In a secure computing environment somewhere in Northern Europe, a machine learning team faces a problem that would have seemed absurd a decade ago. They possess a dataset of 50 million user interactions, the kind of treasure trove that could train world-class recommendation systems. The catch? Privacy regulations mean they cannot actually look at most of it. Redacted fields, anonymised identifiers, and entire columns blanked out in the name of GDPR compliance have transformed their data asset into something resembling a heavily censored novel. The plot exists somewhere beneath the redactions, but the crucial details are missing.

This scenario plays out daily across technology companies, healthcare organisations, and financial institutions worldwide. The promise of artificial intelligence depends on data, but the data that matters most is precisely the data that privacy laws, ethical considerations, and practical constraints make hardest to access. Enter synthetic data generation, a field that has matured from academic curiosity to industrial necessity, with estimates indicating that 60 percent of AI projects now incorporate synthetic elements. The global synthetic data market expanded from approximately USD 290 million in 2023 and is projected to reach USD 3.79 billion by 2032, representing a 33 percent compound annual growth rate.

The question confronting every team working with sparse or redacted production data is deceptively simple: how do you create artificial datasets that faithfully represent the statistical properties of your original data without introducing biases that could undermine your models downstream? And how do you validate that your synthetic data actually serves its intended purpose?

Fidelity Versus Privacy at the Heart of Synthetic Data

Synthetic data generation exists in perpetual tension between two competing objectives. On one side sits fidelity, the degree to which artificial data mirrors the statistical distributions, correlations, and patterns present in the original. On the other sits privacy, the assurance that the synthetic dataset cannot be used to re-identify individuals or reveal sensitive information from the source. Research published across multiple venues confirms what practitioners have long suspected: any method to generate synthetic data faces an inherent tension between imitating the statistical distributions in real data and ensuring privacy, leading to a trade-off between usefulness and privacy.

This trade-off becomes particularly acute when dealing with sparse or redacted data. Missing values are not randomly distributed across most real-world datasets. In healthcare records, sensitive diagnoses may be systematically redacted. In financial data, high-value transactions might be obscured. In user-generated content, the most interesting patterns often appear in precisely the data points that privacy regulations require organisations to suppress. Generating synthetic data that accurately represents these patterns without inadvertently learning to reproduce the very information that was meant to remain hidden requires careful navigation of competing constraints.

The challenge intensifies further when considering short-form user content, the tweets, product reviews, chat messages, and search queries that comprise much of the internet's valuable signal. These texts are inherently sparse: individual documents contain limited information, context is often missing, and the patterns that matter emerge only at aggregate scale. Traditional approaches to data augmentation struggle with such content because the distinguishing features of genuine user expression are precisely what makes it difficult to synthesise convincingly.

Understanding this fundamental tension is essential for any team attempting to substitute or augment production data with synthetic alternatives. The goal is not to eliminate the trade-off but rather to navigate it thoughtfully, making explicit choices about which properties matter most for a given use case and accepting the constraints that follow from those choices.

Three Approaches to Synthetic Generation

The landscape of synthetic data generation has consolidated around three primary approaches, each with distinct strengths and limitations that make them suitable for different contexts and content types.

Generative Adversarial Networks

Generative adversarial networks, or GANs, pioneered the modern era of synthetic data generation through an elegant competitive framework. Two neural networks, a generator and a discriminator, engage in an adversarial game. The generator attempts to create synthetic data that appears authentic, while the discriminator attempts to distinguish real from fake. Through iterative training, both networks improve, ideally resulting in a generator capable of producing synthetic data indistinguishable from the original.

For tabular data, specialised variants like CTGAN and TVAE have become workhorses of enterprise synthetic data pipelines. CTGAN was designed specifically to handle the mixed data types and non-Gaussian distributions common in real-world tabular datasets, while TVAE applies variational autoencoder principles to the same problem. Research published in 2024 demonstrates that TVAE stands out for its high utility across all datasets, even for high-dimensional data, though it incurs higher privacy risks. The same studies reveal that TVAE and CTGAN models were employed for various datasets, with hyperparameter tuning conducted for each based on dataset size.

Yet GANs carry significant limitations. Mode collapse, a failure mode where the generator produces outputs that are less diverse than expected, remains a persistent challenge. When mode collapse occurs, the generator learns to produce only a narrow subset of possible outputs, effectively ignoring large portions of the data distribution it should be modelling. A landmark 2024 paper published in IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence by researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China introduced the Dynamic GAN framework specifically to detect and resolve mode collapse by comparing generator output to preset diversity thresholds. The DynGAN framework helps ensure synthetic data has the same diversity as the real-world information it is trying to replicate.

For short-form text content specifically, GANs face additional hurdles. Discrete token generation does not mesh naturally with the continuous gradient signals that GAN training requires. Research confirms that GANs face issues with mode collapse and applicability toward generating categorical and binary data, limitations that extend naturally to the discrete token sequences that comprise text.

Large Language Model Augmentation

The emergence of large language models has fundamentally altered the synthetic data landscape, particularly for text-based applications. Unlike GANs, which must be trained from scratch on domain-specific data, LLMs arrive pre-trained on massive corpora and can be prompted or fine-tuned to generate domain-appropriate synthetic content. This approach reduces computational overhead and eliminates the need for large reference datasets during training.

Research from 2024 confirms that LLMs outperform CTGAN by generating synthetic data that more closely matches real data distributions, as evidenced by lower Wasserstein distances. LLMs also generally provide better predictive performance compared to CTGAN, with higher F1 and R-squared scores. Crucially for resource-constrained teams, the use of LLMs for synthetic data generation may offer an accessible alternative to GANs and VAEs, reducing the need for specialised knowledge and computational resources.

For short-form content specifically, LLM-based augmentation shows particular promise. A 2024 study published in the journal Natural Language Engineering demonstrated improvements of up to 15.53 percent accuracy gains within constructed low-data regimes compared to no augmentation baselines, with major improvements in real-world low-data tasks of up to 4.84 F1 score improvement. Research on ChatGPT-generated synthetic data found that the new data consistently enhanced model classification results, though crafting prompts carefully is crucial for achieving high-quality outputs.

However, LLM-generated text carries its own biases, reflecting the training data and design choices embedded in foundation models. Synthetic data generated from LLMs is usually noisy and has a different distribution compared with raw data, which can hamper training performance. Mixing synthetic data with real data is a common practice to alleviate distribution mismatches, with a core of real examples anchoring the model in reality while the synthetic portion provides augmentation.

The rise of LLM-based augmentation has also democratised access to synthetic data generation. Previously, teams needed substantial machine learning expertise to configure and train GANs effectively. Now, prompt engineering offers a more accessible entry point, though it brings its own challenges in ensuring consistency and controlling for embedded biases.

Rule-Based Synthesis

At the opposite end of the sophistication spectrum, rule-based systems create synthetic data by complying with established rules and logical constructs that mimic real data features. These systems are deterministic, meaning that the same rules consistently yield the same results, making them extremely predictable and reproducible.

For organisations prioritising compliance, auditability, and interpretability over raw performance, rule-based approaches offer significant advantages. When a regulator asks how synthetic data was generated, pointing to explicit transformation rules proves far easier than explaining the learned weights of a neural network. Rule-based synthesis excels in scenarios where domain expertise can be encoded directly.

The limitations are equally clear. Simple rule-based augmentations often do not introduce truly new linguistic patterns or semantic variations. For short-form text specifically, rule-based approaches like synonym replacement and random insertion produce variants that technical evaluation might accept but that lack the naturalness of genuine user expression.

Measuring Fidelity Across Multiple Dimensions

The question of how to measure synthetic data fidelity has spawned an entire subfield of evaluation methodology. Unlike traditional machine learning metrics that assess performance on specific tasks, synthetic data evaluation must capture the degree to which artificial data preserves the statistical properties of its source while remaining sufficiently different to provide genuine augmentation value.

Statistical Similarity Metrics

The most straightforward approach compares the statistical distributions of real and synthetic data across multiple dimensions. The Wasserstein distance, also known as the Earth Mover's distance, has emerged as a preferred metric for continuous variables because it does not suffer from oversensitivity to minor distribution shifts. Research confirms that the Wasserstein distance is proposed as the most effective synthetic indicator of distribution variability, offering a more concise and immediate assessment compared to an extensive array of statistical metrics.

For categorical variables, the Jensen-Shannon divergence and total variation distance provide analogous measures of distributional similarity. A comprehensive evaluation framework consolidates metrics and privacy risk measures across three key categories: fidelity, utility, and privacy, while also incorporating a fidelity-utility trade-off metric.

However, these univariate and bivariate metrics carry significant limitations. Research cautions that Jensen-Shannon divergence and Wasserstein distance, similar to KL-divergence, do not account for inter-column statistics. Synthetic data might perfectly match marginal distributions while completely failing to capture the correlations and dependencies that make real data valuable for training purposes.

