UK will ban social media platforms for children under 16 years of age.

Wall Street Journal (gift link):

The U.K. plans to ban children under the age of 16 from major social-media platforms including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, ramping up pressure on big tech companies to shield younger users from harmful online content.

Announcing new legislation, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the ban would restrict livestreaming and communication with strangers for under 16s not just on social media, but across other online services such as gaming sites. […]

Starmer said the U.K. was also considering overnight curfews and curbs for scrolling content on feeds for under 18s. […]

Starmer said the U.K. was seeking to emulate the Australian model with a ban targeting platforms with algorithms such as TikTok, Meta Platforms’ Instagram and Facebook, Snapchat, Alphabet’s YouTube and Elon Musk’s X where users can post, but not messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal.

“This is a line in the sand,” Starmer said. “Tech giants had their chance and failed, but we’re stepping in to protect children, back parents and set a new normal for future generations.”

Let the debates begin.

Screen time for kids is a pandora’s box that even Apple can’t fix.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge (News+ link):

Apple is trying to show the world it’s being responsible when it comes to your children.

Only it’s really not. Screen Time sucks. As a mother of two whose children have had Apple Watches, iPads, and iPhones, and who are now entering their late teens (18 and 15), I’ve spent years grappling with Apple’s parental controls. In that time, I’ve gone through what feels like approximately 2,000 Screen Time passcodes and gained several new gray hairs.

Screen Time is simply not a reliable way to control your child’s device use; the only real way to limit screen time is to remove the screen. That’s something Apple is unlikely to ever get behind, and something that, as your child gets older, becomes increasingly untenable for a whole host of reasons.

I’m not going to get into those here, or the argument about how much responsibility one should place on the developer of the technology versus the parents when it comes to parental control — that’s a whole societal debate we can have another time.

My issue with Screen Time is that the world’s most powerful technology company, with reams of expertise in hardware and software, has half-assed its “parental controls” for years and is now trying to put lipstick on a pig.

There are definitely improvements to parental controls, but to quote Jennifer again:

I’m tired of playing whack-a-mole with my kids' devices.

If tech enthusiasts are fed up and are having issues with parental controls, what about the average parent?

I haven’t dug deep into the new settings, but that’s because my kids don’t have any apps on their devices. The only 3rd party apps they have are Google Translate for learning languages, and a Quran app for reading scripture.

That’s it. No Safari, no games, and hell no to social media.

Quite literally, hell no.

They read a lot of books, which have real knowledge and entertainment that helps develop the brain instead of hindering it.

Just move - you will feel better and be a better parent.

I did a few unorthodox workouts over the past few weeks, and what I realized was you have to change your workout routines in order to really benefit your body. Doing movements you wouldn’t normally do will make you feel better and increase circulation. You don’t even have to do crazy stuff - just natural things you might do while having fun. For example:

1. Rollerskating - not usually something I do, but it was a fun way to get the heart rate going from both the movement and from the “joyful fear” of trying not to fall. Even this “joyful fear” is a feeling you don’t experience everyday, but boosts your mood. You also feel it in your legs since you’re balancing yourself in ways and activating muscle groups you didn’t know you had.

2. Throwing a ball back and forth - playing catch with my son on an unlevel backyard with dips and hills is more fun and challenging than you might think. Even throwing a ball crossbody where you are running in one direction to catch the ball and then throw in the opposite direction clicked something in my back and loosened me up.

3. Frisbee - playing with my daughter was fun, and it allows you to jump, stretch, run, and also turn in ways that you wouldn’t do in a gym with weights or on a treadmill. Add the mind complexity of trying to judge where the frisbee is going and you get even more unorthodoxy into the mix.

The best part about all these activities is there’s more than one person involved, and you get more spontaneity while working out and having fun with your family. Dodging people while skating, fielding bad throws by running and trying to catch, and poor frisbee flings leading to even more running and jumping adds that extra organic spice.

If you’re tired, the solution is to move. Just…move.

iPad rage is the equivalent of a drug addiction.

