Main Points of Jonathan Alpert's Article "Is 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' Real?"

From Grok.com: 

Jonathan Alpert, a Manhattan-based psychotherapist, argues in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece (published around early November 2025) that "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS)—a term often used dismissively in political discourse—is a legitimate psychological phenomenon he observes in his clinical practice. Drawing from his experiences treating patients, Alpert frames TDS not as mere partisanship but as a form of obsessive preoccupation akin to anxiety disorders or OCD-like behaviors. Below are the article's key points, based on its core arguments and examples:

• TDS as a Real Psychological Pathology: Alpert asserts that TDS is not hyperbole but a "profound pathology" manifesting as hyperfixation on Donald Trump, leading to irrational emotional distress. He describes it as the "defining pathology of our time," where patients exhibit symptoms like restlessness, sleep disturbances, and trauma-like responses triggered solely by Trump's image, name, or news coverage.
• Prevalence in Clinical Practice: He claims that approximately 75% of his patients present with TDS symptoms, often within minutes of starting sessions. This widespread occurrence, particularly in a liberal-leaning area like Manhattan, underscores its impact on mental health, with patients seeking therapy explicitly for Trump-related distress.
• Specific Symptoms and Triggers: Common manifestations include inability to sleep, feeling "traumatized" by Trump, and compulsive checking of news for Trump-related content, which exacerbates anxiety. Alpert shares an anonymized example of a patient who couldn't enjoy a vacation because seeing Trump on her device caused immediate triggering, illustrating how TDS disrupts daily life and enjoyment.
• Beyond Ideology: A Mental Health Issue: Initially skeptical and viewing it as ideological bias, Alpert evolved to see TDS as unhealthy fixation on a single figure, regardless of political validity. He emphasizes that such obsession—where Trump dominates thoughts and emotions—is maladaptive and requires therapeutic intervention to restore balance, rather than being dismissed as "normal" political disagreement.
• Call for Awareness and Treatment: Alpert urges greater recognition of political obsessions in mental health discussions, suggesting therapy techniques like cognitive reframing to help patients detach from the fixation. He warns that ignoring TDS could worsen societal polarization, positioning it as a broader cultural symptom needing professional address.

The article blends clinical anecdotes with broader commentary, sparking debate (e.g., criticism for potentially breaching patient confidentiality or politicizing therapy). Alpert's Fox News appearance around the same time amplified these ideas, but the WSJ piece focuses more on professional insights than partisan rhetoric. 

Source: Is 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' Real? 

Definitely it is a mental disorder. The people with the disorder seriously need help. See the link below for why.

Therapist says he received threats after calling ‘Trump derangement syndrome' real 'pathology'

You’ve probably never heard of terahertz waves, but they could change your life

 From PopSci.com (Mar. 22, 2022):

There’s a gap on the electromagnetic spectrum where engineers can not tread.

The spectrum covers everything from radio waves and microwaves, to the light that reaches our eyes, to X-rays and gamma rays. And humans have mastered the art of sending and receiving almost all of them.

There is an exception, however. Between the beams of visible light and the blips of radio static, there lies a dead zone where our technology isn’t effective. It’s called the terahertz gap. For decades now, no one’s succeeded in building a consumer device that can transmit terahertz waves.

“There’s a laundry list of potential applications,” says Qing Hu, an electrical engineer at MIT.

But some researchers are slowly making progress. If they stick the landing, they might open up a whole new suite of technologies, like the successor to Wi-Fi or a smarter detection system for skin cancer.

The mystery of the terahertz

Look at the terahertz gap as a borderland. On the left side, there are microwaves and longer radio waves. On the right side lies the infrared spectrum. (Some scientists even call the terahertz gap “far infrared.”) Our eyes can’t see infrared, but as far as our technologies are concerned, it’s just like light.

Radio waves are crucial for communication, especially between electronic devices, making them universal in today’s electronics. Light powers the optical fibers that underpin the internet. These realms of technology typically feed off different wavelengths, and uneasily coexist in the modern world.

But both realms struggle to go far into the terahertz neutral zone. Standard electronic components, like silicon chips, can’t go about their business quickly enough to make terahertz waves. Light-producing technologies like lasers, which are right at home in infrared, don’t work with terahertz waves either. Even worse, terahertz waves don’t last long in the Earth’s atmosphere: Water vapor in the air tends to absorb them after only a few dozen feet.