Detection-Based Evaluation

An alternative paradigm treats fidelity as an adversarial game: can a classifier distinguish real from synthetic data? The basic idea of detection-based fidelity is to learn a model that can discriminate between real and synthetic data. If the model can achieve better-than-random predictive performance, this indicates that there are some patterns that identify synthetic data.

Research suggests that while logistic detection implies a lenient evaluation of state-of-the-art methods, tree-based ensemble models offer a better alternative for tabular data discrimination. For short-form text content, language model perplexity provides an analogous signal.

Downstream Task Performance

The most pragmatic approach to fidelity evaluation sidesteps abstract statistical measures entirely, instead asking whether synthetic data serves its intended purpose. The Train-Synthetic-Test-Real evaluation, commonly known as TSTR, has become a standard methodology for validating synthetic data quality by evaluating its performance on a downstream machine learning task.

The TSTR framework compares the performance of models trained on synthetic data against those trained on original data when both are evaluated against a common holdout test set from the original dataset. Research confirms that for machine learning applications, models trained on high-quality synthetic data typically achieve performance within 5 to 15 percent of models trained on real data. Some studies report that synthetic data holds 95 percent of the prediction performance of real data.

A 2025 study published in Nature Scientific Reports demonstrated that the TSTR protocol showed synthetic data were highly reliable, with notable alignment between distributions of real and synthetic data.

Distributional Bias That Synthetic Data Creates

If synthetic data faithfully reproduces the statistical properties of original data, it will also faithfully reproduce any biases present. This presents teams with an uncomfortable choice: generate accurate synthetic data that perpetuates historical biases, or attempt to correct biases during generation and risk introducing new distributional distortions.

Research confirms that generating data is one of several strategies to mitigate bias. While other techniques tend to reduce or process datasets to ensure fairness, which may result in information loss, synthetic data generation helps preserve the data distribution and add statistically similar data samples to reduce bias. However, this framing assumes the original distribution is desirable. In many real-world scenarios, the original data reflects historical discrimination, sampling biases, or structural inequalities that machine learning systems should not perpetuate.

Statistical methods for detecting bias include disparate impact assessment, which evaluates whether a model negatively impacts certain groups; equal opportunity difference, which measures the difference in positive outcome rates between groups; and statistical parity difference. Evaluating synthetic datasets against fairness metrics such as demographic parity, equal opportunity, and disparate impact can help identify and correct biases.

The challenge of bias correction in synthetic data generation has spawned specialised techniques. A common approach involves generating synthetic data for the minority group and then training classification models with both observed and synthetic data. However, since synthetic data depends on observed data and fails to replicate the original data distribution accurately, prediction accuracy is reduced when synthetic data is naively treated as true data.

Advanced bias correction methodologies effectively estimate and adjust for the discrepancy between the synthetic distribution and the true distribution. Mitigating biases may involve resampling, reweighting, and adversarial debiasing techniques. Yet research acknowledges there is a noticeable lack of comprehensive validation techniques that can ensure synthetic data maintain complexity and integrity while avoiding bias.

Privacy Risks That Synthetic Data Does Not Eliminate

A persistent misconception treats synthetic data as inherently private, since the generated records do not correspond to real individuals. Research emphatically contradicts this assumption. Membership inference attacks, whereby an adversary infers if data from certain target individuals were relied upon by the synthetic data generation process, can be substantially enhanced through state-of-the-art machine learning frameworks.

Studies demonstrate that outliers are at risk of membership inference attacks. Research from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada notes that synthetic data does not fully protect against membership inference attacks, with records having attribute values outside the 95th percentile remaining at high risk.

The stakes extend beyond technical concerns. If a dataset is specific to individuals with dementia or HIV, then the mere fact that an individual's record was included would reveal personal information about them. Synthetic data cannot fully obscure this membership signal when the generation process has learned patterns specific to particular individuals.

Evaluation metrics have emerged to quantify these risks. The identifiability score indicates the likelihood of malicious actors using information in synthetic data to re-identify individuals in real data. The membership inference score measures the risk that an attack can determine whether a particular record was used to train the synthesiser.

Mitigation strategies include applying de-identification techniques such as generalisation or suppression to source data. Differential privacy can be applied during training to protect against membership inference attacks.

The Private Evolution framework, adopted by major technology companies including Microsoft and Apple, uses foundation model APIs to create synthetic data with differential privacy guarantees. Microsoft's approach generates differentially private synthetic data without requiring ML model training. Apple creates synthetic data representative of aggregate trends in real user data without collecting actual emails or text from devices.

However, privacy protection comes at a cost. For generative models, differential privacy can lead to a significant reduction in the utility of resulting data. Research confirms that simpler models generally achieved better fidelity and utility, while the addition of differential privacy often reduced both fidelity and utility.

Validation Steps for Downstream Model Reliability

The quality of synthetic data directly impacts downstream AI applications, making validation not just beneficial but essential. Without proper validation, AI systems trained on synthetic data may learn misleading patterns, produce unreliable predictions, or fail entirely when deployed.

A comprehensive validation protocol proceeds through multiple stages, each addressing distinct aspects of synthetic data quality and fitness for purpose.

Statistical Validation

The first validation stage confirms that synthetic data preserves the statistical properties required for downstream tasks. This includes univariate distribution comparisons using Wasserstein distance for continuous variables and Jensen-Shannon divergence for categorical variables; bivariate correlation analysis comparing correlation matrices; and higher-order dependency checks that examine whether complex relationships survive the generation process.

The SynthEval framework provides an open-source evaluation tool that leverages statistical and machine learning techniques to comprehensively evaluate synthetic data fidelity and privacy-preserving integrity.

Utility Validation Through TSTR

The Train-Synthetic-Test-Real protocol provides the definitive test of whether synthetic data serves its intended purpose. Practitioners should establish baseline performance using models trained on original data, then measure degradation when switching to synthetic training data. Research suggests performance within 5 to 15 percent of real-data baselines indicates high-quality synthetic data.

Privacy Validation

Before deploying synthetic data in production, teams must verify that privacy guarantees hold in practice. This includes running membership inference attacks against the synthetic dataset to identify vulnerable records; calculating identifiability scores; and verifying that differential privacy budgets were correctly implemented if applicable.

Research on nearly tight black-box auditing of differentially private machine learning, presented at NeurIPS 2024, demonstrates that rigorous auditing can detect bugs and identify privacy violations in real-world implementations.

Bias Validation

Teams must explicitly verify that synthetic data does not amplify biases present in original data or introduce new biases. This includes comparing demographic representation between real and synthetic data; evaluating fairness metrics across protected groups; and testing downstream models for disparate impact before deployment.

Production Monitoring

Validation does not end at deployment. Production systems should track model performance over time to detect distribution drift; monitor synthetic data generation pipelines for mode collapse or quality degradation; and regularly re-audit privacy guarantees as new attack techniques emerge.

Industry Platforms and Enterprise Adoption

The maturation of synthetic data technology has spawned a competitive landscape of enterprise platforms.

MOSTLY AI has evolved to become one of the most reliable synthetic data platforms globally. In 2025, the company is generally considered the go-to solution for synthetic data that not only appears realistic but also behaves that way. MOSTLY AI offers enterprise-grade synthetic data with strong privacy guarantees for financial services and healthcare sectors.

Gretel provides a synthetic data platform for AI applications across various industries, generating synthetic datasets while maintaining privacy. In March 2025, Gretel was acquired by NVIDIA, signalling the strategic importance of synthetic data to the broader AI infrastructure stack.

The Synthetic Data Vault, or SDV, offers an open-source Python framework for generating synthetic data that mimics real-world tabular data. Comparative studies reveal significant performance differences: accuracy of data generated with SDV was 52.7 percent while MOSTLY AI achieved 97.8 percent for the same operation.

Enterprise adoption reflects broader AI investment trends. According to a Menlo Ventures report, AI spending in 2024 reached USD 13.8 billion, over six times more than the previous year. However, 21 percent of AI pilots failed due to privacy concerns. With breach costs at a record USD 4.88 million in 2024, poor data practices have become expensive. Gartner research predicts that by 2026, 75 percent of businesses will use generative AI to create synthetic customer data.

Healthcare and Finance Deployments

Synthetic data has found particular traction in heavily regulated industries where privacy constraints collide with the need for large-scale machine learning.

In healthcare, a comprehensive review identified seven use cases for synthetic data: simulation and prediction research; hypothesis, methods, and algorithm testing; epidemiology and public health research; and health IT development. Digital health companies leverage synthetic data for building and testing offerings in non-HIPAA environments. Research demonstrates that diagnostic prediction models trained on synthetic data achieve 90 percent of the accuracy compared to models trained on real data.

The European Commission has funded the SYNTHIA project to facilitate responsible use of synthetic data in healthcare applications.

In finance, the sector leverages synthetic data for fraud detection, risk assessment, and algorithmic trading, allowing financial institutions to develop more accurate and reliable models without compromising customer data. Banks and fintech companies generate synthetic transaction data to test fraud detection systems without compromising customer privacy.

Operational Integration and Organisational Change

Deploying synthetic data generation requires more than selecting the right mathematical technique. It demands fundamental changes to how organisations structure their analytics pipelines and governance processes. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60 percent of large organisations will use at least one privacy-enhancing computation technique in analytics, business intelligence, or cloud computing.