New York Magazine (paywalled) News+ link (also paywalled with no option to gift):

On a Saturday morning a few months ago, Rachel, a mom of two in New Jersey, tried to follow the screen-time advice she had seen repeatedly on parenting Instagram accounts and heard on parenting podcasts: Be clear about limits and give lots of advance warning. So Rachel told her 10-year-old son, Jonah, the night prior and again during breakfast that they would be leaving at 11 a.m. for a birthday party and that he would have to put his iPad away when it was time to go. After he ate his cereal, he sat with his iPad on the couch toggling between Roblox and YouTube shorts, and she set a timer. When there were 15 minutes left on it, and then again when there were five minutes left, she reminded him how long he still had to play. But when she walked into the living room at 10:56 a.m. as the timer rang out and said, “Okay, off,” her son’s reaction overwhelmed her.

“He just left his body,” she says. Jonah threw the controller onto the couch. He started yelling, “You said I had until 11! It’s not 11 yet! You’re always doing this!” He followed her into the kitchen still yelling. She tried to stay calm and be firm. Then she tried walking away. He followed her again. At one point, he sat down on the floor and refused to move.

“I remember standing there thinking, I don’t know this person. I genuinely did not recognize him,” she told me. It took Jonah 30 minutes to calm down enough to get his shoes on. In the car, he slowly became himself again, chatting as if nothing unusual had just transpired. “That’s the part that really messes with you,” Rachel says. “How fast they come back.” […]

There are parents I know who saw the recent headline about an 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy who shot his father after having his Nintendo Switch taken away and admitted to the dark thought, I could see how that happened. But as obvious and urgent as this phenomenon feels for many parents, it is only just gaining acknowledgment and study in the psychological community, which remains divided on what’s happening and why. […]

One psychologist doesn’t think it’s addiction:

Dave Anderson, a senior psychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City, doesn’t think technology in particular is to blame for children’s intense reactions. […] Anderson points to one particular fact: Real withdrawal symptoms don’t fade away after a few intense minutes, whereas screen meltdowns typically do. He says that post-iPad rages occur because children’s brains are still developing and can’t yet smoothly handle losing something pleasurable — and that they’re essentially normal.

One psychiatrist does:

But Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, the author of Dopamine Nation, is convinced screens are a special case — and she doesn’t mince words about their addictive properties. In a recent conversation on The Oprah Podcast, she was asked to explain what happens in a child’s brain when a parent tries to take away a device mid–gaming session and the child erupts. “When you expose a child’s brain to a digital drug that is incredibly reinforcing, it is inevitable that that child will get into this loop of addiction where they get into a state of craving and withdrawal when they don’t have their drug,” she answered.

When I raised Anderson’s explanation with her (namely, that these meltdowns are a normal emotional regulation challenge), she conceded that not every child who gets upset when their device is taken away is in withdrawal. But for kids whose use has tipped into something resembling compulsion, Lembke sees a different pattern: extreme reactions that last too long but tend to resolve with continued abstinence. In addition, abstinence leads these kids to sleep better, exercise more, and reengage with family and school. “These long-term trajectories toward improved physical and mental health are not seen in the wake of your average temper tantrum,” she said.

A nice solution is to have a transitional activity lined up:

But Deanna, a mom in Manhattan, is slightly more hopeful. She told me that after getting into the habit of extending her kids’ screentimes to delay their meltdowns, she finally decided to enact a few changes. Before her kids receive their devices, she makes them verbally agree to an end time. And when their timers go off, she never allows an extra minute. She also always has the next activity queued up and waiting — Legos on the table or a baking project half-prepped— so the screen doesn’t get replaced by a void. It’s a lot of work, and the first week was, “completely brutal,” she told me. But she kept at it, and about a month later, the tantrums weakened. “They still grumble,” she said. “But the fighting — that’s mostly over. I don’t brace myself the way I used to.”

Transitionary activities makes a lot of sense, but a lot of this addiction comes from the constant hit without the work (resistance) to get it. Back in the day, you had to go to the TV and sit in front of it to watch it. If you had to use the bathroom, you had to leave and come back. Now you take the screen with you! Generic commercials that are not personalized are now personalized ads that keep the dopamine hit going with interactive mini-games. Forget HD, you had to tweak the antenna just to get a signal, or blow in the cartridge to make sure it would even work (that’s been debunked).

