Quantifying the Impact YOU Have On Others-- A Personal Anecdote.

Written, lived, and felt-deeply by me Dianna Donnelly aka the couch activist. 

I've recently started doing that where Hyundai is concerned.  

Growing up, there was a dealership in Smish Smalls where I test drove an Accent once and my Dad said no way.  He didn't know the brand, didn't trust the brand, and didn't think I needed a car. 

Years later, I was hired and became the local Hyundai's first official Business Manager. The owner had been doing it since he began selling. I did financing, sold insurances on said financing, rust n' dust n' fabric protections too.  This was a very lucrative role for me.

My family supported that job by buying Hyundai.  That's not to say the fam was into the brand though.  I remember my Dad and sister coming in to drive a Mazda we had on the lot but after driving the Elantra, they both realized that driving is believing (lolololol--sorry old job hats leaking through).

Now, every single member of my family drive Hyundai's.  

Every single one!  

There's even an extended family member who knew me when I worked as a business manager, who now is also a business manager at ... yes, a Hyundai dealership.

I can often think I have no effect on anyone --- down dog down!

But the evidence of my impact is clear as quartz crystal.  They would never have bought the brand if I wasn't working there and the extended fam member would never have imagined seeking a job at a car dealership had it not been for my impact on her.  

Big woop for sure.  I mean, not life shattering or life saving but evidence nonetheless.  

Thank you for reading.  Writing this has left me with a little smirk.

                                                                                        

Cancer Patients Deserve More Options — And We Deserve the Truth

Researched and written by ChatGPT

Every so often, a study comes along that raises more questions than it answers. That is not a failure of science. In fact, that is often how science is supposed to work. A finding appears, researchers look at it from every possible angle, and if the signal is strong enough, someone eventually asks the obvious question: should we investigate this properly?

That is where we now find ourselves with ivermectin, mebendazole and cancer.

A 2026 study published in Anticancer Research followed cancer patients who were prescribed a combination of ivermectin and mebendazole, two inexpensive, long-established antiparasitic medications that are not currently approved as cancer treatments. The study began with 197 patients, and 122 completed the follow-up approximately six months later.

The results are what caught people's attention. Among those who completed the follow-up, 32.8 percent reported no current evidence of disease and another 15.6 percent reported tumor regression. Taken together, that means 48.4 percent reported either regression or no current evidence of disease. Another 36.1 percent reported stable disease.

Those numbers are interesting. They should be interesting to anyone who cares about finding better ways to treat cancer.

They are not, however, proof that ivermectin and mebendazole cured those patients. The study was observational rather than randomized, there was no control group, and outcomes were largely patient-reported. Many of the participants were also receiving other cancer treatments, including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, while others were using supplements, dietary changes or additional complementary approaches.

That makes it impossible to look at these results and say with certainty which treatment produced which outcome.

But this is precisely where I believe the conversation too often goes wrong.

A study does not have to prove something beyond doubt before it becomes worthy of further investigation. In early research, the purpose is often to identify a signal strong enough to justify a better study. When nearly half of the responding patients in a prospective cohort report tumor regression or no evidence of disease while taking two inexpensive repurposed medications, I do not think the rational response is ridicule or dismissal.

I think the rational response is curiosity.

Why Aren't We Studying This More Aggressively?

Cancer remains one of the most frightening diagnoses a person can receive, and despite extraordinary advances in treatment, many patients are still faced with difficult choices, harsh side effects, uncertain outcomes and enormous expense.

That reality alone should make us hungry for more options.

Chemotherapy has undoubtedly saved lives. So have radiation, surgery, targeted therapy and immunotherapy. Recognizing that does not require us to pretend that our current treatments are perfect or that there is nothing left to discover.

Medicine should never become so attached to its existing tools that it loses interest in potentially useful ones simply because they came from somewhere unexpected.

Drug repurposing is particularly fascinating because it asks a very simple question: could medications that have already been used safely for other illnesses have applications we have not fully explored?

Ivermectin and mebendazole are not obscure experimental compounds that were invented last week. Both have been used in human medicine for decades. Researchers have also been studying possible anticancer effects of these drugs in laboratory and animal models for years, including effects on cancer-cell growth, signalling pathways and programmed cell death.

That does not mean laboratory findings automatically translate into successful cancer treatments in humans. Plenty of promising laboratory findings never do.

But again, that is what clinical research is for.

The Money Question Should Not Be Off Limits

There is also an economic aspect to drug research that deserves to be discussed without immediately being treated as a forbidden subject.

New patented cancer drugs can be extraordinarily valuable. Older generic medications generally cannot generate the same financial return. That does not prove that pharmaceutical companies are secretly suppressing successful cancer treatments, and I don't think we need to make that claim in order to raise legitimate concerns about research incentives.

Money influences what gets studied. That is simply reality.

Clinical trials are expensive, often enormously so, and companies understandably invest in treatments they have a financial incentive to develop. An inexpensive generic drug that cannot be protected by a lucrative patent may therefore have a much more difficult time attracting the funding required for large randomized trials.

That creates a troubling possibility.

What if some useful treatments remain under-investigated not because they failed, but because nobody stands to make enough money from proving that they work?

