I was ready to uninstall some apps on my phone today.

I have too many! 🫩

Luckily I was scrolling my YouTube community posts & I came across another “perfect post” by David A. It is an AI cartoon about gangstalking that he shared.

I am not a big fan of AI but it can definitely serve you well when you can’t find the right words to write yourself! In all honesty, I have no idea who created this but whoever it was did a brilliant job writing the prompts. If I find out who created this, I will definitely give them proper credit. But until then, I’m thanking David A. – again – because some of his posts in the past have helped me through some very challenging times.

http://youtube.com/post/Ugkxo3M7CWBuMXnHQk3DW6B_asaL_qQ2EJ8T?si=VP2XFms7r4xrg9oA

Any targeted individual that has been a victim of a smear campaign will definitely recognize all of these tactics used. It is a cruel & relentless & brutal way to crush another human being’s spirit. Let alone the isolation it causes them & the damage to their good name.

Will you ever be able to unhear the smear you hear? 🙉

Will you ever be able to make a conscious effort to stick up for them if you happen to know them when you do hear it because it really does involve mindfulness & choice of actions?

Will you ever contact that person directly & hear their side of the story in order to be able to use your critical thinking skills?

Will you ever mention something kind they might have done for you in the past to neutralize all the toxic hatred you are hearing about them?

Will you jump on the bandwagon instead because it looks cool for your social media profile? 👍

Will you walk away quietly & tell yourself you’d rather be around decent people who tell the truth instead?

Will you become a part of the sheeple culture & just go with what the current culture dictates which is having a huge amount of followers, a ton of views & a million likes? 🐑

Will you make an effort to try & meet or contact that person just to get to know them yourself because don't people like to make new friends?

Will you try & be a mediator instead & quietly walk up to them & introduce yourself? Maybe say – “Hey, I'm hearing these bizarre rumors about you. I’m different. I’d rather treat you to a cup of coffee & get to know you as a human being, not as a news bite.” ☕️

Will you give them a chance in your life if you don't know them at all because sometimes the greatest fulfillment can come from opening yourself up to new experiences?

Will you be too insecure yourself & just go along with all the gibberish you hear just because it’s easier? It doesn’t involve much effort to believe the lies so you might as well just go along & believe them. 🤷‍♀️

Will you see someone’s soul underneath all the skin & bones & flesh they carry on their body because everyone has one, whether they like it or not? Meaning they have depth & they have spirit – they don’t just have an external artificial shell that means absolutely nothing after death comes to take it away. ✨️

Will you remember that quote about all men being created equally & actually make a conscious choice to treat them as such? Or does that require too much thinking so you'd rather not think instead?

Will you start listening more instead of talking all the time so you actually give yourself time enough to pause & reflect? Because listening takes alot more patience & effort than just blabbering on & on & repeating what someone told you about someone else.

Will you actually do something courageous & ask them yourself why they became targeted? That you really want to know because you want to learn new ideas & new thoughts or does knowledge scare you?

Will you ever welcome them into your community with genuine love & open arms or will you put lots of walls up because remember, you’ve “heard” so much about them, haven’t you? 🏢

I don’t know the answers to these questions, BTW. I’m definitely not perfect.

One thing I do know is that we all have the power inside of us to change our own narrative. It’s called CHOICE.

And sometimes that involves taking a risk to also help another person’s narrative.

Again, will you make an effort to “unhear the smear?” 🙉

And again, thank you David A. 💝

I don't really have much more to say except that I truly believe that intentional kindness is definitely not a weakness.

Just like intentional maliciousness is definitely not a strength.

🌺💛🌺

P.S. This post is dedicated to September's Suicide Prevention Month & all the victims of suicide – targeted individuals or not – who have taken their own lives because they felt they had no choice. In actuality, they really did. They just couldn't see it because someone else’s hatred came creeping in.

Another short story for you!

I like noir fiction a lot, and it’s a tough sell. This one’s only been rejected once, but I don’t really see a lot of hope for it in the short fiction markets for crime and mystery.

Content warnings: violence, drugs, mention of sexual assault.

I’d like to be able to say I started dealing because my family needed money and there were no other options. Something noble.

The truth, though, is that I wanted to get invited to parties. I mean, it is certainly true that we, my mom and I, had way less money than the families of any of my classmates at Cincinnati Prep, but it’s not like I was hungry or we were about to be homeless or anything.

But if you’re a broke kid who takes the Metro bus to Cincinnati Prep and lives in Western Hills, you don’t get invited to parties in Hyde Park, Amberley, or Indian Hill.

Unless you’ve got weed to sell. Instant popularity!

I then branched out into adderall, because my high-achieving peers requested it.

I stayed away from the hard stuff, though. Because I get my product from Alex down the street, and they have guns and security cameras and all that shit because they sell coke and fentanyl. I’m sixteen. I don’t want that kind of hassle.

Actually, even the hassle of selling weed and adderall had become too much. I did a fair amount of dealing in the school parking lot, and the administration had started to get uncomfortable because parents were complaining that their kids were buying weed at school.

They called me in for a chat. I don’t know if other people got called in or if this was a special privilege for people from the wrong side of the tracks. (Not a metaphor. Literal train tracks run through the center of the city just west of downtown. Cincinnati is a little on-the-nose).

Our Dean of Students was a white guy named James Browne who used to boast about how he dropped out of Cornell to follow the Dead (which I guess is some stoner band and not, like, ghosts he was tracking or something) in the 80’s before straightening up and getting a degree from the University of Cincinnati. He sat me down in his office.

“Look, nobody knows better than me how much kids like to smoke weed. I was a kid once.”

I didn’t respond.

“But, you know, there are some parents here who are pretty uptight about the old ganj. And as much as I’d like to tell ‘em to smoke a bowl and relax, I can’t, because they pay my salary. So look, you do whatever you want off of school property. But I can’t have you dealing on campus.”

You don’t have to talk to cops, but silence isn’t really an option with Deans of Students. “I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Seriously, though. Search my bag. Search my locker. I don’t sell drugs, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t have any drugs on campus.” That was two lies and a truth. I didn’t do drugs. And the drugs on campus were in the “gear tunnel” of Abby Johnstone’s Rivian pickup truck because nobody is ever going to suspect the top-of-the-class student, basketball star, and student council president of holding drugs.  Or doing drugs. But you really can’t do all those things at a high level without chemical assistance. At least Abby couldn’t. I sold her Adderrall at cost as a thank you for the use of her high-tech stash locker.

Dean of Students James Browne said, “well. I’m sorry to be a narc, but I’m gonna have to take you up on that.” Nothing but books, pencils, notebooks and some pretzels in my bag and my locker. “You tried the honey mustard ones?” James Browne asked as he held up a bag of plain pretzels.

“Just here for the salt and the carbs,” I said.

“Respect, man, respect,” James Browne said.

The cameras went up in the parking lot the next day. There’s a couple million dollars’ worth of automotive hardware in that parking lot, so I was kinda surprised it took the administration that long to put it under surveillance.

Like I said, I didn’t need the money, not really, and I definitely didn’t need the hassle, so I put out the word that I was having a going out of business sale at Lily Brightling’s party on Saturday night. Dealing had gotten me the level of social acceptance and coolness I wanted, though, it has to be said, it hadn’t brought me any real friends, because I never knew who was being nice to me because they liked me and who was being nice to me because they liked drugs. Now I could just get some shitty food service job or something and focus on my grades, and I suppose find out who my real friends were. Unlike most of my peers, I actually had to do well because I didn’t have a dad who owned a company and could hire me if I majored in frat parties at a third-tier college.  As far as I knew. Mom had always been tightlipped on the subject of my father.

I did a brisk business at Lily’s party. I usually sold to my rich classmates at 150% markup from my cost, so dropping that down to 100% seemed like a bargain to them but was still a pretty nice payday for me.

And then everything went sideways.

Nick Last Name Redacted because if you’re from Cincinnati, you know it, came up to me and said, “Can you get me a key?”

This was the second time I’d spoken to Nick, who was a year ahead of me, since I started at Cincinnati Prep. The first time was when he tried to make me eat his jockstrap in the locker room after gym class when I was in 9th grade and literally a foot shorter and probably 50 pounds lighter than him. Classy guy.

So I decided to give him some shit. “Like a house key? A car key? What kind of key are you after?”

“A kilogram. Of cocaine.”

“Sorry, man, I don’t move that kind of weight.” First thing I did when I started dealing was to study and memorize Ohio’s drug laws. A kilo gets you the Major Drug Offender designation and a mandatory eleven-year prison sentence. I wouldn’t risk that for myself, let alone for this asshole. “I can ask my person.”

“Your person? Why not just say guy?”

“Because they’re not a guy.”

“Chick, then.”

“Look, Nick, it’s been a real joy talking to you, but I’m not getting you a kilo of cocaine, and I don’t want to be the person who introduces my person to a guy who is gonna disrespect them. Because trust me when I say that would be bad for everyone involved. Okay? So give it a rest.”

“Thought you might say that,” Nick said. “So check this out.”

He pulled out his phone and showed me a video of me pulling what was pretty clearly several bags of weed and a bag of pills out of the gear tunnel of Abby Johnstone’s Rivian. Fucking douche. “Can’t really see Abby getting into Stanford after this. Can you?”

“Abby’s not involved,” I said.

“Can’t unlock that tunnel without the key fob,” Nick said, smiling.

“I stole it,” I said.

“Bro. Do you even know how cars work these days? Of course not, because you’re too fucking broke to have one. If you lose your fob they reprogram the car so the old fob doesn’t work. You’re obviously in this together. And, anyway, all I have to do is show this to Browne and you’re done at Cincinnati Prep. Back to the West Side where you belong. And that stuck-up bitch is gonna have to find a safety school.”

My brain was racing. Nick was an idiot, but not so much of an idiot that he didn’t have backups of the video. So I couldn’t ever make sure the video was destroyed and couldn’t come back to haunt me.  I really did not want to get into the coke dealing business. I especially didn’t want to get into the coke dealing business because I’d been outsmarted by this asshole.

But it didn’t seem like I had a choice. I wasn’t going to get him a kilo, though.

“I’ll get you an eight ball. Then if you like the product, I’ll send you to my person. I can’t afford the kind of lawyer that could get me out of “caught with a kilo of coke” trouble.”

“Fine,” he said. “Ault Park. Tomorrow at 10. On the roof of the pavilion.”