There are a few terahertz wavelengths that can squeeze through the water vapor. Astronomers have built telescopes that capture those bands, which are especially good for seeing interstellar dust. For best use, those telescopes need to be stationed in the planet’s highest and driest places, like Chile’s Atacama Desert, or outside the atmosphere altogether in space.

The rest of the terahertz gap is shrouded in mist. Researchers like Hu are trying to fix this, but it isn’t easy. [read more]

Mystery Object Blurs Line between Neutron Stars and Black Holes

 From Scientific American.com (June 30, 2020):

For more than a decade astrophysicists have wondered why nature appears to show an odd restraint in the way it slays stars. In life, they range from pip-squeaks to behemoths. Small ones simply burn out and fade away, but something more curious happens to the jumbo-size variety. When such a star dies, its great bulk causes its innards to implode as a core-collapse supernova. The process sparks a cataclysmic explosion and compresses some of the remains into astrophysical exotica—often a neutron star or, for the very heaviest suns, a black hole. Yet a pronounced rift appears to divide the weight classes of these two types of massive stellar corpses. Although astronomers have spotted neutron stars weighing up to around two solar masses and black holes as light as five, middleweight cadavers have gone entirely missing—until now.

In June 2020 the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration announced the first conclusive detection of a stellar remnant falling into the so-called mass gap between neutron stars and black holes. After months of calculations, researchers at LIGO and the Virgo gravitational-wave detector in Italy concluded that such waves rippling through Earth in August 2019—an event dubbed GW190814 that was initially classified as a black hole consuming a neutron star—actually came from a 23-solar-mass black hole swallowing a mysterious 2.6-solar-mass object. Whether the smaller body is the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole—or a truly exotic beast, such as a star made of particles distinct from those of normal stars—its existence suggests that the theories describing the most extreme stellar fates need updating.

“I would rank this as definitely the most exciting announcement we’ve seen from LIGO since the original binary black hole discovery and then the first detection of a neutron star collision,” says Duncan Brown, a gravitational-wave astronomer at Syracuse University, who was not involved in the research. “We’re probing a new piece of astrophysical understanding of the universe.”

The new finding hints that the cosmos may enjoy a wider freedom in how it disposes of stars than researchers had supposed. Whether that leeway means atomic building blocks have enough brawn to support more monstrous neutron stars or that supernovae can forge tinier black holes, LIGO’s detection shrinks the gulf between those two most plausible scenarios.

“The idea of a mass gap as a true gap with nothing in it, I think, is getting progressively destroyed,” says Philippe Landry, a LIGO member at California State University, Fullerton. “This is going to be one nail in the coffin.”

From a fundamental physics perspective, the line separating neutron stars from black holes is razor-thin. If you toss an apple onto a neutron star at the limit of what its constituent neutrons can bear, it will abruptly collapse into a black hole. The heftiest known neutron star weighs 2.14 times the mass of our sun. And nuclear theorists suspect the objects can grow somewhat heavier, with the most optimistic models putting the complete breakdown of matter at 2.5 solar masses. Based on such theories, the LIGO collaboration calculated that the chance of the lighter partner in GW190814 being a neutron star is less than 3 percent. A neutron star that heavy, Landry says, would be a “complete game changer.” [read more]

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, known for brutal crackdowns against political opposition, dies at 63

 

From NBC News.com (May 20, 2024):

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, known for enforcing brutal crackdowns on political opposition and seen as a potential successor to the supreme leader, has died in a helicopter crash landing in the country’s north, state media reported Monday. He was 63 years old.

Raisi, a conservative hard-line cleric, took office in August 2021 after several popular candidates were disqualified from the election, which had historically low turnout. He wore a black turban, symbolic of those who are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

His tenure included a crackdown on mass protests after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed in 2022, the enforcement of a strict women’s dress code, increased enrichment of uranium after the U.S. withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal and increased military tensions with Israel and the West as the regime supported Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Raisi was sometimes notably referred to as the “Butcher of Tehran,” as activists accused him of being one of the four judges who oversaw the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 after the Iran-Iraq war. Iran has never acknowledged what has been described as a massacre of an estimated 2,800 to 5,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch.

“As deputy prosecutor general of Tehran,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in a 2019 sanctions announcement, “Raisi participated in a so-called ‘death commission’ that ordered the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.”

In 2021, when Raisi was asked about his alleged involvement in the 1988 mass executions during his first news conference as president-elect, he described himself as a “defender of human rights.”