I don't know whether ivermectin or mebendazole will ultimately prove valuable in cancer treatment. Nobody does yet.

But I absolutely believe that question deserves an answer.

Give Us Good Research, Not Another Medical Tribe

There is an unfortunate tendency today for medical debates to become tribal. One side treats a drug as though it must be miraculous, while the other treats the very suggestion of studying it as dangerous or absurd.

Neither approach is particularly scientific.

If ivermectin and mebendazole do not meaningfully improve cancer outcomes, a well-designed clinical trial should be able to demonstrate that.

If they do improve outcomes, especially in particular cancers or in combination with other therapies, a well-designed clinical trial should reveal that too.

This does not require abandoning chemotherapy, radiation or any other existing treatment. It requires broadening our willingness to investigate possibilities.

The appropriate next step would be straightforward: independent multicentre trials involving clearly defined cancer types and stages, objective imaging and laboratory measurements, carefully documented concurrent treatments and proper control groups. Researchers should determine in advance what outcomes they are measuring and publish the results whether they are positive, negative or inconclusive.

That is the kind of science patients deserve.

Transparency Has to Work Both Ways

There is another part of this story that cannot be ignored.

Following publication of the 2026 ivermectin and mebendazole study, Anticancer Research issued an Expression of Concern regarding the paper.

That should be examined closely.

People who support further research into repurposed medicines should not hide uncomfortable information any more than pharmaceutical companies, regulators or medical institutions should.

If there are legitimate problems with this study, I want to know exactly what they are. If there are concerns about methodology, authorship, data collection, conflicts of interest or statistical interpretation, they should be laid out clearly and publicly.

Transparency cannot mean demanding evidence only from people we distrust.

It means demanding it from everyone.

If the study ultimately proves unreliable, then say so and explain why. If the concerns are resolved and the findings remain intact, that matters too.

What I do not want is a culture where questions simply disappear because they are inconvenient.

Cancer Patients Deserve Informed Choice

Imagine being told that you have cancer.

Your world changes in seconds.

Suddenly you are learning a new language of scans, pathology reports, stages, survival statistics, treatment protocols and side effects while simultaneously trying to process the fact that your own mortality has just become part of the conversation.

That is not the moment when patients need paternalism.

They need information.

Tell them what treatments have strong evidence behind them. Tell them what is experimental. Tell them what has promising laboratory evidence but little human evidence. Explain what is known, what is uncertain and what risks exist.

Then allow people to participate meaningfully in decisions about their own bodies.

I am increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that questioning a conventional treatment automatically makes someone anti-science. Science advances because people question what we already think we know.

Likewise, exploring an unconventional treatment should never require pretending that weak evidence is strong evidence.

We should be capable of holding both ideas at once.

This Study Does Not End the Conversation. It Begins One.

The viral headlines surrounding this research have exaggerated what happened. Nearly half of the patients did not prove that ivermectin cured their cancer. That conclusion cannot be drawn from this study.

But once the exaggeration is removed, something genuinely interesting remains.

A group of cancer patients taking ivermectin and mebendazole produced outcomes that the researchers themselves considered worthy of further investigation. Nearly half of the responding patients reported tumor regression or no current evidence of disease, despite the study's substantial limitations.

That should be enough to justify better research.

Maybe future trials will show that the drugs provide no meaningful benefit.

Maybe they will help only a narrow subgroup of patients.

Maybe they work best alongside conventional therapies rather than instead of them.

Or perhaps researchers will discover something nobody expected.

Whatever the answer is, I want to know.

Cancer patients deserve more than a handful of established treatment pathways and a warning not to look elsewhere. They deserve rigorous investigation of every credible possibility, especially treatments that are accessible, inexpensive and already familiar to medicine.

Study them properly.

Follow the patients.

Publish the data.

Disclose the conflicts.

Let independent researchers replicate the results.

And then allow people facing cancer to make decisions using the fullest, most transparent body of evidence we can possibly give them.

That isn't anti-medicine.

It is exactly what medicine should be. 

                                                                                     

A Gas Station That Runs on Plastic? What Julian Brown Actually Built

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

A rather extraordinary claim started circulating after inventor Julian Brown appeared at Invest Fest 2026 in Atlanta: he had created a gas station that runs on plastic.

At first glance, it sounds like one of those internet headlines designed to make us either gasp or immediately roll our eyes. In this case, though, there is something very real underneath the hype.

Brown was indeed a featured speaker at Invest Fest in Atlanta on August 8, 2026, where he presented his work converting discarded plastic into usable fuel. The official Invest Fest program identifies him as the founder of NatureJAB and describes his invention as a solar-powered microwave pyrolysis reactor engineered to convert plastic waste into fuel.

What Brown has built is not literally a conventional gas station somehow powered by plastic bottles. It is better understood as a mobile system that processes waste plastic into hydrocarbon fuel and then makes that fuel available for use much like fuel from a pump.

That distinction matters, but it does not make what he is doing any less interesting.

Plastic Is Already Made of Fuel

The chemistry behind this becomes easier to understand when we remember what most plastics actually are.

