DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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The Department of Labor keeps careful track of employment and the demographics thereof. Their latest report on men in the labor force is both mysterious and deeply alarming. It turns out that the labor force is missing about 7 million men who would otherwise be working. Close to a third of working-age men have vanished from the labor force.

 

Steve Graham.

My wife and I had an interesting conversation today. I had noticed a story about Sting, the elderly rock musician who used to be so popular. He was bragging about not leaving his children anything, as though it made him a genius and a great parent.

We both thought he was an idiot.

He’s not alone. Gordon Ramsay is in the same camp. Tony Curtis disinherited all his kids. Bill Gates doesn’t trust his children to handle his fortune. Neither does Warren Buffett.

There are certain eternal truths God expects us to know, and one is that families are supposed to be built up by inheritance. In the Bible, having no inheritance was a great curse, and stealing an inheritance was one of the most wicked things a person could do. Unfortunately, few people know the Holy Spirit, so most don’t know how things work. They come up with their own stupid ideas, and the results are pretty bad.

The excuse these people usually give is that they don’t want to ruin their kids by handing them things they haven’t earned. Mind you, often, these are often people who didn’t raise their kids well, so they care enough to deprive them of money but not enough to teach them to thrive as adults without inheritance.

Think of it as evolution in action.

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Note to employers: When you discover your twin brother employees are ex-cons who did time for hacking into the US State Department, and go to fire them, make sure you fully disable their access.

February 2025, twin brothers Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter turned a routine job termination into one of the most brazen insider sabotage incidents in recent U.S. government history. Just minutes after being fired from Opexus – a Washington, D.C.-area contractor that provides critical case-management software to more than 45 federal agencies – the brothers allegedly launched a rapid digital assault that deleted approximately 96 government databases containing sensitive FOIA records, investigative files, and taxpayer data.

I’m curious as to whom in the government it seemed like a good idea to put persons named Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter in charge of data for U.S. Federal agencies. That guy ought to have been fired as well.

The Foundry.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government sharply criticized a GOP?led hearing Wednesday that examined concerns about Sharia law and Islamic terrorism in the United States, calling it a “conspiracy theory” rooted in “unconstitutional bigotry.”

“There is no evidence of any plot to impose Sharia law,” Ranking Member Mary Gay Scanlon, D?Pa., said during the hearing, accusing Republican politicians of “shamefully scapegoating Muslims for political gains.”

“They made up a conspiracy theory about their Muslim neighbors to intimidate voters. Saying lies over and over again doesn’t make them true, and it doesn’t make unconstitutional bigotry legal,” she added.

The Foundry.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a federal civil rights investigation into Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano over allegations that his office gave preferential treatment to illegal immigrants accused of serious crimes.

This Thursday, mere days after that announcement, Descano—who has received more than $650,000 from Soros-backed PACs and affiliated groups—is scheduled to testify before Congress at a House Judiciary Committee hearing examining the dangerous consequences of sanctuary policies in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Indeed, Descano is a key player contributing to the increasingly dangerous environment in Fairfax County. In February, police arrested Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant from Sierra Leone, and charged him with the fatal stabbing of Stephanie Minter, a 41-year-old mother, at a bus stop in Fairfax County. Jalloh had previously been arrested more than 30 times, only to be released back onto the streets. In more than a dozen of his arrests, Descano’s office entered “nolle prosequi,” a legal term meaning it chose not to pursue the charges.

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Currently active CIA analyst James Erdman, presented himself as a whistleblower to congress to outline how the Intelligence Community had evidence and knowledge about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how it was created by “gain of function” research (weaponizing a virus) in a biolab in Wuhan, China funded by the United States government.

According to the testimony, there are elements inside the Intelligence Community, specifically the CIA, who worked with scientists to coverup the origin of COVID-19 and the fact the virus was man made and leaked from a lab. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, pressured and influenced scientists in the intelligence community to fabricate information and lie about the origin of the virus.