Synthetic data platforms typically must integrate with identity and access management solutions, data preparation tooling, and key management technologies. These integrations introduce overheads that should be assessed early in the decision-making process.

Performance considerations vary significantly across technologies. Generative adversarial networks require substantial computational resources for training. LLM-based approaches demand access to foundation model APIs or significant compute for local deployment. Differential privacy mechanisms add computational overhead during generation.

Implementing synthetic data generation requires in-depth technical expertise. Specialised skills such as cryptography expertise can be hard to find. The complexity extends to procurement processes, necessitating collaboration between data governance, legal, and IT teams.

Policy changes accompany technical implementation. Organisations must establish clear governance frameworks that define who can access which synthetic datasets, how privacy budgets are allocated and tracked, and what audit trails must be maintained.

When Synthetic Data Fails

Synthetic data is not a panacea. The field faces ongoing challenges in ensuring data quality and preventing model collapse, where AI systems degrade from training on synthetic outputs. A 2023 Nature article warned that AI's potential to accelerate development needs a reality check, cautioning that the field risks overpromising and underdelivering.

Machine learning systems are only as good as their training data, and if original datasets contain errors, biases, or gaps, synthetic generation will perpetuate and potentially amplify these limitations.

Deep learning models make predictions through layers of mathematical transformations that can be difficult or impossible to interpret mechanistically. This opacity creates challenges for troubleshooting when synthetic data fails to serve its purpose and for satisfying compliance requirements that demand transparency about data provenance.

Integration challenges between data science teams and traditional organisational functions also create friction. Synthetic data generation requires deep domain expertise. Organisations must successfully integrate computational and operational teams, aligning incentives and workflows.

Building a Robust Synthetic Data Practice

For teams confronting sparse or redacted production data, building a robust synthetic data practice requires systematic attention to multiple concerns simultaneously.

Start with clear objectives. Different use cases demand different trade-offs between fidelity, privacy, and computational cost. Testing and development environments may tolerate lower fidelity if privacy is paramount. Training production models requires higher fidelity even at greater privacy risk.

Invest in evaluation infrastructure. The TSTR framework should become standard practice for any synthetic data deployment. Establish baseline model performance on original data, then measure degradation systematically when switching to synthetic training data. Build privacy auditing capabilities that can detect membership inference vulnerabilities before deployment.

Treat bias as a first-class concern. Evaluate fairness metrics before and after synthetic data generation. Build pipelines that flag demographic disparities automatically. Consider whether the goal is to reproduce original distributions faithfully, which may perpetuate historical biases, or to correct biases during generation.

Plan for production monitoring. Synthetic data quality can degrade as source data evolves and as generation pipelines develop subtle bugs. Build observability into synthetic data systems just as production ML models require monitoring for drift and degradation.

Build organisational capability. Synthetic data generation sits at the intersection of machine learning, privacy engineering, and domain expertise. Few individuals possess all three skill sets. Build cross-functional teams that can navigate technical trade-offs while remaining grounded in application requirements.

The trajectory of synthetic data points toward increasing importance rather than diminishing returns. Gartner projects that by 2030, synthetic data will fully surpass real data in AI models. Whether this prediction proves accurate, the fundamental pressures driving synthetic data adoption show no signs of abating. Privacy regulations continue to tighten. Data scarcity in specialised domains persists. Computational techniques continue to improve.

For teams working with sparse or redacted production data, synthetic generation offers a path forward that balances privacy preservation with machine learning utility. The path is not without hazards: distributional biases, privacy vulnerabilities, and quality degradation all demand attention. But with systematic validation, continuous monitoring, and clear-eyed assessment of trade-offs, synthetic data can bridge the gap between the data organisations need and the data regulations allow them to use.

The future belongs to teams that master not just synthetic data generation, but the harder challenge of validating that their artificial datasets serve their intended purposes without introducing the harmful biases that could undermine everything they build downstream.

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References and Sources

1. MDPI Electronics. (2024). “A Systematic Review of Synthetic Data Generation Techniques Using Generative AI.” https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/13/17/3509

2. Springer. (2024). “Assessing the Potentials of LLMs and GANs as State-of-the-Art Tabular Synthetic Data Generation Methods.” https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-69651-0_25

3. MDPI Electronics. (2024). “Bias Mitigation via Synthetic Data Generation: A Review.” https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/13/19/3909

4. AWS Machine Learning Blog. (2024). “How to evaluate the quality of the synthetic data.” https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/how-to-evaluate-the-quality-of-the-synthetic-data-measuring-from-the-perspective-of-fidelity-utility-and-privacy/

5. Frontiers in Digital Health. (2025). “Comprehensive evaluation framework for synthetic tabular data in health.” https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/digital-health/articles/10.3389/fdgth.2025.1576290/full

6. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. (2024). “DynGAN: Solving Mode Collapse in GANs With Dynamic Clustering.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38376961/

7. Gartner. (2024). “Gartner Identifies the Top Trends in Data and Analytics for 2024.” https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-04-25-gartner-identifies-the-top-trends-in-data-and-analytics-for-2024

8. Nature Scientific Reports. (2025). “An enhancement of machine learning model performance in disease prediction with synthetic data generation.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-15019-3

9. Cambridge University Press. (2024). “Improving short text classification with augmented data using GPT-3.” https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/natural-language-engineering/article/improving-short-text-classification-with-augmented-data-using-gpt3/4F23066E3F0156382190BD76DA9A7BA5

10. Microsoft Research. (2024). “The Crossroads of Innovation and Privacy: Private Synthetic Data for Generative AI.” https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/the-crossroads-of-innovation-and-privacy-private-synthetic-data-for-generative-ai/

11. IEEE Security and Privacy. (2024). “Synthetic Data: Methods, Use Cases, and Risks.” https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MSEC.2024.3371505

12. Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2022). “Privacy Tech-Know blog: The reality of synthetic data.” https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/blog/20221012/

13. Springer Machine Learning. (2025). “Differentially-private data synthetisation for efficient re-identification risk control.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10994-025-06799-w

14. MOSTLY AI. (2024). “Evaluate synthetic data quality using downstream ML.” https://mostly.ai/blog/synthetic-data-quality-evaluation

15. Gretel AI. (2025). “2025: The Year Synthetic Data Goes Mainstream.” https://gretel.ai/blog/2025-the-year-synthetic-data-goes-mainstream

16. Nature Digital Medicine. (2023). “Harnessing the power of synthetic data in healthcare.” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-023-00927-3

17. MDPI Applied Sciences. (2024). “Challenges of Using Synthetic Data Generation Methods for Tabular Microdata.” https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/14/14/5975

18. EMNLP. (2024). “Quality Matters: Evaluating Synthetic Data for Tool-Using LLMs.” https://aclanthology.org/2024.emnlp-main.285/

19. Galileo AI. (2024). “Master Synthetic Data Validation to Avoid AI Failure.” https://galileo.ai/blog/validating-synthetic-data-ai

20. ACM Conference on Human Centred Artificial Intelligence. (2024). “Utilising Synthetic Data from LLM for Gender Bias Detection and Mitigation.” https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701268.3701285

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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

Following the same format as last years post (and somewhat more timely!)…

2025 top tracks

My top 5 listened to tracks in 2025 according to last.fm:

1. pinponpanpon – SO COOL

2. HANA – ROSE

3. Ava Max – Wet, Hot American Dream

4. Ava Max – World’s Smallest Violin

5. Ava Max – Lovin Myself

(unashamed cringe pop enjoyer 😂)

…tbh I think this sums up the year well enough.

Best Song 2025

Not in my top 5 most played (my 35th apparently), but I think song of the year really has to go to:

HUNTR/X – Golden

I mean it was everywhere, and pretty catchy. I also wanted to dislike KPop Demon Hunters, but after actually watching it… honestly surprisingly enjoyable.

No honorable mentions this year since they’re all in their own categories below.

JPop 2025

Absolutely no question on this, it has to be HANA – ROSE. Massive debut year for them, glad Momoka from PD101JP got her debut in a group that suits her style (and is already doing better than the actual group from the show… not to mention healthier management company by all accounts). A well deserved best new artist award too for them at the end of the year. They could easily have had 2 or even 3 songs at the top of this list in 2025 (Blue Jeans being the close 2nd of their songs).

pinponpanpon

My personal favourite song of the year I’ve got to go with pinponpanpon – SO COOL.❄️ Like a lot of their songs lean heavily into the “bad/cringe but funny” category, but I think SO COOL transcends that into a legitimately decent track that can be enjoyed in total isolation (same with Midnight Ravers on last years list). I’m also thoroughly enjoying their youtube antics.

