India’s traditional healing cornucopia comes with a side of heavy metal poisoning. Arsenic, lead, mercury... but also elephant dung? Ayurveda can harm your liver. My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social. www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Ah, yes, my world-famous expertise in how to till the land. My past research in microRNAs and muscular dystrophy has apparently been amazing for farmers. Thank you, Cureus/SpringerNature, for thinking of me.

Ayurveda Can Harm Your Liver www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/... via @jonathanjarry.bsky.social "Many Ayurvedic preparations have been found to contain alarming amounts of heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, which can cause or worsen liver disease"

I will be on @ctvnewsmontreal.bsky.social around 6:30PM tonight (in 15 minutes!) to talk about the low-histamine diet and whether or not histamine intolerance is real. www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

A man in Pennsylvania had been cleaning a shotgun and placed it on the bed. Officers were informed that “a dog had jumped up onto the bed, causing the shotgun to go off, which openly struck the male.”

Worth noting that Krauss is still a darling of the anti-woke movement and has been doing the rounds for his new book about how wokeness destroyed science. Antiwokeness is inseparable from this fuckery.

There's a new Star Trek movie in the works from the Dungeons & Dragons guys; an umpteenth Sharknado sequel; and a Labubu movie ("potentially a franchise," says Variety). I hope we're all proud of Hollywood's limitless imagination.

India’s traditional healing cornucopia comes with a side of heavy metal poisoning. Arsenic, lead, mercury... but also elephant dung? Ayurveda can harm your liver. My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social. www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Given the obsession with being lean, this is a refreshing look at what different body fat % actually look like; how it presents differently in men vs women; and why going too low is unhealthy. youtu.be/5K9QhkPww44?...

Vine is being rebooted under the name diVine, with funding from Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey. The app plans to feature more than 10,000 previously archived Vines and does not allow AI-generated content. (divine.video)

We get you, Carl. We get you.

Trump Denies Writing 36-Volume Comic Titled ‘Don And Jeff: Time Pedophiles https://theonion.com/trump-denies-writing-36-volume-comic-titled-don-and-jeff-time-pedophiles/

What a great day for finding out that a lot of things people thought were conspiracies are actually backed up by emails that are like hey pedo, let us pedo together in pedoland on the second day of the pedo month

What a lovely healthcare system you guys have south of the border. (And it’s coming for us, I know…) deadline.com/2025/11/jame...

I just accidentally typed "artistocratic" instead of "aristocratic," and I think I'm onto something.

Oregon had a hhhhwhale of a problem 55 years ago. Gotta love the reaction. "This is so funny--oh shit, it's raining down on us and it stinks! RUN!!!" www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CL...

Nathan Fielder outdoes himself.

Women: This dress has no pocket! There must be a better way! Apple: Are you familiar with the concept of "a piece of cloth"? And do you have money? www.apple.com/newsroom/202...

RFK Jr. Fires Piss Czar

Remember The Telepathy Tapes? #1 podcast on the charts for a while, more popular than Rogan? You could once pay a small price to view *some* of the experimental footage and poke holes in it. Flat fee. I did it. Here's the email I just received. Access revoked.

Paul Platt’s video essays are always worth a watch. This is about how actors need Instagram followers to get jobs, same with comedians. The world’s changed. Now what? youtu.be/8QnZ88Z8VO0?...

Oh joy…. Men continue to fail upwards. www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/li...

If only science communicators, doctors, and the people who have monitored the anti-vaxx movement for years could have convinced journalists and politicians of this.... They want zero vaccines. They're not hiding it.

The film we can all agree we need: a dog gets depressed when his humans break up, so they must bring him to Florida to lift his spirits. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv_(f...

#Episky, "Cohort X had about a 90% higher chance of incident heart failure over 5 years compared with matched non-users (4.6% vs. 2.7%, respectively)." Isn't that a 70.4% increase, not 90%? How do we get 90% from these numbers? Thank you!

From a book explaining Ayurveda, I learn that "space" and "air" are distinct elements, and that "vibrations in space transmit sound." Um... bad news, Ayurveda. The problem is that this prescientific fantasy is now poisoning people with heavy metals and alcohol. More on that on Friday!