Fauci has denied accusations that he lied about the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) role in funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China and argued that the research did not meet the level of gain-of-function research. However, a longtime advisor of Fauci’s, David Morens, who served as a top advisor at NIAID, was indicted by the DOJ last month and accused of using his personal email account to hide communications related to a controversial coronavirus research grant that involved collaboration with the Wuhan Institute.

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No wonder Biden pardoned him.

The Foundry.

Trial lawyers are putting a heavy focus on a Democrat House majority by not only donating to organizations backing House candidates, but also dumping money into drawing favorable congressional maps.

A report from the watchdog group Alliance for Consumers, set to be released Thursday, shows that since 2025, trial lawyer-aligned political action committees have given $100,000 to the House Majority PAC, which focuses on getting Democrats elected to the U.S. House. The PACs also gave $50,000 to the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, run by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder.

The redistricting committee has been influential in the last year, donating $150,000 toward the election of Democrat candidates for the Virginia state legislature, and another $150,000 toward the election of Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.

Immediately following the donations in October, the Virginia Democrats called a special session to attempt to amend the state constitution to allow for new gerrymandered districts, which would flip the state’s 6-5 Democrat congressional map to a 10-1 Democrat advantage. The new map passed in a referendum, but last week the Virginia Supreme Court found the procedure unconstitutional.

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The Democrats in the Tennessee House of Representatives, including our least favorite knuckleheads Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson, once again comported themselves with utmost shame during the redistricting vote last week.

In a democracy, elected officials need not consider what is good for the general population,  only what is pleasing to the people who voted for them. If the people who voted for them are idiots, then those elected officials will do idiotic things.

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Think of it as evolution in action.

The American Mind.

The New York Times columnists Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein disagree more often than they agree, which made it significant that just before the first anniversary of the 2024 election each arrived at, basically, the same explanation for Donald Trump’s victory. “It is completely obvious that the [Democratic] party lost in 2024 because it overcommitted to a range of unpopular left-wing positions,” Douthat wrote. Whatever else the 2024 election may have been, it “was also an ideological referendum, and progressivism lost.”

Klein’s explanation was even more detailed, making it a tougher read for his followers, who are more sympathetic to the Democratic cause than are Douthat’s. “From 2012 to 2024, Democrats moved sharply left on virtually every issue,” Klein observed, with electoral results that were precisely the opposite of those expected and intended.

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In February 2023, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute issued a report that
analyzed business tax structures across 20 of the region’s largest cities. For each of
those cities, we calculated the annual business tax payment for three hypothetical
companies in office-based industries using business tax rates in each jurisdiction. In all
three examples, estimated tax liabilities in San Francisco were far beyond other Bay
Area cities – with only Oakland approaching a similar scale to San Francisco. As such,
we concluded that San Francisco’s business tax regime created a disincentive for
companies to add employment in the city and was a driving force behind relocations to
other parts of the Bay Area.

The New Neo.

One reason is that the gap between the parties has grown in terms of goals and policy, and so there are few areas of agreement anymore. But that brings up another question: why has that happened? I think it was the fruit of a few decades of leftist indoctrination in the education system, plus the fall of the Soviets which allowed new generations to wax Romantic about socialism/Communism, the spread of leftist ideas online, and the presidency of Barack Obama – our first leftist president, as far as I know. He carefully calibrated his leftist policies to fit what the electorate could take, but he definitely moved the Overton Window to the left.

But it’s not just about policy, and in fact policy may be way way down on the list. To say it’s about power doesn’t really say much either, although power is a big draw for some people of a certain personality type. But power is also about money. With revelations such as this about the vast sums given to NGOs, for example, or Medicaid fraud (and kickbacks and/or payment in votes from the grateful fraudster community), not to mention speaking fees and insider trading and the like, there’s a lot of money to be had.

Trump in particular is a threat – not because he’s a “Nazi” – they clearly don’t mind Nazis if they’re Democrat Nazis – or an “authoritarian” (likewise; authoritarians are great if on the left). It’s because he’s actually serious about “draining the swamp,” which not only has the potential of cutting off the power they wield even when Republicans are in charge, but cutting off the money spigot or at least reducing it.