They even completed a European tour in 2025, including London. Not going to post a whole report on that or anything, the venue was awful, 4am is too late for me these days, but fantastic to see them and their energy in person. Obligatory cheki (as far as cheki locations go, this is pretty awesome tbh!)…

Honorable mentions

Too many others to choose from, could have gone on, but let’s go with these:

• cosmosy – Lucky=One (their subsequent songs have been kinda disappointing, inconsistent sound)
• ATARASHII GAKKO! – Sailor Sail On (if this came out earlier in the year it might made my top played)
• ME:I – Million Stars
• FRUITS ZIPPER – Pipopapo
• FRUITS ZIPPER – Kagami
• Juice=Juice – More! Mi-Amore (2025 and H!P still refuse to properly put their stuff on streaming platforms! 😂)
• Phantom Siita – Bot Bakka
• M!LK – Sukisugite Metsu! (see I don’t only listen to girl groups 😂)

KPop 2025

I don’t think I actually listened to much other than ILLIT or KPop Demon Hunters. So I’ll go with the only one I listened to on repeat for a while:

1. ILLIT – jellyous

Best Album

Two clear contenders, and both very different!

• .BPM – The .BPM Wonder This entire album is like a greatest hits, all their best songs, plus some new songs. It really is a masterpiece from start to finish. Based on what their producer has been saying online, it really seems like it’s been a labour of love to produce the whole thing over the years (and impressive from a single producer!). I can’t praise it enough. I hope they get the recognition they deserve. Definitely want to see them live some day! 🙏

• Ava Max – Don’t Click Play Pure pop. The amount of mess that preceded this album, cancelled how many times, quitting management agency, cancelling an entire world tour, omg, felt like it was never going to happen. Clearly not as iconic as previous Ava Max albums, but this really has some good fun songs, and her lyrical writing is as poetic pop as ever. Was looking forward to the tour before it got cancelled, hopefully it gets re-announced for sometime this year. ❤️

Other Stuff

I think the main other interesting thing that happened last year was seeing the Japanese cast for the SIX musical performing in London (including Suzuki Airi!). I’m not really a musical person, but this felt more like a concert (plot thin at best, lol), super awesome to see Airi still performing on stage and enjoying herself. Far too many people at the stage exit to get any decent photos though, though she took photos of everyone else…

Finally… 😭😭

Can’t end the post without mentioning Perfume going into cryosleep. Still producing amazing albums until the end. Seems like there will be a documentary movie released sometime next summer, then who knows when we’ll hear from them again, though they’re not ending, just sleeping! From my last post in 2023 😭😭😭😭…

“I couldn’t help but wonder, would this be the last time I see Perfume live?”

Music is everything

遥かなユニバース

It truly is.

#music #jpop #concerts #perfume

In Summary: * As evening slowly slides toward night, I'm listening to one of my favorite news talk radio hosts as he wraps up his show. Stories that are catching most of my attention these days on the Internet involve the US expanding the old Monroe Doctrine, Alberta's move toward independence from Canada, Greenland moving away from Denmark and into the sphere of US protection, and stories that deal with folks aging successfully through their 70's and into their 80's and 90's.

Prayers, etc.: *I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 220.02 lbs. * bp= 143/86 (69)

Exercise: * morning stretches, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 08:10 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 09:55 – bowl of blood soup, and white bread * 17:00 – fresh watermelon

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 05:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:50 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:55 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 08:50 – start my weekly laundry * 12:30 to 14:00 – watch old game shows with Sylvia * 15:30 – pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 19:00 – Tuned into the last hour of the Joe Pags Show on local news talk radio

Chess: * 15:10 – moved in all pending CC games

There is a strange, beautiful, unsettling moment in Revelation 10 where heaven does something that feels very personal. God does not thunder. He does not shake mountains. He does not split the sky with lightning. Instead, He hands something to a man. A scroll. Small. Ordinary. Light enough to hold. And yet, it carries the weight of eternity. That single image alone tells us something profound about how God works in this world. He does not always shout over the chaos. Sometimes He places His truth into human hands and asks us to carry it.

Revelation 10 appears right in the middle of cosmic upheaval. Trumpets have sounded. Judgments have been released. The world is shaking. Fear is everywhere. But instead of escalating the destruction, God pauses the storm and introduces an angel. Not a small angel. Not a gentle angel. A towering one with one foot on the sea and one on the land, clothed in clouds, crowned with a rainbow, face like the sun, legs like fire. This angel represents authority over the entire created order. Land. Sea. Sky. All of it under heaven’s jurisdiction. And in his hand is that small scroll.

This is not a detail to skip over. God could have written this scene in a thousand ways. He could have placed the scroll on a throne. He could have locked it in heaven. He could have had it proclaimed by thunder alone. But instead, He chooses to place it into the hands of John. That is the heartbeat of Revelation 10. Heaven entrusting truth to a human being.

That alone should shake us. We often think of God’s word as something distant, mysterious, locked away in theology books or reserved for preachers or scholars. But Revelation 10 shows us something else. God’s voice is meant to be held. It is meant to be taken. It is meant to be internalized. It is meant to be carried into the world by people who are still walking through dust, fear, doubt, and ordinary days.

John is told to take the scroll and eat it. Not read it. Not analyze it. Eat it. Let it become part of him. Let it pass into his bloodstream. Let it shape his internal world. Let it change the way he thinks, the way he feels, the way he sees reality. And this is where Revelation 10 becomes deeply personal for anyone who has ever tried to live a faithful life in a confusing world.

Because God warns John something shocking. The scroll will be sweet in his mouth and bitter in his stomach. That is not a contradiction. That is the truth about what it means to carry God’s word. There is sweetness in hearing God speak. There is comfort in His promises. There is hope in His presence. There is joy in His truth. But there is also bitterness. There is grief when you realize how broken the world is. There is sorrow when you see how far people wander from love. There is heaviness when you understand the cost of truth.

Faith is not sugar. It is not denial. It is not pretending everything is fine. Faith is sweetness and bitterness together. The sweetness of knowing God is real. The bitterness of realizing how much this world needs Him.

Revelation 10 tells us that anyone who truly carries God’s word will feel both. If all you feel is sweetness, you are probably skimming. If all you feel is bitterness, you are probably overwhelmed. But when the scroll is eaten, when it becomes part of you, you will taste both joy and sorrow. That is what it means to be spiritually awake.

This chapter is not about predicting timelines. It is about understanding what it costs to be entrusted with divine truth. John is not given the scroll so he can admire it. He is given the scroll so he can speak it. After he eats it, he is told he must prophesy again to many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings. In other words, the message does not end with him. It must move through him into the world.

That is where Revelation 10 touches our lives today.

We live in a time when voices are everywhere. Everyone is speaking. Everyone is posting. Everyone is broadcasting. Everyone has opinions. But very few people are carrying something that came from heaven. And the difference is not volume. It is weight. Heaven’s truth carries weight. It is not flashy. It is not always popular. It is not always easy. But it changes people because it is real.

John does not become famous for the scroll. He becomes faithful to it. And that is a crucial distinction. God is not looking for people who will perform His word. He is looking for people who will carry it.

The angel in Revelation 10 roars like a lion. Seven thunders respond. John begins to write what the thunders say, but God stops him. Seal it. Do not write it. That moment teaches us something else about God’s voice. Not everything is meant to be known right now. Not everything is meant to be published. Not everything is meant to be explained. Some things are meant to be trusted.

We live in a culture obsessed with answers. We want everything decoded, everything solved, everything revealed. But God reminds John, and us, that mystery is part of faith. There are truths that belong to heaven. There are things God is doing behind the scenes that we will not understand yet. And faith is not knowing everything. Faith is trusting the One who knows.

The angel then declares that there will be no more delay. God’s plan is moving forward. The mystery of God is being fulfilled. That is not a threat. It is a promise. It means that evil does not get the final word. It means injustice does not last forever. It means suffering is not the end of the story. It means that everything God has spoken will come to pass.

Revelation 10 sits between judgment and redemption like a bridge. It tells us that God is not absent in the chaos. He is speaking in it. And He is choosing people to carry His voice through it.

That is why this chapter matters so deeply in our modern world. We are surrounded by noise. Fear. Political shouting. Social media outrage. Endless opinions. Endless crises. Endless distractions. And in the middle of all of it, God is still handing out scrolls. Not literal ones, but living words. Truth. Calling. Purpose. A sense that your life is meant to carry something bigger than survival.

Some people feel that call as a burden. Some feel it as a fire. Some feel it as a whisper they cannot shake. But however it comes, it comes with sweetness and bitterness. The sweetness of knowing God is using you. The bitterness of realizing how much pain there is to confront.

If you have ever felt overwhelmed by what you see in the world, that may not be weakness. That may be the bitterness of the scroll. If you have ever felt a deep joy when you pray, worship, or read Scripture, that may not be imagination. That may be the sweetness of the scroll. Those two experiences together are not a problem. They are the mark of someone who is carrying something sacred.

Revelation 10 tells us that God is not finished speaking. It tells us that He is still sending His voice into the world through people who are willing to receive it, internalize it, and share it. Not everyone will listen. Not everyone will understand. But that is not the measure of faithfulness. Obedience is.

John is not told how successful he will be. He is told what he must do. Speak. Carry. Prophesy. Deliver what was given.

