Jeremy Rothenberg

Releasing the root cause of suffering.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Carlos Whittaker did a 7.5-week no-screen experiment and the results are wild.

No phone. No TV. No laptop. No watch. Nothing. He even got his brain scanned before and after by a neuroscientist.

The outcome? His cerebellum healed years worth of damage in just seven weeks. His cognitive memory score jumped from the 50th percentile to the 99th percentile of adult men in America. He said he felt like a completely different human, sharper, clearer, more alive.

This one stopped me in my tracks. I’ve been feeling the scroll fatigue hard lately, and hearing someone actually measure the difference with real brain scans is next-level motivating.

Our constant screen exposure might be doing more quiet damage to our brains than we realize. Sometimes the simplest reset (doing less) creates the biggest upgrade.

Have you ever done a serious digital detox? Would you try one this extreme?

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@newstart_2024 Ego is absolutely necessary and good. The problem is that most of our egos are out of proportion to their role. The point is not to kill the ego, but put it back in its rightful place – an important part of our drive – but not the only part. Look deeper.

[Daisy @level_x_up]

Watch your thoughts

[Austin Ahlman for Congress @ahlmanforne]

I'm Austin Ahlman. Nebraska is my home. This is our fight. You are my people.

Let’s take Nebraska back.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@newstart_2024 I agree that human connection will become more valuable in a world run by AI. But that won't solve people being out of work. We will need a universal basic income derived from the profits of AI.

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Boris Becker dropped some powerful wisdom on the High Performance Podcast:

He discovered Stoicism in prison and it changed everything. The story that hit him hardest? Marcus Aurelius — the most powerful man in the Roman Empire, basically Trump and Putin combined — was miserable despite having it all. Meanwhile, his slave Epictetus was always smiling and at peace.

Aurelius asked him: “I have everything. You have nothing. How are you happier than me?”

That moment birthed a core Stoic truth: the only thing you truly control is your own thoughts. Not your wife, kids, job, reputation — just your mind. Master that, and you master your life.

Becker learned it the hard way behind bars: when you’re completely alone with your thoughts, you’d better make them beautiful… or they’ll destroy you.

In a world full of noise, comparisons, and things we can’t control, Stoicism reminds us where real power and peace actually live — inside.

I’ve found this idea quietly life-changing during tough seasons — the freedom that comes from focusing only on what’s truly yours to manage.

What about you — what’s one thing outside your control that you’ve had to let go of, and how did it change your peace of mind?

[Paul F. Austin @PaulAustin3w]

The largest psychedelic neuroscience study ever conducted has just been published.

It includes 560 brain scans across five compounds (psilocybin, LSD, DMT, mescaline, ayahuasca), pooled from 11 datasets.

What was the consistent finding across every compound? Psychedelics flatten the brain's hierarchy.

Essentially, networks that normally stay in their lanes - e.g. default mode, frontoparietal, visual, somatomotor - start coupling in ways they don't at baseline. The boundary between cognition and perception gets thinner.

Most of the media coverage I've seen so far doesn't address the part that actually matters.

The limbic system, the brain's emotional core, did NOT show a consistent signature across the five drugs.

The reliable, replicable effect was cognitive, not cathartic.

This is a surprising finding for many folks, since the dominant public story is that psychedelics are tools for healing trauma.

We now know that this may be a secondary, variable, and still mysterious effect.

The core mechanism is structural reorganization.

On psychedelics, your brain's normal compartmentalization drops, and the whole system starts communicating across lines it usually respects. That's why people come back from well-run psychedelic work with novel insights, creative leaps, and perceptual shifts that persist long after the substance clears.

Does this match what you've experienced? Or not so much?

[Etan Nechin @Etanetan23]

Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov, who last week called for an end to the war during a London concert, was arrested at a demonstration on the Gaza border against the war.

“Stop the genocide. It’s ruining everything. Stop it now.”

[Akunjee 🖋 @mohammedakunjee]

Ilan Volkov, the exact opposite of Ben Shapiro

[Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ @tribelaw]

You may be tempted to turn away. Don’t. Please listen to all 4 minutes

[Itamar Greenberg | איתמר גרינברג @itamar_green]

Right now in Tel Aviv: many teens are burning their draft orders.
We won’t take part in genocide. We won’t serve apartheid.
Resist. Refuse!
@Mesarvot_

[Tim Ferriss @tferriss]

What is the smallest meaningful change you can make? Make it small. Small is achievable.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@AngelFaceTV @QueenMab87 This is an example of where context is everything. The term isn't a construction of anti and Semitic in a pure linguistic way. It was constructed to describe a specific thing - anti-Jewish hatred in Europe in the late 19th century.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@AngelFaceTV @QueenMab87 @rehabtoad Per GPT: The term "antisemitism" originated in the late 19th century, coined by German journalist Wilhelm Marr in 1879, who used it to describe the anti-Jewish sentiments in European societies at that time.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@AmiDar There was so much hope back then. I left the rally about an hour before Rabin was killed. That day felt like a fulcrum that tipped the balance towards the rise of Bibi and the end of the peace process. Israel’s inner turmoil continues to this day.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@MaxBlumenthal This is the heart of the problem. Those who believe in religious prophesy cannot be reasoned with. There are crazy fundamentalists on both sides who cannot let go of this nonsense. Bibi, of course, is using this cynically to try to stay in power and out of jail.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@aziz0nomics It is not intellectually dishonest to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. What Hamas did was horrific and barbaric. But killing thousands of civilians in order to "dismantle" them - if that is even truly possible - is also barbaric.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

@jordanbpeterson um, no.

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

It's necessary to admit to unsolvable problems. Or, at least, not knowing the solution. It doesn't take much savvy to recognize that the current "solution" won't work.

[Dr. Mia Brett @QueenMab87]

Hamas isn’t an army. They can’t be defeated with a bombing campaign and a hope that they’ll surrender. The only way this war defeats Hamas is with genocidal actions towards Palestinians. I want Hamas out but this isn’t the way

[Jeremy Rothenberg @JRothenberg23]

We need to radicalize sanity.

[John Aziz @aziz0nomics]

In a sane world, I would be considered moderate.

I think both Israel and Palestine have valid claims and grievances, and should work towards peaceful coexistence.

In the world of rabid antisemites, I am considered a Mossad psyop bot, because I don't want Hamas to kill Jews.