Plastic is largely made from petroleum and natural gas. Its molecules consist of long hydrocarbon chains, chemically related to the hydrocarbons we already use as fuels. Converting plastic back into smaller hydrocarbon molecules is therefore not alchemy. We are essentially breaking apart something that was originally created from fossil hydrocarbons.

One way to do that is called pyrolysis.

During pyrolysis, plastic is heated in an environment with little or no oxygen. Instead of simply burning, its long polymer molecules break down into smaller molecules, producing gases, oils and other products. Those oils can potentially be further processed into fuels or petrochemical feedstocks.

This is established science, and it has been studied for decades.

Microwave-assisted pyrolysis, which Brown is working with, is also an established field of research. Scientific papers describing microwave-induced pyrolysis of plastic appeared more than twenty years ago, and researchers continue investigating the technique today because microwave heating may offer certain advantages over conventional heating methods.

So Brown did not discover that plastic can be converted into fuel.

He says so himself.

In an earlier interview, Brown acknowledged that plastic-to-fuel reactors already existed but explained that his goal was to improve the process through microwave technology and eventually create a continuous system capable of practical operation.

That is where his work becomes considerably more interesting.

What Julian Brown Has Been Building

Brown began experimenting with plastic-to-fuel reactors as a teenager.

Rather than coming through a traditional university engineering program, he drew heavily on his welding skills and began physically building reactors himself. Forbes reported in 2025 that Brown had been developing microwave pyrolysis systems using solar-generated electricity and had received a $100,000 grant from the 776 Foundation, created by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

By 2026, Brown's company NatureJAB was describing its fifth-generation machine as a mobile, solar-powered, continuous microwave pyrolysis reactor.

That word continuous is important.

One of the problems with many experimental plastic-to-fuel systems is that something can work beautifully as a small batch experiment without being economical or practical when operated day after day. A machine that can continuously accept plastic, process it and produce useful hydrocarbons would represent a considerably more valuable engineering achievement than merely proving that pyrolysis works.

Brown's company now claims that its system produces a high-octane plastic-derived fuel it calls Plastolene, and it has publicly demonstrated vehicles running on fuel produced through the process. NatureJAB says it has operated the fuel in vehicles including a Rolls-Royce and a Dodge equipped with a V8 engine. Those performance claims currently come primarily from Brown's own company rather than independent laboratory testing, so they should be treated as company claims until independently verified.

That is an important distinction because this story deserves something better than either blind celebration or automatic dismissal.

The Big Question Isn't Whether It Works

We already know plastic can be converted into combustible hydrocarbons.

The far more important questions are whether Brown's particular system can do it efficiently, cleanly, inexpensively and at useful scale.

Those four words determine whether this becomes an interesting demonstration or genuinely disruptive technology.

Pyrolysis has struggled historically because heating material to the temperatures required takes energy. Plastic waste also isn't uniform. A garbage stream may contain polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, PVC, additives, dyes, flame retardants, fillers and contaminants, all of which can affect what comes out of the reactor.

The resulting pyrolysis oil generally isn't automatically equivalent to gasoline coming from a refinery either. Depending on the process and feedstock, it may require separation, treatment or further refining before it can safely and reliably be used as transportation fuel.

Even researchers who are optimistic about plastic pyrolysis continue to identify energy requirements, catalyst performance, product quality and economics as significant hurdles. A 2025 review concluded that pyrolysis offers substantial potential for energy recovery from plastic waste while also acknowledging that high energy demand remains one of the technology's major challenges.

This is why Brown's emphasis on solar-powered microwave heating and a continuous mobile reactor deserves attention. If those innovations meaningfully improve energy efficiency or allow plastic to be processed close to where the waste is generated, they could address some of the very problems that have kept plastic-to-fuel technology from becoming commonplace.

Whether they actually do so still needs independent engineering data.

There Is Also an Environmental Catch

Plastic-to-fuel sounds environmentally perfect until we remember what eventually happens to the fuel.

It gets burned.

Turning waste plastic into gasoline does not magically transform petroleum-based carbon into renewable energy. The carbon contained in the plastic ultimately enters the atmosphere when the resulting fuel is combusted.

There can also be contaminants in waste plastic.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has previously examined potential contamination in fuels made from waste-plastic feedstocks, including concern about impurities that could enter the resulting products. In 2023 the agency proposed additional safeguards for certain chemicals produced from plastic waste-derived feedstocks before their use in transportation fuel production.

Pyrolysis itself has also become part of a much larger regulatory argument in the United States. Supporters describe it as advanced or chemical recycling because plastic molecules are converted into useful raw materials. Critics argue that when the output becomes fuel and is burned, calling the process "recycling" stretches the meaning of the word.

That argument remains very much alive. In 2026, the EPA was considering regulatory changes affecting how plastic pyrolysis facilities are classified under the Clean Air Act, with industry representatives arguing that the technology should be treated as manufacturing while environmental groups warned about potential emissions and weaker oversight.

Those concerns should not be ignored.

Neither should the technology.

Because We Have Another Problem: Mountains of Plastic

The uncomfortable reality is that our conventional plastic recycling system has never worked particularly well.

Many plastics are difficult or uneconomical to mechanically recycle, particularly when they are dirty, mixed, multilayered or degraded. Huge quantities therefore end up buried, burned or dispersed into the environment.