That is the quiet, radical power of Revelation 10. It reminds us that heaven’s strategy has always been human hearts. God does not drop His word from the sky and walk away. He places it into people and invites them into His work.

This chapter also quietly dismantles the idea that faith is supposed to make life easier. The scroll does not remove suffering. It gives meaning to it. The message does not eliminate struggle. It explains why it matters. John will continue to witness chaos, persecution, and difficulty. But now he will do it as someone who knows the story is bigger than the moment.

That is what it means to live with Revelation 10 in your bones. You do not pretend the world is fine. You know it is broken. But you also know God is not done.

And that knowledge changes how you walk, how you speak, how you endure.

The angel standing on land and sea is a picture of God’s authority over every place your life can go. There is no part of your story outside His reach. There is no territory where His word does not apply. There is no situation that is too far gone for His truth to enter.

And the scroll in his hand is small because God’s truth does not need to be massive to be powerful. It just needs to be real.

That is what Revelation 10 ultimately teaches us. Heaven is not distant. It is near enough to hand you something. God is not silent. He is speaking. And He is still choosing people to carry what He says into a world that desperately needs to hear it.

Once the scroll has been eaten, John is no longer just an observer of God’s revelation. He becomes a carrier of it. That distinction matters more than most people realize. There is a difference between knowing Scripture and embodying it. There is a difference between reading God’s word and becoming someone who lives shaped by it. Revelation 10 quietly moves John across that line. He is no longer simply recording heaven’s messages. He is now participating in them.

This is one of the most uncomfortable truths in the entire Bible. God does not only reveal Himself so we can be informed. He reveals Himself so we can be transformed. The scroll does not sit on John’s shelf. It enters his body. It becomes part of him. That is what makes it sweet and bitter at the same time. Truth that stays outside of you can remain theoretical. Truth that enters you will change how you love, how you grieve, how you forgive, and how you see people.

Many believers struggle not because they lack information, but because they are avoiding internalization. They read Scripture the way someone reads headlines. They skim. They nod. They move on. But Revelation 10 is not about skimming. It is about consuming. It is about letting God’s voice disturb you, comfort you, convict you, and reshape you from the inside out.

That is why the angel’s command is so intimate. Take it. Eat it. Let it become part of you. God does not want distant admirers. He wants living vessels.

And once John has done this, he is told something simple and terrifying. He must speak again. To peoples. To nations. To tongues. To kings. In other words, the message that has entered him must now leave him. It must move outward. It must travel. It must confront power. It must cross cultures. It must endure resistance.

This is where Revelation 10 stops being mystical and starts being practical. Because this is the calling of every believer. Not to become famous. Not to become loud. But to become faithful carriers of what God has placed inside them.

Some people carry hope. Some carry healing. Some carry wisdom. Some carry warnings. Some carry encouragement. But everyone who eats the scroll carries something that the world cannot generate on its own.

The bitterness John feels is not a flaw. It is the cost of caring. When you know God’s heart, you cannot look at suffering the same way. You cannot look at injustice the same way. You cannot look at lost people the same way. You cannot look at broken systems the same way. Love always hurts when it sees what is wrong.

That is why Revelation 10 is such a gift to anyone who feels emotionally heavy in this world. Your sorrow may not be depression. It may be compassion. Your grief may not be weakness. It may be awareness. Your frustration may not be failure. It may be the clash between heaven’s truth and earth’s reality.

But the sweetness is there too. The sweetness of knowing you are not alone. The sweetness of knowing God sees everything. The sweetness of knowing your life has meaning beyond survival. The sweetness of knowing that one day every wrong will be made right.

Revelation 10 holds both without apology. It refuses shallow optimism and refuses hopeless despair. It gives us something deeper. It gives us a calling.

The angel’s feet on land and sea also remind us that God’s message belongs everywhere. Faith is not confined to church buildings. It belongs in workplaces. It belongs in homes. It belongs in hospitals. It belongs in courtrooms. It belongs in schools. It belongs wherever humans are trying to survive in a broken world.

John is not told to only speak to the faithful. He is told to speak to nations and kings. God’s truth is not fragile. It does not need protection. It needs proclamation.

And yet, God also shows restraint. The sealed thunders remind us that not everything is ours to know or share. Wisdom is not blurting everything out. Wisdom is speaking what God has given you and trusting Him with what He has not.

That balance is what makes Revelation 10 so spiritually mature. It teaches us to be bold without being reckless. To be confident without being arrogant. To be faithful without pretending we know everything.

In a world obsessed with certainty, God calls us to trust.

In a world obsessed with noise, God calls us to carry something real.

In a world obsessed with power, God hands us a scroll.

This chapter quietly reveals God’s strategy. He is not just changing history through cosmic signs. He is changing hearts through people who are willing to receive and release His truth.

And that is why Revelation 10 still matters today. Not because it predicts dates. Not because it feeds fear. But because it calls us to be carriers of heaven in the middle of earth.

You do not need to be perfect to hold the scroll. John was not. You do not need to be fearless. John was not. You do not need to understand everything. John certainly did not. You only need to be willing to take what God gives you and let it become part of you.

That is where faith stops being an idea and starts being a life.

And somewhere in the middle of all the chaos of this world, God is still standing with one foot on land and one on sea, still holding out a scroll, still inviting people to carry His voice forward.

Not because He has run out of power.

But because He has chosen to work through hearts.

That is the quiet, world-changing message of Revelation 10.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee

• 🚇 My partner and I drove to Montreal on New Year’s to spend some time with our friends there. It’s always nice to get on the metro, check out some stations, and walk around downtown Montreal. It was very cold (-20°C), so being able to walk through Montreal’s underground city was very welcome!
• 🐧 My #linux Journey is going well. It was actually easier than I thought to make the switch to Ubuntu. A consequence of this change is also moving away from Microsoft and Google services for my personal digital life. So far, pCloud and Fastmail have been working well for my needs. I’m testing Fastmail’s calendar, which seems good enough, and I like that I can sync it with GNOME Calendar.
• 🗓️ I started using a mini Happy Planner which I find is the perfect size for me. It’s much more portable, so it’s easier to have it with me. I don’t use it to track hourly appointments; instead, I use it for weekly/monthly planning and logging cool things.
• ⛸️ I'm back on my ice skating classes! I was so happy that in the first class this weekend, I was able to remember how to do cross-overs in both directions. I mean, I wasn’t as afraid anymore to actually lift my feet and cross over! I used to have a terrible mental block with this movement. So, I think the muscle memory is there, I just need to work more on it now (I can’t do them in sequence yet; I only do one at a time, slowly). It also looks like there will be lots of backward skating practice this time around.
• 🌊 I took some time to do my Yearly Review and set some intentions for 2026. The overall theme for me will be continuing the good things that I established last year. I chose the word FLOW for 2026: trusting my routines & tools, creating less friction, focusing on what brings me joy, and being open, relaxed, and grounded.
• 🏠 We completed another maintenance project in our house: upgrading our attic insulation to R-60. We hired a contractor to do blown-in cellulose insulation, adding to the existing Rockwool batt insulation we installed there when we moved in. One more house task checked off the list.
• 🎿 I was supposed to start classic ski lessons this past weekend, but because of the weather (it warmed up to +7C and rained) the trails were closed. The entire three-day weekend class was cancelled, and the only option offered was to enroll in evening classes instead. So, starting tomorrow, I'll have ski classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the end of the month! I'm very excited because I've never done this before and I want to build a solid foundation before hitting the trails on my own. It's gonna be tough, since the classes start at 8pm, and will disrupt my bedtime a bit, but it's only for two weeks, so I think I’ll survive.
• 📖 I started reading Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey (Book 7 of The Expanse series). I'm loving it! I forgot how much I LOVE this series! I keep finding excuses to stop what I'm doing just to read. And it's even more fun because we are doing an online book club. Thanks, Joel, for inviting me!
• 🎮 I want to get back to playing video games this year. I barely played anything after last summer. So I made a list of games I want to continue or start in 2026: Stardew Valley, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Citizen Sleeper, Trine 4 and Temple of Elemental Evil (the Steam updated edition!)

📌 Cool online reads:

• Gaming Recap 2025 by Joel: Wow, this is an impressive log! It has stats, finished/started/completed/in progress games divided by platform and even purchase costs.
• The Case for Blogging in the Ruins by Joan Westenberg: Great discussion on the importance of reclaiming our own spaces by writing blogs. I loved that it starts with Diderot’s Encyclopédie.
• Thinking about email workflows | Brain Baking : I like this approach to processing email inboxes.
• Why You Need A Stack of Thinkpads by R.L. Dane: Hey, I got one already! (but not the old ones...) But mine will be old someday!
• Winnie Lim » may 2026 be a boring year: Yeah, boring is underrated.
• Spreading misinformation on the internet – 82MHz: It's scary how we can't trust online information anymore. I agree we should all make an effort to publish accurate information out there, whenever possible.
• I'm a wanted criminal in Italy. Well, maybe. Probably not – 82MHz: A fun read!

