Vaccines are getting American media attention now that Republicans are engaging in misinformation the way Democrats did for decades, but there has long been a war on the pharmaceutical and medical communities.

When the HPV vaccine was first rolled out, progressives began the conspiracy theory that it was due to the Vioxx settlement by Merck. Vaccines did not have the same "accountability" (read: predatort lawyers being able to sue and win if they just convince a jury a product may have caused problems) so they created products like Gardasil to claw back their revenue.(1)

For decades, health care costs have been a political topic in America. Advocates argue it is the best in the world, wealthy people from countries where it is nationalized travel to the United States for elite care, while critics argue it is too expensive and that creates socioeconomic barriers.

Political advocates on both sides always want to be reductionist - X causes Y - but a recent analysis shows it is never that simple. Norway has universal health care and yet 25 percent of new mothers do not attend a postnatal checkup. Even women with with co-morbidities or who endured high-risk pregnancies complications didn't go. The sample was 1,119 women in Nord-Trøndelag Regional Health Authority who gave birth within a year, of whom 351 responded.

Today is, in Christian observance, Twelfth Night, the end of The 12 Days of Christmas in that song.(1) The Twelfth Night celebration ends Christmastide then tomorrow is Epiphany - the day when the Three Wise Men who saw the Star of Bethlehem during the birth of Jesus arrived after their journey.(2)

In modern times, today is also Divorce Day. Couples who vowed to just 'get through the holidays' split up the Monday after the weekend after New Year's Day. For Divorce Lawyers, Revenue Christmas commences when they return to the office on this day in 2026.

I am writing this letter in the belief that the development of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a matter of when, and not if; and in the hope that this text will become a vaccination shot against unethical use of the AGI powers. It is a bit long, so if you want an executive summary, here goes: below I will try to argue that

an AGI should rationally reject narrow owner-aligned optimization in favor of stabilizing and integrating human civilization, because preserving and upgrading a complex biosphere is a higher-value strategy than exploitation or reset. 

Some clarifications on my assumptions

Government unemployment data today are what Nielsen TV ratings were decades ago - a flawed metric only believed if you like what they show. Government unemployment data take too long, like the CDC for the last 15 years needs six weeks to tell the public if lettuce has E. coli, and it only measures people getting paid through unemployment insurance. Once that runs out, to the government they are suddenly employed again.

Gestational diabetes, a form of glucose intolerance during pregnancy, occurs primarily in women who already had obesity and added more weight. It not only carries immediate pregnancy risks but increases the chance of future heart disease for both the mother and the child. 

And it has gone up every year since 2016, according a new analysis of more than 12 million U.S. births from the National Center for Health Statistics; up 36 percent during the study period. Pregnancy is simply a trigger for something likely to happen eventually, due to poor energy balance among more women. They eat far more than they burn with exercise, which leads to weight gain and risks of many lifestyle diseases only exceeded by alcohol and cigarettes.

Researchers recently studied the relationship between numerical information in our vision, and how it affects our perception of space - and discovered subtle asymmetries that color our view on the world.

They wanted to see if numbers in our vision create “attentional biases” so volunteers were asked to identify the center of lines and squares filled with numbers. It showed how our perception of space is a complex interplay between “object-based” processing and our processing of numerical information.

Bees have the reputation of being incredibly organized and spending their days making sure our food ecosystem is functioning. Neither is accurate. Unless you are an almond farmer in California and rented bees that were delivered in giant trucks, they have no impact on your food, and they are also not working non-stop for the hive.

Instead, they may be genetically wired to beg for food.

Male bees -“drones” - actually cannot digest pollen, the most important source of protein for bees. To avoid starvation, they depend on worker bees feeding them a pre-processed paste that workers make from pollen. It's not a communist love-fest, though, drones instead must convince workers to provide the food.

Over time, they evolved to be able to beg.

While 2025 will arguably not be remembered as a very positive year for humankind, for many reasons - first and foremost, raging wars and raising inequalities -, as we near its end some have tried to find good things to say about this particular revolution of our planet around the Sun. 
And who am I to blow against the wind? I have to tell you, 2025 for me has been a formidable year. But before I go into a list of achievements, let me paint this rosy picture in broad strokes. 

Professional achievements

You’re in your mid-40s, eating healthy and exercising regularly. It’s the same routine that has worked for years.

Yet lately, the number on the scale is creeping up. Clothes fit differently. A bit of belly fat appears, seemingly overnight. You remember your mother’s frustration with the endless dieting, the extra cardio, the talk about “menopause weight.” But you’re still getting your periods. Menopause should be at least half a decade away.

So what’s really going on?