There is a tendency, particularly in health discussions, to reduce everything to a simple question of what is good and what is bad. Parasites belong firmly in the latter category, at least according to the conventional story. But the deeper I get into the terrain model, microbial ecology, fasting, and the strange adaptability of living systems, the less satisfying that binary becomes. What if the organism we are calling the problem is sometimes part of a much larger process? And what happens when we start asking not simply what an organism is, but what it is doing, and why?
Author: Trance
Artist. Writer. Truth seeker.
It’s Plausible: Truth, Repetition, and the Manufacture of Belief
Disinformation in the Age of AI
Somewhere along the way, “truth-seeking” on the internet became its own strange ecosystem, complete with its own language, symbols, authorities, personalities, and recurring narratives. What begins as a reasonable question can quickly become something much harder to disentangle, particularly when genuine facts are mixed with speculation, technical language, and claims that seem to explain everything at once. This discussion started with one such story and ended somewhere considerably more interesting.
The Devil We Feed: Fear, Attention, and the Creation of Reality
The Observer Becomes Part of the Story
There comes a point in any investigation when the thing being investigated is no longer the only thing worth examining. We can follow the names, institutions, documents, networks, symbols, patterns, and apparent connections as far as they will take us, but sooner or later we have to turn the question back upon ourselves. What happens to the observer who spends enough time looking into the machinery of power, control, fear, and hidden influence? And what happens when the search for an explanation becomes part of the very environment we are trying to understand?
The Centralization of Food: Agriculture, Industry, and Institutional Power
Food, Freedom, and the Systems Around Us
There are certain questions that become more interesting the longer you sit with them, particularly when what first appears to be a question about food turns out to touch land, power, economics, science, institutions, technology, and the very structure of modern life. This discourse began with meat, but it gradually moved toward something considerably more fundamental: what happens when the systems we build to serve human needs begin to shape, constrain, and ultimately redefine those needs themselves?
The Accountability Gap: Institutions, Incentives, and Consequences
Theranos and the Machinery of Trust
There are certain conversations that begin with a single story and gradually reveal something much larger underneath it. Theranos is one of those stories. What initially appears to be a tale of technological deception opens into questions about institutions, incentives, accountability, evidence, and the ways ordinary people can be persuaded to trust things they have neither the knowledge nor the means to independently verify.