Games of the past were more difficult and had less of a reward, but now you have unlimited tries and you can start from the exact point where you left off. Even when you play Nintendo Classics on the Switch, you can play a difficult game from the past, but you can easily rewind the game, correct your mistimed jump, and keep on going. I’m guilty of this myself.

Let’s not forget that the prefrontal cortex of children is under developed which is heavily involved in impulse control and emotional regulation. Combine that with many parents who just don’t have the gall anymore to say no to children even at the young age of 2, before they have the ability to rampage.

And don’t even get me started on social media for kids…

The best meal for $6 you can ask for.

In this economy, getting a meal for $6 sounds like a pipe dream, but it is possible with these healthy frozen dinners from Saffron Road. If you’re in a time crunch you really can’t beat the value.

Not a sponsor by the way, just real experience.

Active Noise Cancellation with AirPods Pro - how many decibels are reduced?

Apple does not provide actual decibel numbers on their website since every situation is unique, but your Apple Watch will give you a live decibel reading factoring in your AirPods. It works for the following listening modes:

1. Off

2. Transparency

3. Adaptive

4. Noise Cancellation

Simply put on your AirPods Pro and open the Noise app on Apple Watch to see the current decibel reading. You can toggle the AirPods icon ON or OFF to see the difference in decibel reduction.

Note: Toggling the AirPods icon ON or OFF in the Noise app does not turn ON or OFF noise cancellation or change listening modes.

I tested this on AirPods Pro and AirPods Pro 2, but this should work with any set of AirPods that have noise cancellation.

---

Tested on watchOS 26.5 Beta 4 and iOS 26.5 Beta 3.

A child logs 13,000 watched YouTube videos in a span of 3 months…during school hours.

The Wall Street Journal (gift link):

AMY WARREN’S “mom siren” went off when her seventh-grader in Wichita, Kan., seemed to know too much about Fortnite, a battling-and-shooting videogame he is barred from playing.

When Warren signed into his school Google account, she was aghast: Her son Ben had accessed more than 13,000 YouTube videos during school hours from December 2024 through February 2025, according to viewing data she provided the Journal.

His feed was rife with inappropriate content. Videos glorifying gun culture, asking about silencers on Nerf guns, “head shots” where children realistically portray being killed, a video with sexually explicit jokes about neighbors sleeping together. 

YouTube had served up “shorts”—video after video that it algorithmically determined that he might like.

“It made me cry,” Warren said. “All of a sudden it’s this kind of gun slop, by no fault of his own. ” She later ran for school board and won in November, eager to galvanize change.

Kudos to the mother for taking action and striving for change, but I think it would require a huge infrastructure change to go back to the older and more proven style of learning when teachers themselves rely on YouTube and videos for teaching. I do think YouTube is a great tool as a supplement for learning in a controlled environment, but the creation of Shorts on all platforms was a sign of mental destruction, and now we have some numbers - 13,000 videos watched in 3 months during school hours.

There’s more numbers stated in the article:

A second-grader in New York watched more than 700 videos in two months during school hours, including one featuring pole dancing. A tenth-grader in Oregon scrolled through more than 200 between 9 and 11:40 a.m. on March 6. 

Who do you blame in this instance? It’s hard to pinpoint the problem because you can make a case for all parties involved, be it parents, Google, Apple, school districts, etc.

However you frame it, this is one of those “first world problems” that truly is a problem:

The concern about YouTube arrives during a crisis in education. American math and reading scores have slid to their lowest point in decades. Many educators, families and learning scientists say they can no longer blame pandemic learning loss; the decline has coincided with a dramatic increase in school screen time, turbocharged by the embrace of 1:1 devices by more than 88% of public schools, according to government survey data. YouTube and Meta recently lost a landmark social-media addiction trial, with a jury finding the companies negligent for operating products that harmed children. YouTube said it’s appealing the ruling.

Chromebooks—primed for Google software and YouTube—have about 60% of the K-12 mobile device market, according to Futuresource Consulting. Apple iPads are also a popular school device. YouTube is a top-viewed website on school devices, sometimes accounting for half of student traffic, according to administrators and web-filtering companies. […]

In some school districts, including Wichita, efforts to block all or part of the platform proved futile. Students found workarounds: logging out of their district accounts, sharing YouTube links in Google Slides and Docs and other backdoors in, parents, teachers and students say. Google says it’s fixed the Slides and Docs bug.