The Foundry.

The intifada is coming to an American neighborhood near you. Or at least it has if you live in New York and you have a sympathetic leftist mayor.

On Monday night, a mob of not-too-peaceful protesters gathered at a synagogue in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. They yelled angrily and, in some cases, harassed the Jews who happened to be there over what they say is the synagogue’s support of settlements in the West Bank.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

An elected Supreme Court justice in Pennsylvania announced Monday night that he has left the Democratic Party and registered as an independent, citing concerns about antisemitism.

In a statement, David Wecht, who is Jewish and served as Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party chair from 1998 to 2001, said he believed antisemitism has moved from the fringe of the Democratic Party to the mainstream.

“Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, intimidation and attacks at synagogues, and other hateful anti-Jewish invective and actions are minimized, ignored, and even coddled,” he wrote. “Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”

Wecht wrote that he had long understood that antisemitism “always festered on the fringe” of the right, a fact that hit home in 2018 when a far-right shooter killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh where he and his wife were married in 1998.

“In the years that have followed, that same hatred has grown on the left,” he said in his statement. “It is the duty of all good people to fight this virus, and to do so before it is too late.”

Wakey, wakey….

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Things are popping off in the Netherlands.

The building used to be the town hall of Loosdrecht. Locals have spent weeks telling the government that they do not want it to be converted into a housing center for more illegal aliens.

ATQUE: “We Don’t Feel Safe Anymore”: Dutch Women March Against Migrant Centre

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As they do.

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In 2020, this man was arrested for shooting at cops. He was only sentenced to five years in jail.

According to police, that man is Tyler Brown, a convicted felon.

But he’s a Person of Color. Let’s not forget that.

Thank the Lord that most criminals/terrorists/leftists are horrible shots.

Thankfully, there were two good guys with guns to stop him, including a civilian (it is very hard to get a concealed carry license in the woke state of Massachusetts).

Don’t Californicate my Texas….

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In case Europe hadn’t already been completely overrun enough, there’s apparently a fresh batch of migrants ready to hit its shores!

Plevris issued a (seemingly empty) threat to migrants that, if any of them were found not to qualify for asylum, they would be detained and later turned away.

As if Greece — along with other European nations — hadn’t reached its limits for taking in migrants. Now they’re already at a breaking point, with few options for dealing with the crisis.

The Foundry.

Agitators shouted “fascist” and obscenities over the weekend outside a Portland, Oregon hotel where they believed FBI Director Kash Patel was staying, according to Fox 12 Oregon and several posts on social media. Patel was reportedly attending a friend’s funeral.

The agitators gathered outside the Sentinel Hotel in downtown Portland. Some of the videos were posted on social media on Saturday; others were posted on Sunday.

Leftists are never happy unless they are  peeing in somebody else’s soup.

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Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia in California, resigned after agreeing to plead guilty to acting as a foreign agent of China, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Prosecutors said Wang and an associate operated a website presenting itself as a news source for local Chinese communities, but in reality used to spread pro-Chinese propaganda between 2020 and 2022, including material that denied allegations concerning the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and was shared rapidly after contact with Chinese officials.

The Democrat mayor also communicated with Chinese officials and John Chen, a senior intelligence-linked figure previously convicted in the United States, and co-operated with Yaoning Mike Sun, who later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison for acting as an illegal foreign agent.

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, individuals who secretly act on behalf of foreign governments undermine democratic institutions, while officials said the case forms part of broader efforts to counter alleged Chinese influence operations in the United States.

City officials in Arcadia said the allegations were deeply troubling but emphasized that no city finances, staff, or decision-making processes were involved, noting that the conduct described occurred before Wang was sworn into office in December 2022. The FBI continues to investigate the case and related figures including John Chen and Yaoning Mike Sun, who have already received prison sentences.