📺 Cool Videos:

• The War on Privacy | Nebula by Jared Henderson: Interesting discussion about the right to privacy, with insights from philosophy and history.
• You're Wrong About Birth Rates & Aging Populations by Philosophy Tube: A well-researched video that explores population growth beyond the usual “infinite growth or economic collapse” framing. A refreshing broader perspective.
• Having Kids Vs Child Free: What's the Right Choice? by Philosophy Tube: This is a continuation of the previous video, presenting different points of view and arguments around the choice of having children. As a child-free woman in this day and age, I really appreciated the honest exploration of the topic.
• Pourquoi l’internet est brisé, et comment le réparer? Avec Cory Doctorow | Décrypteurs: Cory Doctorow’s interview on Radio-Canada discussing Enshitification! (the interview is in English, the intro is in French)

—-

#weeknotes

Revelation 9 is one of those chapters people either sensationalize or avoid. It is full of imagery that sounds like something from a nightmare—smoke pouring from a bottomless pit, creatures like locusts with human faces and scorpion tails, a king over them named Abaddon, and a torment that lasts five months. Many have turned it into horror fiction, conspiracy theory, or end-times spectacle. But Revelation was never written to entertain fear. It was written to awaken truth. And Revelation 9, more than almost any other chapter, exposes something modern culture desperately needs to face: the real nature of evil, the real cost of rejecting God, and the hidden prison people willingly walk into when they try to live without Him.

This chapter does not describe a future movie scene. It describes what happens when spiritual restraint is removed. It describes what happens when human beings, after rejecting light for long enough, are finally allowed to live fully in the darkness they chose. The abyss is not just a pit under the earth. It is the consequence of a heart that refuses God. Revelation 9 is the moment when God stops forcing people to be protected from the lies they insisted on believing.

John begins by seeing a star fallen from heaven. That star is given the key to the bottomless pit. Notice what is happening. This is not Satan breaking into something he does not own. He is given permission. That is important. The abyss exists already. It is not created in this moment. It is unlocked. God allows what has been restrained to come forward. Evil does not gain new power. It simply loses the leash.

When the pit opens, smoke rises so thick that it darkens the sun and the sky. That detail is not random. In Scripture, light is truth, clarity, revelation, and presence. Darkness is deception, confusion, and spiritual blindness. What is coming out of the abyss does not just hurt people—it blinds them. It clouds the mind. It makes it harder to see reality, harder to hear God, harder to distinguish what is real from what is false. This is the psychological side of spiritual warfare that Revelation 9 captures so accurately. Before the torment comes the fog.

Out of that smoke come locusts. But these are not insects. They are described as having faces like humans, hair like women, teeth like lions, iron breastplates, wings that sound like chariots, and tails like scorpions. They are a grotesque mixture of things that should not belong together. And that is the point. Evil is not simply ugly. It is distorted. It is something that looks almost human but isn’t. It imitates life without having life. It mimics identity without having substance.

These creatures are given power to torment people for five months. But there is a crucial line most people miss. They are not allowed to harm the grass, the trees, or the earth. They are only allowed to torment those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. That tells us something profound. This is not random destruction. It is targeted. It is spiritual. It is inward.

The torment is described as being like the sting of a scorpion. Anyone who has experienced severe nerve pain knows how brutal this is. It is not immediate death. It is agony that makes you want death. Revelation says people will seek death and not find it. That is one of the most heartbreaking verses in the Bible. It describes despair so deep that people want to stop existing—but they can’t.

This is not God being cruel. This is God allowing people to fully experience the spiritual environment they chose. The torment is not inflicted on believers. It is inflicted on those who refused God’s seal. In other words, those who refused His protection, His truth, His presence. They wanted autonomy. They wanted to be their own god. They wanted to decide right and wrong for themselves. Revelation 9 shows what that really looks like when all illusions are stripped away.

We need to talk about what the abyss represents. The abyss is not just hell. It is not the lake of fire. It is the realm of chaos, deception, and spiritual captivity. Throughout Scripture, the abyss is associated with demonic imprisonment. In Luke 8, when Jesus confronts the man possessed by a legion of demons, they beg Him not to send them into the abyss. Why? Because the abyss is where lies collapse. It is where demons lose their ability to masquerade as something else. It is the place of naked spiritual reality.

Revelation 9 is the moment when that hidden spiritual prison opens and spills into human experience. People who lived their lives believing they were free suddenly discover what has really been influencing them. The torment is not random pain. It is the realization of bondage. It is the agony of seeing truth after a lifetime of self-deception.

This is why the locusts are told not to kill. Death would be mercy compared to what is happening here. The pain is revelation. It is exposure. It is the soul realizing what it has aligned with.

The king over these creatures is named Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek. Both mean “Destroyer.” This is not Satan in his prideful rebellion. This is Satan in his true nature. The destroyer does not build. He does not create. He does not even rule well. He destroys identity, hope, connection, meaning, and truth. Revelation 9 shows his kingdom for what it really is.

What makes this chapter so unsettling is how closely it mirrors the world we are already living in.

Look around. We see unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, addiction, isolation, identity confusion, and despair. People have more comfort, more technology, more entertainment, and more knowledge than ever before—and yet suicide, self-harm, and emotional collapse are everywhere. People are not dying physically as much as they are dying internally. That is Revelation 9 energy.

The smoke that darkens the sun is the flood of noise, misinformation, ideology, and distraction that clouds the ability to think clearly. The locusts are not literal bugs. They are the forces that torment the mind: shame, fear, comparison, addiction, lust, bitterness, rage, and hopelessness. They sting but they do not kill. They make life unbearable without ending it.

People are seeking escape everywhere—substances, relationships, money, fame, fantasy, spirituality without God—but nothing actually frees them. They want the pain to stop. They just don’t want God. That is exactly what Revelation 9 describes.

The seal of God is not a tattoo. It is belonging. It is identity rooted in Christ. It is knowing who you are, who you belong to, and where your life is anchored. When the smoke rises, those with God’s seal still see light. When the torment comes, they are protected. Not because they are perfect, but because they are connected.

There is another detail we cannot ignore. The locusts are given authority. Evil does not run wild on its own. God is still sovereign. Even in judgment, there are boundaries. The torment lasts five months. It is not forever. It is not random. It is measured. Even when God allows the consequences of rebellion to unfold, He still limits their reach.

This tells us something deeply important about God’s heart. Revelation is not God losing control. It is God allowing truth to finally be seen.

After the first woe, John says two more are coming. But before we get there, we need to understand why Revelation 9 matters so much for us right now.

This chapter is not just about the end of the world. It is about the end of illusions. It is about what happens when humanity finally sees what life without God really is. The torment is not just pain—it is clarity. It is the removal of spiritual anesthesia.

People often ask why God allows suffering. Revelation 9 shows us the deeper question: what happens when God stops intervening?

When God restrains evil, even unbelievers benefit. They experience love, beauty, joy, creativity, and connection because God is still holding the world together. But when that restraint is lifted, when the abyss opens, what comes out is not neutral. It is torment.

That is why this chapter is not meant to terrify believers. It is meant to wake up those who think they can live without God and still be whole.

The most haunting verse in this chapter is not about monsters. It is about people begging for death and not finding it. That is what hopelessness looks like when it is fully exposed.

And yet, even here, God’s mercy is still present. The torment is not annihilation. It is an invitation to repentance. Pain has a purpose. It is meant to drive people back to God.

But Revelation tells us something tragic. Even after this torment, many still refuse to repent. They cling to their idols, their violence, their lies, and their self-made gods. That is not because God is cruel. It is because pride is powerful.

Revelation 9 is not about bugs from hell. It is about what happens when the human heart refuses light for so long that darkness becomes its home.

In the next part, we will go deeper into the sixth trumpet, the four angels at the Euphrates, the massive army, and what it all means for the spiritual condition of the world—and for your own heart right now.

Because Revelation 9 is not about someday.

It is about what is already happening, and what God is still offering before it is too late.

Revelation 9 does not stop with the first wave of torment. The chapter moves into something even more sobering, because after the five months of spiritual agony have passed, after people have been forced to feel what separation from God truly produces, the world is not healed. It is hardened. That is where the sixth trumpet comes in, and it reveals something even more unsettling than the locusts: when people refuse repentance long enough, the problem is no longer external evil. The problem becomes what the heart has learned to love.

John hears a voice from the golden altar before God telling the sixth angel to release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates. That detail is loaded with meaning. The Euphrates was the boundary of ancient Israel’s enemies. It was the edge of the known world, the line between safety and threat. In Genesis, it is one of the rivers flowing from Eden. In later Scripture, it becomes the highway of invading empires. Spiritually, it represents the place where blessing and danger intersect. Releasing angels there is symbolic of something crossing a boundary that was once held in place.

These four angels are not benevolent. They are not protectors. They are restrained forces of judgment that have been waiting for a specific hour, day, month, and year. That phrase is not poetic. It is precise. It means God’s sovereignty is exact even when judgment unfolds. Nothing is late. Nothing is early. Everything happens when the moment is right.

