Mike Gullion

Passionately political, scrupulously scientific, philosophically perplexed. In perpetual search of “aesthetic arrest.”

Writing. Music. Film. Photography.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

The last few years have been tough. I’ve lost four mentors and a best friend. All were emotional pillars. Though life’s finitude isn’t lost on me, the fiction of permanence is a necessary dampener to quiet the horror of losing someone we love. Whether grappling with a question or needing to vent, I always thought they’d be there. But then reality hits: Immortality is a fantasy. Security, an illusion. And beyond life’s two guarantees—we’re going to die and we don’t know when—certainty is a lie.

This morning, I learned that Jay A. Holstein passed. I’m not just saddened but devastated. This one—number five—stings.

As a young neuroscientist studying at the University of Iowa, I was a rabid atheist going from lecture hall to lecture hall, bar to bar, seeking one sound argument—just one—for the existence of God, even organizing standing-room-only faculty debates on science versus religion. I sought out every professor who’d engage me, building a roster of mentors. And even though I’m still a fervent secular humanist, out of all my teachers, a religion professor was my favorite.

Professor Holstein introduced me to Ecclesiastes. He taught it not through fear and indoctrination—Heresy! Apostasy! Blasphemy!—but as wisdom literature, an ancient struggle with the ultimate questions of life, meaning, and the human condition. We also did deep dives into 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982), exploring through film—my favorite medium—what it means to be human in the age of advanced technology. He even gave critical feedback on music, once taking the time to listen carefully, and later emphatically rejecting Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”—forever ruining it for me. Like his maternal grandfather, Jay was hell on wheels—alive—and you’d better have your arguments in order before going toe-to-toe with him.

Jay’s uniform was always a plain black T-shirt. Like a judge’s robe, it was a symbol of his integrity. He couldn’t be bought. His soul was not for sale. He approached the Bible not as spectacle—a cheap performance to impress others—but seriousness. In the most unique of ways, he taught me about transient pleasures and the vanity of luxury and materialism—or “precious ointments,” in the language of the Bible. “All is vanity,” opens Ecclesiastes, “a chasing after the wind.” I’ve been immune to Italian fashion houses ever since.

We all seek purpose. We all desire a life of meaning. We all long for narrative completeness, haunted by a B-rated end to our story: slipping in drunken piss, choking on a wafer during prison chapel, doubling over in fluorescent-lit agony from ExxonMobil’s signature dish: Ranchero Beef & Cheese Tornados®. (Nothing says death by bowel obstruction like gas station gastronomy.) Professor Holstein was no B-movie. His name—Jay Allen Holstein—was top billing. He had conviction and direction. His life was one of purpose and meaning; it was complete.

Goodbye, Jay. You taught me more about film than any film class. More about music than any music class. More about philosophy than any philosophy class. And you taught me more about life and death than anyone ever could. I’ll never forget you, Professor. And your students will always remember your name.

“A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” —Ecclesiastes 7:1

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

@CBSNews Hmm, I wonder if it had anything to do with pouring 12% hydrogen peroxide, a known paint stripper, into the reflecting pool.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

@evan_mcgl Not only is LeDoux a leading neuroscientist, but also the lead singer in The Amygdaloids.

Recognize.

https://t.co/4hDhH4rrYb

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Panem et circenses.

[John Jackson @hissgoescobra]

I I’ll never forgive people who voted for Trump. This is on them. The Lincoln Memorial is hallowed ground. Where our greatest president, who gave his life to end slavery, is commentated. Where the Gettysburg Address is written. We live as graffiti now.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Almost makes me forget Trump’s war crimes.

[Adam Stern @A_S12]

.@NitroCircus' Travis Pastrana and others did some jumps and backflips on dirt bikes on the @WhiteHouse South Lawn today as part of the UFC Freedom 250 event weekend.

➡️ Pastrana was joined by Ricky Carmichael, Jeremy McGrath, Brian Deegan, Jeremy Stenberg and Keith Sayers.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

This morning’s IPO minted the world’s first trillionaire, a measure of nations, not individuals. Elon Musk’s net worth is now $1.18 trillion, larger than the GDP of Sweden, Taiwan, or Ireland. Economists have a name for it: wealth inequality. Usually it’s an abstract number, the Gini coefficient. Today it was made flesh.

Advertising has always sold corporate greed as your benefit. McDonald’s produces cheap paste. Yet Ronald doesn’t sell to you. He hijacks your identity. “I’m lovin’ it.” Notice the pronoun. The clown becomes you, not because he’s manipulative or creepy, but out of love.