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A new study on religious attitudes among young people in Vienna has triggered fierce political debate in Austria after researchers found that a significant proportion of Muslim youths place religious rules above the country’s laws.

The study, commissioned by the City of Vienna and based on interviews with 1,200 people aged between 14 and 21, found that 41% of Muslim respondents agreed with the statement that the rules of their religion stand above Austrian law. Among Christian respondents, the figure was 21%.

Researchers also found that 46% of Muslim youths surveyed believed people should be prepared to “fight and die” for their faith, compared with 24% of Christians.

In addition, 65% said Islamic rules should apply strictly to all aspects of daily life, while more than half supported Muslim women wearing headscarves in public.

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A newly elected Green Party councillor in the UK has sparked controversy after sharing footage of himself driving a Lamborghini shortly after winning his local election seat—drawing accusations of hypocrisy given his party’s policies on reducing car use and taxing drivers.

Mohammad Baghdadi Khan, who won the Halliwell ward in Bolton, Greater Manchester, posted a video showing him at the wheel of a Lamborghini Huracán Spyder, a high-performance sports car worth up to £270,000 (€311,000). The clip, which also included footage of his election win, was reportedly filmed at a wedding in 2023 where a convoy of luxury vehicles was used.

In addition to the Lamborghini footage, Khan also shared clips of himself driving a Mercedes with personalised number plates, a vehicle he reportedly used during his election campaign. During that campaign, he pledged to stand up for the people and support “greener spaces” while also backing higher taxes on the wealthy.

Rules are for thee but not for me.

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French authorities have arrested a 27-year-old Tunisian man suspected of plotting a jihadist-inspired attack in Paris, the national anti-terror prosecutor’s office said.

The suspect was detained on May 7th following a preliminary investigation into a possible “terrorist criminal conspiracy.” He was later placed in pre-trial detention. According to investigators, he had considered carrying out an attack on a Paris museum and targeting members of the Jewish community, although no specific site had been definitively selected.

Sources cited by French media reported that the Louvre museum was among the potential targets, along with areas linked to the Jewish community in the capital’s 16th arrondissement.

Quillette.

If the treatment of gender dysphoric youth were treated like any other medical topic, there would be little controversy about how patients should be cared for. Two years ago, Dr Hilary Cass, a former president of Britain’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, released an exhaustive report that examined the most reliable peer-reviewed research from around the world. She concluded that the laissez-faire policy of reflexively “affirming” gender-distressed minors, which has been ideologically fashionable since the mid-2010s, isn’t supported by science. She debunked the myth that puberty blockers are harmless drugs that merely hit the “pause” button on a child’s development; as well as the morbid propaganda claim that speedy “affirmation” is necessary to prevent gender-distressed individuals from committing suicide.

In the weeks that followed the report’s release, transgender activists—along with their allies in journalism, psychotherapy, and medicine—howled in outrage, insisting that Dr Cass’s analysis must somehow be flawed. For many in this camp, questioning the wisdom of medicalised gender transition is not only inherently pseudoscientific, but also indicative of transphobic bigotry.

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In July 1998, the Rome Statute created the legal basis for the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body designed to “guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice.” The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) was also created to initiate investigations and seek arrest warrants for anyone charged with crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction. Article 70 of the Statute empowers the Court to prosecute individuals for bribery, intimidation, or corrupt influence, but no one seems to have entertained the possibility that the prosecutor himself might be guilty of one or more of these offences. This oversight looks spectacularly naive in retrospect.

On 28 April, the Wall Street Journal reported allegations that the Qatari government had said it would “look after” ICC prosecutor Karim Khan if he indicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant. Khan sought arrest warrants for both men on 20 May 2024 and denies receiving any such assurances from Qatar or any other state prior to doing so. Arrest warrants were also sought for Hamas leaders, but not for the Iranian and Qatari officials who financed and armed the group for years. In November 2025, the Guardian reported that Qatar had allegedly hired a private intelligence firm in Britain to discredit a Malaysian ICC staffer who has accused Khan of sexual assault. If substantiated, this conduct could raise questions about the applicability of Article 70. Notably, Khan’s decision to pursue Israeli leaders for war crimes was taken shortly after the emergence of the assault allegations, which he also categorically denies.

