A Series of Notes in My Pen 
“What if you discovered that the fire of Hell is real?
So be it. I cannot be immoral, foolish, and a liar because I am threatened with torture.”
— Interpreting things by twisting clear events and inventing conspiracy theories may give you a pleasant feeling that you are smart and know hidden truths, while in reality you are very foolish and the matters are obvious.
A recorded tape simply plays back what has been stored; it does not think for itself. Thought requires originality, and we cannot call a person a thinker if they operate with an inherited herd mentality.
If all the budgets in the world allocated for weapons and arms races were spent on free education, I believe the world would not need weapons. I say “free” because rote learning cannot be called knowledge.
When an ignorant person feels they are about to lose an argument, they shift the debate onto a pile of rocks, where it becomes unclear who truly knows the game and who does not. They possess only four words, and once those run out, they start quarreling.
When you throw your people into confrontations for which you have no means, you are the traitor.
The greatest betrayal is to perforate the ship while your family cannot swim.
A fact that may not interest you: Captain Noah’s Ark will not hold the beetles alone, as there are more than 350,000 different species of beetles. We offer our apologies to you, elephants and giraffes—the ship is full, and we must depart.
If Abraham had been burned in the fire, it would have been better than us burning by the fire of his three children over thousands of years.
I believe if Moses had drowned instead of Pharaoh, the world would have seemed better.
For billions of years, God only created bacteria.
God is the most generous of the generous, yet He expelled Adam from Paradise because of an apple.
Noah lived a thousand years, yet he only fathered four sons. Poor Mrs. Noah—I believe he slept with her once every 250 years.
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Regards,
Mohsen Ezzeddine Al-Bakri

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/...ecord-high

NEWS: Britain's “poorest are getting poorer” as severe poverty reaches a record high, a new study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has found. Campaigners warned that progress on tackling poverty could stall after April unless the government follows up its decision to scrap the two-child benefit cap with further action.

The limit will be lifted that month after the measure was confirmed in the autumn Budget. The foundation said the removal of the cap would lead to around 400,000 fewer children living in poverty compared with the year before.

According to the government, the change, combined with measures in its child poverty strategy published in December, will lift 550,000 children out of poverty by 2029-30. But the JRF said its analysis suggested that without additional changes, poverty levels would remain “stuck at a high level.”

It cited Office for Budget Responsibility projections indicating that the headline poverty rate will remain broadly unchanged through to the end of the decade. The charity said 6.8 million people were living in very deep poverty in the year to March 2024, meaning incomes after housing costs were below 40 per cent of the national average.

This figure accounted for almost half of everyone in poverty and was the highest level recorded since the mid-1990s. More than one in five people, around 14.2 million, were living in poverty overall, the report said.

Poverty has “hardened,” with those affected now further below the poverty line on average than in previous decades. Work does not guarantee security, with most working-age adults in poverty living in households where someone was in work.

JRF chief analyst Peter Matejic said: “Poverty in the UK is still not just widespread, it is deeper and more damaging than at any point in the last 30 years. When nearly half of the people in poverty are living far below the poverty line, that is a warning sign that the welfare system is failing to protect people from harm. There can be no national renewal if deep poverty remains close to record levels.”

Responding to the figures, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “Scrapping the two-child limit was vital and will make a real difference for many families. “But a toxic combination of insecure work and rising living costs is locking too many households into poverty, even when people are doing everything right.”

https://www.euronews.com/2026/01/26/cons...-reform-uk

INTRO: Former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman became the latest politician from the party to defect to hard-right rival Reform UK.

Braverman, who was fired from her job as interior minister in 2023 after repeatedly diverging from government policy, said on Monday she had quit the Conservatives after 30 years and would represent her southern England constituency in Parliament as a Reform UK lawmaker.

"We can either continue down this route of managed decline to weakness and surrender," Braverman said. "Or we can fix our country, reclaim our power, rediscover our strength. I believe that a better Britain is possible."