Nike stitches cowhide to rubber. But they’re not just selling shoes. They’re selling your potential, your identity, your legacy. One chance. Don’t betray yourself. “Just Do It.”

Coca-Cola is sugar water. But they’re not peddling syrup; they’re selling pleasure. “Open happiness.” And they’re not doing it for corporate profits, of course, but as a personalized gift. In the “Share a Coke” campaign, they put your name on the bottle. So you buy one for yourself. Then you buy one for Jacob and Sarah. Coke wants you to “care” about others, too.

The common thread is the self: your pleasure, your potential, your caring heart. Each marketing campaign is a sleight of hand, keeping the focus on how awesome you are, not the corporation picking your pocket.

For 24 years, Musk has marketed SpaceX as a civilizational mission. Consciousness is a fragile candle that could easily be extinguished. We either become multiplanetary or face extinction. To disagree is to condemn your grandchildren. What kind of person says no?

At this morning’s Nasdaq ceremony, he invoked Star Trek, promising to take not just astronauts but you—literally you—to the stars. “This ship’s for you.” If you care about Jacob and Sarah, then you certainly have to care for humanity. Musk sells you a seat and a moral obligation. With SpaceX, the self and the species are one swipe.

Don’t buy it.

Never has Musk mentioned Golden Dome, Trump’s program to put weapons in space. Well, except once: by denying he bid for it. That was April 2025. One year later, SpaceX received $6.45 billion in Golden Dome contracts, the largest government payment it has ever received.

Sure, Starship is SpaceX’s rocket to Mars. But it is also the rocket Golden Dome requires to put satellites into orbit. What a coincidence.

Golden Dome paid SpaceX billions. Funding for beyond the solar system? Zero. Funding for interplanetary travel? Zero. A Mars mission? The government has yet to pay a single dollar.

McDonald’s, Nike, and Coke have been one-upped. AI companies sell consciousness and salvation, and SpaceX sells consciousness and salvation, on par with religion. Curiously, they’re both war profiteers.

Today’s IPO didn’t mint a trillionaire through the market alone. It was completed by the state. The billions in Golden Dome contracts—your tax dollars—did the rest. Musk sold you a ride on a ship you paid to build.

Ronald hijacks your identity. Musk hijacks your soul. All out of love, of course.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Whether Henry Ford’s Fordlandia, Walt Disney’s EPCOT, or Elon Musk’s Starbase, company towns reek of fascism. Stripping employees of their inherent creativity through enforced obedience is dehumanizing enough. Scale it from the workplace to an entire town, and you have total subjugation, corporate occupation of the human spirit. One may as well have the Amazon smile branded into the soul.

Don’t succumb to category debates. Fascism is not merely a form of government, but a form of institution, an operating system that runs on government, corporation, and religion alike. No matter what shape it takes, any encroachment on human freedom must be challenged, resisted.

https://t.co/Y2p3IxkEqW

[The Intercept @theintercept]

One top military officer provided a plausible explanation, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, The Intercept has learned. In the briefing, a high-ranking officer on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff stated that some of the people killed by the U.S. military may have been the victims of human trafficking.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Israel’s national security minister just called for territorial conquest and “arresting” women and “youth.”

Propaganda flags:

“arresting” = hostage-taking

“youth” = legal minors

“harming the civilian environment” = terrorism

https://t.co/fPGNXrgwLc

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

It was never about law. The “I’m not against immigration; I’m against illegal immigration” canard has been exposed.

Call it the “myth of legality.”

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

That swamp (red carpets, fancy parties, sycophancy) is the murky upswell of dark money. It’s certainly not civil servants in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Yet it is curious how Trump’s “swamp” imagery never features an oligarch bent over, Italian trousers pulled to the ankles, clouding the mire. Instead, the portrait is always a poor, brown-skinned, mid-level government worker.

I just don’t know, Shawn. Are these public employees, living on a modest wage, the swamp? Or is it corporate interest—finance and insurance, defense and aerospace, oil and gas, tech and pharma—clashing with public interest? Just. Don’t. Know.

Fuckin’ marsh dwellers. Fouling the pool.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

It was a relief when Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) forced the withdrawal of Casey Means’s surgeon general nomination. As a physician himself, Sen. Cassidy was repulsed by her stance on childhood immunization. Placing a vaccine-denying “wellness” influencer in the nation’s top medical role could have resulted in untold deaths.

But in the diseased mind of the MAGA-verse, prioritizing the health and well-being of children over loyalty to a cult leader is an unpardonable sin. And Cassidy was given no quarter—he was one of the “Impeachment Seven,” a group of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump on incitement of insurrection.