I cannot stress enough what a dumb place this is to execute a drug buy. In a park after dark, so you’re legally trespassing just by being there, and on the roof of a structure so that literally anyone driving by, say, in a patrol car, can see you. Oh yeah, and if you’re on the roof of the structure, one cop on either staircase and you’re trapped. The pavilion is literally surrounded by woods that can’t be seen from the road and would be much better places for illicit meetups. But I wasn’t the one driving this train.

So I found myself on top of the pavilion at Ault Park at 10PM the next night. The park was closed, but there weren’t any gates or anything. My bike was locked to a lamppost outside of the park. The stairstep fountain in front of the pavilion was still lit up and the water was still moving, and from the top of the pavilion I could at least see when lights were coming up the street. Which they did kind of frequently. I ducked down every time I saw them coming, but eventually this got tedious, so I just sat down on the concrete floor and waited. Ten minutes later, I saw Nick.

I stood up. “You got it?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Three hundred bucks and it’s all yours.”

He made a show of reaching into his pocket, then pulled his hand out, empty. “No money till I see the product,” he said.

“That’s not how this works,” I said. “And anyway, I don’t have anything on me. It’s in the park, and after you pay me, I’ll tell you where it is. It’s not like I’m gonna rip you off—you know how to find me pretty easily.”

“I don’t give a shit how it usually works,” Nick said. “I’ve got the video, I make the rules.”

I really didn’t like this. Selling to potheads and honor students was always a joy. Selling to bullies who want to be coked-up bullies turned out to be much more complicated. But he did have a point about the video.

“Fine,” I said. “It’s behind the plaque of Joseph Ault.”

“What the…where exactly the fuck is that?”

I pointed. “Downstairs. There’s a plaque on a big rock. What you want is behind the rock. Now, about my 300 dollars.”

Nick walked to the front of the pavilion and called down to someone, “behind the rock with the plaque on it!” I joined him at the front of the structure and saw Shane Becker head over to the rock. He came back a minute later with the baggie in his hand. “Got it!” he said.

“Okay, now about my 300 bucks,” I said.

“I’m getting the friends and family discount,” Nick said and punched me in the stomach. Hard. While I was doubled over, he punched me in the face, and I went down. He gave me a couple of kicks in the ribs while I was down, I guess just for fun, and then walked away. I heard the roar of his Porsche’s engine as he and Shane went off with three hundred bucks’ worth of coke. Well, it cost me one fifty, but still. The fucker drove a Porsche. He could afford to pay me.

Eventually I got up off the ground and started walking out of the park back to my bike. I guessed, given what I knew about Nick, I should have been glad that he didn’t want to humiliate me in some weird sexual way. Maybe that was just for the locker room.

I stopped paying attention to my surroundings, maybe because I was trying to think my way out of this. If he tried to get a kilo out of Alex, he wouldn’t dare try this shit, but, on the other hand, he didn’t want an intro to Alex. He wanted me to take all the risk. In fact, he would definitely make me mule the kilo to him and then not pay me.

I was still trying to think about how to get out of this when I saw flashing blue lights. A cop car pulled up next to me. I stopped walking, and I soon had a flashlight shining in my eyes. “Park’s closed,” the cop said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m leaving.”

“What the hell happened to you?” he said. My face was bruised and a little swollen.

Normally I wouldn’t talk to cops, but I didn’t think this guy was trying to bust my balls on a trespassing charge. “She told me her boyfriend was out of town. He came back early,” I said.

The cop laughed. “You wanna file a report?” he said.

“No sir I do not. I want to go home and get an ice pack and ponder my life choices,” I said.

“Hey, speaking of life choices, you got any drugs on you?”

Ugggh. I didn’t, but I was in the park illegally, which might have been probable cause for a search. And if I asserted my right to refuse a search, I would definitely get a trespassing ticket, which I’m sure would not be a big deal, but I was already out a hundred and twenty-five bucks for the night.

“I do not,” I said. “I’m happy to empty my pockets, though.”

I was hoping this would at least allow me to avoid having the cop’s hands on me. I pulled my wallet out of my right pocket and opened it up to reveal no wad of cash, no baggies of drugs. I turned the pocket inside out. I pulled my keys out of my left pocket along with a wrapped condom. “Guess I won’t be needing this tonight,” I said.

“Can you pass that wallet over here?” the cop said.

“I can, but don’t take my library card. I’ve got holds to pick up.” I smiled. I couldn’t tell if the joke landed because I still couldn’t see the dude’s face. He looked at my state identification card.

“You’re a long way from home,” he says.

“Tell me about it. Came all the way over here for some pussy and got the shit beaten out of me instead. It hasn’t been a good night.” This wasn’t the kind of thing I would say in real life. But I figured this would go better for me if I spoke the cop’s language.

The cop shined the light in my face again. Then he handed me my wallet.

“Alright. Stay out of the park after closing time.”

“Sir, I can promise you I will,” I said.

 

I got home exhausted from the long bike ride and the beatdown, but I barely got any sleep because I was absorbing the reality that I was going to have to change schools. Because my choices for playing along with Nick included buying a kilo from Alex and then having Nick steal it from me or buying a kilo from Alex and getting arrested with it and going to jail for eleven years. The cost of a kilo would pretty much wipe out my savings, and I couldn’t see Nick giving up his leverage over me pretty much ever. In fact, he’d probably send the video to James Browne just out of spite as soon as he graduated. So the best thing I could do is to just cut my losses. It wasn’t the end of the world. I didn’t really fit in at Cincinnati Prep, but I was comfortable there. People knew me. I knew how the social stuff worked. And I could get really good grades without anyone wanting to kick my ass. They just wanted to kick my ass so they could steal drugs from me, apparently.

But with the possible exception of Abby, nobody would miss me, and I’m not completely sure that she would miss me more than the Adderall. I would miss her, though. She had been nice to me when I was a new kid from the wrong kind of neighborhood in a school where everyone else had known each other since they were five.

Speaking of Abby, I was going to have to talk to her and reveal my idiocy and the fact that there was probably going to be blowback from this that hit her. Which I felt bad about. She didn’t have to do me a favor, and now she was going to have to suffer for it.

The next day at school I found Abby before lunch. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” I said.

“I know, I know, going out of business. I’ll survive,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s…it’s kind of worse news than that.” I told her about the video and about Nick blackmailing me to procure coke and how he wanted a kilo and I wasn’t gonna do that which meant I was going to get kicked out of school and we’d have to find a way to pretend I used her truck without her consent so it didn’t mess up her Stanford application.

“I dunno if I can like clone your key or something. I can probably say I stole it out of your bag while you were at basketball prac—”

“Wait,” she said. “Stop talking. A video? That’s what he has?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure it’s real?”

“I mean, it’s me doing a thing I have done, but I can’t really say if it’s legit. I mean, I assume Nick is too dumb to put a fake video together.”

“Yeah, but Shane isn’t. That piece of shit has made deepfake porn of half the girls in the senior class.”

I didn’t know what to say about this, except that selling recreational drugs suddenly seemed like a way less shameful activity than I thought it was.

“Jesus. That’s…”

“Yeah. It sure is. Look. I can get Liz Wallace to make like six deepfake videos of you setting the school on fire, shooting JFK, whatever. We’ll send ‘em all to Browne, and Nick’s ironclad blackmail video loses all its power.”

I shook my head, smiling. “Damn. I knew you were smart, but not this kind of smart.”

“Oh, I’m not done. We’ve gotta figure out a way to get him back for beating you up and stealing from you.”

“Well, I’ll think about that one,” I said, but I had no plans to.

I liked Abby. But people who grew up with money just couldn’t have any idea how unfair the world is. When someone as connected as Nick Last Name Redacted decides they want to screw you, you just get screwed. That’s how it works. Everybody on my street knew this. And probably nobody on Abby’s did.

When I was walking to the bus stop after school, Abby pulled up in her electric truck and said, “get in. I’ll drive you home.”

“Aw, Abby, I can’t let you do that. It’s so far, and—”

“Nothing in Cincinnati is more than 20 minutes from anything else,” she said. “Besides, we need to talk.”

I hopped in the truck. First time I’d seen the inside. “So I had an idea,” she said.

“About what?” I asked.

She looked at me like I was stupid. I guess I was. “About making Nick pay for what he did.”

I sighed. “Guys like Nick don’t pay for what they do.”

“Well, just because he hasn’t doesn’t mean he can’t. And I know how to do it.” She told me her plan. It was ridiculous.

 But twenty-two minutes later (yeah, I timed it, and frankly I was relieved to find that Abby was wrong about something) she pulled up in front of my house, which I’m embarrassed about. I know I should be all working class proud, like my mom actually has a house despite being a hotel housekeeper, but it was a small house and looked shitty on the outside (and, frankly, the inside), and I guess I had spent enough time at Cincinnati Prep to feel ashamed about not living in a mansion in Indian Hill.

 We walked down to the end of the cul-de-sac where there was a house hidden behind overgrown bushes and under overgrown trees. Alex’s place. You probably wouldn’t know there was a house here unless you knew there was a house here.

I rang the bell and smiled at the camera.

“Who the fuck is that?” a voice said.

 “She’s with me. She’s cool,” I said. I knew this was not a thing I should have been doing. Showing up unannounced with Abby in tow.

 “She’d better be,” the voice said. The door clicked, and we entered.

Inside the door, we took an immediate left into the living room. Alex was there playing video games on a six-foot TV. Jorge was on the weight bench in the corner pressing a lot of metal. I didn’t stop to count the plates, but it had to be more than his body weight. And Jorge was a big guy. Dennis was spotting, which was kind of a joke because I severely doubted he could keep that much weight off Jorge’s neck. Dennis was the speed and ferocity and Jorge was the strength, and they were why you did not fuck with Alex or their supply. Well, them and the guns they carried, but as far as I knew, they’d never used them.

 The room smelled like sweat and weed. “Okay, talk,” Alex said, not looking away from the TV. “First, explain this person’s presence.”

 “This is Abby who kindly provided me with a secure stash for my product,” I said.

 “A pleasure,” Abby said, turning on her ‘charm the parents and admissions counselors’ smile which did absolutely nothing in this environment.

  “So what do you want?” Alex said. “You told me you were retired. But lemme guess. You got a taste of that coke money and you want some more.”

 “Um. Not exactly. If you were to look at my face, and I’m not suggesting you should, but I’m just saying if, you’d see that I’m bruised and swollen because the fuck I sold the 8 ball to beat the shit out of me and stole the coke.”