Lung cancer risk is higher in people who eat…fruits and vegetables??

Gizmodo:

The new study, which surveyed 187 young patients diagnosed with lung cancer, has found an infuriating link between the incidence of lung cancer and these patients’ statistically higher consumption of healthy foods, including dark green vegetables and legumes. Medical oncologist Jorge Nieva at USC Keck, a coauthor on the new research, noted that past studies have also documented higher rates of lung cancer in agricultural workers exposed to pesticides—evidence that would support their theory of pesticides’ causal relationship to the disease.

“Our research shows that younger non-smokers who eat a higher quantity of healthy foods than the general population are more likely to develop lung cancer,” Nieva, a specialist in lung cancer, said in a statement.

“These counter-intuitive findings raise important questions about an unknown environmental risk factor for lung cancer related to otherwise beneficial food,” he noted, “that needs to be addressed.” […]

Most patients had reportedly never smoked, possibly not even once or twice at house parties.

But what most of these young cancer patients had done is eat a statistically higher daily amount of fruit, vegetables, and whole grains compared to the average member of the general public.

Here’s what Nieva’s team found when comparing this lung cancer cohort’s data to data on the eating habits recorded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey: Young lung cancer patients averaged about 4.3 servings of dark green vegetables and legumes per day, compared to the average American’s 3.6 servings. These patients also averaged 3.9 servings of whole grains daily, compared to the average American’s 2.6 servings.

One of the more blood-boiling things about these fruits and vegetables, according to Nieva, is that the non-organic varieties tend to also have higher pesticide residues than the food less health-conscious people are likely to enjoy, including dairy, meat, and many processed foods.

The part that pisses me off:

And it bears repeating that their survey-based research has only found a troubling overlap in these pesticide exposures and incidences of lung cancer, not concrete proof of a biochemical mechanism confirming these compounds are carcinogenic.

OK, so pesticides like the most infamous one (glyphosate) might cause cancer, but it’s not proven yet - there’s just a “troubling overlap” between pesticide exposures and cancer.

My family has been going organic with certain foods and we have discontinued the use of GMO cereal at our house, but everyone needs to go as organic as possible. In the back of my mind, that still won’t be enough to solve this issue.

A more recent therapeutic oil that I have been “dailying” these days is black seed oil. Great for many ailments including inflammation, blood sugar regulation, lowering bad and raising good cholesterol, and relevant to this story, great at neutralizing cancer-causing free radicals. One teaspoon a day is a good start, and probably enough for most people.

The other route? All food is bad for you and will kill you, so go all in and enjoy, and blame genetics at the end of the day. Honestly, this option is starting to feel more and more palatable.

Two instances of “Face ID” like I’ve never imagined.

I spoke about my daughter not too long ago, and this past week she finally had her first cleft lip repair surgery. She was born with a mid-line cleft lip that extended into her nose and with the first surgery, the most visual defect has been corrected. She still has more surgeries in the future, but we’re taking it one step at a time. This “before” image represents what she looked like prior to surgery, and she is working her way to the “after” photo as she gets older.

The biggest change from our perspective so far is her smile. Her top lip is much narrower leading to a thinner smile, but it’s beautiful in a different way.

Speaking of other unexpected face changes, we saw multiple nurses throughout the week she spent in the hospital, and a lot of them wore face masks. Your brain subconsciously tries to complete the face of the masked person that you’re seeing day in and day out, but then you get surprised when the mask comes off and the face is not what you expected. There were no defects in their faces, but your subjective brain’s reality distortion field was expecting a certain look based on their other facial features and speech.

It’s like those AI experiments people do where they cover half their face with a hand, and ask AI to remove the hand and generate the rest of the face. It’s close, but you can tell there’s something off. My brain’s result was similar to Google’s Magic Eraser and not Apple’s Clean Up, which I consider a huge win for the human mind.

From a digital authenticity and reality point of view, Apple’s Clean Up is better because it is so bad you know the edited photo is not real and the line between reality and falsehood is obvious.