When these angels are released, they lead an army of two hundred million. John describes their horses as breathing fire, smoke, and sulfur. Their riders have breastplates the color of fire and brimstone. Their tails are like serpents. This is not a literal modern army. It is the embodiment of violent, destructive power unleashed without restraint.

A third of mankind is killed. That is not symbolic of a few people. It is massive loss of life. And yet, even after this devastation, the final verses of Revelation 9 tell us something that should shake every reader. The survivors do not repent. They do not turn to God. They continue worshiping demons, idols of gold and silver, and they refuse to give up their murders, sorceries, sexual immorality, and thefts.

That line is devastating. It means that even when truth is undeniable, even when suffering is overwhelming, even when death is all around, some hearts would still rather cling to darkness than surrender to light.

This is the ultimate message of Revelation 9. It is not about monsters or war. It is about the human will.

God is not forcing people into hell. He is honoring what they chose. When someone spends their entire life rejecting God, rejecting truth, rejecting love, rejecting humility, rejecting repentance, Revelation shows us what happens when those choices finally become reality.

Hell is not God torturing people. Hell is God allowing people to have a world without Him.

The locusts reveal what life without God feels like inside. The armies reveal what life without God looks like outside. One destroys the soul. The other destroys society.

We are already watching both happen.

Look at how quickly anger turns into violence. Look at how easily lies become law. Look at how entertainment has replaced meaning. Look at how sexuality has been reduced to consumption. Look at how people dehumanize one another online. Look at how despair is normalized. Look at how children are confused about their identity. Look at how truth is treated as hate and lies are treated as virtue.

This is not political. This is spiritual. It is Revelation 9 unfolding in slow motion.

The smoke is everywhere. The torment is everywhere. The confusion is everywhere. But so is God’s mercy.

Because Revelation is not just a warning. It is an invitation.

The seal of God still protects. The name of Jesus still saves. Grace is still available. Repentance is still possible. No one has to go through the abyss.

Revelation 9 is terrifying if you want to live without God. But it is comforting if you belong to Him. It tells you that no matter how dark the world becomes, you are not abandoned. The locusts cannot touch you. The destroyer does not own you. The abyss is not your home.

Your identity is sealed.

The most important truth in this chapter is not that evil is powerful. It is that evil is limited. It has a king, but it is not the King. It has authority, but it is borrowed. It has time, but it is measured.

God is still on the throne.

Revelation 9 is God pulling back the curtain and saying, “This is what your choices lead to. Choose wisely.”

If you feel overwhelmed by the world right now, if you feel the smoke in your mind, if you feel stung by anxiety, shame, or despair, this chapter is not condemning you. It is calling you. It is saying there is still a way out of the pit before it ever opens.

Jesus is that way.

The abyss does not have to define you.

The destroyer does not have to rule you.

The torment does not have to claim you.

You can be sealed.

You can be free.

You can belong.

And that is why Revelation 9, as terrifying as it sounds, is actually a chapter of mercy.

Because it shows us what we are being saved from.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee

I really wanted to write about pineapple and pineapples.

For my thirtieth birthday, we took a cruise ship. I was wearing my yellow polo shirt and drank Piña Colada — my favourite drink — through a straw.

With me were some of my favourite people,

my family.

Some of them,

they hurt me.

I am not yet able to tell the tale plainly.

I don’t understand enough.

It’s not the type of thing that has a clear timeline. Rather, it’s exactly like they were the pineapple in my fruit salad and I was (in this analogy) allergic.

It might have developed suddenly or over time, as these things do. At some point, I kept eating — the same way I always had. It left me with (metaphorical) blisters on my tongue, without me knowing why they were there.

Some time during the following years, I concluded that my tongue was supposed to be swollen. Like that was just the way of things.

Until I stopped thinking there was anything wrong with it to begin with. Even as it kept growing, were someone to ask what was up with my tongue, I wouldn’t have even understood the question.

Finally, the pineapple was too much — the allergy so intense that it almost suffocated me. I stood there in front of the mirror, having reached some final threshold, and realised:

• It’s not supposed to hurt like this to speak.

• Breathing shouldn’t be this hard.

• Most people don’t have tongues this swollen, with blisters all over them.

When it dawned on me that it was all from the pineapple — which I love so much — something broke inside of me.

It hurts.

Even though I know there are other fruits you could put in there instead, like oranges — small representations of the sun — it’s never going to be the same.

And physalis.

I am not sure whether I will ever be able to eat pineapple again. Realistically, I could probably eat it once a year. But is it worth it?

(It’s not)

It has indeed been awhile since I posted on here. Entries on here will be a little more sporadic over the next few months as this is my busy time of year for my actual job. I know I'm a little late to the party here but I want to wish everyone a happy new year!

Sportsbooks, media rights, and leagues themselves have created a triangle of sorts over the past few years. We have sportsbooks who have their names on networks, we have leagues who have deals with sportsbooks, and of course we have the media rights deals leagues have with the networks and apps. While this makes a whole bunch of money for the stakeholders of all those parties (some of which have massive conflicts of interests), it's the fans who lose out. First though, I want to discuss what is going on with Main Street Sports, the operator of the FanDuel RSNs.

Main Street Sports, the company that operates what are now known as FanDuel Sports Networks, is in dire straits and if they do not get bought out soon, they will go bankrupt. The Major League Baseball Teams who had media rights deals with FanDuel RSNs opted out of their broadcast deals to paint a picture of how bad the situation is. This does not affect the nationwide FanDuel TV, which used to be TVG, that is a whole separate entity which I will get into in a bit. First, RSNs (Regional Sports Networks) are mostly dying out as the media landscape is changing. Companies like Main Street Sports and others who solely operate RSNs are feeling the pinch of lower advertising revenue along with higher costs for the broadcast rights of the teams that they air. This dynamic is why RSNs would not be a viable way for the proposed Brand New Shield to distribute its media rights. Second, the FanDuel Branding I believe hurt the RSNs just like the Bally's Branding before it because of the fact those brands were built on gambling. It was different when they were Prime Sports Networks or Fox Sports Networks or NBC Sports Networks (a few of the NBC Sports Networks are still around). The naming rights deals with the Sportsbooks to me were one of the gravest mistakes the RSNs made which is why a company like Main Street Sports is in such a bad predicament. Many people do not associate premier sports television coverage with sports betting, and quite frankly they never will.

Now there is also the national FanDuel TV which used to be TVG (which was primarily a horse racing channel). FanDuel TV has turned into more of a sports talk/sports betting channel with personalities like Kay Adams and such leading the way on their programming. They also have a deal with the Indoor Football League to air games including the championship game. While this could be great for the IFL, it comes at a costs in terms of league image and integrity. As I've mentioned before, I don't believe FanDuel TV would offer such a deal unless they could get betting revenue from it. The IFL just doesn't have the footprint for FanDuel to offer such a deal without such a benefit for FanDuel involved. While the IFL will undoubtedly get more exposure and the opportunity to grow the fan base, they will also face similar questions like the NFL does in terms of its relationship with FanDuel. Is there a script? Are games rigged? Establishing such a relationship creates these questions regardless if there's any foul play involved or not.

I'd still like to think that integrity still matters at an organizational level in Sport Management. That is why I ask these questions and post about these types of relationships on here so that if/when the opportunity to do better comes along, we do better when that opportunity arises. The gambling and media rights landscapes for sports are ever-changing and maybe, just maybe, there's a chance to change them for the better.

There is a moment in Revelation 8 that is so strange, so emotionally unsettling, and so spiritually heavy that most people read past it without really letting it hit them, and yet it may be one of the most important verses in the entire book of Revelation for anyone who has ever felt forgotten, delayed, or unheard by God. John writes that when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Not thunder. Not angels singing. Not the sound of worship. Not the roar of judgment. Silence. Heaven, the place that never stops praising, the place that never sleeps, the place that never stops moving, suddenly goes quiet. That silence is not emptiness. That silence is attention. It is the sound of all of heaven leaning forward. It is the sound of eternity pausing because something on earth has finally reached God in a way that demands response.

This chapter is not primarily about disasters falling from the sky. It is not mainly about trumpets and fire and hail and blood. It is about what happens when prayers that were whispered in pain, cried in secret, and spoken in despair finally reach the throne of God in full. Revelation 8 is where the suffering of the saints stops being ignored and starts being answered. The judgments that follow do not come from anger alone. They come from justice awakened by intercession.

John is allowed to see what no one on earth gets to see. He sees seven angels standing before God, and they are given seven trumpets. Trumpets in Scripture are not background music. Trumpets announce something that cannot be ignored. They declare that what was hidden is now revealed. They are used for coronations, for war, for divine announcements, for the arrival of God’s authority into human history. But before any trumpet sounds, something else happens. Another angel appears. This angel is not blowing a trumpet. This angel is carrying a golden censer, and he is standing at the altar. He is given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne.