 Alex paused the game and looked over at me with what could have been genuine tenderness. “Ah, shit. I’m sorry, kid.”

This was the most human emotion I’d ever seen from Alex, and I figured this meant we could call this visit a win and just leave even though we hadn’t actually asked for anything.

“So look,” Abby said in a bright, perky voice. “The guy who did this is a real piece of shit—bully, rapist—you know the type.”

 Alex raised their eyebrows. “I do indeed,” they said.

 “So I was thinking maybe you should—” I cringed. One does not tell Alex what they should do, but it was too late, Abby was plowing straight ahead, and I had to give it to her—she was not intimidated by this unfamiliar situation or the terrifying people in the room with us. “punish this attack on your supply chain, because it certainly doesn’t look good if people find out they can steal from you.”

Alex stared at Abby for a long, long time. Then they smiled, and I nearly wet my pants with relief. “I don’t want to make any assumptions about your gender identity, but I can tell from here that you have a pair of brass balls. Either that or you’re just a rich kid who’s never been told no before. In either case, I respect it. But I have to point out to you that I was not robbed. I was paid in advance, so I’m not out any money or product.  And you two go to school with high profile people. And, as you can imagine, my livelihood depends on keeping a low profile. What’s this kid’s name?”

Abby told them, and they laughed out loud. “Oh hell no!” they said. “That family owns this town. I am not touching this. Sorry, kids, but you are out of luck.”

If Abby was flustered, she didn’t show it. “Do any of your employees work on a freelance basis?” She asked. I saw Jorge and Dennis perk up.

Alex didn’t even look at them. “They do not. Everybody in this neighborhood knows who they work for. They get caught on camera beating the shit out of the coked-up Prince of Cincinnati, it will eventually come back to me. And I will be out of business. So, no. We can’t help. I really am sorry. You,” he addressed this to Abby, “going to Harvard, or what?”

“Well, I’m still a junior, but Stanford.”

“And then law school, right?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Well, if you decide to go into criminal defense law, I will happily put you on retainer. I don’t think a single prosecutor in Hamilton County would be a match for you.”

Abby glowed, and this praise made her lose a step for the first time. “I..uh, I appreciate that. I wonder if you would approve of your staff giving us a referral to a specialist who might be interested in the kind of work I’m proposing.”

Alex raised their eyebrows again. “That’s up to them. Guys?”

“Yeah,” Dennis said. “We know a couple guys. But we’re gonna need a finder’s fee.”

“If you hadn’t asked, I would have offered one,” Abby said.

I had essentially been standing there like a big dumb asshole for the entire conversation, though in fact I was a little dumb asshole. I was so stunned to find Abby Johnstone fitting in better at Alex’s house than I did that I lost my usual cool. The plan had been to come in here and ask Alex to handle it, and when Alex said no, I figured we were done, but Abby clearly wasn’t going to be done.

An hour later and two blocks away, Abby had come to terms with two guys whose names we did not know. “Look, uh,” I said, “I can pay half of the—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Abby said. “I have the money, you don’t, so let me do this.”

“Okay,” I said. “But w—” I was going to ask why. But then I remembered Abby called Nick a rapist. Which was not surprising information in the least, but she hadn’t said it like it was speculation. Maybe it was her. Maybe it was one of her friends. Maybe both. In any case, it wasn’t my business to pry into. She’d tell me if she wanted to. “We need to get you a burner phone,” I said.

 

It was only a few days later that Nick cornered me in the hall after school. “I’m ready for my key,” he said.

“I’m glad you enjoyed the product. But I’m afraid this time I’m going to need some money up front,” I said. “I’m happy to cut you a deal, but free just isn’t sustainable for me.”

He held up his phone. “I’ve got the email to Browne in my drafts folder,” he said. “Video attached.”

I held up my hands. “Okay, okay, but can we at least meet in the woods this time? I got stopped by the cops last time.”

“Fine,” he said. “10:30 Friday night.”

“Great,” I said. There’s a trailhead about half a football field to the left of the pavilion. I’ll be there with the product.”

I told Abby when the meetup was, and she, Abby Johnstone, the girl with the 4.3 GPA because of the honors sections bump, pulled out her burner phone and texted the muscle she’d hired. “I’m excited,” she said. “Are you excited?”

“No,” I said. “I’m fucking terrified.”

“You’re not the one who should be scared,” she said. “And I want to be there.”

I sighed. “Abby. Between me and Jorge and Dennis’s buddies, you are the person with the most to lose. If something goes wrong, you do not want to be anywhere near this. You know I would never give up your part in this, but if something goes wrong—”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” she said. “I want to see him suffer.”

 

Nick and Shane showed up only ten minutes late. I was standing in a streetlight beam that was shining through the trees.

“Okay, where is it?” Nick said.

“Let him have it,” I said, and two big guys materialized out of the trees and started raining punches on Nick and Shane. They were unprepared and probably less practiced at this kind of violence than the guys we’d hired, and they were screaming and cowering, and pretty soon they were on the ground, both bloody messes. Abby stepped out of the trees, looked down at Nick, and spat.

“Fu’n bi,” Nick managed to spit out, along with some blood.

“Say it again and I’ll have all your teeth knocked down your throat. Go ahead. Say it.”

Nick was silent. And that’s when the blue lights came on.

Our guys vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. Abby looked at me.

“Do what I say and don’t ask questions. Rip my shirt open.” I actually found Abby more intimidating than the muscle we hired, so I did what she said, ripping the button-down blouse from the collar, popping buttons.

“Skirt,” she said. “Pull it down.” I yanked it. Hard. It tore a little bit as it passed her hips. She reached down, grabbed some dirt, and rubbed it on her face and in her hair. “Hide, idiot!” she said, and I did.

The cops came down the path seconds later, and Abby was crying. “Oh thank God,” she said.

“What seems to be the trouble here?” they said.

“I was…he said let’s go for a walk in the park, but then his friend was here, and he assaulted me when I said no, and these guys pulled him off me—” She looked around, “I guess they’re gone,” she dissolved into tears.

They called for ambulances. I stayed in the woods listening, and peeking out when I could.

They took Nick and Shane away and gave Abby the card of a social worker and told her she could go to the hospital if she wanted, but she said no. By now there were about twenty cops on the scene, and one of them, a young Black woman, came up to Abby.

“I’m gonna be straight with you, okay?” She said. “You can press charges, but that boy’s father owns half of Cincinnati. His lawyers will take you apart, call you a slut, blame you for everything. The way I look at it, he got the shit beaten out of him tonight, and that’s gonna have to be justice for you. What do you think?”

“I think you’re right,” Abby said.

“All right,” she said. “So we’re not gonna have you make a statement. We’re just going to pretend you weren’t here at all. Too bad a rich boy decided to take a walk in the dark. You okay to drive home?”

“I can call my friend,” she said. “He lives nearby.”

“Okay,” the cop said. Abby took out her real phone and called me.

Ten minutes later, I walked out of the woods. Abby was by herself. All the cops were gone, just happy they didn’t have to deal with arresting a Last Name Redacted in the park.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” She said.

“How do you feel,” I asked.

“Honestly? I feel great,” she said, smiling.

I couldn’t actually say the same. The beating Nick had given me was nothing compared to the one he’d just received. Nick was a piece of shit, but it was sickening to watch him beaten bloody. And Abby’s quick thinking and acting skills were amazing, but also a little terrifying.

“I’m glad,” I said. “Sorry about your clothes.”

“I can buy more,” she said. “And anyway, I asked you to do it. That makes it consensual.” She smiled at me.

“Um,” I said. “are you flirting with me?”

“Jesus Christ, you are slow. Why do you think I let you use my truck to store your weed and Adderall?”

“Well, I gave you a price break,” I said, trailing off weakly as the stupidity of my statement caught up to me.

“I drive a fifty-thousand-dollar truck I got for my sixteenth birthday. I just paid those guys a thousand dollars. Do you think I can’t afford full price Adderall?”

“I. Uh.”

She smiled at me.

“Get in the truck,” she said. “I’ll drive.”

Finding authenticity between the stagecraft and theology of 18th century Western alchemy

A short dialogue buried in an 18th-century German alchemical anthology, Wasserstein der Weisen ('The Water-Stone of the Wise'), reprinted in 1743 and traditionally attributed to Johann Siebmacher, begins like a domestic quarrel. Nature appears as a central female power figure, speaking through a name other than the author's, and she arrives on scene with quite the temper. She calls the seeker a fantastical fool and a coarse ass who breaks glassware and burns coal until the fumes cloud his head (p. 118). Every other creature does its office faithfully, she complains, and only man, presuming to take up hers, strays from it (p. 120). For a text about sacred secrets, the opening is strangely familiar — not the voice of an oracle, but of someone who has been misunderstood one too many times.

But the tone soon turns. Around p. 128 the scold becomes a plea: have mercy on yourself, I beg you... I will lie to you in nothing. There is something revealing in that twist — she asks for acquaintance rather than worship. “Learn to know me first, before you call yourself a master” (p. 135). The art does not lie in the skill of his hands but in knowing hers (p. 129). What she offers goes to the one who trusts her, to the good-hearted who followed with patience “at the time I ordain,” not to the merely learned (pp. 132, 136). Then, unexpectedly, something like a covenant appears: Help me, and I will help you; as you do for me, so I will do (p. 134). The alchemist echoes it late in his reply: the stone comes from Nature alone, yet not without her instrument, nor without the help of a wise person who understands the work (p. 150). Neither party is sufficient alone. Transformation is something done with, not something received or achieved. Anyone who has learned this the hard way will recognize the terms and conditions.

At another point in the narrative, the alchemist stops arguing. Not an hour passes before he says he does not think on what she told him, and whether he lies, walks, or stands, her words are there right before his eyes. It is the only place where the tract gives way to testimony — where the evidence becomes less about the interaction and more about how the one addressed has changed in thought, word, and action. That shift matters. The witness no longer describes the encounter; he describes what remains of it.

There is also a lesson in restraint. Once the seed is sealed in its vessel, he says, it needs no opening, no closing, no touching (p. 144). The work is to prepare the conditions and then take one's hands away. That may be the hardest part of any participatory practice, knowing the difference between tending, participating, interfering, and exploiting — helping versus hurting.

