Rick Heller

Rick Heller (@rickheller) My first Substack Note ever. My newsletter went on hiatus in 2022 and is now back. I’m expanding the focus from mindfulness to wellness in general and I hope you’ll take a look at my first new post.

I've revived my mindfulness newsletter. If there was ever a time to be less reactive and more mindful, it's now. substack.com/profile/2666...

State steps in to ensure access to COVID-19 vaccine Public health order counters potential limitations set by the USFDA

New Mexico is overriding the federal government on the topic of COVID19 vaccines to ensure their residents can access them.

States hold a tremendous amount of public health power. They should use it.

The Perilous Spread of the Wellness Craze A new book reveals how health-care inequality fueled the spread of anti-science conspiracy theories.

Will definitely want to read this book: www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

All of NIH funding to Northwestern University is frozen. This pause includes noncompeting approved funding, new and competing grants with fundable scores. No reimbursements for money already spent have been received since March. This situation is rarely reported so please Please get the word out!

At Least Two Newspapers Syndicated AI Garbage Slop the presses.

AI also created fake discussion points sent to me for a book club I belong to, referencing fake chapter titles in the book.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

There is a false dichotomy drawn between "the ivory tower" and "the real world," and I'm here to report that in a post-industrial society, your real-world economy absolutely hinges on the university.

University towns are factory towns. Universities drive economic activity, not the other way around.

anecdote is evidence. It’s just one data point. A bunch of anecdotes are like a focus group and can provide some direction for a more formal investigation.

How Claude helped a patient
"A.I. isn’t a magic bullet. But it uncovers hidden connections in data at speeds no human can match, freeing doctors to focus on what they do best: care."
gift link www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-h...

A figure depicting responses to the question “How are body signals related to your mental health”, including both themes and example quotes. Broad themes included: (1) location of bodily sensations; (2) when sensations occur; (3) psychological symptoms and factors; (4) intensity and frequency of sensations, and (5) lifestyle factors.

Workshop contributors had a variety of initial thoughts in response to the question: “how are bodily signals related to your mental health?” This was conducted prior to any detailed information about the aims of the workshop, or the field's perceived notions of interoception. 🧵4/n

This Week: The Power of Predicition Podcast Episode · Philosophy Talk: Select Episodes · 11/05/2025 · 52m

ICYMI Yesterday's broadcast with cognitive philosopher Andy Clark, author of "The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality," is now available for download: podcasts.apple.com/id/podcast/t....

#PhilSky #philosophy #neuroscience

New Age spiritual ideas were associated with the left starting in the 1970s, but if you go back to the 1930s and before, they were more associated with right-wingers, who rejected Marxism, with its atheistic and philosophically materialistic views.

The science is clear: Deep breathing can be a game changer for anyone. Elite athletes agree Elite athletes such as Steph Curry use deep breathing to calm their mind and reach peak performance. The practice can also work for anyone.

www.nytimes.com/athletic/632...

YouTube video by Howard Schubiner #3 Predictive Coding

Excellent video on how predictive coding in the brain can produce #chronicpain from Dr. Howard Schubiner

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcI9...

META BOOK THIEVES - They Must Do The Write Thing The Society of Authors are protesting Meta’s HQ today This image shows illustrations of authors holding placards saying “make it fair” and “do the write thing”

Today UK authors are protesting against Meta for stealing our work to train their AI model. Authors earn an average of £7000 per year, we are not rich, and yet a trillion dollar company decided it didn’t want to license our work fairly as it was “too expensive”

Theft is not a valid alternative.

Big Pharma Needs to Get Off the Sidelines The industry can’t continue to sit idly by while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. guts the nation’s public health agencies.

Noticeably silent amid the upheaval at HHS? Big pharma. Every new drug has NIH somewhere in its DNA--and NIH funding supports the training of their workforce. Now they're finding out FDA isn't safe, either. Wrote about how keeping quiet isn't working My latest @opinion.bloomberg.com (gift link):

Breakdown Listen to Breakdown by Penny and Sparrow #np on #SoundCloud

I really enjoyed this song with its reference to a Rube Goldberg machine

soundcloud.com/penny-and-sp...

I'm saving Facebook Live videos and "Your video is partially muted due to a copyright match" is a message I have on an old Live video where some recorded music was played during a live event. But they are not so concerned about ripping off copyrighted books to train their AI

Tweet from Michael Lin, MD PhD @michaelzlin Our NIH grant to discover coronavirus antiviral meds was terminated today. With this grant, we had developed a better SARSCoV2 inhibitor than Paxlovid, and we recently discovered an improved drug that looks better than Pfizer's own second-generation inhibitor. Attached is a screenshot of a research paper’s title page: An orally bioavailable SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitor exhibits improved affinity and reduced sensitivity to mutations MICHAEL WESTBERG YICHI SU AND MICHAEL Z. LIN (D +19 authors Authors Info & Affiliations SCIENCE TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE • 13 Mar 2024 • Vol 16, Issue 738 • DOI: 10.1126/scitransimed.adi0979 6:05 PM • Mar 25, 2025 • 3,400 Views

Until I got the Bird apps, I didn't know there was such a thing as the Song Sparrow. I thought sparrows were boring birds that just go "cheep." But song sparrows are so musical!

I'm setting a new goal: being able to meditate while gas-powered leaf-blowers are blasting outside.

#meditation #mindfulness

Mindfulness of Bird Songs Step outside and listen to the chorus

The birds are back for #spring, so I thought I'd repost an essay from a few years back on #mindfulness of #bird songs.

rickheller.substack.com/p/mindfulnes...

I got new eyeglasses yesterday. They seem distorted to look out of at first, but from experience, I know the eyes adjust. The optician says the adjustment actually happens in the brain. Is this due to predictive processing? #Neuroscience.

Witch hazel

first bloom of the year: Whitch Hazel in Harvard Square

I listen to this free audiobook in the evenings to lull me to sleep:

The Frozen North
Edith Horton

The Frozen North offers short sketches of the first men who bravely took great risks to explore the unknown polar regions.

librivox.org/the-frozen-n...

Report: mRNA vaccines are in RFK Jr’s crosshairs; funding in question “Kennedy’s war on vaccines has started,” one researcher said.

mRNA vaccines are legit a near-miracle tech, there's one in testing that might be able to cure pancreatic cancer, and this fucking degenerate might take them from us arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

It is important for people to see this graph/data. #NIH is the irreplaceable leader of USA leadership in biomedical discovery and development of new therapeutics.

I'm really sad about this. A lot of wisdom from Kevin.

Spinal interventions for chronic back pain Do negative findings demand action? Despite the common use of spine injections in pain clinics around the world, it has been hard to come up with evidence that strongly supports this practice when ap...

"Despite the common use of spine injections in pain clinics around the world, it has been hard to come up with evidence that strongly supports this practice when applied to chronic back pain" #chronicpain

www.bmj.com/content/388/...

Effectiveness of the 2023-to-2024 XBB.1.5 COVID-19 Vaccines Over Long-Term Follow-up: A Target Trial Emulation: Annals of Internal Medicine: Vol 0, No 0 Background: Monovalent COVID-19 vaccines targeting the XBB.1.5 Omicron variant were introduced in September 2023. In the absence of randomized controlled trials demonstrating their efficacy, informati...

The 2023-24 #covid #vaccine not effective in preventing infection, low effectiveness against hospitalization and death, which declined rapidly over time

I got #Covid 6 weeks after getting the vaccine, so lines up with my experience.

www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/...

Club 47 historic plaque

Seen on Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge #ACompleteUnknown