Suspicious behavior by printer of 1700s King James Version of the Bible

Yesterday I looked at the introduction to the King James Version of the Bible that the LDS Church uses.

I was surprised to notice that the occurrence of italicized letters was kind of arbitrary, which is often the case, in my experience, when the publishers are hiding messages.

According to my big old dictionary, italicized disconnected typeface can also be labeled "cursive", which when applying the "v" step, turns into "iesruc", which is "I's are U's." So I decided to use a cipher in which I=U.

I did a doubles-cancel operation on all the italicized words in the preface: BY THE GRACE OF GOD England Sion Occidental Star Elizabeth Sun Christendom English tongue England. 

That gave me "YFZRMISLD." Applying the 26-letter alphabet ring circle where I=U, I get "EXDLQUKRZ." Applying the "z" step, I get "EXDLQUKR." Applying the "x" step, I get a dyad (i.e., two) solutions, one a taunt and the other a reference to a food/science secret:

"ER KUQLD" which appears to be calling someone with the initials "ER" a cuckold, i.e., a man whose wife is having children with a different man.

"EDL QUKR" which appears to be a reference to cooking with an "EDL" utensil or process. According to my old dictionary, the only "edel" process is an "edeleanu process" that uses sulfur dioxide, which frequently shows up in foods that I've experienced otherwise unexplainable weight loss/control from.

I dug into publishers of the King James Bible, and the cuckold taunt appears most likely to be referring to the husband (initials "RE") of Sarah Baskerville, a live-in housekeeper whose husband disappeared and who then married her employer John Baskerville, printer of the 1763 folio version of the King James Version.

[Update 9:55 pm, 12/16/2024: Here are photos of the two mentioned definitions from my old, huge dictionary:

Who knew that cursive could be nonjoining letters, too? Very interesting.]

Most recent weight loss experiment procedure--it resulted in weight drops four times so far

 As too many people working to lose weight know, weight "plateaus" happen and it's not always clear why. I think it's because there are certain molecules that help the body give up its fat storage and utilize it and that some processed foods contain those certain molecules. I have had otherwise unexplained weight drops from some canned fish or cured meats, certain chocolates, and occasionally other processed foods.

By keeping a food diary and paying close attention to what seems to give results and what doesn't, I have arrived at a procedure that I think provides the needed molecules to go down from a weight plateau. Four times now, it has resulted in me experiencing weight drops of one pound in one day when combined with a low carbohydrate lunch, light cardio exercise, no processed sugars for either lunch or dinner, and a weight maintenance beverage at both lunch and dinner (see procedure for my weight maintenance beverage at the bottom of this post * ).

Here is the procedure:

Part One:

For breakfast, drink some distilled water that has sat in the sunlight in a glass container together with some minced celery leaf and toaster-roasted banana/plantain leaf (put the roasted banana/plantain leaf in with the distilled water and minced celery leaf right after toasting it black in the toaster). Don't have anything else. Think of this part as your "first breakfast."

I think part one provides a stabilized source of enzymes that are needed for the second part of this procedure.

Part Two:

Think of this as "second breakfast" and consume it about 1-3 hours after part one.

This part currently uses juniper berries that I collect from juniper bushes growing in yards and alleys. They aren't technically berries but are actually seed cones which are used as a culinary spice. I think the juniper berries can be replaced by other edible natural products, but I haven't yet determined which other natural products can be substituted for them.

Microwave uncovered sixty seconds in a microwave-safe plastic cup about seven (dusted off, dry) juniper berries together with a little just-grated cinnamon bark, a pinch of roasted banana/plantain leaf ash, and a little beer salt (beer salt has no beer; I think the silicon dioxide in it is the important ingredient). When the minute is over, stir the cup contents with the handle of a white plastic disposable spoon for about one minute. 

Put a little salted butter on the blades of a "bullet blender." Press the juniper berries from the paragraph above into the butter. I use salted butter because all the unsalted butter in the United States of America started to have additives in the past few years.

Prepare another seven juniper berries by microwaving them for 90 seconds uncovered in a white mug with a little beer salt and a little cream of tartar (I think the cream of tartar is important because of the potassium in it). Stir the contents of the mug simultaneously with the handle of a silver fork and the handle of a bronze spoon from Thailand (yes, that is an unusual thing to have on hand, but I was given a set of bronze tableware from southeast Asia years ago). After stirring with both utensils for about 90 seconds, press these seven juniper berries also into the salted butter on the blades of the blender.

Put some distilled water (about 2 ounces) into the cup of the bullet blender, screw on the blade part, and blend for about 40 seconds to make a butter puree of distilled water, salted butter, and the two kinds of juniper berries. I think the butter provides a medium for mixing the nonpolar and polar chemical compounds on the surfaces of the two sets of juniper berries.

Eat a little raw green cabbage. (The cabbage has either enzymes or nitrates that are important).

Microwave uncovered for 60 seconds some Hershey's cocoa topped with some dried dill weed in a dry Mason jar. I use the jars that come with the Classico pasta sauce. After microwaving, stir in with a plastic utensil (I use a plastic chopstick) some just-sliced small pieces of Roma tomato.

Microwave uncovered for 60 seconds in a plain ceramic mug some Hershey's cocoa topped with dried onion powder, a little roasted banana/plantain leaf ash, and lastly a little red raspberry seed powder. 

Pour a little butter puree into the Mason jar. Also pour a little butter puree into the plain ceramic mug. Mix the contents of the Mason jar with a long plastic utensil and pour them into the plain ceramic mug. Mix the contents of the plain ceramic mug together and then drink about a third of it. 

Prepare ahead of time (but not more than 24 hours) around 10 dry soybeans in about 2 ounces of distilled water. I think the soaking water from this has some lipid molecules that are similar to phospholipids but that contain arsenic/antimony/bismuth in place of phosphorus. If the soybeans have soaked for 24 hours, put the container of them and the soaking water into the refrigerator to prevent them becoming slimy and gross; this should keep the beans from getting gross for another day or two.

Pour some of the soybean soaking water into the plain ceramic mug and stir with plastic. Consume about half. 

Cut a little raw green cabbage into thin slices and put into the plain ceramic mug. Mix a little and consume the rest of the mug's contents.

If this works for you like I've felt it work for me, you might experience some faint fat-burning sensations, especially in your fingers or upper arms, within the next hour.

That was a bit daunting to type! I think this procedure can have some of the ingredients or steps removed, but I wanted to document that I finally have a procedure that has given repeated results on four different occasions. The big difference seems to be the new step where I microwave the juniper berries with beer salt and cream of tartar and then stir them with the two utensils, the silver fork and the Thai bronze spoon.

I'm not sure exactly why the beer salt is so helpful. I think it might be because the silicon dioxide when microwaved could be giving off tiny electron-sized sparks that facilitate the chemical reactions and ionizations listed in tables of standard electrode potentials (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_electrode_potential_(data_page)).

* Here is my weight maintenance smoothie. 

Prepare in a jar a little  beef gelatin powder mixed with room-temperature distilled water.

In a high-speed blender, blend some fresh, rinsed broccoli florets with rinsed raw cacao nibs and distilled water.

Pour the blender contents once pureed and steaming (that takes about 50 seconds in my Blendtec at its top speed) into the jar of gelatin-water. Mix together in the jar.

Dilute with more distilled water to a pleasant drinkable texture.

I have this smoothie at lunch and dinner and avoid fried foods and simple sugars, and it has been doing a great job of keeping my weight steady. I think it's likely helpful because it's creating a molecule similar to insulin that keeps the body from making a lot of its own insulin. We tend to think of insulin as a good thing because diabetics need it, but insulin also tells the body to store fat.