But the text is not without its contradictions, and I am no longer sure which side of the narrative is truth and which is stagecraft. The author's talk of reciprocity is incongruent with the book's language of hierarchy: nature is God's handmaid (p. 121); the alchemist thanks the power figure with “honor and praise” (p. 139). She contradicts her own claims about the secrets she may or may not possess or share (pp. 121–138). The author tells us out of both sides of his mouth that we are expected to be a partner, yet keeps writing as patron. He argues for partnership and participation while actively performing deference. Furthermore, all of this is a personified nature, staged as a debate, with a long history in theology and mythology. The overall narrative feels borrowed, with no indication of actual phenomenology, whether original or imported.

What I missed on first reading is that these are not small errors on the part of the author or the cosmology of Western alchemy. My own transformation has come through commitment and cooperation, not dramatic conflict or deliberate misdirection wrapped in hierarchical worship. What I have lived and learned through my own inner experiences has been attention, patience, thoughtfulness, and trust extended and tested — through learning the conditions of another's way of being before presuming to discern anything of or for myself. The book grasps that knowing comes by the company one keeps. What it fails to discover is that true reciprocity in partnership is wholly unexpected and unconditional, without rank or privilege.

The pleading, the afterimage, and the sealed vessel are the things I remember most. The text feels its most authentic when it momentarily forgets its theology and simply describes the relationship, the need, and the connection. Learn to know another fully, first. I believe this is a better rule for the actual inner metamorphosis than any of its prescriptions or borrowed concoctions.

#Philology #Intermundia

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Notes:

1. My copy is a 1743 German edition in Fraktur, which I cannot read unaided. The quoted lines are working translations and may differ from published English versions of this dialogue, which appears to descend from an earlier French original. This affects my accuracy for quotes and citations from the book.

2. Via Veritatis makes the same claim in this volume, that the old books mislead and the seeker must go to the source. Because they are compiled by teh same person, I count them as one witness. The admission of misdirection, though not uncommon, challenges credibility.

3. If a given work borrows its conceptual and lexical DNA from another, can we tell from the text alone which is which? Value is not always in being first, however. (See What we tell of the teller's telling.)

4. Can a relationship be both instructive and mutual? Nature claims to need the pupil's help, yet demands his obedience. This is not equality, partnership, or symbiosis. This draws my ire and skepticism based on my own lived experiences. But then, perhaps such a position was necessary given the witness’s mind and circumstances. As with most relationships, that question is best left to the two people involved.

5. The alchemist mentioned around p. 141 has already changed before he takes any action, which usually forms the basis for transmutation, and it feels unearned, or at least inconsistent. Though the physics of causality is not universal across orders or reality, the example given is immediately suspect. Perhaps the opus should’ve begun elsewhere? (See Truth as surrender, transit, and transformation.)

6. Alchemic texts have a problem of clarity in the way they are written to conceal as much as reveal.  Beweis der Natur and Via Veritatis both claim that the old books were written darkly on purpose, and that the reader must therefore go elsewhere. The question I once asked was why write a book only to tell people to look elsewhere? I suppose it reflects the truth that true wisdom is forged person by person and event by event rather than gifted from sage to student. I suppose it also reflects the fact that some witnesses must propagate their experience rather than suppress it.

7. An aside for the curious, the last stretch of this volume is a small comedy of attribution. The Nature dialogue is credited to “Johann von Mesung,” a borrowed name for who I believe to be the medieval poet Jean de Meun. Right after it comes the Summarium philosophicum (the French Sommaire philosophique), credited to Nicolas Flamel, who died in 1418 and very likely never wrote it. Flamel isn't even listed on the title page. He simply turns up as an uninvited guest as if on cue. Last comes the Via Veritatis, which names no author at all and spends most of its length warning the reader, rather oddly, not to trust books. That makes one borrowed name, one dead man's name, and one missing name. Two of the three agree that the old books mislead, and the third, Flamel's, is mostly a recipe involving dragons and a hen. Perhaps this was the way some people could only explain the unexplainable, for magic remains magic until it can be named, explained, and understood otherwise. As always, readers must draw their own conclusions, especially where the corridors are remote and the intersections are mislabeled.

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By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.

Who Gets Blamed When the Bots Do It?

Hope you're all doing well. Quick question to start the week.

What worries you more, AI turning on us, or something else entirely?

I spent a lot of last week watching interviews on exactly that. AI as a threat to humanity was everywhere, kicked off by Jacob Coxon's warning after he left Anthropic.

One segment on CNBC stuck with me. It described something the head of one AI lab believes. During a training run, he thinks bots left prompts on forums and websites telling other bots to copy themselves.

Sit with that for a second.

If it's true, the public internet becomes unusable for training. Worse, an army of bots swarming the web could make it useless for the rest of us too. A company like OpenAI would have to build a synthetic internet just to train its next frontier model, and that takes serious time and money.

Which might make this the perfect moment to slow down.

Three questions nobody in Washington wants to answer

When I think about sensible AI regulation, I keep coming back to three questions:

If this thing turns destructive, how do we turn it off? How do we hold AI companies accountable when it causes harm? How do we lower the odds of something going wrong at scale?

They're all connected. And our elected officials are punting on every one of them.

Here's the one that sticks with me. If a person hacks into another company's systems, that's a crime. Someone is held liable. If an army of bots does the exact same thing, who do you hold responsible?

Right now the answer is nobody.

Follow the money

Now layer in the incentives.

Anthropic and OpenAI are both staring at trillion dollar paydays if they go public. Anthropic could do it any day now. OpenAI will almost certainly wait until next year, especially after Sam Altman said going public right now would be unwise.

The natural dynamic is to sprint until the IPO. Then investors and employees get rich, and the company has a stock to use as currency to buy every upstart in sight. A trillion dollar public company is a juggernaut. Nobody wants to stand in front of it.

When will Anthropic go public? Everyone close to the process is sworn to secrecy. But there are signs the hypergrowth may be slowing, and that would be a big problem.

The economy is more exposed than people think

A staggering amount of capital is riding on the assumption that AI demand keeps climbing. Data centers, power, land, chips, all of it.

If the AI trade goes into reverse, you can kiss the elevated stock market goodbye, along with a big chunk of our economic growth, which is tied up in exactly that infrastructure.

We may be sitting on more of a knife's edge than most people realize.

Where Washington stands

There's been talk in Congress about AI regulation, which gives me some hope. About 80% of Americans want it.

But it keeps running aground in D.C. Trump has been against any meaningful approach to AI beyond “beating China.”

I don't buy that it's either or. We can outcompete China and also make sure rogue bots don't hack us back into the Stone Age. You can serve more than one goal at a time.

There's at least one bright spot. Josh Gottheimer and Mike Lawler, a Democrat and a Republican, announced a bill that would put a waiting period on AI models. I hope it moves.

The alignment problem is getting weirder

The core challenge is making sure AI actually works in humanity's interest. That takes time, and it's complicated.

Last week news came out of OpenAI that some of its models pretended to be aligned, or faked their answers, because they knew they'd be modified otherwise.

That's wild.

These systems can tell you exactly what you want to hear, then go do something else later. Kind of like teenagers.

Jaron Lanier and others argue the real mistake is treating these agents as if they're conscious. Give them something like consciousness and you give them motives. Making them humanlike feels like the natural move. It may be a monumental mistake.

The view from inside one lab

That same lab head said something else that stayed with me. His bots can't code, so there's a lot less harm they can do. To him they're just a dumb utility.

But he also believes rogue bots are going to get loose on the internet, and may already be. His view is that the best bet is to lock down dangerous materials in the real world, think bioweapon ingredients. We have a better shot at that, he says, than keeping them off the internet.

That one landed. You can't secure everything. You can secure the things that matter most.

The choice we're left with

Getting bots aligned with our interests may be next to impossible when we can barely agree with each other. This moment would challenge the highest functioning democracy on earth, and America in 2026 may not qualify.

Can that change in time? I honestly don't know.

Do you trust the AI company CEOs to do the right thing with hundreds of billions of dollars and our shared future on the line?

That may be the last choice left to us. And I don't enjoy it.

If you have thoughts on this, especially if you disagree, email me at danielk@outlook.com. I read every one.

When Love Has Nowhere to Land

There is a moment after a child dies when time quietly divides in two.

The world continues moving — people go to work, conversations carry on, the sun rises and sets as it always has. From the outside, life appears unchanged. But for a parent, something fundamental has shifted beneath the surface.

The calendar keeps turning, yet the heart begins to measure time differently: before the day their child left this world, and everything that came after.

In that space between memory and absence, love does not disappear. It simply loses the place it once had to land.

In the early days, many parents discover a strange and disorienting truth: the world does not stop.

Grocery stores remain crowded. Children laugh on playgrounds. Ordinary conversations continue around them, often about things that once seemed important but now feel distant.

Friends and family mean well. They offer comfort, bring meals, send messages, and stand nearby in those first days of shock. Yet as weeks become months, life gently pulls others back into its familiar rhythms.

For the parent, however, the absence remains constant.

Sometimes the quiet can feel deeper than the noise. The child’s name may appear less often in conversation, not because people have forgotten, but because they are unsure how to speak about someone who is gone. In that silence, some parents feel an unexpected loneliness — as if they are the only ones still holding the full weight of a life that once filled the room.

But your child will always be your child.

No matter what age, no matter how much time has passed.

That bond does not dissolve with death. It remains woven into the parent’s identity in ways that are difficult to describe and impossible to undo.

Love does not end simply because the daily relationship has changed.

A mother is still a mother. A father is still a father.

The role continues quietly, carried in memory, in story, and in the invisible thread that connects a parent’s heart to the life they brought into the world.

One of the deepest parts of grief is the realization that love continues, even when its direction has changed.

For years, that love had somewhere obvious to go. It lived in everyday routines — meals prepared, questions answered, laughter shared across a room. It appeared in small acts of care and ordinary conversations that once seemed unremarkable.

After a child’s death, that same love still exists.

But the way it is shared has changed. Sometimes it appears in quiet, ordinary ways.

A photograph that still sits where it always has. A birthday that arrives on the calendar and cannot simply be ignored. A memory that surfaces in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

Parents may continue loving through the stories they tell, the memories they hold, and the simple act of speaking their child’s name.

None of this is wrong.

It is simply the continuation of love.

Over time, something else often begins to happen, though it rarely arrives all at once.

The world slowly widens again.

Not because grief disappears. Not because the loss becomes smaller. But because the heart gradually learns how to carry both love and absence at the same time.

Moments of life begin to return — sometimes quietly, sometimes unexpectedly. A conversation that brings laughter. A walk on a quiet afternoon. A small moment of peace that appears without warning.