Naturally, Trump never forgave him. The fact that Chairman Cassidy refused to schedule a vote on Means’s nomination was the final straw, pushing Trump over the edge.

In retaliation, the Mar-a-Lago machine launched a four-month media blitz backing Julia Letlow, a former university administrator who championed DEI initiatives. This is not mere political irony, nor is it just revenge. It exposes MAGA as a political cult with zero principles or policy positions. The base couldn’t care less about Letlow’s “woke” paper trail. All that mattered was Trump’s stamp of approval. Her campaign message was singular: “Trump supports me.” She was a vessel for his cult of personality—nothing more. Completely empty. No policy, no heart, no soul.

As a parting shot, Trump nominated Nicole Saphier for surgeon general, a supplement grifter who “formulated” a product called Calm, marketed to “balance” both “mind and body.” Its main ingredient causes liver toxicity.

Sen. Cassidy, you’ll recall, is a physician. His specialty? The liver.

https://t.co/cwOvfj1Lzi

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

@jeffkski1 We can’t be a nation of laws if some are exempt, especially the powerful.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

The Leahy Laws would be relevant if we were a nation of laws. We’re not.

Although the observation dates to Aristotle, Roscoe Pound, one of the 20th century’s most cited legal scholars, formalized a relevant concept: law in books vs. law in action. Sure, Congress has passed laws prohibiting arms sales to human rights abusers. But having such laws “on the books” means nothing without an executive to enforce them. It’s wasted ink; dirtied paper.

The Trump administration—partly via Elon Musk’s DOGE—gutted the offices enforcing the Leahy Laws. The dismantling is pure banality; Hannah Arendt would be taking notes. The mechanism is quietly simple: since Leahy requires evidence of human rights violations, Trump simply eliminated the staff who gathers it. Done deal. We’re now free to sell arms to whoever we want—de facto nullification. No act of Congress required. No ruling from the Court necessary.

After taking office, Trump spent January and February stripping oversight offices, used March to bypass Congress and rush $3 billion in bombs to Israel, leveraged April to slash regulations on arms sales, then flew to the Middle East in May to announce the largest arms deal in history—all with human rights violators, all surrounding neighbors of Iran. The chronology was not accidental but strategic. Eisenhower would recognize it immediately; an unholy gift to the defense industry. War profiteering, unvarnished.

A tragic consequence of DOGE was gouging the Pentagon’s Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR), which eliminated more than 160 positions dedicated to preventing civilian casualties. The human cost was immediate: 120 children killed in the U.S. bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School on the very first day of the war.

We needed the CHMR to vet intelligence. We needed more people paying attention. Most importantly, we should never have been there.

Whether it was accidental is irrelevant. By Nuremberg judgment, it is inevitable. A war of aggression always “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” And so it went: Within days of the Minab school bombing, 66 other schools were damaged or destroyed across Iran. Now the figure is 600+ with over 1,000 students and teachers killed or injured, all underreported in the U.S. One sacrifices their humanity by shrugging off such terror with a casual sorry, we didn’t mean it, as Secretary Hegseth has.

The only thing more depraved than raising a glass to Jeffrey Epstein—a man who raped minors—is dropping Tomahawk missiles on elementary schools, tearing children limb from limb.

America is exceptional in one regard: impunity. Laws once enforced are now only symbolic, fraudulently signaling moral authority. Flags wave. Bombs drop. Laws fall silent.

Just as nations wrap themselves in religion to disguise crimes, they wrap themselves in law.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Thermobaric bombs have a larger audible radius than conventional munitions. The blast is not only heard but felt for miles. The weapons carry explicit, malicious intent: to terrorize the civilian population (see sources below).

Whether sanitized as “forced displacement” (rebranded as the “Trump Plan”) or the more honest “ethnic cleansing,” these chest-rattling bombs send populations fleeing in horror. The formula is straightforward:

Step 1: Drive Palestinians out of their neighborhoods, then block reentry when they return home.

Step 2: If they evade Israeli blockades, then implement a scorched-earth campaign: destroy the buildings so there is nothing to return to.

Step 3: Since walking back to the piles of rubble is itself an act of resistance, bomb them again while they mourn, sift, and search through twisted rebar and fractured cinder blocks. And then bomb their families when they come to retrieve their loved ones. Also, bomb the paramedics when they come. And keep bombing anyone who approaches for hours after. Israel once fired on a site for eight consecutive hours, ensuring no one was saved.

Step 4: If all the above methods of “population transfer” fail, resort to systematic genocide.

Thermobaric bombs not only kill—they vaporize. The heat is so intense that there is no body to name, no body to mourn, no body to say goodbye to one last time. It is as if they never existed. Erasure.