The heart is more than just a muscle.

The heart has always been at the center of emotion, purity, love, and passion, even though the brain is the organ with an unfathomably huge neural network. For comparison’s sake, the brain has about 86 billion neurons while the heart has about 40 thousand neurons.

86,000,000,000 vs 40,000 seems like a huge advantage, but the heart does have a memory, a memory that can be carried on between people who receive a heart transplant.

Pretty insane stuff.

Summer’s (almost) here, which means two tragedies and one adjustment…

The tragedies are real:

1. No more secret stash of chocolate in my car - it would melt before I could say, “milk chocolate with almonds is the best.” You could also file this “tragedy” under the, “blessing in disguise” category.

2. I have to iron my shirts again - jackets keep wrinkly shirts hidden in the winter, and lab coats at work keep wrinkles hidden all year long, but stepping out and touching some grass would require me to iron my shirts again.

One tech adjustment I’ve noticed so far:

1. I need to add one more link to my link bracelet to get a comfortable fit due to heat-induced wrist expansion. Do note - Apple only sells extra links for the larger 46mm link bracelet, so don’t lose your links if you use the smaller 42mm bracelet.

Trying to read “Apple: The First 50 Years,” in bed.

David Pogue’s historical book is quite the monstrosity from both a content and size perspective, and from a physical point of view it is a proper textbook. I thought the only way to read this beast was on my desk, but I am able to read it comfortably (enough) while lying in bed. All of the book’s weight is on a pillow on my chest, making it easy on my arms while elevating the book for a good reading angle.

Apple Books and Kindle are cheaper options for digital readers, but I know I would get distracted and start doom scrolling. With a physical book, I am focused in on one task, and within 20-25 minutes (regardless of which book I’m reading), it is lights out for me.

Smoking weed isn’t a new problem, but a more potent one, and changes the definition of what “high school” is supposed to be.

The Wall Street Journal (News+ link), starting off their story with what seems like a scene straight out of the movies:

It was 10:09 and 22 seconds on a Friday morning at Liberty High School when an alert dinged on James Geis’s phone: “High Vape Index.”

He dashed out of the administrative building and jumped into a golf cart, racing across the school’s sprawling campus to the location identified in the alert, the “E” girls’ bathroom. Within minutes he was outside the door.

A girl walked out. “Can I talk to you? Was there anyone else in there with you?” said Geis, one of the school’s campus supervisors tasked with combating marijuana use—or what many Liberty students call “narcs.”

Two more girls walked out. Geis told the students that a vape sensor went off. “What would happen if I ran?” one said.

“We would get you when you come back,” Geis responded.

She didn’t run. Geis ushered the students to a conference room where Liberty’s principal, Efa Huckaby, searched their backpacks. Hand sanitizer, folders, perfume, a pair of black leggings. Empty chips bags. He had the girls, two seniors and one freshman, turn their jeans’ pockets inside out and patted down the hoods of their sweatshirts. One of the students spoke slowly and seemed glassy-eyed.

Another campus supervisor, Brad Ainsworth, hung back to search the empty bathroom. Eventually, he found an empty box for a vape cartridge stuffed under a bag lining a metal trash receptacle.

Everywhere I go I can smell weed, even right outside the hospital. It’s not surprising that schools also have increased usage. Meanwhile, High Times argues that marijuana use is going down, even quoting the Wall Street Journal’s survey statistics:

Let’s get the obvious part out of the way. Teen cannabis use is real. The risks are real. THC can be harmful to developing brains, and schools have every right to care about what students are doing on campus. But that is not the same as proving legalization created some brand-new youth cannabis crisis. That leap is where the piece gets slippery.

Because once you leave the anecdote and look at the trendline, the panic starts to wobble. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future report shows past-year marijuana use among 12th graders at 26.0% in 2024, down from 35.7% in 2019. Among 8th graders, it was 7.0% in 2024, down from 11.8% in 2019. That is not an explosion. That is a decline.

While different news outlets will argue whether it should be illegal to smoke and how widespread the issue might be, no one can deny the barrier to entry has declined significantly since I went to high school back in the 90s:

1. It was a process to smoke weed. You had to first acquire it without the aid of a cellphone where you are in constant communication with your “source.”