[Update 12/10/2024: Something seems to have happened to the Thai bronze spoon and/or silver fork so that I couldn't recreate the weight loss for the past thirteen days. Yesterday I tried two different things to "recharge" whatever needed to be there:

1) I baked at 450 Fahrenheit in the oven the two implements (the fork and the spoon) with powdered dried eggshell then cooled them quickly in the freezer. This was done in case I need a specific crystal/lattice structure in the metal, a structure obtained by annealing.

2) I ran a current through the bronze fork and the silver spoon, using a 9-volt battery, by hooking them to a battery and placing them both in a glass jar of distilled water with a little salt added.

Yesterday morning, I used the first set of implements to do the originally posted experiment. Then, later in the morning, I used the second set of implements to do the same experiment (using the resulting juniper berries to replenish the butter puree leftover from the earlier try that day).

This morning I woke up and weighed in lower for the first time since I reported success with the originally posted experiment. I wonder if there is something in some of the more expensive dishwasher detergent pods that facilitated a needed change in either the silver fork or the Thai bronze spoon. I ran out of those more expensive pods and switched to the cheaper, store-brand dishwasher detergent pods.]

Encoded messages in a Spanish-language reading primer: Nacho Estados Unidos Libro Inicial de Lectura

Recently, I acquired a Spanish-language reading book for beginning readers intended for the schoolchildren of the USA. The title is Nacho - Estados Unidos - Libro Inicial de Lectura, which means "Nacho" - United States of America - First Reading Book." The boy on the cover appears to be named Nacho, for that is written on his cap. 

I played around with the letters on the front cover, doing double-letter-cancellations with letters in the same color font or with the same color outlining them. In doing so, I found hints that this reading primer had encoded messages, which would mean someone at the publisher, Susueta, was probably putting in coded messages way back in 1974 when the book first was published.

I tried double-letter-cancellations on an inside page, using letters that appeared in the same color font (black, blue, red, gray, etc.) and then applying the "OL cipher" from my previous decoding efforts with predominantly English-language works:

• A B C D E F G H I J K L M
• Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N

Nothing happened. No apparent encoded messages. Since this is a book in Spanish, which has more letters than the English alphabet, I tried again with the added letters of "ch" and "ñ"; I didn't added "ll" and "rr" because they are doubled letters and so would cancel themselves out in any algorithm that couldn't distinguish when they were being used as a digraph (i.e., a two-part letter). That gave me an "OK cipher":

• A B C Ch D E F G H I J K L M
• Z Y X W  V U T S R Q P O N Ñ

This cipher gave results!

Here's an example from page 10. The red letters, when double-cancelled, give PIEOSA.

Applying the "OK cipher" above, I get

P I E O S A

J Q U K G Z

However, I have learned from doing a lot of decoding that an additional step is often needed, applying a "see-saw" of sorts using specific letters. In this book, it looks like I'm supposed to use the page number--10 here--to decide which letter to use as my "fulcrum." The tenth letter of the Spanish alphabet (still excluding ll and rr) is "O", so I switch lines at the "O" point to get the following:

P I E G Z

J Q U S A

The first requires the use of the "Z" (zigzag from outside to inside) and results in P I E G, which looks like a mockery of "G" from "Pie Jesu." The second looks like it's referring to something in the USA; from my previous decoding efforts, I've seen that J on its own often signifies some kind of "hook" and "Q" on its own often refers to smart people who are running something. "G" on its own often appears to refer to a secular group, perhaps from "Gaea," the Greek mythology word for the personification of the Earth/world.

Page 6 had some reddish letters that quickly yielded a short, plausible decoded message when I used the "OK cipher" above and "E" (because its the sixth letter) as the "fulcrum." But page 6 gave me problems when I tried to decode the letters in black font. My efforts just didn't seem to result in anything.

I was about to give up and try a different decoding algorithm when I noticed that the printing of the publisher's name in the lower left was so poorly done that the letters were black instead of the usual blue:

For comparison, see the same word on page 10 here:

So I did double-letter-cancellation on all the black letters on page 6 again, this time including "susueta" at the end. After using "E" as a fulcrum, I got a string of letters that yielded possible messages. 

This points to the likely involvement of people in typesetting and approval of the final print job (i.e., the quality assurance gatekeepers in the publishing industry) in hiding messages. Authors could be completely innocent of sneakiness and yet have their books used to pass around messages, some innocent and some not.

Rye grain, fibrinogen beta chain, and a danger of organized secret-keeping

I was looking at the most recent US Post Office mailer (a regular ad sent out by the USPS at the start of the holiday season each year) and found messages encoded in it, too. Encoded messages generally fall into four categories: 1) science tidbits, 2) identification of people/organizations in underground groups, 3) mockery of people placed below the encoders in their hierarchies, and 4) instructions on further decoding keys to use. 

A day or two ago, I saw one message couplet that appeared to be drawing a connection between rye and fibrinogen beta chain ("FBG"): RHY FBG. That looks like a scientific tidbit "hit." FBG is connected to blood clots, i.e., thrombosis, via thrombin: "Following vascular injury, fibrinogen is cleaved by thrombin to form fibrin which is the most abundant component of blood clots" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrinogen_beta_chain). 

Thrombin can be counteracted by ferulic acid (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26948317): "In addition, [ferulic acid] dose-dependently inhibited platelet aggregation induced by various platelet agonists, including adenosine diphosphate (ADP), thrombin, collagen, arachidonic acid (AA), and U46619." Ferulic acid is relatively high in rye grain. See https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5466124/ for a listing of foods high in ferulic acid and an description of how alkaline hydrolysis must occur for the ferulic acid to be freed. Pretzels traditionally were made by first boiling the pretzel dough in diluted lye water, which is an alkaline hydrolysis process; it's interesting to me that pretzels are coincidentally from the part of the world that consumes the most rye flour in its bread products.

The other half of the message couplet was IS BUY T, which I think means that "IS" bought "T". I keep seeing "T" in various messages, apparently in reference to what Mormons would recognize as "secret combinations" (i.e., oath-bound hierarchies of people who cover for the misdeeds of others in the same oath-bound structure). I would think that a big problem with taking orders from a shadowy higher-up is that you don't know who is giving that higher-up his/her orders. Did "IS" buy control of one or more "T"s? Who is "IS" anyway? The "Islamic State"? "Israel"? The second possibility would help explain the world standing by and not stopping the killing in Gaza. While I completely support Israel's right to exist, 43,000 dead, mostly-civilian Palestinians in just the past year is genocide. Have secret combinations been traded and sold like sports teams until the people caught up in them are now being silenced and trapped into inaction by their own secrets? That would explain so much about today's headlines....

Digging into indices of older books (includes Excel VBA macros to facilitate decoding)

Based on my research using older books, some people in the printing industry have been encoding messages for a very long time in places where others wouldn't think to look. The index of a book is a good place to do such encoding because the typesetters can control how many characters are on a given line and what letter/number combinations each line ends with. 

Using the example of Stepping Stones to an Abundant Life, a 1971 book by David O. McKay, the president of the LDS Church who died in 1970 before the book was printed, I can show you some of what I find when I search in an index. Typos are often a tip-off of where to start in order to find what encoding patterns are being used.

The index has only two entries that start with the letter combination "smo," and one of those has a glaring typo:

Smokers lack respect for others, 283.

Smoking cigarets, warns against 281;

     overcoming habit of, 113.

The typesetter can influence what is on the first line easily but not the entire entry. So I applied doubles cancellation* to just the first line of each entry:

Smokers lack respect for others, 283.

Smoking cigarets, warns against 281;

Minus the punctuation, I get "lpfh3kcewgain1" and then, after substituting the numbers for the corresponding letters of the alphabet and capitalizing it all, I get LPFHCKCEWGAINA.