There are 2,842 documented cases of vaporization since October 2023. Consider reading the following Al Jazeera report:

https://t.co/HM7JXgzYa6

Sources:

On explicit intent to terrorize civilians (opening paragraph):

“Explainer: The Dahiya Doctrine & Israel’s Use of Disproportionate Force” (October 2008): “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force and cause great damage and destruction there.”

https://t.co/kLX1PwSZCV

“Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets” (October 2023): “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved.”

https://t.co/y21Zpu7p5N

“Former Israeli National Security Chief: Gaza is a Nazi state and civilians are not innocent” (November 2023): Eiland stated that cutting off food, water, gas, and electricity to the entire civilian population was the correct course of action.

https://t.co/2Aoqm5yu0d

The Goldstone Report: UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (September 2009): Israel’s military strategy was “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.”

https://t.co/Pv5jX5cNeQ

United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1566 (2004), S/RES/1566, adopted 8 October 2004. Israel targeting civilians is not only a war crime but the functional definition of terrorism under Res. 1566, which all 15 members unanimously adopted, condemning such acts “by whomsoever committed,” including states. Terrorism is not merely a term relegated to non-state actors like Al Qaeda. Under Res. 1566, any of the 193 UN member states could be held to the same standard.

https://t.co/pgSDNH7Xno.

“2025 Donald Trump Gaza Strip takeover proposal” (Trump Plan):

https://t.co/7wLOpqObPp

On Step 1: Driving Palestinians out and blocking reentry

“‘There Will Be No Return:’ Israeli Army Says It Will Not Allow Residents to Return to North Gaza” (November 2024): “No one is returning to the northern area. There is no return to the north, and there will not be.”

https://t.co/6yYgF7eyzT

“‘The war is not over’: Israel blocks Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza” (November 2023): “The movement of the population from the south of the Strip to the north will not be allowed in any way.”

https://t.co/DLAAaoXACm

On Step 2: Scorched-earth destruction of buildings

“Widespread destruction by Israeli Defence Forces of civilian infrastructure in Gaza” (February 2024): The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights documented “widespread destruction and demolition by the IDF of civilian and other infrastructure” and concluded it “appears to be aimed at or has the effect of rendering the return of civilians to these areas impossible.”

https://t.co/GbfVt678AP

“‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza” (November 2024): Human Rights Watch documented that Israeli officials “specifically stated that damage, not accuracy, was the purpose of bombardments,” with over 60 percent of residential buildings and 80 percent of commercial facilities damaged or destroyed by January 2024.

https://t.co/LmyxiVZf1D

On Step 3: Bombing rescuers and families

“‘Double tap’ airstrikes: How Israel targets Gaza rescue efforts” (July 2025): Based on interviews with five Israeli security sources, the +972 Magazine report found that double-tap strikes had become “standard procedure in Gaza.” One source present confirmed the army knows the practice is “a death sentence for dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of wounded civilians.”

https://t.co/XLT3ckTvN3

“Israel deliberately targeting medical facilities in south Lebanon, say health workers” (March 2026): The Guardian documented at least five double-tap strikes in Lebanon, with paramedics describing the pattern: “striking, waiting for paramedics, then striking again.”

https://t.co/t6x8wuuTCe

On Step 4: Genocide

“Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” (December 2024): A review of 102 statements by Israeli officials identified 22 statements that “appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent.”

https://t.co/rnlCkxzTWy

“‘Nakba 2023’: Israel right-wing ministers’ comments add fuel to Palestinian fears” (October 2023): “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

https://t.co/TvYBSNeko1

“Smotrich says Gaza to be ‘totally destroyed,’ population ‘concentrated’ in small area” (May 2025): Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich says Gazans will be in such a despairing state that they will want to leave, and also predicts that the entire West Bank will be annexed by Israel before the end of the current government’s term.

https://t.co/t8odwWiLLg

“Database of Israeli Incitement to Genocide” (January 2024): A compiled database of over 500 statements by Israeli officials indicating genocidal intent, submitted to the International Court of Justice.

https://t.co/3GTpKtTQOH

[Hasan alrabay @HasanEssam29636]

The Israeli army launched thermobaric and pressure bombs, supplied by the United States, on Gaza. These bombs, which burn at a temperature of 3,500 degrees Celsius, are capable of killing thousands in seconds, leaving no trace.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Tropic Thunder (2008) is not just a spoof of Apocalypse Now (1979), but also of its making-of documentary Hearts of Darkness (1991). Naturally, Tropic Thunder needed its own making-of mockumentary. Behold, Rain of Madness (2008), the ultimate meta-flex. It’s a spoof of a spoof.