2. You had to prep it with tools and “roll your own joints,” which apparently is a skill many of today’s youth don’t have or need because a vape is much easier to use and masks the smell from teachers.

And who would know best if use has actually gone down except teenagers themselves (WSJ continues):

But some Liberty students said they don’t think weed use has really gone down. The school’s focus on the bathrooms has just pushed it to other spots, both on campus and off. A major hot spot for weed and nicotine is the stairwell of a parking garage next to the school. “Anytime you go over there, I see a herd of them puffing,” said Blunt, the Liberty senior.

Some teens are brazen enough to do it in class, Blunt said, while a group of her fellow students nodded in agreement. Some will hide vape pens in the sleeves of their shirts and hoodies and take a discreet puff when the teacher isn’t looking.

And if the teacher is showing a video in class, it is a free-for-all, said Trimua. “If the lights are off, the smoke is on,” he said.

Let’s not forget the surveys given in high school are also a horrible way to determine true accuracy of increase or decrease in usage. Many students skew the results by trolling the polls and do speed clicks to get the survey over with, selecting any answer at random:

But a new research paper points out one huge potential flaw in all this research: kids who skew the results by making stuff up for a giggle. "Mischievous Responders," they're called.

They may say they're 7 feet tall, or weigh 400 pounds, or have three children. They may exaggerate their sexual experiences, or lie about their supposed criminal activities. In other words, kids will be kids, especially when you ask them about sensitive issues.

Jackson Terry, 14, says he answered honestly when he took one of these surveys last year, but he knows kids who didn't.

"They handed out the sheet, I believe it was in language class," says Terry, who's from Granville, Ohio. "The teacher was in the room. It was anonymous. I think they asked us about bullying, do you feel safe in school, some questions about drugs, the learning environment."

Some kids "would joke through the entire thing and have a cocky attitude about it," Terry says. "Afterwards some would say, yeah, No. 5, that's totally not true; I just made something up."

New York Times also describes how the potency of THC has increased dramatically from 4% to 90% in some cases (gift link):

Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.

This extremely potent version of THC can lead to psychosis, even with a single dose, destroying the future of countless children and adults.

“Stats” might say use is declining, but I beg to differ.

The “miracle” weight loss drug only works if you can withstand taking it for life.

Fast Company:

The impact of GLP-1 medications on weight loss is undeniable, but emerging research suggests the results may only be temporary. A growing body of evidence shows that when patients stop taking GLP-1 drugs, much of the weight they lost returns—and so do the medical complications that may have prompted treatment in the first place. 

“The only way that they work is if you keep taking them,” Scott Isaacs, an endocrinologist at the Grady Health System in Atlanta, told Market Watch. “And when people stop taking them, they have a lot of weight regain, and the medical problems that went away tend to come back.”

New research from the University of Oxford found that weight is projected to return to pretreatment levels within about 1.7 years after stopping medications. Improvements in cardio-metabolic markers—including blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes-related indicators—also trend back toward baseline within about 1.4 years after cessation.

It’s not a surprise that any medication for weight loss needs to be taken indefinitely, especially since personal responsibility takes a backseat. From personal experience, I take a cholesterol pill everyday, knowing full well that this might be a lifelong pill, and yes, it makes one eat a little less responsibly at times knowing that the pill will take care of my bad decision to eat a greasy burger with fries and soda, followed by some ice cream.

At least I know what to watch out for in terms of side effects, but anyone taking a medication for lifestyle improvements needs to realize wholeheartedly what they’re getting themselves into. Don’t just follow the fad and look at the positives, but look at the negatives as well.

A Psychiatrist talks about meds he would never give his kids.

Enough about what I think, just listen to the expert. He holds very conservative values, and a lot of what he says falls in line with what Islam has to say.

One of the key points he mentions is the effect our diet has on our bodies. Eating and drinking well plays a huge part in how we feel, and we can all attest to that. We all like to eat junk every now and then, and that’s how it should be - every now and then, not the bulk of our diet which is true for many if not most Americans.