Allegations like these highlight the threat that financial incentives and judicial activism can pose to the pursuit of international justice. The notion that international courts are impervious to foreign influence is a delusion that The Hague has nurtured for decades, and it helps to explain why the system has failed to deter the commission of atrocities. This is a problem of institutional design. These courts were forged in debates about competing state interests and their independence from the UN Security Council, which baked power politics and reputational management into their architecture from the outset. A decade ago, these courts were widely depicted as neo-colonial instruments, advancing Western political interests against African states under the guise of human rights. Today, they have overcorrected into postcolonial theory, and like virtually every other liberal institution in the modern West, they have been captured by self-destructive ideologies and hostile foreign interests.

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WhatCable explains cable speed, charging limits, e-marker data, and connected devices in plain English. No more guessing why a cable charges slow or refuses to drive your display.

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If you tossed something about LGBT folx and homeless addicts into this story, it’d be the most “California” article of all time.

I’m told Eileen, who is a U.S. citizen, is just as American as me!

ATQUE: Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang admits acting as Chinese spy, running fake news website with ex-lover in shocking plea deal  (New York Post)

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And who could blame her?

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has decided to skip out on the upcoming mayoral debate scheduled for Wednesday, according to debate organizers who posted on social media over the weekend.

Campaign spokesman Alex Stack said Bass will instead travel to Sacramento, where she will be “fighting for critical state funding for housing, homelessness, and Palisades recovery, and will also discuss the city and state partnership on the Olympics and World Cup,” according to City News Service.

“It’s time to move past debates,” Stack said on why the mayor pulled out of a scheduled debate with the primary election less than a month away.

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Well, aside from every Democrat elected to Congress and every member of the Congressional Black Caucus….

A pertinent 19 minute video is making the rounds today. It might be a commemorative effort to push someone somewhere into arresting this mass murderer before the statute of limitations expires on his pushing COVID protocols that were deliberately deadly, as well as his pushing the COVID vaccines.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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My understanding is that North Korean ballistic missiles might possibly be able to reach the Left Coast, if that.

I fail to see a down side to this development.

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Because, as we all know, refugees wherever found are TOTALLY the responsibility of the U.S. government—and the U.S. taxpayer.

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Think of it as evolution in action.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Democrats are scheming to pack a court after justices clearly upheld the law in opposition to their agenda.

No, it isn’t the U.S. Supreme Court, for once. Instead, it’s Virginia’s highest court—and Democrats’ lawless scheme is positively Machiavellian.

When the Virginia Supreme Court rightly struck down Old Dominion Democrats’ constitutional amendment on redistricting, Democrats responded by… scheming to effectively nuke the Virginia Supreme Court.

According to a bombshell report from The New York Times published Sunday, Democrats who represent Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives held a private discussion with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

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It’s time to dismantle one of the most degraded sectors in American higher education: schools of education. The colleges responsible for training and certifying the majority of our nation’s teachers have become factories for mediocrity and indoctrination—the embodiment of what Allan Bloom termed “the closing of the American mind.” States have both the authority and obligation to replace these monolithic institutions by promoting better teacher-prep pathways that are already proving their worth across the nation.

As recent graduates of Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, we believe that teachers must be more than competent technicians—they must deliberately form American citizens.

Today, however, schools of education are the chief culprits in the growing disquiet among pundits and everyday Americans about the value of the traditional four-year college experience. Graduates with bachelor’s degrees in education are among the lowest earners of any college major. Even more alarmingly, recent research shows their degrees aren’t worth what they paid and are often financed with loans.

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Alex from the Bronx is here to relate to black southerners.

AOC traveled to Atlanta this weekend to take the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church, former home to MLK Jr. and current home church of Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, in order to whip up racial tensions over redistricting.

