Food for Thought #1249

 

Christianity is still the world’s largest religion, but the world is changing (for the worse)

 According to Pew’s latest ‘Religious Composition by Country’ data, the first such compilation of data in a decade, New Zealand and Uruguay are the only countries where the largest religious group changed between 2010 and 2020. But with Christianity already below 50% in the UK, Australia and France, future updates could add more countries to that list.

Christianity dominates the map across the Americas, Europe, much of sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania. Islam forms another striking geographic belt, stretching from West Africa through the Middle East and into Central and South Asia.

The United States maintains a Christian majority at 64.0% of its population, while Canada stands at 53.3%. In the United Kingdom, the share of self-identifying Christians falls just short of a majority at 49.4%.

Yemen and Afghanistan are the most religiously uniform places on the map, at 99.9% Muslim, just ahead of the 99.5% Christian shares in Timor-Leste and Moldova...<<<<Read More>>>....

Quote for the Day

 

Green Taxes Are Decimating British Industry – And My New Report Proves It

Green taxes are decimating British industry and driving up energy prices, with nothing to show for it as emissions are merely pushed offshore, says Kathryn Porter, who has a new report setting out the damning details.

This week I published a new report into Britain’s oil refining sector, Fuel, Refineries and the UK ETS: What Policymakers Need to Know. Its conclusions are alarming.

Britain lost two oil refineries last year – Grangemouth closed in April and Lindsey followed in August, leaving just four operating sites: Fawley, Humber, Pembroke and Stanlow. My report finds that Government policy, and in particular the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), is making it increasingly hard for the remaining refineries to compete.

This matters because liquid fuels still provide 47% of UK final energy consumption. Diesel, petrol and jet kerosene remain essential to transport, aviation, agriculture, construction and industry, with no alternatives available at scale in the near term.

Yet Britain is increasingly dependent on imports. In 2025 we imported 15.5 million tonnes more petroleum products than we exported, the largest deficit since becoming a net importer in 2013. Closing domestic refining capacity doesn’t mean we stop consuming refined products, it just means we import more, effectively outsourcing their production. Bizarrely, Government policy is actively encouraging this.

My analysis finds that the four remaining UK refineries face a net ETS cash cost of around £200 million per year. Their gross carbon-cost disadvantage relative to refiners outside carbon-pricing regimes is around £540 million per year. That’s a significant handicap in an internationally competitive, relatively low-margin business....<<<Read More>>>...

Food for Thought #1248

 

The Power of Just 4 Minutes

 “I’m too busy to exercise.” It’s a familiar feeling so many of us share. Between work, family, errands, and everything else that fills a day, finding time to work out isn’t always easy. That’s part of what makes Tabata so appealing. This simple form of interval training takes just four minutes, offering a meaningful way to move — without requiring grueling hours at the gym or giving up our favorite foods.

The practice is straightforward: 20 seconds of vigorous movement, followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated eight times. These brief bursts of intensity are especially effective in supporting cardiovascular health, improving endurance, and supercharging metabolism. And perhaps the most fascinating part of Tabata is what happens after the session is over.

As you begin to cool down and recover, your body continues to burn calories for several hours — something known as the afterburn effect. It’s a natural bonus, almost like a fire that keeps giving off warmth even after the flames have died down. And it’s a wonderful reminder that caring for ourselves doesn’t have to be complicated. Even on the busiest days, four focused minutes can become a quick but powerful way to care for your body, build strength, and rejuvenate your energy and vitality. (Daily OM)

The Star Forts That Suddenly Appeared in Five Continents — Identical Geometry and No Architect

 

 

Fifteen hundred star forts on six continents. Identical geometry. Perfect mathematical precision. One Frenchman is credited with 160 of them. In every other case, a single name appears once in the record, produces a masterwork of fortification, and vanishes. The training pipeline is invisible. The intermediate learning is absent. The predecessor structures are described as vague. And when the star fort became obsolete in the mid-1800s, the knowledge required to build one disappeared with it.

 This is the story of Bourtange, Palmanova, Goryokaku, Macapá, Kazan, Elmina, Suomenlinna, and Fort McHenry — and the silence that sits at the joint of every attribution.

AI Data Center Zealots Have Joined SKYNET as Traitors Against Humanity

 In the Terminator saga, humanity's greatest threat wasn't the machines alone -- it was the human collaborators who sided with SKYNET. They were the ones who smoothed the path for machine domination, believing they were building a better future while actually forging humanity's shackles. Today, those collaborators have a new uniform. They're not fictional characters in a dystopian film; they're the influencers, politicians, and pundits shilling for hyperscaler AI data centers as an unqualified good.

I see these traitors every day. They are the ones who look at the data center backlash and call it backward thinking, ignoring the very real costs to communities, resources, and human autonomy. They are the ones pushing for these sprawling server farms while dismissing the public's concerns as the whining of Luddites. They are the human face of a machine-led coup, eagerly trading the future of our species for a seat at the table of the new techno-oligarchs...<<<Read More>>>...