It makes you ponder the verse in the Qur’an that talks about food, and how it leads down a Satanic path:

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ كُلُوا۟ مِمَّا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ حَلَـٰلًۭا طَيِّبًۭا وَلَا تَتَّبِعُوا۟ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيْطَـٰنِ ۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمْ عَدُوٌّۭ مُّبِينٌ ١٦٨

O humanity! Eat from what is lawful and good on the earth and do not follow Satan’s footsteps. He is truly your sworn enemy.

The Cow (2:168)

Lawful and good, or lawful and pure.

How much of what we eat is actually pure? To think that there isn’t a connection between diet and mental health is ludicrous. Even just a few decades ago, the connection between your oral health and heart disease was popularized, and we don’t question that at all.

So now ponder over this verse - if we don’t eat pure food and nourish our bodies the right way, we could be following Satan’s footsteps. We indulge in what is bad with little to no self-restraint, which is exactly the Satanic path. Compound the bad food with bad health, leading to poor medical choices such as brain-altering antidepressants, and you wonder why children on psychiatric drugs start acting out of character, become dangerous, and even suicidal. Children’s brains are still underdeveloped, and now you’re altering them with drugs that consistently show bad outcomes.

Having a deeper connection with Allah, with your daily prayers, with the Qur’an, with the Sunnah, and eating right are all part of the process that will lead to 99% of people being free from psychiatric drugs, but it’s the answer that doesn’t generate record-breaking profits.

Dry January? More like high January.

The Atlantic (News+ link):

Many Americans enthusiastically partake in Dry January, but it is rarely pitched as fun. After the holiday stretch of office parties and family gatherings, Americans have come to use the start of every year to abstain from alcohol in the name of health and auspicious beginnings. It’s a time of discipline, of cleansing, of embodying your mood board, even if it makes you a drag at parties. And it is also, as weed companies have learned, a marketing opportunity.

In recent years, weed companies have started to lean into the argument that taking the edge off sobriety with a low-dose gummy or THC drink still counts as dry. My social-media feeds are flooded with posts from cannabis companies pitching their products as fun and approachable tools to get through an alcohol-free month. Mary and Jane, an edibles company, makes a tantalizing proposition: “Dry January made easy.” Artet, which specializes in beverages, sells a “High & Dry January” bundle that includes a bottle of its THC-laced aperitif. Some products are conspicuously health-coded: North Canna describes its cannabis drinks as “functional,” and Feals highlights its edibles’ low calorie count. Above all, the ads emphasize how little booze you drink when you get high instead.

This push for a weed-filled January is, of course, a blatant (and somewhat silly) attempt by cannabis companies to get more customers. But as restrictions on marijuana loosen, and more Americans find themselves able and willing to fit the drug into their lives, Dry January does appear to be offering an opportunity for experimentation. In fact, cannabis sales surged in January 2024, and 21 percent of Dry January participants who responded to a 2023 survey swapped booze for weed that month.

This type of liberalistic, “have what you want as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else,” mindset is what will eventually destroy civilizations, including ours. You can’t walk out of anywhere these days except you smell weed. Even right outside the hospital for God’s sake.

So much for starting the new year with optimism and healthier choices:

The shaky logic of replacing one drug with another during a month dedicated to sobriety is hard to ignore. If the point of Dry January is to improve health, replacing alcohol with cannabis—which is not a benign substance—seems counterproductive. Far less is known about the long-term use of cannabis compared with alcohol, but both can be abused, cause dependence, and interfere with daily function and productivity, Ryan Vandrey, who helps run Johns Hopkins’s Cannabis Science Laboratory, told me. Some people are predisposed to react negatively to cannabis, experiencing anxiety, paranoia, or even cyclical vomiting. Over time, long-term heavy cannabis use can exacerbate mental-health conditions such as schizophrenia and depression.

The cycle will continue, as increased schizophrenia and depression means prescribing more antidepressants and antipsychotics that people once again shouldn’t need, but it fuels the money circle fresh with even more cash. One of the reasons why I left traditional pharmacy is because you become a bonafide, legal drug dealer, depending on what city you work in.

That was over a decade ago, so I can’t even imagine how insane it must be today.

Just think - almost every area of healthcare that has increased treatment leads to better outcomes, except mental health.