UPDATE: Canada has announced that it has lost its measles elimination status. This is a direct result of the increase in anti-vax disinformation, which has caused large, sustained outbreaks in the country over the last year.

The heath benefits of multilingualism appear to be far beyond prior expectations erictopol.substack.com/p/multilingu...

Knowing more than one language associated with living longer in very large European study. BUT "we have no idea when a person learned a new language and how proficient or how frequent the language was spoken." Still, c'est encourageant! erictopol.substack.com/p/multilingu...

The old “art under capitalism” debate rears its head again as fans of Game of Thrones are served AI slop in the latest anniversary edition of a GoT book. Why paint when you can prompt? youtu.be/WBFdItxslcg?...

I spotted this on Mastodon and I find it horrible, not least for the speed with which this has happened.

🌶️ ➡️ 🍰 Has anyone had this experience? You bite into something that is *way spicier* than you can handle... and once you've recovered, your brain makes slightly sweet stuff taste *way sweeter* than normal? Like a temporary dysgeusia?

Another example "nocebo" effect (expectation of bad response) driving a diet trend? 👇 Who Is the Low-Histamine Diet Really For? www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/... by @jonathanjarry.bsky.social The justifications for diet "hits a wall when people get tested in a blinded fashion."

You had me at “geriatric island for penguins.” You lost me at “acupuncture.”

Horrified but not surprised to learn that the predatory pseudoscience known as the Lightning Process is alive and well in Canada, and being targeted at (the bank accounts of) people with Long Covid who are desperate to return to their old lives. simonspichak.beehiiv.com/p/cbc-flagsh...

James Watson, co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, has died. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/s...

Next week, I'll be tackling a shocking topic I learned more about at QED, and it involves ::checks paper he's reading now:: "excreta of baby elephant" and "semen of the Civet cat." Should be fun.

Have you been tempted to try a low-histamine diet? Do you suspect you may have histamine intolerance from the food you eat? I looked into this trend and was surprised/not surprised by what I found. My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social. www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Privileged to be a returning speaker at the MGH/Harvard Interdisciplinary Pain & Headache Rounds this December, talking about the evidence (lack thereof) for many alt. medical practices used by people in pain. Doctors need to be better informed. cpdlearn.massgeneralbrigham.org/course/mghha...

THIS 👇 If you want to *do* something with your skepticism, listen to the main segment on this episode of Skeptics with a K. @mrmmarsh.bsky.social does a brilliant job of highlighting how we can all get involved. www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/podcasts/ske...

That moment when @mikehall314.bsky.social, going rogue, ordered—ORDERED!—the foot-tapping anthem “Duggadoo” from Doctor Who to be played full blast before #QEDcon began. I will never forget his bravery.

A quick snapshot of the official end of #QEDcon: Nicola, Andy, Marsh & Mike walking off stage after a standing ovation. There is unlikely to be another skeptical conference like QED but I can only hope the organizers inspired the next generation to be as considerate and passionate as they were.

You could rack up a massive debt by going to a genuine U.S. university, or you could go to a fake conservative university, UATX, for *free* thanks to a $100 million donation by Jeff Yass, a billionaire TikTok investor who has funded libertarians and Republicans! uatx.substack.com/p/uatx-is-en...

"Sarepta’s drugs have had multiple chances to show that they can improve the lives of Duchenne’s sufferers, and as far as I can see they have failed to do so every single time."

We must get our good news wherever we can. LOOKA-DE-SHOOOOS!

"He got to spend seven years deciding who the bad guys were and how to kill them. He got to scrawl the simplest possible moral calculus across the world in blood. He lived the dream." defector.com/dick-cheney-...

Great to see season 3 of Ultimate Self-Defense Championship test combatants' ability to sniff out a scam. Self-defense is not just about throwing punches; the show's been great at revealing its true scope in the real world. This ep is a riot! 👍 www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx6j...

Former Vice President Dick Cheney dead at 84

#QEDcon was really special this year. Here are a few shots I took during the event, including the awarding of a special book of memories to the organizers.