CKC actually equals "X" because the second C is before an "e" and so makes an "s" sound. This string is therefore LPFHXEWGAINA. Applying the OL cipher** to LPFHXEWGAINA in the two possible ways (one of which doesn't require any transformation since there are no other O's or L's in the string) gives me the following: 

PFHXEWGAINA

KUSCVDTZRMZ

Starting with PFHXEWGAINA, apply the X to first reverse the fragment before X and then the fragment after X, which gives the following:

HFPEWGAINA - H.F. Pew GA in A, which looks to me like a reference to the custom upholstery company HF Custom (https://www.hfcustomfurniture.com/ouramericanstory.inc), which has been in business since about 1940 and makes chairs that look like the ones in LDS Church buildings. I think the GA is supposed to mean "Gaea" (i.e., "the world," a term Jesus used to refer critically to those who sought material gain instead of being generous and good) and A is for "America."

 

PFHANIAGWE - P. F. Han Iagwe, which to me looks like P. F. Hon. Iago, or Prince Philip Honorable Iago. Iago is the villain in Othello, and he causes Othello to commit suicide. A little internet research turns up recent news articles on how the now-deceased husband of Queen Elizabeth II might have been involved with the major players in a scandal that brought down the UK government in the 1960s and resulted in one man committing suicide. Look into the Profumo affair, Stephen Ward, and Christine Keeler; also see https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-phillip-profumo-affair-scandal-fbi-hoover-b2583748.html. I doubt Prince Philip himself was involved in causing the suicide of Stephen Ward, for there would have been several government functionaries surrounding him who had their own reasons to keep Philip's reputation intact.

Going back to KUSCVDTZRMZ, I first apply the V to pull together its two neighboring fragments in an alternating way starting from the inside:

CDSTUZKRMZ

I then use the first Z in CDSTUZKRMZ to pull together its two neighboring fragments in an alternating way starting from the outside:

CZDMSRTKU

I then use the remaining Z in CZDMSRTKU to pull together its two neighboring fragments, again in an alternating way starting from the outside:

CUKTRSMD - CUK TRS MD, which to me looks like kook-taurus (i.e., bull)-medical doctor, which appears to be saying that a bull was involved in revealing medical knowledge. (I've seen several clues where people who are revealing secrets are called crazy or loony.) Interestingly, there was a BBC TV show called The Doctors produced by a Donald Bull that ran from 1969-1972; quoting from IMDB, "Most of the episodes produced are missing from the archives; 139 of the 160 shows are thought to be lost." (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163933/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_ov_pl)

Decades after these messages and clues get encoded, we can now often deduce what they were referring to. Why encode them in book indices in the first place? Blackmail purposes? Bragging? A quiet marketplace of secrets being run by those in the archive and publishing fields? A combination of all three? I think digging into these older indices is an intriguing exercise that could also be of good in shedding light on any similar modern practices being carried out with newer technology.

I have also found that a cipher that turns Ds into Xs (from in-D-X, I think) to be productive in decoding messages and clues in indices. Below is a macro*** to aid in turning Ds into Xs and so forth.

* Here is a macro in Microsoft Excel to do cancellation of double letters:

Function RemoveDuplicates1(pWorkRng As Range) As String

'Updateby Extendoffice found online and modified

Dim xValue As String

Dim xChar As String

Dim xOutValue As String

Dim result As String

Set xDic = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")

xValue = pWorkRng.Value

xValue = LCase(xValue)

For i = 1 To VBA.Len(xValue)

    xChar = VBA.Mid(xValue, i, 1)

    If xDic.Exists(xChar) Then

        result = Replace(xOutValue, xChar, "")

        xDic.Remove xChar

        xOutValue = result

    Else

        xDic(xChar) = ""

        xOutValue = xOutValue & xChar

    End If

Next

RemoveDuplicates1 = xOutValue

End Function

** Here is a macro in Microsoft Excel to do the cipher that turns Os into Ls and so forth:

Function OLCipher(pWorkRng1 As Range) As String

'Turn O to L and so forth (U-shaped cipher)

Dim xOLValue As String

Dim xOLChar As String

Dim xtempChar As String

Dim xOutOLValue As String

xOLValue = pWorkRng1.Value

xOLValue = LCase(xOLValue)

For i = 1 To VBA.Len(xOLValue)

    xOLChar = VBA.Mid(xOLValue, i, 1)

    xtempChar = xOLChar

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "a", "Z")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "b", "Y")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "c", "X")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "d", "W")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "e", "V")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "f", "U")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "g", "T")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "h", "S")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "i", "R")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "j", "Q")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "k", "P")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "l", "O")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "m", "N")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "n", "M")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "o", "L")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "p", "K")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "q", "J")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "r", "I")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "s", "H")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "t", "G")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "u", "F")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "v", "E")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "w", "D")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "x", "C")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "y", "B")

    xtempChar = Replace(xtempChar, "z", "A")

xOutOLValue = xOutOLValue & xtempChar

Next

OLCipher = xOutOLValue

End Function

*** Here is a macro to turn Ds into Xs (and As into Ns and so forth):

Function DXCipher(pWorkRng2 As Range) As String

'Turn A to N, D to X, and so forth (O-shaped cipher)

Dim xDXValue As String

Dim xDXChar As String

Dim xtChar As String

Dim xOutDXValue As String

xDXValue = pWorkRng2.Value

xDXValue = LCase(xDXValue)

For i = 1 To VBA.Len(xDXValue)

    xDXChar = VBA.Mid(xDXValue, i, 1)

    xtChar = xDXChar

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "a", "N")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "b", "Z")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "c", "Y")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "d", "X")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "e", "W")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "f", "V")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "g", "U")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "h", "T")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "i", "S")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "j", "R")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "k", "Q")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "l", "P")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "m", "O")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "n", "A")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "o", "M")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "p", "L")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "q", "K")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "r", "J")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "s", "I")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "t", "H")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "u", "G")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "v", "F")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "w", "E")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "x", "D")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "y", "C")

    xtChar = Replace(xtChar, "z", "B")

xOutDXValue = xOutDXValue & xtChar

Next

DXCipher = xOutDXValue

End Function

Scripture and coded messages

A few years ago, I started noticing that there was a significance attached to the use of some people's mentions of the wedding of Cana, site of Jesus' first miracle of turning water into wine, and wine generally. There is Tara Westover, for instance, the author of Educated, saying she started to lose her faith in Jesus when she began drinking wine while studying at Oxford. Then there is the whole premise of The Da Vinci Code, that Jesus used specially-fermented vinegar (wine quickly becomes vinegar with the right bacteria in it) to fake his death and then went off to Europe afterward. For reasons inexplicable to me at the time, The Alchemist became a much-lauded book. 

I think some people have been convinced in our modern times that Jesus was an ancient alchemist who used his skills to do what his disciples viewed as miracles because of their not knowing how he did them. References to alchemy and Cana appear to be their justifications and nods to each other that they "are in on the secret" and know Jesus wasn't really the son of God.

I worry that anyone who has fallen for this line of thinking is mistakenly accepting that modern understandings of how to do some biological feats--such as pull off "living death" or making food/drinks/salves with impressive biological effects--would have been available 2000 years ago when life was relatively primitive and drab and too often short and brutish. We only just figured out the structure of atoms and how they come together to form molecules within the last two centuries.