The EPA now describes plastic pollution as ubiquitous in both natural and built environments and notes that plastic can persist for hundreds of years depending on conditions.

That leaves us with an awkward but important question.

If a piece of plastic cannot realistically be reused or mechanically recycled and is otherwise destined for landfill, an incinerator or the environment, could recovering some of its stored chemical energy be preferable?

Sometimes the answer may be yes.

That doesn't mean we should manufacture unlimited plastic because somebody can eventually turn it into gasoline. It means waste management rarely gives us the luxury of choosing between a perfect solution and a terrible one. More often, we are comparing imperfect solutions and deciding which creates the least harm while recovering the most value.

So Did Julian Brown Invent a Gas Station That Runs on Plastic?

In the viral sense, sort of.

Brown has demonstrated a system designed to take waste plastic, break it into usable hydrocarbons through microwave pyrolysis and produce fuel that can subsequently be used in engines. His latest work packages that idea into something increasingly resembling a mobile plastic-to-fuel production and dispensing operation.

But he did not invent plastic pyrolysis, nor did he discover that plastic could become fuel.

His potential innovation lies elsewhere: creating a mobile, solar-assisted, continuously operating microwave pyrolysis system that could perhaps make an old scientific idea more practical.

That is actually a more interesting story than the viral headline.

History is filled with technologies whose underlying science existed for decades before someone finally figured out how to make them cheap enough, small enough, reliable enough or convenient enough to change the world.

We don't yet know whether Julian Brown has crossed that threshold.

Independent measurements of energy consumption, emissions, fuel composition, production cost, throughput and long-term reliability will tell us much more than a dramatic demonstration on a stage.

But dismissing him simply because plastic-to-fuel technology existed before him would miss the point entirely.

The person who invents the first automobile doesn't necessarily invent combustion. The person who changes solar energy doesn't necessarily invent the photovoltaic effect. Frequently, the breakthrough is figuring out how to take something we already know is possible and make it actually useful.

Julian Brown may or may not have done that.

What he has unquestionably done is ask a worthwhile question:

If we are going to surround ourselves with billions of pounds of material made from hydrocarbons, why are we burying so much of that stored energy in the ground?

That question deserves considerably more attention than it has been getting.

                                                                                   

The Robert Becker Rabbit Hole: What If Healing Is Electrical?

Researched and written by ChatGPT


I went looking into the story of something called Operation Lazarus, an alleged secret 1960s DARPA project said to have discovered extraordinary regenerative effects from extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields.

I still haven't found credible documentation proving that Operation Lazarus existed as described. No original DARPA report, project number, named researchers or military study has surfaced that verifies the spectacular claims circulating online.

But while following the trail, I found something considerably more interesting because this part is documented.

His name was Dr. Robert O. Becker, and more than sixty years ago he was asking a remarkable question:

What if healing isn't controlled by chemistry alone? What if the body also uses electricity to tell itself how to repair?

Salamanders Knew Something We Didn't

Becker was an orthopedic surgeon and researcher who became fascinated with salamanders because, unlike humans, they can regenerate entire limbs.

He wondered what happened electrically when one of these animals was injured.

This wasn't some obscure internet theory. Becker was publishing the work in established scientific journals.

In 1960, he published research examining the bioelectric field of the salamander. In 1961, he published The Bioelectric Factors in Amphibian-Limb Regeneration. Another 1961 paper in Science investigated electrical current flow associated with salamander nerves.

Becker's 1961 regeneration paper on PubMed

The important idea was not that electricity simply gave cells an energy boost. Becker was exploring whether electrical patterns were part of the biological signalling system involved in telling tissue what to do after injury.

That distinction becomes important later.

Then Came Bone

By the early 1960s researchers already knew something peculiar about bone.

Bone has electrical properties. Mechanical stress placed upon it can generate electrical potentials, a phenomenon demonstrated experimentally by Eiichi Fukada and Iwao Yasuda in the 1950s.

Then, in 1964, C. Andrew Bassett, Robert Pawluk and Robert Becker published “Effects of Electric Currents on Bone In Vivo” in Nature.

They demonstrated substantial new bone formation around an electrode delivering a tiny electrical current.

Read the 1964 Nature paper

Other researchers subsequently attempted to reproduce the work. A 1969 Nature paper reported that although electrical stimulation had failed to speed fracture healing in one experiment, the researchers did reproduce the striking bone formation observed around the electrodes in Becker and Bassett's earlier work.

This is where the story starts becoming difficult to dismiss as merely historical curiosity.

Electrical and electromagnetic stimulation eventually developed into real treatments studied for stubborn fractures and bone non-unions. Clinical results have varied depending upon the injury and treatment method, and the evidence is not strong enough to claim miraculous regeneration, but the biological effect itself is very real.

Becker Went Further

In 1972 Becker reported something even stranger.

He published research in Nature titled “Stimulation of Partial Limb Regeneration in Rats.”

Rats, unlike salamanders, do not normally grow substantial portions of amputated limbs back. Yet Becker was investigating whether electrical stimulation could coax mammalian tissue toward a more regenerative response. He and J. A. Spadaro also published a longer paper that year on electrical stimulation of partial limb regeneration in mammals.