That one sentence changes everything. The incense is not symbolic decoration. In Scripture, incense represents prayer rising before God. What John sees is not just angels and altars. He sees every prayer that was ever prayed in faith and pain now being gathered, mixed, and presented before the throne of the living God. That means the prayers of the persecuted church, the prayers of parents who buried children, the prayers of believers who were imprisoned, the prayers of those who died alone in faith, the prayers of people who were mocked, beaten, silenced, and ignored for following Jesus, all of it is now in one place. Heaven is not silent because nothing is happening. Heaven is silent because everything is happening.

This is where Revelation 8 becomes intensely personal. Because it means that none of your prayers were wasted. None of your tears were lost. None of your cries vanished into the air. None of your whispered pleas were ignored. The silence in heaven is not God hesitating. It is God listening. It is the pause before divine response. It is the intake of breath before the storm of justice is released.

Then John sees something terrifying and beautiful at the same time. The angel takes the censer, fills it with fire from the altar, and throws it to the earth. That fire had been burning in the presence of God. That fire had been touching the prayers of the saints. When it hits the earth, there are peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. What that means is that prayer does not stay in heaven. Prayer comes back to earth as power. Prayer returns as consequence. Prayer returns as God’s will breaking into human systems that have been resisting Him.

Too many people think of prayer as passive. Revelation 8 shows it is explosive. The prayers of the saints are what release the judgments of God. The world is not shaken by politics. It is shaken by intercession. Empires do not fall because of armies. They fall because heaven has decided that enough is enough. And heaven makes that decision because of what God’s people have been crying out for.

When the first trumpet sounds, hail and fire mixed with blood are hurled down upon the earth, and a third of the earth is burned up. A third of the trees are burned up. All green grass is burned up. This is not random. In Scripture, trees and grass often represent human systems, prosperity, growth, and stability. What is being judged here is not just nature. It is the illusion of human self-sufficiency. God is striking at the things people trust more than Him. He is touching the economic systems, the agricultural systems, the environmental structures that make humanity think it can survive without God. A third is burned, not all. Judgment is still restrained. Mercy is still present. Even in wrath, God limits destruction because His desire is repentance, not annihilation.

The second trumpet brings something like a great mountain blazing with fire that is thrown into the sea. A third of the sea becomes blood. A third of the living creatures in the sea die. A third of the ships are destroyed. In the ancient world, the sea represented commerce, trade, travel, and global connection. God is now touching the flow of the world. The systems of profit, the systems of movement, the systems that connect nations and economies. Revelation is not anti-creation. It is anti-idolatry. When humanity builds a world that worships money, speed, power, and expansion, God will shake those foundations.

The third trumpet brings a star called Wormwood that falls on the rivers and springs of water, making them bitter so that many people die from the waters. In Scripture, water represents life, truth, and sustenance. Wormwood means bitterness. This is not just a physical poisoning. It is a spiritual one. It is what happens when truth is corrupted, when lies are normalized, when deception flows through the systems people depend on. A poisoned culture eventually poisons its people. Revelation is showing what happens when humanity drinks from sources that are no longer clean.

The fourth trumpet darkens a third of the sun, moon, and stars. Light is reduced. Night becomes longer. Day becomes dimmer. This is not just astronomical. It is spiritual. God is withdrawing clarity. When people reject truth long enough, darkness becomes the norm. Confusion becomes the atmosphere. Revelation 8 is showing a world that no longer knows where to look for light because it rejected the Light when He came.

But through all of this, the most shocking truth remains this: none of this started with anger. It started with prayer. The entire chain of events in Revelation 8 begins at an altar where incense and prayers rise before God. That means that what is happening in the world is connected to what God’s people have been saying to Him. Heaven is responding to the cries of the faithful.

This should change how you see your own life. Because if the prayers of persecuted believers can move heaven and shake earth, then your prayers are not small. When you pray for justice, for healing, for restoration, for God to act, you are participating in the same spiritual mechanism that moves Revelation forward. You are not ignored. You are being collected. Your prayers are being stored. They are being weighed. And one day, they will be answered in ways you cannot yet see.

Revelation 8 is not meant to make you afraid. It is meant to make you confident. It shows that God is not distant. He is not detached. He is not slow because He does not care. He is slow because He is listening to everything. And when He moves, He moves with the full authority of heaven behind Him.

This chapter is the proof that God has a memory. He remembers every injustice. He remembers every martyr. He remembers every act of faith. He remembers every tear. He remembers every prayer. And when the time is right, He answers in ways that reshape the world.

What you are seeing in Revelation 8 is not a cruel God. You are seeing a just God who has finally decided to respond to the cries of His people. The silence in heaven was not absence. It was focus. It was the moment before eternity spoke back to history.

And when heaven speaks, the earth listens.

The most sobering truth about Revelation 8 is not what falls from the sky, but what rises from the altar. Everything that shakes the world in this chapter is born in prayer. That alone should radically change how you understand both suffering and intercession. The persecuted church was not powerless. The oppressed believers were not forgotten. Their cries were not just emotional expressions of pain. They were legal appeals in the court of heaven, and Revelation 8 shows us the moment those appeals were answered.

When the eagle flies in mid-heaven and cries out, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth,” it is not because God enjoys destruction. It is because humanity has ignored mercy for so long that justice must now speak. Even here, God warns before the worst arrives. Revelation never shows God ambushing humanity. He always sends signals. He always gives time. He always calls people to turn back.

What makes this chapter so powerful is that it connects prayer to history. Too often believers think prayer is about changing how they feel. Revelation 8 shows prayer changes how the world moves. The saints did not stop Rome by swords. They stopped it by faith. They did not overcome persecution by violence. They overcame it by endurance and truth. And heaven recorded every moment of that faithfulness.

The incense was not just fragrance. It was testimony. It was proof that the church endured. It was proof that faith survived. It was proof that love did not die even when hatred ruled. When God threw that fire back to the earth, He was not throwing punishment alone. He was throwing validation. He was saying that every act of faith mattered.

This is why Revelation 8 should give you courage when you feel unseen. If heaven keeps records of prayer, then nothing in your life is wasted. The season where you felt like nothing was happening was actually the season where everything was being recorded. The silence you experienced was not abandonment. It was accumulation.

God is not slow. He is thorough. He waits until the full weight of prayer has been gathered before He acts, because when He acts, He acts with perfect justice. No innocent cry is ignored. No faithful tear is forgotten.

This chapter also exposes something about the modern world. We live in a culture that believes power comes from platforms, armies, money, and influence. Revelation 8 reveals the real engine behind history is intercession. The most dangerous people on earth are not the ones with weapons. They are the ones who pray. They are the ones who refuse to stop believing that God hears them.

That is why tyrants fear faith. That is why oppressive systems try to silence worship. Because prayer moves something they cannot control.

The trumpets are terrifying not because they are loud, but because they announce that God has stepped into history in response to the cries of His people. What follows in Revelation is not chaos. It is accountability. It is the collapse of a world that was built without God.

If you ever wondered whether your faith matters in a broken world, Revelation 8 answers you. Heaven is listening. Earth will respond. And nothing done in Christ is ever forgotten.

This chapter stands as one of the most profound promises in Scripture: God hears His people, and He will answer them in ways that shake the world.

Your prayers are not small. They are part of something eternal.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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Immediately after the death of Charlie Kirk, many on the political left celebrated and mocked his death as getting what he deserved, while many on the right called for retribution in the form of violence. There were not calls from either side to stand down. There was not even agreement that his assassination was a tragedy worthy of lament and mourning. People on both sides of the political spectrum were stoking the sparks of dissent into anger.

Immediately after the death of Renee Good, many on the political right celebrated and mocked her death as getting what she deserved, while many on the left called for retribution in the form of violence. There were not calls from either side to stand down. There was not even agreement on what just happened. People on both sides of the political spectrum were fanning the flames of anger into rage.

Clearly, this event is BY NO MEANS THE MORAL EQUIVALENT of Charlie Kirk's assassination. It is potentially far worse. It is potentially far less serious. If it turns out that Good was gunned down by an overzealous law enforcement agent of the state, it is far worse than Kirk's assassination by a private citizen. It if turns out that the use of deadly force against Good was justified by law enforcement, her death is still tragic, but it is nowhere near morally comparable to Kirk's.

Here's the thing...we do NOT know which one of the above evaluations is correct. That judgment does not come in an instant from social media, talking heads on cable news, or politicians. That judgment comes as the result of a deliberate, impartial investigation by individuals qualified to do it. So far, that has not happened.

Here's what we do know...both sides of the political spectrum have abdicated their moral authority by cheering either death and should be soundly rebuked. Both sides are wrong to celebrate the death of either of these individuals, regardless of motivation. Both sides are being irresponsible and are part of the ever-growing cancer of division that has metastasized through these United States. Though there are clearly times when violence is necessary and right, anyone celebrating and glorifying death (regardless of cause) is acting as a lackey of Satan, willingly or unwillingly, and is directly contributing to the destruction and collapse of our nation.

It is time to stand down. It is time to mourn the destruction of lives, the destruction of the ability to debate and disagree, the destruction of civility, and the inevitable destruction of our nation that will come as a result of the normalization and celebration of political violence. Stand down. Everyone.

Better yet, time to fall down on our knees and pray...that is the only way out.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

#culture #politics #theology