Braverman is the latest high-profile Conservative to embrace Reform UK leader Nigel Farage's message that Britain is broken and overrun by migrants. Her move on the heels of Robert Jenrick's recent defection gives Farage's party eight of the 650 seats in the House of Commons. The Conservatives have 116 seats and remain the official opposition to Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government.

Although Reform has a tiny number of seats in Parliament, it leads the governing Labour Party and the Conservatives in opinion polls ahead of important local elections in May, including for the parliaments in Scotland and Wales... (MORE - details)

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-loses-meas...o-13499336

EXCERPTS: The UK has lost its measles elimination status from the World Health Organisation (WHO) after vaccination coverage plateaued and cases surged. From 2021 to 2023, the country was considered to have "eliminated" the disease, but global health officials say measles transmission was re-established in the UK in 2024.

Vaccination coverage has flatlined in recent years, with recorded measles infections in the UK soaring to 3,681 in 2024. Spain, Austria, Armenia, ⁠Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan also lost their status, and the WHO urged countries to boost vaccination rates to prevent the ​disease infecting more children.

"It is unsurprising the UK has lost its WHO measles elimination status, following nationwide outbreaks since 2024 and the preventable death of a child in 2025," said Dr Ben Kasstan-Dabush, assistant professor of global health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

[...] A WHO spokesperson said the UK's change of status "reflects a broader challenge" that the organisation is facing across Europe. "Outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases are threats to health security in Europe," they added.

Dr Bharat Pankhania, senior clinical lecturer in public health medicine at the University of Exeter Medical School, said: "It's extremely concerning that in the UK we now have pockets of low or no vaccine uptake."

He warned that "we urgently need to remedy this situation"... (MORE - details)

PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT: Frozen times in Europe

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SURVIVAL LILLY
https://youtu.be/7Jjv7DQooEs

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Today I would like to report about the situation here in Europe. First of all, I would like to start with some very concerning news coming from Norway. In Norway apparently the army is preparing the population for war.

[...] Thousands of people received letters on Monday informing them that houses, cars, boats, and other equipment could be confiscated in the event of a war. This is intended to ensure that the armed forces have access to the resources necessary for national defense in the event of war [....] So you can expect if there's a war coming, they will just take everything from you. Your preps, your house, your weapons, guns, ammunition, everything....

[...] Then also we have an inflation of 3.6% in Austria in general. And um when it comes to living, water and energy, it's actually 5.7% inflation. Restaurants and hotels it's 5.8% and food it's 3.7%. I don't know where this is going to end. People they are going to lose their houses and flats.

So when I was in school teachers told us that in Austria we have a social market system. So we have a free market, but also we have a social health care system and social welfare system. But it seems as if we are slowly developing into a more socialist country because this is what's happening right.

So the government is taking taxes from the working population, and they just distribute the wealth to people who are not working, who are not paying taxes, and those people of course are voting for this government. And young people, they say, why should I go to work and pay so many taxes? I'd rather stay at home and receive social welfare.

This is actually one way how a government can nurture their own voters. And the end stage of socialism is essentially that they will take everything from you. And the thing is socialism in this form never has worked out, and we've seen in history around the world that the people who suffer the most are living in a socialist country.

Then also the healthcare in Austria is in trouble....

Situation in Europe January 2026 (Part 3) ... https://youtu.be/7Jjv7DQooEs
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/7Jjv7DQooEs

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1114050

INTRO: Cannabis-infused beverages may provide a unique opportunity for helping people drink less alcohol, according to the findings of a small study led by public health researchers from the University at Buffalo.

The risks associated with drinking alcohol are many, both from a health as well as a societal standpoint. Alcohol consumption has been linked to at least seven different types of cancer and nearly 200 health conditions and diseases. Cannabis, on the other hand, poses lower risks and harms, especially compared to heavy alcohol use.

The study published this month in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs is the first of its kind to focus on cannabis beverages and the potential for alcohol harm reduction, the authors say. It also happens to be particularly relevant given it was published in “dry January,” a month in which many people try to start the new off by reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption.