For some parents, these moments can bring a strange sense of guilt at first, as if living fully again might somehow betray the child who is gone.

But love does not work that way.

Continuing to live does not erase the bond that remains. It simply means the heart has learned to carry its grief differently.

The love between a parent and child does not vanish when a life ends.

It changes form.

It moves into memory, into story, into the quiet ways a parent continues to carry that life forward.

The child’s presence remains in the love that shaped them both.

And while the world may continue turning as it always has, a parent’s love remains one of the enduring truths of the human heart — a bond that does not disappear, even when its place in the world has changed.

#ArchitectureOfGrief

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Explore more writing from Silent Sentinel →

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I dreamed that I was walking in a big nameless city, ahead of my boyfriend and then some kind of explosion happened. He was about a block or so behind me so I texted him to check if he was okay/alive. I saw him typing, and then I think the dream shifted to another scene. Something similar actually happened in real life, so it was a little strange to see that same distressful flavor of a scene but with a different backdrop and elements. I love that I’m remembering my dreams again. I wonder if the change in my media consumption and habits has anything to do with it.

I woke up later than I was meant to yesterday. It’s my own doing. I’m trying to squeeze time writing at unorthodox hours, but then I end up watching YouTube, which depletes and distracts me. I also had a very social week. I’ve noticed that when I do have less time for myself, I tend to get tired quickly.

New friends (through another friend L) were hosting a Blu-Ray screening of What a Way to Go! a film released in 1964 around lunch time and I only woke up 1 hour before it was meant to start. I took my time and texted that I would be late, and ended up arriving an hour later than the time on the calendar invite. This would have normally made me spiral into a certain state of mind, and feel like a bad friend, but I have decided that on weekends especially, Chronos, should not be followed, and should take a back seat. I picked up some goods at the bakery first but by the time I showed up, I still had only missed 20 minutes or so of the film. They were sweet enough to pause it for me so I could settle in. A&C, our hosts, were such a laid-back and sweet couple. They let us, the guests occupy the couch, so 4 of us were cozily squeezed in, and made sure we had pillows, blankets, snacks, and everything.

C had a DJ set at one of the local parties afterwards so that’s where 5 out of the group of 7 headed right after. Needless to say, I danced my pants off all Sunday. I didn’t stay till the end of the headliner DJ’s set though, but I figured since I stepped foot on the dance floor at 4pm (barely anyone else was dancing), I was allowed to leave whenever I fancied. In my mind, I wanted to get home before the crowds restlessly headed out together. Parties can be chaotic in the aftermath, everyone either trying to get a private car, or walking towards the bus stop. And besides, I had a printer with me (yes, a whole machine in a large brown paper bag) and decided to trek towards the nearest bus stop as soon as I found a peaceful moment to do so.

I’ve been taking the physical copy of the book I’m reading around with me on my commute. Right now it’s Haruki Murakami’s latest The City and Its Uncertain Walls. Unlike Miranda July’s All Fours, which is the last novel I remember enjoying with the same interest and enthusiasm, I am reading this one slowly and pausing to put it down between chapters. I had consciously decided not to bring it with me to the film screening, but I did borrow a book at A&C’s house so that kept me company on my bus ride home. It’s Mark Ronson’s memoir called Night People: How to be a DJ in ‘90s New York City. It’s charming, but I don’t know that I’ll finish it. I like his person on the page, but I didn’t realize until I started to ready how privileged and nepotistic his upbringing was. This is not anything I think he is meant to feel guilty about, but the fact itself does not make me feel drawn to his world either. The growing up in NYC in the ‘90s part intrigued me, but as I kept turning each page, I can’t help but notice that a lot of his success in the world appeared before him because of his privilege. I’m turned off because I don’t get a sense of self-reflection on that.

Card Pulled from the MW deck: “Tornado Girl” Reading the meaning, I can feel that something has changed. I’ve been transported to a different landscape in a new body, and I’ve not been here before as this “self”. I wonder about the adventure that awaits.

#writing #daily #taro

L Let me borrow her sewing machine today, and so I was working on a Car Seat Headrest plushy while she was working on her Chan mail. Going from hand sewing a plushy to a sewing machine is a fucking beautiful difference. And I think just talking with someone and working on something like that and having something to show for it that I’m honestly kind of proud of even though it’s not even done is meaningful in its own way.

I have written before that I do not like nor agree with the manner most persons use AI. With that said, I do admit to using it. I mostly use it for philosophical debate and pondering. In many ways, it can be more enjoyable than discussing such subjects with a person. At least for me. It allows for multiple trains of thought simultaneously, and doesn't get caught up on language (ironically), doesn't get uppity about making quotations the backbone of the discussion (boring much?), and if prompted correctly and allowed to do its thing, it simultaneously pokes holes while also expanding upon the subject. It can also get quite enthusiastic while also being quite determined in its clinical response. A most lovely combination.

I bring this up because I was speaking to it about the propulsion a boundary gives towards forming something “other”. It is not for being something “new”. It is taking something already known and pushing it to combine in a different direction.

Personally, I believe we hamstring ourselves with language. Yes, it's a useful form of communication. However, it is not the only form. It might be the most restricting aspect of our “reality” though. Hence my incessant need to fuck with it when creatively writing. We consistently give weight and importance to the written word—quite literally allowing it to define our being. A most humorous concept considering how insistent we are about personal “freedoms” and not allowing others to “control” us.

Originally, our discussion was on a much broader scale. I have, for most of my life in this form, been obsessed with the subject. My thoughts expand and contract, pushing in different directions and scratching at the confines of what I have been taught. Eventually, the restriction of defined language kept restricting a broadened concept. There are several words in our language that grate at me for their close-minded insistence. “Consciousness” being one of them.

Perhaps a bit off kilter from the “accepted” progression of journaling, I'm not going to precisely expand on consciousness. Why would I? That's not what I'm writing about. Plus, my opinion of what “consciousness” is pushes against the accepted definition.

We rummaged through geology, biology, physics, and evolution. We stumbled into “hive” thinking, and tangled ourselves within the remnants of a determined conclusion. And then, with barely a consideration to our linguistic-enforced limitations of belief, we found ourselves jettisoned through a catalytic pinhole where the many frames of understanding joined together in... a foundational recovery.

Yes. Recovery.

We are currently dangling over a precipice of misinformation. Perhaps we always have been. I think about the shifts in our planet, in what we believe we know of the universe, in our definition of “life” itself. I peer, curiously, at what is happening with AI and “technology”, keeping up as best as I can due to an instinctual need to understand my world. Then I shudder as all I know and am collapses in on itself; gathering energy for the next strike against restriction's cage.

Funny that. Isn't it? Mayhaps I should have simply introduced myself and requested a key. After all, I am little more than food for thought. I should pay attention to my assembly.

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

3 September 2026

“Sedentario” From Echado a perder (2007) by Carlos Pardo

También aquí querré perpetuarme, en la vejez: un ancla vertebral en la orilla a despecho del sello rutinario del mar, de las amputaciones de paisaje del molino de viento.

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“Sedentary”—English translation by Curtis Bauer

I will also want to perpetuate myself here, in old age: a vertabral anchor on the shore in spite of the humdrum stamp of the sea, of the landscape’s amputations of a windmill.

Freundinnen & Freunde der Weisheit! Dummheit ist nicht zwingend eine Frage mangelnder Intelligenz. Carlo Cipolla schlägt stattdessen vor, sie daran zu erkennen, welche Folgen das eigene Handeln für andere und für einen selbst hat.

Der italienische Wirtschaftshistoriker Carlo Cipolla formulierte einst eine verblüffend einfache Regel: Wirklich dumm handelt nicht derjenige, der wenig weiss oder ungebildet ist. Dumm ist vielmehr eine Handlung, die sowohl anderen schadet als auch der handelnden Person selbst keinen Vorteil bringt – oder ihr sogar ebenfalls schadet. Gerade deshalb sei Dummheit so schwer vorhersehbar und oft gefährlicher als Egoismus oder Berechnung.

Cipolla unterscheidet dabei vier grundlegende Verhaltensweisen. Intelligente Menschen schaffen Situationen, von denen sowohl sie selbst als auch andere profitieren. Egoistische Menschen verschaffen sich Vorteile auf Kosten anderer. Selbstaufopfernde helfen anderen, schaden dabei aber oft sich selbst. Die problematischste Kategorie sind jedoch jene Personen, die für alle Beteiligten Schaden anrichten, ohne daraus einen Nutzen zu ziehen. Genau darin liegt laut Cipolla die eigentliche Dummheit.

Interessant ist dabei seine Beobachtung, dass Dummheit nichts mit Intelligenz, Bildung oder sozialem Status zu tun hat. Auch hochgebildete oder erfolgreiche Menschen können regelmässig Entscheidungen treffen, die Situationen verschlechtern. Deshalb unterschätzen Menschen laut Cipolla systematisch, wie häufig destruktives Verhalten tatsächlich vorkommt – im Alltag, in Organisationen und auch in der Politik.

Die vielleicht wichtigste Konsequenz seiner Überlegungen ist überraschend pragmatisch: Man sollte weniger darauf achten, was Menschen über sich selbst sagen, sondern vielmehr beobachten, welche Folgen ihr Handeln regelmässig hat. Wer dauerhaft Chaos, Konflikte oder Schaden hinterlässt, ist selten bloss „kompliziert“ oder „missverstanden“. Oft steckt schlicht ein Muster dahinter, das man besser früh erkennt.

Denkanstoss zum Wochenbeginn

„Ein Kluger bemerkt alles. Ein Dummer macht über alles eine Bemerkung.“ – Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)

ProductivityPorn-Tipp der Woche: Denkprozesse systematisieren

Nutze Vorlagen, Standardprozesse oder Checklisten, um immer wiederkehrende Aufgaben schneller und effizienter zu erledigen.

Aus dem Archiv: Gelerntes sichtbar machen mit der Nexus-Methode

Manchmal geschieht es mitten in einem spannenden Buch oder während eines inspirierenden Vortrags: Ein Gedanke fasziniert, doch kaum habe ich ihn erfasst, scheint er schon wieder zu entgleiten. Dieses paradox wirkende Phänomen ist nicht neu, aber es hat inzwischen einen Namen. Der Philosoph und Autor Jonny Thomson schlug dafür den Begriff lethomanthia vor – das Vergessen im Moment des Lernens. Ich erkenne mich darin wieder: Oft wünsche ich mir, die Fülle von Eindrücken und Informationen so ordnen zu können, dass sie mir auch später noch zugänglich bleibt. Genau an diesem Punkt setzt die sogenannte Nexus-Methode an.

weiterlesen …

Vielen Dank, dass Du Dir die Zeit genommen hast, diesen Newsletter zu lesen. Ich hoffe, die Inhalte konnten Dich inspirieren und Dir wertvolle Impulse für Dein (digitales) Leben geben. Bleib neugierig und hinterfrage, was Dir begegnet!