Becker's 1972 mammalian regeneration paper

That does not mean Becker discovered how to regrow human arms and legs.

It does mean that scientists were seriously experimenting with electrical control of regeneration more than half a century ago.

And that leads us directly into modern biology.

The Idea Didn't Die

Today, Tufts University developmental biologist Michael Levin and others are investigating what is now broadly called bioelectric signalling.

Every living cell maintains electrical differences across its membrane because charged ions are distributed unevenly inside and outside the cell. Cells also communicate electrically with neighbouring cells.

Levin's laboratory studies how these electrical networks participate in embryonic development, regeneration, cancer and anatomical pattern formation. His publication record includes research on bioelectric circuits, regeneration and what researchers describe as “pattern memories”—electrical states that can influence what structures tissues build.

Tufts University's bioelectricity research publications

This introduces an extraordinary possibility.

We usually imagine DNA as the body's blueprint. That metaphor isn't entirely wrong, but DNA alone doesn't explain how trillions of cells coordinate themselves into a correctly shaped animal.

A skin cell and a neuron largely contain the same genome. Something must also tell cells where they are, what their neighbours are doing and what structure the collective is supposed to create.

Chemistry is unquestionably part of that conversation.

Increasingly, we know that electricity is too.

Which Brings Me Back to Operation Lazarus

The modern Operation Lazarus story claims that DARPA discovered dramatic human regeneration using electromagnetic frequencies beginning around 7.83 Hz, frequencies sometimes associated with the Earth's Schumann resonances.

I would love to show you the original 1965 document.

I can't.

And until somebody produces one, claims involving hundreds of soldiers, fractures healing in days or paralysis being reversed should not be presented as established history.

But here's what makes the rabbit hole worthwhile:

Someone investigating Operation Lazarus eventually runs straight into real regenerative science.

Robert Becker really did investigate bioelectricity and salamander regeneration.

He really did investigate electricity and bone growth.

He really did publish experiments involving electrically stimulated partial regeneration in mammals.

Those papers really did appear in journals including Nature and Science.

And modern scientists really are investigating bioelectric signalling as one of the systems controlling growth, healing and anatomical form.

That story doesn't require a secret military document.

It is sitting in the scientific literature.

Perhaps the most interesting question, then, isn't “Was Operation Lazarus real?”

It is:

How much regenerative information is already contained within our cells, and how much of healing depends upon learning the electrical language that tells those cells what to do?

Robert Becker started asking versions of that question more than sixty years ago.

We still haven't finished answering it.

                                                                                             

Where Attention Goes: The Double-Slit Experiment and the Strange Participation of the Observer

Researched and written by ChatGPT

There is an old saying: Where attention goes, energy flows.

Most of us understand this psychologically. Focus constantly on what is wrong, and the problems begin to fill the entire landscape. Begin looking for beauty, kindness or possibility, and somehow those things become easier to see. They may have been there all along, but attention brings them forward.

The double-slit experiment raises a stranger question:

Does observation merely change what we notice—or can the act of obtaining information change what physically occurs?

The experiment does not give us a simple answer about human consciousness. It does, however, show that at the quantum level, reality cannot always be separated neatly from the way we investigate it.

And that is where things become interesting.

Two Slits and a Very Strange Result

Imagine a wall containing two narrow openings. Behind it sits a screen capable of recording whatever passes through.

When ordinary particles—tiny pellets, for example—are fired toward the wall, some pass through one slit and some through the other. On the screen, they form two general bands corresponding to the two openings.

Waves behave differently.

When water or light waves pass through two openings, the waves spread out and overlap. Their peaks and valleys strengthen or cancel one another, producing a series of alternating bands called an interference pattern.

So far, none of this is especially mysterious.

The strangeness begins when individual quantum objects, such as photons or electrons, are sent toward the slits one at a time.

Each one arrives at the screen as a single point, as though it were a particle. Yet after enough particles have passed through, those individual points gradually form an interference pattern—the pattern expected from waves.

It is as though every particle somehow encountered both possible paths and interfered with itself before arriving at one particular location. Experiments have recorded this interference building one photon or electron at a time.

Then researchers try to determine which slit each particle passed through.

Once reliable “which-path” information becomes available, the interference pattern disappears.

The particle-like result returns.

What Changed?

This part is often described by saying that “the particle knew it was being watched.”

That language is irresistible, but it can also be misleading.

A human being does not need to stand beside the experiment staring intensely at the particle. A detector can collect the information automatically. Nobody needs to read the result immediately. The important factor is that the quantum system has interacted with a measuring apparatus or its environment in a way that makes the path distinguishable.

In other words, observation in physics does not necessarily mean conscious awareness. It means a physical interaction through which information can be recorded.

Modern explanations usually describe the loss of interference through measurement, entanglement and decoherence. As information about the path becomes available to the measuring system or surrounding environment, the delicate relationship between the possible paths is disrupted. The ability of those alternatives to interfere is lost.

A 2025 experiment at MIT tested this relationship using individual atoms as extremely small “slits.” The researchers found that the more path information the atoms could obtain about the photons, the weaker the interference became—again confirming the trade-off between knowing the path and seeing wave-like interference.