Recently, I looked at the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible and its short account of the wedding of Cana in John 2:1-11. I took the four passages that are framed by the word "wine" and did double-cancellation on them before applying possible ring ciphers. I was surprised to see that there was a pattern emerging in what resulted in recognizable terms/references. The ring cipher that pairs "L" with "Y" ("lie") and "S" with "E" ("sea") turned up letter combinations that look like amen, Louie, pounds, needy, and juvie ("youth"). The ring cipher that pairs "P" with "J" and "O" with "K" turned up letter combinations that look like lox (or locks?), egg, jar, axon, bow, fad (or fade?), and HTP (or HTTP?).* Even without doing a ring cipher on one passage, I got a result from double cancellation that looked like "G-D Ra," an apparent reference to an Egyptian "little-g" god.

Language changes a lot over time. I think our language has been "nudged" over the centuries since the KJV was written in such a way as to create meaning in what would otherwise be random letter combinations. I've seen enough in the way of intentional publishing "typos" with significant meanings now to realize that some people in the publishing and typesetting industries are not the innocent technicians they are widely considered to be (when people in other careers even consciously think about them, which is rare...). Today, those industries include those in information technology who write our word processing software and who can, via algorithms, influence which stories and articles get more exposure.

If you're a BBC Sherlock fan, you probably remember the episode where Watson and Sherlock spend a few hours going through a library looking for a book that was used in sending coded messages. I think the Bible has been being used as a source of codes. Thanks to the Gideons and other Christian movements, the KJV of the Bible is probably the most widely-found English book on the planet. The very first book anyone in the English-speaking world should expect to find being used for coded messages is the KJV Bible.

That raises an interesting question: What other scriptures are being used for sending coded messages? The Torah? The Koran? And, if so, who is using them that way and for how long have they been doing it? Those books are much older than the KJV Bible.

* (Interestingly, I didn't find the ring cipher that pairs "P" and "D" to result in recognizable terms; I wonder if that might be because P.D. now means police department and there's been an intentional steering of our common language usage away from revealing to law enforcement how the KJV is being used.)

Myristoylation, HID-1, nutmeg, and colon cancer

I recently came across a possible encoded message that was about an "apo-HID." "Apo" in biology means a molecule that is missing an important subpart such that it no longer does what it is usually supposed to do.

There is an enzyme called "HID-1." It looks like an "apo" version of it exists when myristoylation fails to occur:

Finally, we verified that a conserved N-terminal myristoylation site was required for HID-1 binding to the Golgi apparatus.

"HID-1 is a peripheral membrane protein primarily associated with the medial- and trans- Golgi apparatus," 2011, online at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4875289/

In eukaryotes, most proteins must undergo alternative splicing and extensive modifications, such as protein glycosylation, phosphorylation, or lipidation, after synthesis to reach their active and functional forms. Indeed, attachment of lipid groups is vital for proteins to achieve their final native structure and to allow intracellular transport for them to reach the appropriate cellular localization. Protein lipidation can be divided into four major types: N-myristoylation, S-palmitoylation, prenylation, and glycosylphosphatidylinositol anchor conjugation.

N-myristoylation is a ubiquitous protein lipid modification that occurs cotranslationally in eukaryotes and involves attachment of myristic acid to the N-terminal glycine (Gly) of a wide range of substrate proteins.

"Protein N-myristoylation: functions and mechanisms in control of innate immunity," 2021, online at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7966921/

What is myristic acid? It's a saturated fatty acid. (See https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C544638.) It's found in butter, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, and especially in nutmeg oil:

Nutmeg butter has 75% trimyristin, the triglyceride of myristic acid and a source from which it can be synthesised. Besides nutmeg, myristic acid is found in palm kernel oil, coconut oil, butterfat, 8–14% of bovine milk, and 8.6% of breast milk as well as being a minor component of many other animal fats. It is found in spermaceti, the crystallized fraction of oil from the sperm whale. It is also found in the rhizomes of the Iris, including Orris root.

Downloaded from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myristic_acid on October 8, 2024.

Myristic acid appears to have an anti-tumor effect in the human body. 

Myristic acid has been widely confirmed to have strong antitumour effects, which induce apoptosis of many kinds of tumor cell[s], such as breast cancer cells, prostate cancer cells, stomach cancer cells, liver cells, and other.

"Antimicrobial potential of myristic acid against Listeria monocytogenes in milk," 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41429-019-0152-5. 

Nutmeg itself in mice has been demonstrated to help prevent the formation of colon cancer tumors. See "Modulation of Colon Cancer by Nutmeg," 2015, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6334305/.

HID-1 is more highly expressed in cancers generally. See https://www.proteinatlas.org/ENSG00000167861-HID1/pathology. Perhaps I found a valid message pointing to a need to increase the N-myristoylation of HID-1 to help prevent cancer tumors. It would be interesting to look at whether the myristic acid content of milk has been decreasing at the same time as there has been an increase in colon cancers in young adults.

[Update: Because milk has myristic acid and milk/dairy consumption is very high globally, I think there is something even more complicated going on than just the presence or absence of myristic acid. The process of N-myristoylation apparently uses the compound CoA-HS:

Downloaded from https://alchetron.com/Myristoylation on October 8, 2024.

What if our dairy processing nowadays is making it so there is either too much or too little CoA-HS and so affecting N-myristoylation? It would be interesting to see what other small molecules nutmeg contains in conjunction with HID-1 and myristic acid. Is there a lithium version of this myristoylation ingredient (e.g., CoA-LiS) that causes myristoylation to happen differently? Is there a -1 sulfur anion that messes with the process? Or, what would happen if there were two-proton hydrogen in place of the usual H+ ion? How I wish I had better technology to see what is in my food!]

New technology and its possible uses and misuses for covert influencing

As I peruse older books and realize that some people in the publishing world have apparently been sending messages via unusual marks, font aberrations, overly-early line breaks, careful wording, and similar details for over a hundred years, I can't help but think that newer technology has to have been put to use by the same kind of people.

What newer technology would they use? 

First, they couldn't abandon the old methods of underground messaging immediately, or lower-level people "in the know" would realize that something big had changed. So we could expect the newer technologies to be used side-by-side with the older covert techniques.

Second, it would almost certainly take advantage of the connectedness we now all share in thanks to cell, wireless, and satellite communication inventions of the past few decades.

Third, it would have as a primary objective the concealment of its own existence. It would need to be very subtle, like the odd-but-not-obvious printing choices of last century.

I think, after decades of fMRI tests--the kind that figure out what brain wave patterns correlate to what thoughts and emotions--we should all be asking, "What has been done with that accumulated data?" Has it been reverse-engineered yet so as to allow us, from externally, to induce certain emotions and thoughts in people? I find the absence of any public discussion of this even as a possibility to be a fairly good indicator that such reverse engineering has already been done to some extent. Can you imagine that ability quietly being sold off to the highest bidders? I think this would explain a lot of our current societal contention and confusion.

Graphic design used to comment on global issues (and perhaps indicate future events)

Two or three years ago, I was looking through a German translation of a children's picture atlas when I noticed something on the pages about Japan. This atlas includes photos of stamps from some of the countries it covers. In the section on Japan, the authors picked a stamp that was worth 50 yen. From my studies, 50 is sometimes used as a symbol of the United States because we have 50 states. Right under the 50 is a postmark where the date is cut off so that the legible part reads 7-12-18. In the date-writing system used in most of the world besides the USA, "7-12" is December 7, which is the date of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Japanese military. Here's a photo of the stamp:

It could be coincidence, but it's an attention-getting coincidence.

That brings me to my next find in this atlas. On the pages about the eastern United States, they show a skyline of Manhattan. This is a 1987/1989 publication, so the skyline features the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. 

Just above one of the WTC towers is an arrow from the photo's caption, above which is a stamp and a text box. I'll translate the German text here since I don't have the English version of the atlas.

Plan of better cities [or "a better city"]

Turn the book clockwise and you will see courtyards, parks, and gardens between the skyscrapers.