State media reported early Monday that rescuers found "no sign of life" in the wreckage of the helicopter that made a "crash landing" Sunday. Search-and-rescue teams deployed to the scene took hours to reach the crash site, delayed by heavy fog and bad weather.

Raisi was returning with a government delegation that had attended the inauguration of a dam on the border with Azerbaijan.

Two helicopters traveling with Raisi made their destination unharmed.

Though state news aired prayers for Raisi and others following the crash, he is despised by many Iranians in the country and around the world for the government’s brutal crackdown on the country’s 2022 women-led protests and Iran’s dire economic situation.

In 2017, he lost the presidential election to Hassan Rouhani, who was elected to a second term by a wide margin. Rouhani, who had run on a promise to reduce Iran’s diplomatic and economic isolation, was banned this year by Iran for running for the Assembly of Experts, which appoints and can dismiss the supreme leader, Reuters reported.

In 2021, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard urged an investigation of Raisi for his alleged “crimes against humanity” while he was head of the judiciary.

Under Raisi’s watch, Callamard said, Iranian authorities killed hundreds of people with impunity, “subjecting thousands of protesters to mass arrests and at least hundreds to enforced disappearance, and torture and other ill-treatment during and in the aftermath of the nationwide protests.”

“Ebrahim Raisi’s rise to the presidency follows an electoral process that was conducted in a highly repressive environment and barred women, members of religious minorities and candidates with opposing views from running for office,” Callamard said.

In 2022, the United Nations’ human rights office opened an investigation into the violent suppression of protesters who took to the streets following Amini’s killing. She died after morality police detained her for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly and failing to adhere to the dress code. [read more]

Hell reclaims one of its own. Say hello to Hussein, Stalin, Mao, Hitler and other psychos like you. I'm sure you'll have things in common with them. Definitely no rest in peace for you.

Another article on his death:

Fireworks and dancing as Iranians defiantly celebrate Raisi’s death

Palestine Fails the Test of Statehood

 From The Gateway Pundit.com (May 17, 2024):

There are four conditions for statehood; Palestine arguably meets one of them.

The most widely accepted definition of a sovereign nation is found in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which was adopted at the Seventh International Conference of American States in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1933. The Montevideo Convention lays out the criteria for statehood, including a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. These criteria are widely accepted as the basic requirements for statehood in international law.

1. Defined Territory: The entity seeking statehood must have a clearly defined territory over which it exercises sovereignty. Palestine does not meet this criterion. The original mandate granted it the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. However, these territories are not contiguous, and the Palestinians are demanding more territory, including the whole of Jerusalem. Hamas, moreover, wants all of Israel. Thus, there is no clearly defined territory for Palestine, and even the Palestinians have not agreed on what their territory should be.
2. Permanent Population: The entity must have a permanent population residing within its defined territory. This is the only criterion that Palestine more or less meets, as Gaza and the West Bank do have a permanent population. However, the phrase ‘within its defined territory’ suggests that the territory of Palestine would need to be clearly established first before it can be said to have a permanent population within that territory.
3. Government: The entity must have a functioning government capable of exercising control and authority over its territory and population. Palestine fails this test. Power in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is divided among three entities: the Palestinian Authority, the terrorist organization Hamas, and the state of Israel. Generally, the Palestinian Authority exerts control over the West Bank, Hamas over Gaza, and Israel over both. Therefore, it cannot be said that Palestine has a functioning government.”
4. Capacity to Enter into Relations with Other States: The entity must possess the capacity to enter into relations with other states, indicating its independence and sovereignty. Palestine does not have the authority to enter into international agreements or treaties. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), previously designated as a terrorist organization, represents Palestine at international bodies but does not hold memberships or voting rights in those bodies. For example, the PLO has permanent observer status at the UN.

These criteria are widely recognized as the fundamental requirements for statehood in international law. Most countries and international organizations adhere to the principles laid out in the convention. Additionally, the criteria specified in the convention are commonly used by governments, legal scholars, and international bodies to determine the statehood of entities seeking recognition as sovereign states. Therefore, the definition provided by the Montevideo Convention is broadly accepted by the international community.

UN members recently voted to recognize Palestine. According to the UN Charter, “States are admitted to membership in the United Nations by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.” However, as a member of the Security Council, the US exercised its veto power, preventing Palestine’s admission.