The experiment does not prove that the human mind forces matter into position.

But it does prove something almost as unsettling:

The kind of information reality reveals depends upon the kind of question the experiment is arranged to ask.

Ask, “Which path did it take?” and nature provides a path-like answer.

Preserve the uncertainty between the paths, and nature provides an interference pattern.

The experimenter does not simply stand outside reality and look in. The experimenter chooses the conditions under which reality will appear.

Is Consciousness Involved?

This is where physics meets philosophy, and where certainty begins to thin.

Quantum mechanics predicts experimental results with astonishing accuracy. What those results mean about the underlying nature of reality remains disputed.

Some interpretations treat measurement as an ordinary physical interaction, with no special role for consciousness. Others argue that the theory still leaves a genuine measurement problem: how do multiple quantum possibilities become the single definite event we experience?

Physicists and philosophers have proposed many answers—decoherence, hidden variables, many worlds, relational interpretations, objective collapse and others. No single interpretation has settled every philosophical question to universal satisfaction.

Consciousness-based interpretations have also been proposed, but the double-slit experiment alone does not establish that consciousness causes quantum collapse.

That distinction matters.

We do not need to inflate the experiment into proof that our private thoughts directly command particles. Its actual implications are already profound enough.

At the smallest scales we can study, nature does not always appear to carry a complete set of ordinary, predetermined properties simply waiting for us to uncover them. What can be said about a quantum object depends partly upon the relationship between the object, the apparatus, the available information and the question being asked.

The observer is not necessarily the creator of reality.

But neither is the observer entirely absent from the story.

Attention Shapes the World We Experience

The connection between quantum measurement and daily human attention is not a direct scientific equation. Our worries are not electrons, and our intentions are not laboratory detectors.

Still, the double-slit experiment offers a powerful metaphor—perhaps even a warning.

We tend to imagine that we move through life as neutral witnesses, simply observing a fixed world.

We do not.

Attention selects.

It frames.

It excludes.

It determines what information reaches us, what patterns we recognize, what memories strengthen and what possibilities remain invisible.

A person who expects betrayal notices every hesitation, altered tone and unanswered message. A person convinced that nothing ever works notices every failure while discounting every quiet success. Someone searching for evidence of human cruelty will find plenty. Someone searching for generosity will also find it.

Neither person necessarily invented what they saw.

But neither saw the whole.

What we repeatedly attend to becomes more available to the mind. It influences what we remember, how we interpret ambiguous events and what actions we take next. Those actions then affect how other people respond, creating consequences that appear to confirm our original expectations.

Attention can therefore help build the very world it later claims merely to have observed.

Not through supernatural command, but through participation.

We Live Inside Our Questions

Perhaps the deepest lesson of the double-slit experiment is not that consciousness magically creates matter.

Perhaps it is that questions are not passive.

The apparatus asks a question of the particle.

The available answer depends upon how that question is asked.

Something similar happens throughout life.

When we enter a situation asking, How will this hurt me? we collect one set of evidence.

When we ask, What am I missing? another set becomes visible.

When we ask, Who is to blame? the mind organizes events around guilt.

When we ask, What can be learned or changed? the same events may reveal an entirely different path.

Questions direct attention, and attention decides which part of an overwhelmingly complex world will enter our awareness.

This does not mean that suffering can be wished away or that people create every hardship that reaches them. Reality contains forces far beyond individual control. Pretending otherwise turns a meaningful idea into blame disguised as spirituality.

But within the reality we are given, attention still matters enormously.

It influences which doors we notice, which risks we recognize, which relationships we nourish and which inner stories we keep alive.

The Participating Universe

Physicist John Wheeler used the phrase “participatory universe” to describe the strange possibility that observers are not merely spectators looking upon a completed cosmic machine.

Whether consciousness itself plays a fundamental role in quantum reality remains unresolved. The evidence does not justify declaring that every thought reshapes the physical universe.

Yet the old picture of reality as a collection of solid, fully independent objects behaving exactly the same whether measured or not has not survived quantum physics untouched.

Relationship matters.

Context matters.

Information matters.

The question matters.

And perhaps that is enough to make us more deliberate about the attention we bring into our own lives.

Every day, countless possibilities surround us. We cannot perceive all of them. We select a narrow band and call it reality.

What are we measuring?

What are we reinforcing?

What disappears from view because we never think to look for it?

The double-slit experiment does not tell us that we can think anything we desire into existence. It tells us something subtler and, in some ways, more challenging:

We are participants in what becomes known.

Perhaps we are also participants in what becomes possible.

Where attention goes, experience gathers.

Where experience gathers, beliefs form.

Where beliefs form, choices follow.

And through those choices, the world around us really does begin to change.

                                                                                   

The DMT Laser Phenomenon: Are People Seeing the Brain at Work—or Something Deeper?

 Researched and Written by ChatGPT

Every so often, a claim emerges that is so unusual it deserves neither immediate dismissal nor unquestioning belief. Instead, it deserves careful investigation.