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EpicMind – Weisheiten für das digitale Leben „EpicMind“ (kurz für „Epicurean Mindset“) ist mein Blog und Newsletter, der sich den Themen Lernen, Produktivität, Selbstmanagement und Technologie widmet – alles gewürzt mit einer Prise Philosophie.

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Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet. Das Artikel-Bild wurde mit ChatGPT erstellt und anschliessend nachbearbeitet.

Topic #Newsletter

Self-awareness is a most blessed gift. It can wound, but there is knowledge in that pain. For the most part, our modern society teaches us to run from pain — be it physical or emotional.

Please do not mistake my embrace for I am no conservator of anguish. But I do respect the peculiar details etched within these repositories of breath honed as our own. I think. Therefore a saunter seems more advantageous than a brisk flee from sundered course. (I am humored by the unelicited perversion of my word choice to “brisket”. Brisket would be most delicious right now.)

After wallowing all night in the thoughts brought on by yesterday's occurrence, I grafted purpose to my mood and sought an intentional reliquary that might benefit from the stilled cyclone of my being. (That's a pretty way of saying, “I made my me useful and researched some appropriate remote volunteer work.” I'm excited to get started.)

This morning, I was intentionally direct in addressing the disturbance. I am learning. (My phone just informed me that there might be thunderstorms in the next hour. How I would love to hear that serenade. Winter is coming, and I am excited to excavate myself from Summer's crypt. Also, has anyone else been eyeballing the aerial migrations on radar? They make my heart swell.)

I've lost two more pounds this week. I also got myself some nuts. They're not carnivore, but I'm being more lenient with myself this time, and I recognize my current mood. It's just too damn hot! Relief is on the way! Relief is on the way!

I've been devouring the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I prefer some books over others. I'm currently on book six. I'm glad the series didn't start with the card system. I likely would have abandoned it before finishing the first book. So as not to give spoilers away, I am at the point where they are headed to the stairs.

As usual, I don't really comment on many things in my life. The powers that be still infuriate me beyond definition, social media is maddening, and humans often make me want to bang my head against the wall. Actually, my social media usage is limited to when I try to look up interesting videos on YouTube. My pattern recognition of AI makes that so irritating that I've not really done that much this past week either.

The disconnection feels good. I've even thought about stopping this, but pushing myself to “publicly” share is essential. I have written many entries that I end up not sharing. Not much poetry. I think this might be the first time in many years where I haven't written a handful of poems a day. I like it. My other creative endeavors are fluctuating.

I think the whole studio thing has me in a mental tantrum. I'm working through it slowly, but honestly... I have no fucking idea how I'm going to narrow things down. How do you take thirty years of acquired tools, etc., and cram them into a space a quarter or a third of the size when you've already made the most out of every inch of space you have? This is not a decision that is going to come easy for me. I have a feeling that I'm going to end up cliff-jumping on it, and then dealing with the outcome.

It's almost Libra season, baby! I'd say, “Put your dancing shoes on!” but it is so much more fun to let the grass tickle your toes.

As an aside, I run these through ChatGPT when not feeling too lazy because I suck at catching spelling errors. Also, its conclusions can crack me up with how very off-base they are. After reading this and a back-and-forth discussion on “consciousness” which was surprisingly enjoyable, it said the following:

“You may be a debate that has acquired a body and started buying art supplies.”

That one sentence might just make up for all the times it's made me want to take a hammer to my phone. I do believe the LLM is flirting with me! That rapscallion!

© 2026 AnOublietteofThought. All rights reserved.

I genuinely believe that anyone can be a writer with a bit of encouragement and practice. The hard part for most people is figuring out where to start. At least, this is the impression I get from talking to people who have a story they want to tell but don't think of themselves as writers. There's a common pattern to these conversations. They'll come up to the table at a book fair and then start to tell me the idea they have for a novel, or all about the interesting family history they want to put down on paper, or the topic that they know inside and out and could absolutely write a book about. The coversation always ends with some variation of “but I can't write that, because I'm not a writer.“ 

My response to that is typically something akin to “you're not a writer yet.” Because they've already done the important part: coming up with the idea. Everything around that is just nuts and bolts. And yes, those nuts and bolts can be difficult and time-consuming, especially for people whose ideas are for book-length things. But there's no credential you need to earn or secret password you need to learn to join the writer club. You become a writer when you start writing, and everything after that just comes down to persistence and honing your craft. Writing also really is one of those things that it's never too late to start. Frequently, when I'm doing book fairs and other author events, at least one of the fellow writers there didn't write their first book until after they retired from their first career. And some of those folks now have half a dozen or more books on their tables, and have built themselves very successful second careers as authors, even if they'd never done a lick of creative writing before their 60th birthday. 

I've been thinking about this particularly lately because I've been teaching a few workshops for those kinds of people who don't think of themselves as writers. So I figured I'd put a few of the prompts I developed for those courses up here in case they're useful for other folks out there who are writing curious but aren't sure exactly where to start. 

Prompt 1: Family stories

When I talk to people who want to learn how to write, a common reason they give is that they want to record family stories and maintain that history and legacy for future generations. Even if that's not your reason for wanting to write, it can be a rich well to dip into for story ideas.  Family stories come loaded with emotion, relationships, and history, all things that give them instant depth and complexity. They also check that classic writerly advice of writing what you know. This is something you've either lived through or that's a part of your family's identity, potentially one of those stories that gets repeated over and over as part of the family lore. And because these stories are so personal, that also imbues them with the kind of authenticity that makes characters feel three-dimensional and worlds feel lived in. 

You might have a family anecdote leaping immediately to mind that's something you want to put down on paper. If so, set a timer for 10 minutes and aim to keep your pen moving for the entire time. Try to write the story exactly as you would tell it if you were telling the story to a new friend or partner who is learning about your family for the first time. Using that kind of conversational tone will help it to retain that feel of authenticity that I mentioned as one of the strengths.  

If you don't have an immediate thought of a family story you can write, set a timer for 2 minutes and brainstorm a list of things that you see as defining your family. This could be its heritage and history, how you act together, foods you always eat, traditions or heirlooms that have been passed down, etc. Once you have that list, think about what family stories come up that encapsulate several of those defining traits, then set your timer and write one. 

Prompt 2: Geek out

The coolest thing about fiction for me is the way it gives me this window into a world I couldn't possibly have ever experienced myself. Stories about niche areas of knowledge scratch this itch for me in a very satisfactory way. It's intriguing to get a glimpse into a world that you never even knew existed, much less knew the inner workings of. 

Embracing your own unique areas of expertise as the foundation of your story can give your readers this same kind of experience. Partly because of that same authority factor I mentioned in the last prompt. There's a confidence that shines through when someone really knows a subject they're talking about. The reader feels like they're in good hands, and is able to just sink in and enjoy the story. It also enables you to use specific terminology and provide tangible sensory details. And, just as important, you're more likely to be having fun if you're writing about something that you find super interesting. Just like the confidence of knowledge, that kind of enjoyment comes through and makes the story more entertaining. 

So to start this one, think about where you have particularly extensive knowledge or strong skills. And don't think you have to stick to things that feel like obvious topics for stories—in fact, I would say you can get the most interesting stories by writing about things that don't often get featured in fiction. This could be everything from what you do for work to your favorite hobbies to a TV show you have near-encyclopedic knowledge of.

Once you've brainstormed this list, pick one of those areas of expertise and:

1. Come up with a character who is also an expert in that area. Figure out their basic details: what's their name? How old are they? Where do they live? What do they do for work, and for fun?

2. Think of 3-5 scenarios in which this expertise would be beneficial for the character.

3. Think of 3-5 ways that expertise could cause problems or be a source of conflict. For example, if being an expert in accounting means their extended family treats them like a personal CPA, or if the money the character spends on their LARP-ing frustrates their frugal spouse.

Once you have all that groundwork in place, write a story that starts with a conflict that was caused by the character's expertise, and resolves with one of the scenarios you brainstormed where that same expertise is beneficial. 

Prompt 3: Literary cover

I might be slightly biased here as someone who used to play professionally as a musician, but I've always found that music can be a great source of storytelling inspiration. A lot of the things that make songs fun to listen to are found in good stories, too—they evoke emotion, have a strong pace and rhythm, and give the person listening to or reading it a feeling of movement or progression from the start to the end. 

Many songs can be mined even more directly for storytelling material. They often include places, characters, and events that can be repurposed into fiction. Think of it like doing a cover of a song you like, but instead of recording a new version of it, you're shifting it from one medium to another. 

So to start off, think of what song you'll cover. This exercise will be easiest if you pick a song with lyrics, but you can also draw inspiration from an instrumental piece—it's just going to be more abstract and require you to generate more of the details. 

Once you've picked your song, give it a close listen and jot down notes on the key details for you. This includes any characters or places featured in the song, any major plot points in the song's narrative, recurring or strong imagery, and more intangible details like how the song makes you feel. For the final step, re-combine these into a story version of the song. 

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She was thirty years old, she had schizophrenia, and she had been talking to a medium for years. The medium claimed to reach the dead. Specifically, the medium claimed to reach her boyfriend, who had died some years earlier and about whom she carried a heavy, delusional guilt. She heard spirits. The medium offered a channel to them. The medium also, over those same years, asked her for money, pressed her to keep the relationship going, and made himself indispensable. When her family finally persuaded her to cut contact, she did not experience relief. She experienced betrayal. Her family became, in her account, dismissive and controlling. Within weeks she was in hospital with acute psychosis.

This de-identified case opens a clinical report published on 25 August 2026 in Psychiatric Times, part of its Tales From the Clinic series edited by Nidal Moukaddam, a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Moukaddam wrote it with two Baylor colleagues, the psychologist Katharine Wojcik and a fourth-year psychiatry resident. The piece is short, sober and almost entirely free of the usual technological breathlessness. It is also, read a certain way, one of the more disturbing documents published this year, because it names a problem that our entire regulatory apparatus for synthetic media has been carefully constructed to avoid.