Color of their skin? Awesome! Content of their character? Not so much….

Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Police in Toronto have arrested a man they say shot at “visibly identifiable members of the Jewish community” on two occasions a week apart.

Ruslan Novruzov, 18, is charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose in conjunction with the shootings, which took place on April 30 and Thursday, one week later.

In both incidents, people experienced minor injuries, according to the Toronto police. The shooting on Thursday targeted three people standing outside of Congregation Chasidei Bobov, an Orthodox synagogue.

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Documenting the exodus from Illinois.

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Democrats have gone into what party insiders openly describe as panic mode as Republicans suddenly see a clearer path to holding the House in 2026.

A series of court rulings on redistricting and voting rights has given the GOP a clear path to pick up at least 10 House seats, political experts say.

What only weeks ago appeared to be a growing Democrat advantage in the national redistricting battle has now dramatically reversed.

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New organized labor reforms signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last week require a majority of members to be present for teachers union certification or recertification votes, increase fines for illegal strikes, and establish merit-based pay for educators.

In Idaho, after July 1, teachers unions will be prohibited from collecting dues directly from members’ paychecks, using paid time off for union activities, or recruiting new members during school hours.

A similar law in Arizona, which also bans teacher strikes and prohibits organized labor members from using any school property—even email addresses—for union activities, will be decided on by voters in the November election.

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Bahrain’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday the arrest of 41 citizens, including multiple Shia religious leaders, over alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The ministry said security services uncovered the alleged network through “investigations, security reports, and previous Public Prosecution cases related to espionage involving foreign entities.” The detainees are accused of “espionage involving foreign entities and sympathy with blatant Iranian aggression.”

Around 30 Shia Muslim clerics were among the 41 arrested, as the Gulf monarchy intensifies a campaign of raids and arrests predominantly targeting Shia religious figures and seminary teachers in Bahrain.

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The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel (OPC), a state agency that represents its utility consumers, filed a complaint before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding PJM Interconnection, LLC’s plans to charge it $2 billion of the $22 billion it spent to upgrade its grid to accommodate increasing demand from data centers. According to the OPC’s press release, this $2 billion bill will cost the state’s consumers an extra $1.6 billion in the next ten years alone — that means an extra $823 million for residential (approx. $345 per customer), $146 million for commercial (approx. $673 per customer), and $629 million for industrial customers (approx. $15,074 per customer).

“Without FERC action, Maryland customers face paying billions for transmission infrastructure that PJM is advancing to benefit data centers,” said Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp. “PJM’s cost allocation rules are broken. Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects nor will they meaningfully benefit from them.”

PJM Interconnection, LLC is the United States’ largest electricity transmission company, and covers 13 states plus Washington, D.C. This includes Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, covering about 65 million people, or about 20% of the entire U.S. population. Some of these states, including Maryland, host a large number of data centers, so the firm needs to upgrade its infrastructure to meet projected demand from these power-hungry AI systems.

Why not let them provide their own power? Say, small nuclear reactors?

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Baylor College of Medicine researchers have found that the human brain is capable of sophisticated language processing while in an unconscious state from general anesthesia. The findings, published in the latest edition of Nature, challenge what we know about the role of consciousness and cognition, and could open new ways of understanding memory, language and brain-computer interfaces.

“Our findings show that the brain is far more active and capable during unconsciousness than previously thought,” said Dr. Sameer Sheth, professor and Cullen Foundation Endowed chair of neurosurgery and a McNair Scholar at Baylor. “Even when patients are fully anesthetized, their brains continue to analyze the world around them.”

Sheth, who is also a neurosurgeon at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, and his collaborators first recorded neural activity from hundreds of individual neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory, while patients were under general anesthesia during epilepsy surgery. Patients undergoing this type of surgery were sought after because it allowed researchers access to this particular part of the brain.

Using Neuropixels probes, a technology which had not been used in this part of the brain before, the team collected data on how the brain processed sound and language without conscious awareness.