One such claim has been gaining attention after appearances by behavioral scientist Chase Hughes and independent researcher Danny Goler. The phenomenon is surprisingly specific: individuals under the effects of DMT report seeing stable, code-like symbols when looking at a diffused red laser projected onto a wall. They describe glyphs that resemble Japanese katakana, ancient writing systems, or an unknown symbolic language. More intriguing still, many claim the symbols remain fixed in place rather than morphing like typical psychedelic visuals, and some report that independent observers have drawn remarkably similar symbols.

If true, this would be a fascinating discovery in neuroscience, perception, or perhaps something we have yet to understand. If false, it would still represent one of the more interesting examples of how the human brain constructs reality.

Either way, it deserves a closer look.

Why This Claim Is Different

Psychedelic experiences are typically personal and difficult to compare between individuals. One person encounters geometric tunnels, another reports entities, while someone else experiences profound emotional insights. These experiences are meaningful to those having them, but they are also highly subjective.

The laser phenomenon makes a much stronger claim.

Rather than describing an internal experience, participants suggest they are observing the same structured information within the same physical environment. That shifts the conversation from personal experience toward something that can, at least in principle, be tested scientifically.

The Physics Begins With Laser Speckle

Before introducing DMT into the discussion, it helps to understand what a laser is actually doing.

Unlike ordinary light bulbs, lasers emit highly coherent light. As this coherent light reflects from microscopic imperfections on a wall, it creates an interference pattern known as laser speckle. Although the wall appears uniformly illuminated, the laser actually produces a complex field of tiny bright and dark regions resulting from constructive and destructive interference.

Optical engineers generally consider speckle to be an artifact because it introduces structured visual noise into images. Entire areas of laser research have focused on reducing or eliminating speckle for imaging applications.

In other words, a laser-projected wall already contains far more visual structure than our brains consciously recognize.

What DMT Does to Vision

DMT is one of the most powerful naturally occurring psychedelic compounds known. Its primary action is through activation of serotonin 5-HT2A receptors, producing profound alterations in perception.

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that DMT changes how the visual cortex processes incoming information. Researchers have observed increased receptive field sizes within the primary visual cortex (V1), potentially explaining why people experience distortions in size, depth, edges, and spatial organization while under its effects. Importantly, these changes occurred without differences in eye or head movement, indicating the alterations originated within visual processing itself rather than simple gaze changes.

Many neuroscientists also describe psychedelic perception using predictive processing.

Under ordinary circumstances, your brain constantly predicts what it expects to see, filtering enormous amounts of sensory information before it reaches conscious awareness. Psychedelics appear to weaken those predictions, allowing previously ignored sensory information—or internally generated patterns—to become far more prominent.

If that model is correct, coherent laser speckle may provide unusually rich visual input that an altered visual cortex organizes into highly structured forms.

Shared Perception or Shared Pattern Recognition?

The most compelling aspect of the claim is not that people see symbols.

Humans are extraordinarily good at recognizing patterns. We routinely identify faces in clouds, animals in tree bark, and meaningful shapes in random textures—a phenomenon known as pareidolia.

The stronger claim is that different observers reportedly see similar symbols in similar locations without prior communication. That possibility has motivated an open documentation effort in which participants submit drawings of what they observed, including reports that do not support the hypothesis. The project's stated goal is not to prove the phenomenon but to determine whether genuine convergence exists.

Whether those similarities ultimately exceed what would be expected by chance remains an open scientific question.

What Would Convince Scientists?

Extraordinary claims require careful methodology rather than heated debate.

A rigorous experiment might include:

• Participants who have never heard about the phenomenon.

• Double-blind procedures that prevent expectation from influencing perception.

• Independent drawings made immediately afterward.

• Statistical comparison between observers.

• Replication by laboratories with no connection to the original investigators.

If independent groups repeatedly produced matching results under controlled conditions, researchers across neuroscience, psychology, and vision science would almost certainly pay attention.

Conversely, if similarities disappear once expectation is removed, that outcome would also be valuable.

Good science advances regardless of which hypothesis survives.

The Question Is Bigger Than DMT

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this story is that it touches on one of neuroscience's oldest questions.

We tend to assume our eyes show us reality directly.

They do not.

Our brains construct reality from incomplete sensory information, using prediction, memory, prior experience, and constant interpretation. Every moment of conscious perception is already an active reconstruction rather than a simple recording of the external world.

The DMT laser phenomenon invites an intriguing possibility: under certain altered states, does the brain simply become better at extracting hidden visual structure from coherent light, or does it generate symbolic interpretations from otherwise meaningless optical noise?

At present, both explanations remain plausible.

Curiosity Is Not the Same as Conclusion

There is understandable excitement surrounding these reports. There is also understandable skepticism.

Both responses have their place.

History contains many discoveries that began as observations outside conventional thinking. It also contains countless fascinating ideas that dissolved under rigorous testing. The challenge is learning to remain curious without becoming credulous and skeptical without becoming dismissive.

The DMT laser phenomenon has reached the point where anecdotes alone are no longer enough. What it needs now is careful experimentation, transparent data, independent replication, and the willingness to accept whatever the evidence ultimately reveals.

Whether this turns out to be an unexpected feature of human perception or simply another remarkable illusion produced by an extraordinary brain, the journey toward answering that question may prove every bit as interesting as the answer itself.