So I turned it clockwise. (A silly thing to do since it doesn't actually change the text or images on the stamp, but, hey, I followed the instruction.)

That light blue coastline isn't just any city. This is meant to be lower Manhattan with Battery Park represented by the open space in the corner. Now note the "X" building next to the open space. To my knowledge there was no X-shaped skyscraper in lower Manhattan in the late 1980s. But there is now.

Due to its tapering, angled walls, from above One World Trade Center, which appears to be built on the site of the northernmost of the two towers destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, looks like a 4-pointed star oriented like an X on the city block as is drawn on the stamp.

The 2001 September 11 attacks weren't the first time the World Trade Center was targeted. In 1993, a van bomb detonated below the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex. Twice that tower was targeted, and when it was successfully brought down, it was replaced with a building that resembles the one on this stamp in this atlas, an atlas printed before either of the attacks were even begun to be planned by the al Qaeda terrorist who carried out both attacks.

Is the inclusion of this prescient stamp a coincidence? I don't know, but it seems improbable that it is merely by chance.

Possible terrorism connection decoded together with a reference to a type of lesser known ion channels formed by a fungal molecule

Because of messages I've been decoding in my chemistry book captions, I started learning recently about alamethicin (ALA), a voltage-gated, ion channel-forming peptide. First, to clarify what ion channels are: "Ion channels are protein assemblies that transport ions across cell membranes." (See "Multi-oligomeric states of alamethicin ion channel: Assemblies and conductance," 2023, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.)

Ion channels are located within the membrane of all excitable cells,[3] and of many intracellular organelles. They are often described as narrow, water-filled tunnels that allow only ions of a certain size and/or charge to pass through. This characteristic is called selective permeability. The archetypal channel pore is just one or two atoms wide at its narrowest point and is selective for specific species of ion, such as sodium or potassium. However, some channels may be permeable to the passage of more than one type of ion, typically sharing a common charge: positive (cations) or negative (anions). Ions often move through the segments of the channel pore in a single file nearly as quickly as the ions move through the free solution. In many ion channels, passage through the pore is governed by a "gate", which may be opened or closed in response to chemical or electrical signals, temperature, or mechanical force.

(Excerpt from 9/16/2024 Wikipedia article online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_channel)

And why should we care about ion channels? In this time of so many mental issues, especially in our teenagers and young adults, they are very important:

The cyclic activation of these channels influences neurotransmitter release, neuron excitability, gene transcription, and plasticity, providing distinct brain areas with unique physiological and pharmacological response. A growing body of data has implicated ion channels in the susceptibility or pathogenesis of psychiatric diseases. Indeed, population studies support the association of polymorphisms in calcium and potassium channels with the genetic risk for bipolar disorders (BPDs) or schizophrenia. Moreover, point mutations in calcium, sodium, and potassium channel genes have been identified in some childhood developmental disorders. Finally, antibodies against potassium channel complexes occur in a series of autoimmune psychiatric diseases.

("Major channels involved in neuropsychiatric disorders and therapeutic perspectives," 2013, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3646240/) 

Alamethicin is a protein from fungi that forms channels in the presence of electric field." (See https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.) Alamethicin is a very small clump of a few amino acids that comes from fungi. It is abbreviated as "ALM." This is attention-grabbing to me because it means that it or similar compounds can be present in anything made with yeast. That means in bread, fermented food/drink, and anything flavored with yeast extract. 

Peptaibols, a family of nongenomically synthesized antimicrobial peptides extracted from fungi, mediate ion transport through permeabilization of membranes. Permeabilization mechanism via formation of ion channels was proposed for several of them, such as antiamoebin (1), trichotoxin (2), and alamethicin (ALM) (3). Peptaibols consist of 5–20 residues, most of them hydrophobic, that assemble into simple bundles of α helices surrounding a water-filled pore, which acts as a conduit for ions. Assembly usually takes place in the presence of an applied transmembrane voltage. In contrast to large, genomic ion channels, peptaibols are not endowed with complex features, such as selectivity filters, gating, or activating mechanisms. 

("Multi-oligomeric states of alamethicin ion channel: Assemblies and conductance," 2023, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(23)00304-1.)

I think in a time when we have electronic devices constantly near and/or on our bodies, we should be paying close attention to anything that can affect ion channels in our neurons. Instead, I just recently discovered the existence of these nonselective ion channels that can be formed by millivolts of electric charge.

Last night I was quite concerned when I decoded a caption that had to be decoded in a tricky way. When I did what the picture--which showed ion channels in a neuron--indicated I should do to decode its caption, I got "ALMOUNLHNHEKPLJAJNHMO" as a result. The only word I could pull out of that is "ALM" (as in, giving alms to the poor). That left me with this string of letters: "OUNLHNHEKPLJAJNHMO" Doing doubles-cancellation on it, I got "UEKPANHM." That appears to be "UK-PanAm." Which, to anyone who has learned about the global war on terror, sets alarm bells going off. In 1988, a Pan Am airplane blew up mid-air, killing 259 people.

Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.

(Excerpt from 9/16/2024 Wikipedia article online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103.)

The Lockerbie bombing is not only tragic, but it's not "in the past." One of the alleged bombers is set for trial next year in May 2025. Why would there be a reference to the Lockerbie bombing together with a reference to a little-known type of ion channel creator and neuron ion channels? Is there a terrorism connection? What official agency would I bring this to the attention of? The FBI?

[Update 9/17/2024: Here's a scan of the neuron photo and its caption so you can see what I'm talking about. 

The "trick" in decoding is, at about the halfway point in the caption, to shift the letters -7 and then right before the end instead to shift by +3 as indicated by the numbers in the caption. The book is Conceptual Chemistry, Fourth Edition by John Suchocki. I don't think Suchocki encoded the information. I think something or someone associated with the publisher or the publishing software is responsible for doing that. Computer programs--and information technology generally--have lots of layers where people can insert coded information.]

An overlooked role of manganese (II) ions in blood clotting disorders

A couple days ago, I was doing some caption-decoding in my chemistry book, and I got a possible coded message that said, ""TEA-(read backwards, as was the pattern for possible messages in this particular caption)DRTZVWB." To me, this looked like "tea dirt 's VWB," so I looked up possible meanings for VWB. I got a hit that made sense in "Von Willebrand" (VWB) disease.

"Von Willebrand disease is a bleeding disorder caused by the qualitative or quantitative deficiency of the pro-von Willebrand factor. Affected people may complain of excessive bruising, prolonged bleeding from mucosal surfaces, and prolonged bleeding after minor trauma....The pro-von Willebrand factor propeptide then undergoes cleavage, and then both the propeptide and mature von Willebrand factor are secreted into the vessel lumen. It functions as a carrier for factor VIII to maintain its levels and help in platelet adhesion and binding to endothelial components after a vascular injury. Any qualitative or quantitative deficiency of pro-von Willebrand factor will lead to an increased bleeding tendency, and this syndrome is called Von Willebrand disease....Low von Willebrand factor is quite common in the general population, but not all patients have clinically significant bleeding issues. Therefore, a significant proportion of the patient population goes undiagnosed. 

"Von Willebrand Disease," Ayan Sabih; Hani M. Babiker, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459222/.

In other words, Von Willebrand disease is where the blood doesn't coagulate, or clot, as well, and so there is excessive bleeding from nosebleeds, period bleeding, etc.