One of the reasons why it’s true is because people aren’t living with purpose anymore. Many people don’t even think about the question:

“Why am I here?”

They’re always connected to a device, listening to something 24/7, are on some sort of drug cocktail, binge watching a new series, and so on.

They’ve never unplugged and detoxed their mind to really think about, “Why am I here?”

Every girl’s dilemma.

Huffington Post describes one young girls dilemma with AI generated nude content:

One 15-year-old girl revealed a stranger had made fake nude images of her and she was worried about them being sent to her parents.

“It looks so real, it’s my face and my room in the background. They must have taken the pictures from my Instagram and edited them,” she told the charity.

“I’m so scared they will send them to my parents, the pictures are really convincing, and I don’t think they’d believe me that they’re fake.”

Just one of many thousands of horror stories.

Five “Fahadx” observations I made when at the hospital.

Baby girl got sick again this past week, making a total of 8 days at the hospital over a one month period. A few observations I noticed:

1. Almost every healthcare worker wears an Apple Watch.

2. This particular Modular Compact configuration with no bottom widget is more common than I would like.

3. The chapel is occupied by Muslims 99% of the time.

4. Sushi is great, and cheap. You can literally park at the hospital and get cheaper sushi at the cafeteria than the grocery store.

5. Masimo blood oxygen sensors are a real thing. A wrap-around for the foot, using the big toe as the sensing point. Thank you Masimo - now please (Apple and Masimo), make a deal and give us proper Apple Watch blood oxygen capability.

OpenAI releases ChatGPT Health.

OpenAI:

Today, health information is often scattered across portals, apps, wearables, PDFs, and medical notes—so it's hard to see the full picture, and people are left to navigate a complex healthcare system on their own. People have shared countless stories of turning to ChatGPT to help make sense of it all. In fact, health is one of the most common ways people use ChatGPT today: based on our de-identified analysis of conversations, over 230 million people globally ask health and wellness related questions on ChatGPT every week.

ChatGPT Health builds on this so responses are informed by your health information and context. You can now securely connect medical records and wellness apps—like Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal—so ChatGPT can help you understand recent test results, prepare for appointments with your doctor, get advice on how to approach your diet and workout routine, or understand the tradeoffs of different insurance options based on your healthcare patterns.

Health is designed to support, not replace, medical care. It is not intended for diagnosis or treatment. Instead, it helps you navigate everyday questions and understand patterns over time—not just moments of illness—so you can feel more informed and prepared for important medical conversations. To keep your health information protected and secure, Health operates as a separate space with enhanced privacy to protect sensitive data. Conversations in Health are not used to train our foundation models. If you start a health-related conversation in ChatGPT, we’ll suggest moving into Health for these additional protections.

Sounds promising, and makes me think their first hardware device will be a wearable of some sort that also gathers health data.

Grok’s ability to sexualize women - are we really surprised?

Sex sells.

Any publicity is good publicity.

Whether it’s right or wrong, it doesn’t matter to many people.

It’s funny because I go out of my way to blur women, but here we are now where all kinds of women, even hijabis are being exposed with AI.

From Reddit:

there has been an increase in people misusing AI tools to turn hijabi women pics into harmful images and spreading them online without consent.

you have a bunch of guys asking Grok things like "put her in a bikini", "turn her around", "make her touch her toes while turned around"

Muslim woman if you are reading this and share your images online, you might want to check out what's happening in X because images shared online are no longer in your possession and people can do with them as they like

This one video of this known hijabi went viral and it's fully extreme NSFW, published on Corn sites.

Please be cautious with public photos May Allah protect us all.😧

Unfortunate of course, but not surprising. I mentioned this over a year ago in my other blog when discussing about “undressing” websites:

This is another reason why women and girls in general, shouldn’t post their photos online. The fitna is already there even if the photos aren’t sexualized, but this is a whole other level of just destroying a girls reputation. 

Imagine if this became rampant in the Muslim community? It would just be a huge mess, with families’ reputations being tarnished and girls being slandered against left and right. Imagine a high school or middle school boy liking a muslim girl in school, and trying this feature on her. She may not even be one who posts photos online and might not even be involved in social media, but anyone can just take your photo these days and do whatever they want with it.