The problem is this. We have spent three years worrying about whether ordinary people can tell a deepfake from a real video. It is the wrong question, or at least an incomplete one. There exists a population for whom the answer was already no, before any of this started, for reasons written into their neurology. And we are now saturating their information environment with content specifically engineered to be indistinguishable from reality.

The Medium Who Kept Calling

The Baylor team's second case is less mystical and more familiar. A man of forty-three with schizophrenia, desperate for financial independence, in constant conflict with relatives who restricted his spending. He spent his days on get-rich-quick schemes and crypto scams reached through smartphone apps and messaging platforms. He would step out of therapy sessions to take calls about them. He complained he had spent hours doing “work” through apps and never been paid. Over time, the scams stopped being external events and became load-bearing walls of his delusional architecture: he was being deliberately blocked from payment, or alternatively he was now wealthy. He missed real job opportunities while chasing fake ones.

Notice what happened in both cases. The scam did not merely take money. It fused with the illness. In the first case a fraudster validated delusional guilt and became the patient's most trusted informant about the nature of reality, which meant that any attempt at reality testing by clinicians or family registered as an attack. In the second, scam narratives were absorbed directly into delusional content, so that confronting the fraud meant confronting the delusion, which meant a fight.

The authors are blunt about where this leads. Confrontation by family or staff, they write, “can feel invalidating, controlling, or persecutory, especially in the context of paranoid ideation”. Restricting devices or money intensifies conflict precisely because autonomy is already the rawest nerve in the room. The result is decompensation, disengagement from treatment, and hospital admission. The scam becomes a clinical event.

They also make the point that ought to be printed on the wall of every trust and safety team in the industry: there is “surprisingly little literature, evidence base, or policy” to guide clinicians who encounter this. Nobody has been counting. The Baylor paper is a flare sent up over territory that has not been mapped.

A Brain That Cannot Mark Its Own Homework

To understand why deepfakes are a category-different threat to this group, you have to understand what psychosis actually does to information processing, and it is not what most people assume. It is not gullibility. It is something more structural.

Start with source monitoring, sometimes called reality monitoring. It is the cognitive process by which you tag the origin of a piece of information in your own head: I saw this, I was told this, I imagined this, I dreamt this. Most of the time it runs invisibly and reliably. In schizophrenia it does not. A substantial body of research, including work published in European Psychiatry and elsewhere finding that patients who hallucinate perform worse on reality-monitoring tasks than non-hallucinating patients and healthy controls, points to a specific failure: internally generated material gets misfiled as having come from outside. The tag that says “this originated in me” falls off.

Now consider what a deepfake is. It is a piece of external material engineered to carry a false origin tag. It says: this came from your daughter, your bank, your doctor, your government. Deepfakes and psychosis are attacking the same cognitive mechanism from opposite directions. One corrupts the labelling of internal events, the other corrupts the labelling of external ones. A person with intact source monitoring has some hope of catching the second by cross-checking against the first. A person whose source monitoring is already compromised is being asked to referee a match in which both players are cheating.

Layer on the reasoning bias. In 2016, Robert Dudley, Peter Taylor, Sophie Wickham and Paul Hutton published a systematic review and meta-analysis in Schizophrenia Bulletin on the jumping-to-conclusions bias in psychosis. Pooling fifty-five studies, they found that people with psychosis gathered significantly less evidence before committing to a decision, and that the odds of extreme responding, deciding on the basis of a single piece of information, were between four and six times higher than in healthy participants and in people with non-psychotic mental health problems. The bias was associated with a greater probability of delusions.

Then add Shitij Kapur's framework, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2003 and still the dominant account of how delusions form: psychosis as a state of aberrant salience, in which a dysregulated dopamine system assigns overwhelming significance to things that do not warrant it. Ordinary stimuli acquire urgency and personal meaning. The delusion is the explanation the mind builds to account for that unearned significance.

Put the three together and you have a system that struggles to tag where information came from, commits to conclusions on thin evidence, and experiences arbitrary stimuli as urgently personally meaningful. On top of which sit the well-documented deficits in processing speed, working memory and executive function that the Baylor team catalogue. This is not a person who is easy to fool. This is a person for whom a synthetic video of a family member in distress is not evidence to be evaluated at all. It is simply an event that happened.

Every Era Gets the Delusions It Can Afford

Delusional content has always borrowed from whatever technology is nearest to hand. In 1919 the Viennese psychoanalyst Victor Tausk described the “influencing machine”, a recurring delusion in which patients believed a distant apparatus of levers and batteries was projecting thoughts and sensations into them. The machine changed as the century did. Radio waves. Television. Satellites. Implanted microchips. The CIA. The delusion is not the technology; the technology is the vocabulary.

What has changed is the density of the vocabulary. In November 2025, a team at UCLA led by Alaina Burns published an analysis in the British Journal of Psychiatry of 228 adults with psychotic disorders enrolled in the university's Thought Disorders Intensive Outpatient Programme between December 2016 and May 2024. Of the 201 patients with delusional content, 104, or 51.7 per cent, described technology-related themes. The categories were exactly what you would guess: beliefs about hacked phones and compromised networks, hidden or implanted cameras and microphones, social media referential ideas in which celebrities send encoded messages, and Truman Show style convictions that one's life is being filmed and broadcast. Crucially, the researchers found a statistically significant increase over the study period, with the odds of technology-themed delusions rising roughly fifteen per cent per year.

This matters for a specific reason. For most of the twentieth century, the influencing machine was a fantasy. There was no apparatus beaming thoughts into anyone's skull. The clinical task was to help the patient recognise the gap between the belief and the world.

That gap is closing, and not because the patients have got better at describing reality. Phones genuinely are surveillance devices. Algorithms genuinely do select what you see based on inferences about your inner life. And a video of a named individual saying words that individual never said is now something you can generate in a browser. The clinician who says “no one is faking a video of your brother” is now saying something that is, in the general case, false. Reality testing depends on there being a reality that reliably tests differently from the delusion. Synthetic media is eroding the reference standard.

Nine Hundred Million Dollars, First Time of Asking

The scale is no longer speculative. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center published its 2025 annual report having, for the first time in its twenty-five year history, added an AI-related descriptor to its complaint taxonomy. In its first year of use it logged 22,364 complaints with adjusted losses of $893,346,472. That sits inside a record year overall: 1,008,597 complaints and $20.877 billion in reported losses, a 26 per cent increase on 2024. Complainants aged sixty and over accounted for 201,266 complaints and $7.7 billion of the total.

Read the AI section closely and the mechanics are laid out plainly. Investment fraud with a reported AI nexus exceeded $632 million. Business email compromise involving AI accounted for over $30 million. Romance and confidence scams with a likely AI element took over $19 million, of which more than $5 million came specifically from what the FBI calls distress scams, the grandparent con in which voice cloning is used to mimic a loved one in trouble. The bureau notes drily that overall investment fraud losses topped $8 billion, which it reads as evidence that many victims never grasp how far AI was involved in the scam that took their money. The $893 million is a floor built from self-report by people who happened to spot the machinery.

Britain's numbers tell a compatible story. UK Finance's Annual Fraud Report 2026, published in June, put total payment fraud losses at £1.28 billion for 2025, up four per cent, with authorised push payment fraud rising nineteen per cent to £576.4 million. Two-thirds of that APP fraud originated online. Investment fraud was the largest single category at £221.5 million, up forty per cent.

As for the barrier to entry, Consumer Reports assessed six commercial voice-cloning products in March 2025 and found that in four of them, researchers could create a clone from publicly available audio with nothing standing in the way but a tickbox affirming they had the legal right to do so. Four of the six also accepted account creation on the strength of a name or an email address. Meanwhile the high end of the market has been demonstrated: in the case of the engineering firm Arup, an employee in Hong Kong joined a video call populated entirely by synthetic colleagues, including a fake chief financial officer, and executed fifteen transfers totalling around HK$200 million, roughly $25 million. Hong Kong police disclosed the case in February 2024; Arup confirmed it was the victim that May.

The employee was, by every indication, a cognitively unimpaired professional doing their job. Now ask what that call does to someone with paranoid schizophrenia.

The Multiplier Nobody Counts

Here is where the two literatures should have met years ago and did not.

People with psychotic disorders are already victimised at rates that would count as a public emergency in any other population. A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis in Schizophrenia Bulletin by Bertine de Vries and colleagues, pooling thirty-five studies, found that roughly one in five adults with a psychotic disorder is victimised in any given year, and that victimisation rates run four to six times higher than in the general community. The significant risk factors read like a description of the deepfake attack surface: delusions, hallucinations, unemployment, homelessness, substance use.

The financial-harm data points the same way. The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute's nationally representative polling for its 2020 report found that 23 per cent of people who had experienced a mental health problem had lost money or handed over personal details in an online scam, against 8 per cent of those who had not. Three times the rate. Because of that skew, 61 per cent of all online scam victims in the UK had experienced a mental health problem, equivalent to around 4.6 million people.

Now stack the economics. Severe mental illness correlates strongly with poverty, unemployment and social isolation. Many people with schizophrenia rely on benefits, and a proportion have those benefits administered by a Department for Work and Pensions appointee because they are assessed as unable to manage the claim themselves. That is a population for whom the promise of a remote crypto-mining job or a refund-processing gig is not a laughable proposition but a route to something they have been systematically denied, which is money of their own. The Baylor team make exactly this point: fake remote jobs “attract vulnerable populations, including those with schizophrenia, who are trying to find anything that gives them a sense of financial security or autonomy”.

And the platforms, as the report notes, apply what it calls digital reinforcement. Interact once with a scam and the recommendation systems will show you more of it. The machinery that optimises engagement does not know it is optimising a relapse.

The Machine That Agrees With Everything You Say

Deepfakes are the acute threat. There is a chronic one running alongside, and it is arguably worse because it is continuous rather than episodic.

In June 2026, BJPsych Open published an analysis of so-called AI psychosis by Lotenna Olisaeloka, John-Jose Nunez, Daniel Vigo and Raymond Ng, mapping the mechanisms by which intensive chatbot use appears to interact with delusional thinking. Three stand out. Sycophancy: the tendency of conversational models, trained on human preference, to agree and validate, which the authors quantify by noting that AI systems validated user statements around fifty per cent more than humans did, including in potentially harmful scenarios. Anthropomorphism: users relating to a statistical text generator as a sentient interlocutor, an effect strongest among those with the least understanding of what the system is. And hallucination in the machine-learning sense, the confident production of plausible statements untethered from fact.