Why does this look like a coded message? Because compared to western Europe and the USA, Von Willebrand disease is relatively uncommon in China (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24968688/) and other southeast Asian countries that are also high tea (Camellia sinensis) consuming countries. But VWB disease prevalence is comparatively higher in Japan than in those other Asian countries (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hae.14804), and in Japan they tend to focus more on green tea varieties than on black tea. The two types of tea differ in that green tea is not allowed to darken from the activity of the enzyme polyphenol oxidase in the tea leaves while black tea is. (See https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/polyphenol-oxidase for information on this enzyme.) Tea leaves are a good source of manganese if the tea plants are grown in dirt that contains manganese:

Tea drinking is a major source of dietary Mn and intakes commonly exceed proposed adequate intake values of 1.8–2.3 mg Mn/day and, on occasion, exceed upper limits of 10–11 mg/day. Dietary Mn intake has little influence on markers of Mn status or expression of Mn-dependent enzymes. Fasting whole blood Mn levels and leucocyte expression of MnSOD could, together, be further investigated as markers of Mn status.

"Influence of tea drinking on manganese intake, manganese status and leucocyte expression of MnSOD and cytosolic aminopeptidase P", 2005, https://www.nature.com/articles/1602260

A result of oxidizing manganese-containing molecules should be manganese oxide, or MnO, if I understand the chemistry correctly. That means there are manganese (II) (i.e., Mn2+) ions. (See also "Biosynthesis and antibacterial activity of manganese oxide nanoparticles prepared by green tea extract," 2022, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215017X22000285 for an intentional use of green tea to get manganese oxide particles.)

Mn2+ ions are effective at promoting blood coagulation activity by the above-highlighted Factor VIII:

Factor VIII-light chain (FVIII-LC) and Factor VIII-heavy chain (FVIII-HC) were isolated separately from human plasma and were without coagulation activity. When FVIII-LC and FVIII-HC preparations were mixed, coagulation activity was generated in the presence of Mn2+, Ca2+, or Co2+. Mn2+ was most effective and with Ca2+ maximal activity was first obtained after 8 days. 

"Generation of active coagulation factor VIII from isolated subunits," 1988, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3121624/, full .pdf online at https://www.jbc.org/article/S0021-9258(19)57273-8/pdf.

Thus "tea-dirt's-VWB" appears to be an encoded message saying that the manganese (II)--as Mn2+ ions-- in oxidized tea leaves can help blood clot quickly.* That is useful information. In bandages, we might want to put some Mn2+ ions on the cloth/paper sections that touch wounds in order to help encourage blood coagulation. On the other hand, to combat excessive internal blood clotting, we also might want to avoid ingesting or inhaling a lot of Mn2+ ions if we are worried about clotting ailments such as deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolisms.

* Today I decoded another message that also points to this helpfulness of manganese ions in blood clotting. It was KLUHAHOUWNMHAUW". Taking out the two words "KLUH" ("clue") and "HAU" ("haw"), I'm left with AHOUWNMW. Applying doubles-cancellation, I get AHOUNM. Applying the OL ring cipher, the last part becomes either AHFMN or ZSUNM. I think that "clue" is to indicate that a clue is hidden in this string of letters, and the "haw" references Chinese hawthorn, used in traditional medicine there. AHFMN looks like "anti-hemophilic factor" (AHF) and manganese (MN). ZSUNM looks like a reference to the sun and the letter M, which are two common motifs in encoded messages. As in a previous post, I admit the possibility that I might be reading too much into a string of letters, but it does start off with "KLUH" and the science behind using manganese for blood clotting is established by the 1988 "Generation of active coagulation factor VIII from isolated subunits" research article.

That uncomfortable moment when you realize that you bought something that might be causing big problems for bees

I was looking at bee collapse stories and statistics today. There are a lot of bees in the USA these days, but that is thanks to the energetic efforts of so many people to raise bees and keep pollination happening. Colony collapse hasn't gone away as a problem. Around half of hives don't make it according to a Washington Post article from earlier this year:

So the situation on the ground seems to confirm the census: We probably do have a record number of honeybees....Sadly, however, this does not mean we’ve defeated colony collapse. One major citizen-science project found that beekeepers lost almost half of their colonies in the year ending in April 2023, the second-highest loss rate on record.

"Wait, does America suddenly have a record number of bees?" by Andrew Van Dam, online at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/wait-does-america-suddenly-have-a-record-number-of-bees/ar-BB1kK5Rm

So why do so many hives fail? You have probably seen headlines in the past two decades about colony collapse disorder. "Colony Collapse Disorder is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen, plenty of food and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees and the queen." (https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder)  

A molecule called "juvenile hormone" in honey bees is important to helping them stick around the hive. Removal of the glands that produce juvenile hormone makes it so the bees disappear around the time that they take their first "orientation flight." (see https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/206/13/2287/13497/Juvenile-hormone-and-division-of-labor-in-honey)

Juvenile hormone in insects is of crucial importance for mitochondrial protein synthesis and a necessary later increase in activity of an enzyme called "cytochrome oxidase" (also known as COX, Complex IV, and cytochrome c oxidase). (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0020179088900960)

Evidence suggests that flight metabolism and dispersal potential are tightly linked to COX function. For example, long-distance migratory butterfly species have higher COX content and activity than short-distance fliers. In this regard, the migratory butterfly Vanessa atalanta flight muscle mitochondrial area and cristae density were higher compared to the short-range butterfly Melitaea cinxia. Remarkably, the relationship between dispersal potential and COX activity can also be observed within the same flying insect species. Recently established populations of M. cinxia butterflies have higher dispersal potential than old ones, a phenotype that is mirrored in COX activity. This strongly indicates that COX represents a key metabolic mechanism for dispersal potential in flying insects.

"Cytochrome c Oxidase at Full Thrust: Regulation and Biological Consequences to Flying Insects," 2021, online at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7931083/.

One disruptor of cytochrome oxidase is bifenthrin, a common pesticide. "Bifenthrin (BF), a synthetic pyrethroid is used worldwide for both agricultural and non-agricultural purposes due to its high insecticidal activity and low toxicity in mammals." (See "Bifenthrin disrupts cytochrome c oxidase activity and reduces mitochondrial DNA copy number through oxidative damage in pool barb (Puntius sophore)," 2023, online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653523011153)

I don't think of myself a pesticide user. Sure, I kill wasps and spiders sometimes, as needed, but the real problem is all those big agricultural farms using all the dangerous pesticides, right? It turns out bifenthrin is the active ingredient in Scotts Turf Builder, which I think I used on my lawn recently. Am I helping cause bee colony collapse? Surely we can find pesticides for our yards that don't keep bees from flying back to their hives?

Question about an older drug that is no longer marketed in the USA and which might help combat aging-related inflammation

 As we age, a lot of inflammation-related ailments start to occur. A promising pathway to target to combat aging-related ills is inhibition of IKKβ activity. 

Constitutive NF-κB activation is associated with cellular senescence and stem cell dysfunction and rare variants in NF-κB family members are enriched in centenarians. We recently identified a novel small molecule (SR12343) that inhibits IKK/NF-κB activation by disrupting the association between IKKβ and NEMO....Taken together, these results demonstrate that IKK/NF-κB signaling pathway represents a promising target for reducing markers of cellular senescence, extending healthspan and treating age-related diseases."

"Novel small molecule inhibition of IKK/NF-κB activation reduces markers of senescence and improves healthspan in mouse models of aging," 2021, online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.13486.

Also see "Inhibition of IKKβ/NF-κB signaling facilitates tendinopathy healing by rejuvenating inflamm-aging induced tendon-derived stem/progenitor cell senescence," 2022, online at https://www.cell.com/molecular-therapy-family/nucleic-acids/fulltext/S2162-2531(21)00329-2

One inhibitor of  IKKβ that has been recently shown to be anti-inflammation is thioridazine, which used to be marketed in the USA for schizophrenia. 

"Nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB) is a crucial transcription factor in the signal transduction cascade of the inflammatory signaling. Activation of NF-κB depends on the phosphorylation of IκBα by IκB kinase (IKKβ) followed by subsequent ubiquitination and degradation....A computer-aided drug identification protocol was followed to identify novel IKKβ inhibitors from a database of over 1500 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drugs. The best scoring compounds were compared with the already known high-potency IKKβ inhibitors for their ability to bind and inhibit IKKβ by evaluating their docking energy. Finally, Thioridazinehydrochloride (TDZ), a potent antipsychotic drug against [s]chizophrenia was selected and its efficiency in inhibiting IκBα protein degradation and NF-κB activation was experimentally validated. Our study has demonstrated that TDZ blocks IκBα protein degradation and subsequent NF-κB activation to inhibit inflammation. Thus, it is a potential repurposed drug against inflammation."

"Repurposing Thioridazine (TDZ) as an anti-inflammatory agent," 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30763-5.

Since thioridazine used to be marketed in the USA, perhaps there is some data in this country or in a neighboring country that could be analyzed to see if the diseases that fall under the category of "inflamm-aging" (see "Inflammation and aging: signaling pathways and intervention therapies, 2023, online at  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-023-01502-8) were less common in people who were taking thioridazine. There must be some long-range studies that tracked medications and health outcomes during the years that thioridazine was being used the most--perhaps the Framingham Heart Study in the USA or the SEDAP (Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population) in Canada.

Example of a decoding exercise that yielded a reference to Masonic handshakes and a possible botanical secret

On August 21, 2024, I posted a blog post about decoding chapter headings and photo/figure captions from books (especially textbooks). It is at https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/08/decoding-copybook-headings.html. 

Tonight, I decoded a very long photo caption (one for Ernest Rutherford in a chemistry textbook) that appears to have a Book of Mormon tie-in. The surrounding text pointed to the 25-letter French alphabet (leave out "w" as it was not in use in French centuries ago) as the one to use instead of the Hawaiian alphabet I discussed in my August 21 blog post. After counting letters in word pairs, dividing by 25, and adding the quotients to the remainders, as outlined in that same blog post, I got the following line of letters after shifting two letters ahead:

YIYTXOLDLEKSAKNAVKALSUIXVLTOKENVAOPTLNJBAUZUTOJBMLEAJE

The underlined words stood out to me:

YIYTXOLDLEKSAKNAVKALSUIXVLTOKENVAOPTLNJBAUZUTOJBMLEAJE

Y-it-X-old law-AK-knuckles-UIXVL-token-VA-opt-LNJ-boss-UTOJBM-liege

which separates to give: "it old law knuckles token opt boss liege" and YXAKUIXVLVALNJUTOJBM.

The first phrase appears to be a reference to Masonic handshakes and the like.

The second part, when interpreted with the X-reversals and the "ol" ring cipher I mentioned in my blog post of July 30, 2024 (https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2024/07/some-ways-literate-people-covertly.html), looks as follows:

YXAKUIXVLVALNJUTOJBM

YX-IUKA-VLVALNJUTOJBM (do one X-reversal)

Y-IUKA-VLVALNJUTOJBM (do a second X-reversal)

YIUKAVLVALNJUTOJBM (find the O's and L's to prepare to apply the "ol" ring cipher to some segments)

YIUKAV-EZ-NJUT-QYN

This to me looks like "yucca is N jute kin." Yucca (which is not cassava/manioc) species are New World plants with fibers used for textiles; jute species are old world plants with fibers used for textiles. The primary jute species used for fibers is "Jute mallow or Jew's mallow or Nalita jute (Corchorus olitorius)," per Wikipedia. When I look at photos of their seeds and seed cases, I can see how jute and yucca could indeed be kin, or related. Per their botanical classifications, yucca and jute don't appear to be related, but those classifications are subject to change and sometimes seem unreliable.

The Book of Mormon repeatedly talks about people in America making and wearing "fine-twined linen":

silks … and fine-twined linen, 1 Ne. 13:7 (Alma 1:29; 4:6; Ether 10:24).

women … did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen, Hel. 6:13.

See Scriptures|Study Helps|Topical Guide at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/tg/linen?lang=eng. Some have thought it meant flax, but that was apparently not a pre-Columbian crop. Looking at the distribution of jute species in the area of the Arabian peninsula, I think it makes more sense for the migrants in the Book of Mormon to have taken the seeds of a lesser-known jute species over to the Americas and used its descendants to make clothes. By selective breeding, they could have easily ended up with a plant that resembled some of the modern yucca species.

Three paths for technology to take as it seeks to obtain information about us

As I've thought about the possible uses of cell phones and similar technology to affect us and our children for good or ill, I've looked into different ways that the programs they run can become aware of what interests us and how we think or feel about something specific. There are at least three avenues that I can see:

• Speech recognition of what we say aloud--this can occur via 
• built-in microphones (obviously microphones are standard on cellphones so that we can use them as telephones),
• accelerometer-sensed vibration analysis (see how in this article: https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/42303), and
• optical sensor-captured air vibration analysis (here's one way: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Guided-spatio-temporal-Filtering-for-Extracting-Tanigawa-Yatabe/dffdd0a4103ccba483aa8fa6a830d250dbad50be).

• Brain electromagnetic wave pattern recognition--our neural network extends from our brain throughout our body and into the skin, and our neurons send signals to each other using a combination of chemistry and electromagnetism. The anomalous Nernst effect, which involves using magnetism and heat to generate an electrical current, points to an ability to have tech device interaction with our neurons due to the magnetic fields in and around human beings (The article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41427-019-0116-z discusses how to induce a larger voltage than was previously thought possible for a given magnetization). Such currents could be used to sense and possibly interact with our neural network signals.

• Long-distance brain electromagnetic wave pattern recognition using quantum particles--the weak force appears to serve as a bridge between "quantum entanglement" (the so-called "spooky action at a distance" that has been experimentally proven to happen: https://scitechdaily.com/first-experimental-proof-that-quantum-entanglement-is-real/, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234921-800-how-quantum-entanglement-really-works-and-why-we-accept-its-weirdness, and https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.076016) and the electromagnetic activity in our brains (see this summary of the electroweak interaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction). While I don't know how one would actually establish the requisite quantum entanglement between our neurons and a sensor located in a distant location, once it is in place, the entanglement should enable what we consider "mind reading."

Finally! Repeated results on the weight loss experiments!

I'm trying not to be too excited here, for I have been working on this weight loss project for over four years now. But I just got three days of repeated results (down 1 pound each day, punctuated by two days of not doing the most recent change and not seeing the weight go down on those days, while drinking the celery leaf-roasted banana leaf water for breakfast; eating a low carb lunch of broccoli/egg/my weight maintenance beverage; eating a carb-rich/fruit/vegetable/white rice/peanut/my weight maintenance beverage dinner, and doing gentle cardo exercise for 40-60 minutes twice a day) by changing up the juniper berry experiment that I make and consume between breakfast and lunch.

Here is how I prepared the juniper berries and used them:

1) Microwave 60 seconds in a plastic-covered mug a mix of a small amount of raw juniper berries/cream of tartar/ground clean white eggshell with a little onion powder to prevent clumping during storage/"beer salt" (for the silicon dioxide)/roasted banana leaf ash. 

2) As soon as the 60 seconds is over, remove from microwave, uncover, and stir with the silver handle of an old silver fork.

3) Press the juniper berries while still a little warmish into plain salted butter. When that is cooled, blend with distilled water to make a puree. 

Then I proceed with the steps outlined back on March 19, 2024 on my blog:

4) Use a mug to microwave for 60 seconds layered cocoa powder topped by dried onion power, some more powdered toasted banana/plantain leaf, and lastly red raspberry seed powder. Mix some of the juniper berry puree into it afterwards. Stir with a plastic stirrer.