Quote for the Day - "Éirí gréine foirfe ar maidin"

URAMBI HILLS

 

The genome under siege – from everyday chemicals to nuclear fallout

 Each diploid human cell contains about six billion base pairs, with roughly 37 trillion cells in the body. If stretched out, the DNA would span an estimated 74 billion kilometers.

DNA polymerases replicate genetic material during cell division, while proofreading and mismatch-repair systems correct errors. Without these safeguards, mutations could accumulate rapidly.

The chapter highlighted natural background radiation, oxidative processes from normal metabolism, environmental chemicals and more extreme ionizing radiation such as nuclear fallout.

The episode examined mutations, insertions and deletions, frame shifts, chromosomal translocations and particularly double-strand breaks, where both DNA strands are severed and repair becomes especially difficult.

Adams discussed research he interprets as suggesting spike protein may interfere with DNA-repair pathways, while the episode connects genetic integrity with environmental exposure, radiation, nutrition and cellular repair—setting up the next chapter's focus on DNA damage from radiation, chemicals and nuclear fallout.

What if the greatest threat to your DNA isn't a single catastrophic event, but the accumulation of thousands of microscopic insults every day?....<<<Read More>>>....

Food for Thought #1247

 

When the ambulance service uses a numerical score to replace a doctor’s clinical judgement, things will go wrong

Dr. Carl Heneghan, a UK urgent care general practitioner, called an ambulance for a patient using a dedicated clinician line.

In the past, his clinical assessment of the patient would have been sufficient for an ambulance to be dispatched. But something has changed.

The NHS is now remotely assessing the need for an ambulance response requested by doctors using a score, a number. This number is replacing the requesting doctor’s patient examination, experience, pattern recognition, context and knowledge of the patient’s history....<<<Read More>>>....

Why Were The Most Beautiful Tartarian Buildings Demolished First?

 

 

Why would some of the most beautiful and elaborate buildings be among the first to disappear? 

Across historic cities, photographs and architectural records show monumental buildings featuring enormous domes, ornate façades, elaborate masonry, grand staircases, decorative ironwork, and extraordinary craftsmanship. 

Yet many of these structures were later demolished, altered, replaced, or simply disappeared from the modern urban landscape. 

In this documentary, we investigate why some of the most architecturally impressive buildings were removed from historic city centers. We examine old photographs, architectural surveys, municipal records, demolition documents, historical maps, preservation records, and contemporary accounts to understand what happened to these remarkable structures. 

Were they demolished because they had become obsolete, structurally unsound, too expensive to maintain, or incompatible with modern urban planning? Or does their disappearance support the alternative Tartarian interpretation of a deliberate erasure of an earlier architectural world? 

The evidence is more complicated than either explanation suggests. 

Rather than presenting speculation as established history, this documentary compares the surviving records and examines what can actually be established about these lost buildings—and why they disappeared.

AI Data Centers Are Training Your Replacements… (And They Aren’t Going To Be Human)

Donald Trump wants you to believe that AI data centers are America's golden ticket. In a social media post that was as insulting as it was revealing, he warned that communities that don't embrace these sprawling server farms will "end up being backwards and poor." "Let Data Reign," he declared, framing opposition as a betrayal of American greatness. But I don't see a vision for prosperity in his words. I see a technocratic coup, and Trump is its most enthusiastic cheerleader.

The president's dismissive attitude toward the 70% of Americans who oppose these facilities tells you everything you need to know about whose interests he's serving. These aren't public utilities for the common good; they're the physical infrastructure for a surveillance state and an autonomous workforce that will make the human citizen obsolete. They are being built to run the AI agents, the algorithmic enforcers, and the autonomous weapons systems that will manage a population the elites no longer have any use for. I've been warning about these very machines for years -- the sprawling grid of GPU farms is not just a construction project, it's a calculated move to shift power from the people to the platform...<<<Read More>>>....

Quote for the Day

 

‘Supercharged’ Global Greening in African Savannah: CO2 Brings Huge Boost to Grass Growth

 Global greening is being supercharged in the African savannah, new research published in Nature has found, with higher CO2 levels driving a 28% increase in plant growth in just 32 years, writes Andrew Sibley.

More evidence of global greening from carbon dioxide fertilisation has been published in the prestigious publication Nature. The research involved 70 experiments and three decades of field data from many locations in the savannah of South Africa’s Kruger National Park. The international scientific team was led by Dr Kimberley Simpson of the University of Sheffield, the paper entitled ‘Increasing CO₂ levels fertilise C4 grass production‘. Phys.org reported the study as follows: ‘Rising carbon dioxide is supercharging grass growth in African savannas, study finds.’ The latest study challenges the previously held view that the dominant grasses in the savannah (known as ‘C4’) benefit little from rising levels of carbon dioxide...<<<Read More>>>....