, which killed civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis in 2020.

Researchers analyzing why pancreatic cancer survival rates at their Japanese hospital declined in 2022 and 2023, after years of steady increases, found a statistically significant connection between the number of mRNA doses taken by those patients and how quickly they died, even when considering “tumor, node, metastasis” (TNM) factors, surgery and chemotherapy.

Taking as little as the primary series and booster, which the Biden administration rushed through approval over the protests of its lead vaccine reviewers, is “associated with poorer overall survival in patients with PC,” the Miyagi Cancer Center researchers concluded in the peer-reviewed journal Cancers, published by Swiss open-access publisher MDPI. 

They emphasize that “high levels of IgG4, induced by vaccination, correlate with a detrimental prognosis in these patients” — another example of the so-called antibody class switch documented in global research, in which people with three or more jabs start to produce far more antibodies that tolerate rather than neutralize pathogens.

Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s staffer wrote one of those class-switch papers, which was edited by a Pfizer scientist.

Keep reading

Biden Doctor’s Refusal To Answer A Single Question Blows Up The ‘Doctor-Patient Privilege’ Excuse

Joe Biden’s White House doctor refused to answer a single question during a congressional interview on Wednesday, raising more concerns about efforts to conceal the former president’s decline while in office.

According to House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., Biden physician Kevin O’Connor pled the Fifth at his previously scheduled deposition with House lawmakers. The revelation came a day after the Trump administration waived executive privilege for O’Connor to sit down with members of the committee for the transcribed interview.

According to a House Oversight Committee official, O’Connor did not simply plead the Fifth on questions related to doctor-patient privilege, but on any and all prospective queries posed by lawmakers.

“The American people demand transparency, but Dr. O’Connor would rather conceal the truth,” Comer said in a statement. “Dr. O’Connor took the Fifth when asked if he was told to lie about President Biden’s health and whether he was fit to be President of the United States. Congress must assess legislative solutions to prevent such a coverup from happening again.”

Keep reading