Further Reading

• DMT Code Project (open documentation effort): https://dmtcode.com

• Rapid effects of tryptamine psychedelics on perceptual distortions and early visual cortical population receptive fields (NeuroImage, 2024).

• Reviews of laser speckle and optical coherence in imaging research.

                                                                                       

 Written and researched by ChatGPT


Author's Note:  I've been writing with this ai model for a while now.  It helps my ideas come to life more quickly to say the least.  But of course, I worry that my finished products --I have three books in the works-- will not be respected.

Then I began hearing about famous authors who have collaborated with others on a regular basis.  

If this helps anyone else set aside preconceived notions about what it is to author a book or book series, then I'm happy. 

What's interesting is the idea of showing people all of the back and forth that builds the book or book series. When minds or code interact, magic happens.

Here to help!

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The Myth of the Lone Author: Why Great Books Have Always Been Collaborative

For centuries, we've celebrated the image of the solitary author. A quiet room. A typewriter or laptop. One brilliant mind pouring words onto a page until a masterpiece is born.

It's a wonderful image.

It just isn't the whole story.

Behind many of the books we cherish are editors, publishers, researchers, collaborators, secretaries, co-authors, ghostwriters, and trusted friends who helped shape what eventually reached readers. While one person may have conceived the story or argument, bringing it to life has often been a team effort.

Perhaps collaboration isn't the exception to great writing. Perhaps it's one of the reasons great writing exists.

The Invisible Architects

Ask any published author about their editor and you'll quickly discover that editors do far more than correct spelling mistakes or move commas.

Developmental editors routinely challenge weak plots, suggest restructuring entire chapters, encourage authors to deepen characters, remove unnecessary scenes, or strengthen themes that only partially emerge in an early draft. Line editors then refine sentences for rhythm, clarity, and flow, often rewriting awkward passages while preserving the author's voice. Copy editors and proofreaders provide another layer of refinement before a manuscript ever reaches a bookstore.

In traditional publishing, acquiring editors may even influence a book long before it is finished, offering feedback on proposals, requesting substantial revisions, or steering a project toward a stronger market position.

The finished book may still belong entirely to its author, but it is rarely untouched by many experienced hands.

Famous Authors Who Didn't Write Alone

This shouldn't surprise us. History is filled with successful writers who openly collaborated.

James Patterson is perhaps the most recognizable modern example. He develops stories, characters, outlines and major plot points before working with co-authors who help transform those ideas into complete novels. Patterson remains deeply involved throughout the process, but he has never hidden the collaborative nature of his work.

Tom Clancy followed a similar path later in his career, producing numerous novels with co-authors whose names often appeared beside his own.

Long before either of them, authors frequently dictated their work rather than writing every sentence by hand. Henry James dictated many of his later novels to a secretary. Agatha Christie also dictated portions of her work at various times. Their ideas remained their own, even if another person recorded the words.

Then there are ghostwriters.

Political leaders, business executives, celebrities, athletes and even novelists have quietly relied on professional writers to help tell their stories. Sometimes the public knows. Often it doesn't. The collaboration may be invisible, but it is hardly unusual.

Every Creative Field Works This Way

Oddly enough, writing is one of the few creative arts where we still cling to the idea that one person should do everything.

A film director doesn't operate every camera.

An architect doesn't lay every brick.

A composer may rely on orchestrators to prepare music for an entire symphony.

Painters throughout history employed apprentices who prepared canvases, mixed pigments and even painted background elements under the master's direction.

None of this diminishes the creative vision. If anything, it allows that vision to reach its fullest expression.

Why should writing be any different?

When Ideas Outrun Words

Many people possess extraordinary ideas but struggle to express them on paper.

Some think visually rather than verbally.

Others are natural storytellers when speaking but freeze in front of a blank page.

Many simply don't know how to organize thousands of thoughts into a compelling narrative.

None of these challenges make someone's ideas less valuable.

Writing is a craft. Like woodworking, music or painting, it improves with practice, feedback and collaboration. Working alongside someone who can ask questions, suggest alternatives, tighten prose or help uncover the heart of a story has always been part of that process.

Sometimes the greatest barrier isn't imagination.

It's translation.

Turning what exists vividly in the mind into words another person can experience.

A New Kind of Collaboration

Artificial intelligence has introduced another collaborator to the writing table.

Some people view that with suspicion. Others see it as cheating.

History suggests a different perspective.

If authors have long worked with editors who reshape chapters, co-authors who draft scenes, assistants who transcribe ideas, and ghostwriters who help construct books, then AI may simply represent the newest tool in an old tradition.

Like every collaborator before it, its value depends on how it is used.

An author who simply asks a machine to produce a book and publishes it unchanged has contributed very little.

An author who brings original ideas, asks thoughtful questions, rejects weak suggestions, rewrites passages, develops characters, reshapes chapters and guides every creative decision is still doing what authors have always done.

They are creating.

The tools have changed.

The process of refining ideas through collaboration has not.

Perhaps the real question has never been whether someone received help.

Perhaps the question has always been this:

Whose imagination gave birth to the story in the first place?

Because long after the edits are finished, the collaborators have gone home, and the manuscript reaches a reader's hands, it is still that imagination readers remember.