Harm reduction is a public health strategy used to reduce the risks associated with substance use. It acknowledges that while abstinence is often best, many people choose to use legally available products containing alcohol, tobacco or cannabis.

“In the first study of its kind, we introduce the concept of having cannabis as harm reduction for alcohol. Cannabis has been proposed as harm reduction for other drugs such as opioids but not talked about as often for legal substances such as alcohol,” says study first author Jessica Kruger, PhD, a clinical associate professor of community health and health behavior in UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions.

But, she cautions, “I think we have a long way to go before this is seen as mainstream as cannabis beverages are a new modality of use.” The market for cannabis beverages is exploding... (MORE - details, no ads)

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1114118

EXCERPTS: General intelligence is not itself a skill or strategy, the researchers argued. It is a pattern — the tendency for diverse abilities to be positively correlated. The study argues that this pattern reflects differences in how efficiently brain networks are organized and work together.

[...] The implications of this study extend beyond intelligence research ... By grounding cognition in large-scale organization, the study offers a principled account of why the mind is unified at all. This framework helps explain why intelligence develops broadly during childhood, declines with aging and is particularly sensitive to diffuse brain injury. In each case, it is large-scale coordination — not isolated function — that changes.

The findings also inform ongoing debates about artificial intelligence and how AI models are developed. If general intelligence in humans arises from system-level organization rather than from a dedicated general-purpose mechanism, then achieving general intelligence in artificial systems may require more than the accumulation or scaling of specialized capabilities.

“This research can push us into thinking about how to use design characteristics of the human brain to motivate advances in human-centered, biologically inspired artificial intelligence,” Barbey said.

“Many AI systems can perform specific tasks very well, but they still struggle to apply what they know across different situations.” Barbey said. “Human intelligence is defined by this flexibility — and it reflects the unique organization of the human brain.”

[...] The researchers found evidence to support four predictions of the Network Neuroscience Theory.

First, the theory predicts that intelligence is not localized to a single brain network but arises from processing distributed across multiple networks. Intelligence, therefore, depends on how the brain manages the division of labor across different networks and combines them as needed.

Second, for the brain to manage this distributed processing, it requires integration and effective long-range communications. To synchronize those efforts, Barbey said, there is “a large and complex system of connections that serve as ‘shortcuts’ linking distant brain regions and integrating information across the networks.” These pathways connect structurally distant areas of the brain, enabling efficient communication and supporting coordinated processing across the system.

Third, effective integration requires regulatory control that coordinates interactions among networks by shaping how information flows throughout the brain. These areas serve as regulatory hubs, reaching out to other networks to orchestrate the brain’s ongoing activities. They selectively recruit the appropriate networks for the specific task at hand — whether it be piecing together subtle clues to make sense of a problem, learning a new skill or deciding whether a situation requires careful deliberation or a rapid, intuitive response.

Finally, Barbey said that general intelligence depends on the brain’s ability to balance local specialization with global integration. In other words, the brain functions best when tightly connected local clusters communicate well, but are still able to link to distant regions of the brain across short communication paths. This makes the most effective problem-solving possible, according to the co-authors... (MORE - missing details, no ads)

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1114085

INTRO: Why some memories persist while others vanish has fascinated scientists for more than a century. Now, new research from the Stowers Institute has identified the mechanism that makes a fleeting moment unforgettable. In a study that culminates more than 20 years of work, Stowers scientists have provided the first direct evidence that the nervous system can deliberately form amyloids to help turn sensory experiences into lasting memories.

The research forces us to rethink long-standing assumptions about memory and the consequence of amyloid formation in the brain, potentially providing new avenues for treating amyloid-related disorders of the nervous system.

“I wanted to understand how unstable proteins help create stable memories,” said Stowers Institute Scientific Director Kausik Si, Ph.D. “And now, we have definitive evidence that there are processes within the nervous system that can take a protein and make it form an amyloid at a very specific time, in a specific place, and in response to a specific experience." (MORE - details, no ads)