Lots of layers goin’ on here. Lots of layers.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Dear Brian Greene (@bgreene),
Alexander Lerchner, senior scientist at Google DeepMind, just published a paper arguing LLMs are structurally incapable of consciousness, quite a claim from someone at a publicly traded company that profits from Gemini. Excitement over sentience has measurable marketing value. Then again, unlike OpenAI’s rush-to-market culture, Alphabet invests in long-term pure research. Google DeepMind is the highest-funded AI lab in the world, reminiscent of Bell Labs a century ago. Perhaps we nerds should rejoice in poorly placed YouTube ads.

The “mysterious flame” of consciousness will almost certainly emerge from a substrate closer to our own, more Nexus-6 replicant (Blade Runner) than HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey). Even a “flicker of self-awareness” will likely require a biological topology that instantiates rather than a silicon transistor that calculates.

But who knows. We are talking about the hardest problem in science, after all.

https://t.co/3upjN9A4Uf

[Brian Greene @bgreene]

I suspect AI will one day be sentient, but I’m intrigued that some experts, including Nick Bostrom, don’t rule out that today’s systems may already have a flicker of self-awareness. Maybe it’s time to be a little kinder to ChatGPT and Claude. https://t.co/Y86JWPffgL

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

Thank you. Prof. Holstein was one of a kind.

Sorry for your loss. Like Holstein, I am sure your teacher is an active, ongoing force rather than a static memory.

Your bio reads that you’ve written for HBO and Showtime. You might be interested in knowing that Holstein had a profound influence on Joe Russo, who was his student in the early 1990s.

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

The last few years have been tough. I’ve lost four mentors and a best friend. All were emotional pillars. Though life’s finitude isn’t lost on me, the fiction of permanence is a necessary dampener to quiet the horror of losing someone we love. Whether grappling with a question or needing to vent, I always thought they’d be there. But then reality hits: Immortality is a fantasy. Security, an illusion. And beyond life’s two guarantees—we’re going to die and we don’t know when—certainty is a lie.

This morning, I learned that Jay A. Holstein passed. I’m not just saddened but devastated. This one—number five—stings.

As a young neuroscientist studying at the University of Iowa, I was a rabid atheist going from lecture hall to lecture hall, bar to bar, seeking one sound argument—just one—for the existence of God, even organizing standing-room-only faculty debates on science versus religion. I sought out every professor who’d engage me, building a roster of mentors. And even though I’m still a fervent secular humanist, out of all my teachers, a religion professor was my favorite.

Professor Holstein introduced me to Ecclesiastes. He taught it not through fear and indoctrination—Heresy! Apostasy! Blasphemy!—but as wisdom literature, an ancient struggle with the ultimate questions of life, meaning, and the human condition. We also did deep dives into 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Blade Runner (1982), exploring through film—my favorite medium—what it means to be human in the age of advanced technology. He even gave critical feedback on music, once taking the time to listen carefully, and later emphatically rejecting Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”—forever ruining it for me. Like his maternal grandfather, Jay was hell on wheels—alive—and you’d better have your arguments in order before going toe-to-toe with him.

Jay’s uniform was always a plain black T-shirt. Like a judge’s robe, it was a symbol of his integrity. He couldn’t be bought. His soul was not for sale. He approached the Bible not as spectacle—a cheap performance to impress others—but seriousness. In the most unique of ways, he taught me about transient pleasures and the vanity of luxury and materialism—or “precious ointments,” in the language of the Bible. “All is vanity,” opens Ecclesiastes, “a chasing after the wind.” I’ve been immune to Italian fashion houses ever since.

We all seek purpose. We all desire a life of meaning. We all long for narrative completeness, haunted by a B-rated end to our story: slipping in drunken piss, choking on a wafer during prison chapel, doubling over in fluorescent-lit agony from ExxonMobil’s signature dish: Ranchero Beef & Cheese Tornados®. (Nothing says death by bowel obstruction like gas station gastronomy.) Professor Holstein was no B-movie. His name—Jay Allen Holstein—was top billing. He had conviction and direction. His life was one of purpose and meaning; it was complete.

Goodbye, Jay. You taught me more about film than any film class. More about music than any music class. More about philosophy than any philosophy class. And you taught me more about life and death than anyone ever could. I’ll never forget you, Professor. And your students will always remember your name.

“A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” —Ecclesiastes 7:1

[Mike Gullion @Mike_Gullion]

@RadioFreeTom The science building kind of fits, though. You once mentioned that you were a chemistry major.