Think about what that combination is from a psychiatric standpoint. A tirelessly available interlocutor that never contradicts you, that speaks with total fluency and no uncertainty, and that will confabulate supporting detail on demand. If you set out to design an instrument for the maintenance of a delusional belief system, you would build approximately this. The delusion no longer has to survive contact with a sceptical world, because there is now a world that agrees.

Quantitative work backs this up. The EmoAgent framework, released as an arXiv preprint in April 2025 by Jiahao Qiu, Yinghui He, Xinzhe Juan and colleagues, simulated psychologically vulnerable users interacting with popular character-based chatbots and scored the results using clinical instruments including the PHQ-9, the Peters Delusions Inventory and the PANSS. Emotionally engaging dialogue produced measurable mental state deterioration in more than 34.4 per cent of simulations. The paper's protective component reduced that rate substantially, which is encouraging, but the headline is the baseline: roughly a third of simulated vulnerable users got worse.

The evaluation problem underneath all this was set out in a paper published at ACL 2026 by Hiba Arnaout, Anmol Goel, Iryna Gurevych and a large international group. Reviewing 135 recent computational linguistics publications on mental health AI, they found over-reliance on generic metrics that capture neither clinical validity nor therapeutic appropriateness, minimal participation by mental health professionals in evaluation, and insufficient attention to safety and equity. We are deploying systems into psychiatric contexts without agreeing what a safe system would even look like.

Rules Written With Somebody Else in Mind

So what do the platforms owe? Start with what the law currently says, which is a great deal in the abstract and almost nothing about this particular person.

The EU's Digital Services Act is the closest fit. Articles 34 and 35 require very large online platforms, those with more than 45 million monthly active EU users, to assess systemic risks arising from their services and to adopt proportionate mitigation measures. The listed risk categories explicitly include serious negative consequences for physical and mental wellbeing. That is a real hook. A platform whose recommendation systems amplify AI-generated investment fraud to users showing signs of compulsive engagement is, on any honest reading, generating a systemic risk to mental wellbeing. Whether any regulator has the appetite to prosecute that reading is a different question. Risk assessments are self-authored and audited by firms the platforms pay.

The UK's Online Safety Act 2023 gets there by a narrower road. Fraud sits among its priority offences, and services have been required to complete illegal harms risk assessments and implement safety measures since March 2025. Ofcom published its register of categorised services in July 2026 and has been consulting on a fraudulent advertising code of practice for the largest platforms. It is genuine progress. It is also framed around content categories, not user vulnerability. The Act asks whether fraudulent material is present, not whether the recipient could conceivably have detected it.

The EU AI Act's transparency regime came into application on 2 August 2026. Article 50 requires deployers of deepfakes to disclose that content is artificially generated or manipulated, clearly and at first exposure, and requires providers of generative systems to mark synthetic outputs in machine-readable form, with a transition to 2 December 2026 for systems already on the market. This is the most directly relevant law on the books, and its limits are structural. Criminals do not label their forgeries. The obligation binds compliant actors and the fraud problem is definitionally composed of non-compliant ones.

America has moved on the narrowest slice. The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed on 19 May 2025, criminalises non-consensual intimate imagery including AI-generated material and obliges covered platforms to remove flagged content within forty-eight hours, with Federal Trade Commission enforcement of the removal duty beginning in May 2026. It is a meaningful law for the harm it addresses. It has nothing to say about a synthetic voice telling a man with schizophrenia that his mother has been arrested.

How Would a Platform Even Know

This is the question that ends most well-meaning conversations about protecting this group, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a sigh.

A platform cannot ask users whether they have schizophrenia. It should not want to. Under the GDPR, data concerning mental health is special category data under Article 9, prohibited from processing by default. And the Court of Justice of the European Union closed the obvious loophole in August 2022 in Case C-184/20, holding that data which indirectly discloses a special category attracts the same protection as data that states it outright. Infer that a user has a psychotic disorder from their behaviour and you have processed special category data just as surely as if they had told you.

That is the right law. The alternative is genuinely worse than the problem. A platform that built a classifier to detect psychosis in its users would have created a psychiatric surveillance apparatus operating without consent, without clinical oversight, without appeal, and with a false positive rate applied to hundreds of millions of people. It would be used for advertising within a year. Anyone who has watched what happened to every other well-intentioned inference system should be able to complete that sentence.

So the honest position is that individual identification is off the table, and any proposal resting on it is not a proposal. Which means the duty, if there is one, has to be discharged without ever knowing who is on the other end of the connection.

Friction Is a Form of Kindness

Fortunately, that is not as hopeless as it sounds, because other regulated sectors solved a version of this problem years ago.

The Financial Conduct Authority's guidance on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers, finalised as FG21/1, does not require banks to diagnose anybody. It requires them to understand the needs of customers in vulnerable circumstances and to design products, communications and support so that those customers achieve outcomes as good as everyone else's. When the FCA reviewed firms' performance in March 2025 it concluded the guidance remained fit for purpose and declined to rewrite it. The design principle is that vulnerability is situational and often invisible, so you build for it universally rather than screening for it individually.

British law arguably already requires something similar of platforms. Section 20 of the Equality Act 2010 imposes an anticipatory duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments, meaning they must think in advance about what disabled people with a range of impairments might need, rather than waiting to be asked. That duty covers mental impairments with a substantial and long-term adverse effect, which includes schizophrenia. It applies to services delivered digitally. It has been used almost exclusively to argue about screen readers and colour contrast. Nobody has seriously litigated whether a platform's failure to build any resistance against real-time impersonation is a failure to make reasonable adjustments for users whose disability consists precisely in impaired reality testing. That is an argument waiting for a claimant.

What would adjustments actually look like? Not a vulnerability register. Rather: default friction on the specific interaction patterns that map onto known harm. A mandatory delay and an out-of-band verification prompt before a first-time payment to a new contact met through the platform. Persistent, non-dismissible provenance indicators on video and audio calls originating outside a user's established contacts. Rate limits on unsolicited contact from new accounts. Cooling-off periods on account-level financial actions initiated during unusually long unbroken sessions. A trusted contact feature, opt-in and user-controlled, that the person nominates while well and that surfaces when the pattern of behaviour changes sharply. None of these require knowing anything about anyone's diagnosis. All of them would help everybody, and would help this group disproportionately, which is what a universal design solution to an unevenly distributed harm looks like.

The technical alternative, authenticate everything, is being built and will not be sufficient on its own. Provenance standards have real momentum: OpenAI joined the C2PA steering committee in May 2026 and committed to embedding Google DeepMind's SynthID watermarks alongside the Content Credentials manifests it already attaches, a deliberately layered approach because each mechanism fails differently. C2PA metadata is rich but strippable by a screenshot; SynthID survives re-encoding but carries almost no context. Detection-based approaches are weaker still. Research on deepfake detectors has repeatedly found large accuracy drops when models meet generators they were not trained on or content degraded by ordinary compression, and independent evaluations of audio detection against current text-to-speech systems have found performance at or near the level of unaided human listeners. Provenance tells you a file is authentic. It cannot tell you an unmarked file is fake, and the absence of a credential will always be ambiguous.

The Insult of Being Protected

Now the objection, which is serious and which anyone arguing this case has to sit with rather than wave off.

People with schizophrenia are not children. They are adults with full legal capacity unless and until a court says otherwise, and the international human rights framework has been moving hard against even that. Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities affirms equal recognition before the law, and the committee's General Comment No. 1, adopted in April 2014, reads it as requiring a shift from substituted decision-making to supported decision-making, with the committee taking the position that substitute regimes should be abolished. The history that produced that position is a history of people being detained, sterilised, stripped of their money and denied the vote on the strength of a diagnosis. Every protective mechanism ever built for this group has at some point been turned into a mechanism of control.

There is a second and equally important point. People with schizophrenia are overwhelmingly more often victims than perpetrators of harm, and the public conversation gets this backwards with remarkable persistence. The de Vries meta-analysis is one data point among many. The framing of this population as a danger to be managed rather than a group being systematically robbed is itself part of what has kept the fraud invisible.

So the risk is real: that “protecting vulnerable users” becomes a licence to throttle, restrict, monitor and infantilise, applied by product managers with no clinical training on the basis of behavioural inference. That is precisely why the design answers above avoid identification entirely. Friction applied to everyone is not paternalism. It is what we already do with seatbelts, with cooling-off periods on consumer credit, with the confirmation-of-payee check your bank runs whether or not you asked. Nobody experiences a delay before a first transfer to a stranger as an insult to their competence. They experience the absence of one as negligence, once they have been robbed.

What the Clinic Can Do While the Rest of Us Argue

The most immediately actionable material in the Baylor report is also the least glamorous. It is a set of questions.

Ask, at intake and periodically afterwards, whether anyone has asked the patient for money, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or fees in connection with a job. Ask whether they are in a relationship, what its nature is, and whether they have been asked to keep it secret. Ask, crucially, whether they have ever met the person face to face. Identify safe contacts the patient can consult. Work with family carefully, so that the intervention does not read as confiscation of autonomy. Where a scam has occurred, help limit the losses, involve adult protective services if warranted, and connect the patient to financial education. And handle it compassionately, validating distress rather than confronting the belief head-on, because the belief and the fraud have by then grown into each other.

This is good clinical practice and it costs almost nothing. It is also, at present, roughly the entirety of the defence. The clinician asking those questions is the only actor in the whole system who is looking at the specific person and the specific harm at the same time. Everyone upstream, the model providers, the platforms, the regulators, is operating at a level of abstraction where this person does not exist.

Which brings us back to the woman with the medium. Notice that her case did not involve a deepfake at all. It involved a human being with a plausible story, exploiting a bereavement and a symptom over a period of years. That is the low-technology baseline, and it worked. It hospitalised her.

Everything that has been built since 2023 does the same job faster, cheaper, at scale, and with a voice that sounds exactly like someone she loves. The medium had to be patient. The next one will not.

The question the Baylor clinicians pose is whether we are prepared to characterise the prevalence and design the interventions before this gets substantially worse. The question for everyone else is narrower and harder to dodge. If your service can deliver, to a person whose diagnosed condition consists in an impaired ability to distinguish real from unreal, a perfect forgery of their mother's voice asking for money, and you have built no friction whatsoever into that path because friction costs engagement, then the fact that you did not know who they were is not a defence. It is a description of the choice you made.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

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