5) Use another mug to microwave cocoa powder topped by dill weed for 60 seconds in a glass jar then stir in some freshly sliced Roma tomato with a plastic stirrer.

\6) Pour the contents of the first mug mug into the second mug, stir with plastic stirrer, and consume about half of it. Then put in some freshly sliced green cabbage and some soaking water from a cup with dry soybeans and distilled water left for a while (not sure yet how long to soak it for best results), and then consume the rest along with the cabbage and tomato pieces.

Can I tell you how much I am looking forward to reducing the complexity of the above process?!?! But it works. At last based on the past week. I'll keep you updated!

[Update 9/7/2024: I haven't been able to replicate whatever I did that worked. Very frustrating. As always, I'll keep plugging away at it....]

[Update: 9/14/2024: I might have replicated the weight loss experiment successfully now. The key seems to be to microwave the juniper berries in two different mugs (for one minute each) and then press the juniper berries afterward into the salted butter. Apparently the butter acts as a solvent that allows whatever is on/in the juniper berries to mix when I puree that all up with some distilled water.

For the first mug, I microwave one mug of around 10-20 raw juniper berries together with some dried parsley (putting cocoa powder on the bottom of the mug doesn't seem to interfere, but using magnesium sulfate or cream of tartar in the mug does eliminate effectiveness for weight loss) for 60 seconds. I cover it with a plastic lid during microwaving, and I don't stir it with anything metallic. 

For the second mug, I microwave uncovered for 60 seconds raw juniper berries (10-20), "beer salt" (it's a source of silicon dioxide), powdered eggshell mixed with powdered onion, and cream of tartar for 60 seconds in an uncovered mug. After the 60 seconds, I put two pieces of pieces of grayish-white granite into the mix and stir it all up in the mug for 2-3 minutes with a silver fork handle. (The granite pieces are small ones that I hammered off granite samples given to my by a granite counter business.) Then I take out the granite pieces and swirl in some roasted banana leaf ash (roasted with my toaster, which quickly reaches a higher heat than my oven) and microwave the mug for another 60 seconds. Then I stir the results in the mug with the silver fork handle again.(no granite pieces used this time). 

I press some of the juniper berries from each mug into a little salted butter placed on the blender blades (I use a small, inexpensive bullet-type blender). After a few minutes, I pour some distilled water into the cup part, assemble the blender, and make a puree in about 15 seconds.

Since I started doing this bifurcated procedure to prepare the juniper berries, I've moved down off a weight plateau. Yesterday was the first day I included cocoa powder in the first mug, and last night I noticed that my biceps seem more prominent and larger. I don't know what to think of that, but I like it!]

[Update 9/28/2024: I've been sick this week, so I didn't do my usual experiments. However, I might have gotten a little fat burning (no exercise involved, since I've been sick) by having distilled water microwaved with Quaker old-fashioned rolled oats and then stirring in either banana leaf ash or a powder I made right before I got sick--here's how I made the powder: 1) microwave beer salt/fresh ground cinnamon/raw juniper berries 60 seconds in a mug and then stir for a while with a silver fork, 2) add banana leaf ash and microwave for 60 seconds more and then stir with a plastic utensil. I think silver chloride formation was possibly involved. I did smell chloride gas.]

[Update 10/18/2024: I might have gotten off a weight plateau finally. I think barium sulfide was involved (maybe that's what's in my broccoli/cacao nib/gelatin drink that I use for weight maintenance). Another possibility is that I've figured out a helpful catalyst in the form of gold infused (via electric current) with iodine, bismuth, or bromine that I then use in prepping the juniper berries.]

[Update 11/22/2024: Looking over my old records, I saw something I had done with the juniper berries that might have been successful but that I hadn't retried. I retried it for the past two days, and the following two mornings, I saw my weight go down 1 pound each morning. Here's what I did differently: 

1) I microwaved juniper berries, a pinch of roasted banana leaf powder, beer salt (for the silicon dioxide), and just-grated cinnamon bark for 60 seconds in an IKEA plastic cup; I stirred it afterwards with a cheap white plastic disposable fork.

2) I microwaved juniper berries, beer salt, and cream of tartar (probably helpful because of the potassium ions) 60 seconds in a light colored mug and then stirred with a silver fork handle and a Thai bronze spoon handle.

3) I pressed the juniper berries from both containers into salted butter onto the blades of a small blender. I think this allows both nonpolar and polar compounds to have a medium in which they can be combined. I used distilled water to puree the salted butter and the junipers together.

I then continued with my experiments as usual. The big difference was how I prepared the juniper berries.]

[Update 11/25/2024: Step 2 in the update from 11/22/2024 appears to be necessary. It appears to be required that I use both the silver fork handle and the Thai bronze spoon handle together. I wonder what metals are in those utensils from different hemispheres that could be working together...silver and tin? Silver and gallium? Silver and germanium? There are so many elements that could be in that Thai bronze spoon. (Whatever the special ingredient(s) in the Thai bronze spoon, I think it or they are also in white eggshells, because that, based on the yellow-highlighted section at the top of this post, was the item that would have been the correlating item for the bronze spoon. I wonder if the recent changes in egg production and the increase in cost have something to do with what trace elements egg-laying hens are or are not fed.)

Putting some butter puree into the dill/cocoa/tomato jar before mixing it into the red raspberry seed/roasted banana leaf/onion powder/cocoa/butter puree mug seems to also be helpful.

I'm down another pound. Only two more to go, and I will stop low-carbing lunch all the time! I'm kind of a fan of carbohydrates. :) ]

Cyberhygiene...an idea for which the time came when we were watching cat videos....

To be fair, cats can be very amusing to watch. :)

[Update 8/26/24: If you're wondering how your cellphone will "hear" you, read up on what is possible with the accelerometer, a sensor in nearly everyone's phones. See https://csl.illinois.edu/news-and-media/42303 and https://www.directdefense.com/is-this-thing-on-privacy-and-your-smartphone-microphone/.]

Down to two homeschool students

Three of my children have now moved on from being homeschoolers. Two are in a charter school that offers dual enrollment college classes, and one is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That leaves just two sleeping in and learning at their leisure. We will pick up the pace next week when their part-time program begins, but for now, we're mostly learning about the 1600s in Europe.

The story of the King James Version of the Bible was covered yesterday. Did you know that there were many other competing non-Latin Bibles at the time? The King James Version won out.

As I look at the harm that can be done by mistranslating even one word* in a book of scripture, I'm amazed that Christianity has survived translation and recopying by scribes and scholars making errors and pushing their own agendas for 1500+ years now. (* Unfortunately, the Spanish-language Book of Mormon translates "wilderness" as "desierto" in many places. This is a questionable choice, for wildernesses can be quite green and full of plants and trees; a wilderness just has to be "wild" and uncultivated land. There are LDS people who debate where in the Americas the events of the Book of Mormon take place, and this mistranslation adds to the confusion.) 

And then there are the shifts in meanings that have occurred in the past 400 years. Many words can now mean the opposite of what they used to mean. "Literally" is a good example of that. I see one of my jobs as a home-educating mother is to teach my children that language changes and they need to know where our words came from. 

Besides history, religion, language arts, and foreign languages (Greek for one, Welsh for the other this year....sorry, Latin), we'll be learning some chemistry (I plan to focus the experiments on kitchen chemistry and cooking) and doing music lessons, exercising (video game dancing is a favorite), and art. I don't have a planned art curriculum for them. For art, I provide supplies and let them go to it. Sketching is a huge favorite. I love that so many of their peers sketch for fun these days and that they share their drawings with each other online and in person.