The United Nations (UN) does not have an official definition of statehood, as it is not explicitly defined in the UN Charter. Instead, the UN generally follows the criteria outlined in the Montevideo Convention. Additionally, the UN has three more requirements for membership.

1. Peace-loving State: The applicant must be a peace-loving state that is able and willing to carry out the obligations contained in the United Nations Charter. The Hamas attacks on Israel, as well as numerous other attacks over the past decades, and the PLO attacks that date back even further, disqualify Palestine.
2. Recommendation by the Security Council: The application for membership must be recommended by the UN Security Council, requiring at least nine out of fifteen votes, including the concurring votes of all five permanent members (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China). Palestine failed this requirement due to a US veto.
3. Approval by the General Assembly: Following the Security Council’s recommendation, the application must be approved by a two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly. Palestine passed this test in the recent UN vote. However, the veto power of the US overrode the vote.

In conclusion, Palestine is not a state. It meets possibly only one of the four criteria under the Montevideo Convention and one of the three criteria under the UN. Ultimately, the US can exercise its veto power. Pro-Palestine protestors need to read the requirements of statehood and understand that their outrage has been misguided. [source]

The author makes the case well. From the UN's own criteria, it doesn't look like Palestine is a state.

AI Photo Editing and the Blurring of Fact and Fantasy

 From Breakpoint.org (Dec. 5, 2023):

One of the best features of our smartphones is the ability to apply a few tweaks to our photos before sending them to relatives or sharing them on social media. Using a phone’s built-in tools, we can bump up the brightness or fix red eye, with the desired result of a photo that looks more like the real-life moment when we snapped it. Of course, these same tools can now deliver photos even “better” than what we saw in real life. We can even create moments that didn’t happen in real life.

Is it okay to pass those off as real? What is the boundary between fiddling with a photo and faking one? Does it even matter?

Such questions will soon be forced on us through the integration of artificial intelligence with smartphones. Popular figures on Instagram have already demonstrated how easy it is to alter a mood or look, airbrushing a photo of a crying woman, for instance, into a beaming and happy version of herself. Images entirely generated by AI, often incorporating real people’s likenesses, are becoming nearly indistinguishable from photos.

Writing recently at The New York Times, tech editor Brian Chen described how devices like Google’s Pixel 8 come with an AI-powered “Magic Editor,” a tool that can remove and add objects, move subjects around, and even stitch together elements from multiple photos into a new one. The result is imagery that is partially make-believe and, though it comes from the camera app and is stored with other “photos,” can no longer strictly be called photography. These snapshots of alternate realities fudge the truth in front of your lens, which is the point, since they’re closer to “exactly the photo you want.”

According to Ren Ng, a computer science professor at Berkeley, this means that “[a]s we go boldly forth into this future, a photo is no longer a visual fact.” AI-powered photography and editing means that people will “increasingly have to question whether what they see in their images is real—including photos from loved ones.” Of course, this goes further than just personal photos, and will contribute, Ng thinks, “to the spread of fake media online when misinformation is already rampant and it’s hard to know what to trust.”

Last month, in fact, Hamas falsely accused Israel of faking images of atrocities using AI. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to see how future conflicts will be sparked by a convincing image posted online.

Increasingly, the fundamental worldview question of our age is “What is real?” Fake photos, artificial wombs, and AI chatbots posing as friends are just a few examples of technology that is challenging our understanding of reality, including our understanding of who we are and why and even whether we need each other.

Christians should have a clear answer. Nonnegotiable purposes and relationships have been built into creation by God, things humans were designed to pursue and steward in particular ways. This is not an infinitely malleable world. We are not infinitely malleable creatures, able to invent and reinvent ourselves as technology permits. This applies both to big changes like amniotic pods replacing mothers as well as seemingly trivial changes like “photography” tools.

Here are two principles to keep in mind as we “go boldly forth into this future” of AI, smartphones, and photography.

First, we should never lie, not even with AI. That means we need to define the term “photograph.” Is it a shared visual fact, a representation of reality that can establish everything from family memories to journalistic truth, or is it an idealized digital painting? We shouldn’t get in the habit of passing one off as the other.

Second, we shouldn’t look to technology to replace human ability. Somewhere between using AI to edit out a trash can in a family photo and using it to create a fake family member for Instagram, a moral line is crossed. That line is on a slope, and we are about to find out just how slippery it is. Planting your feet firmly and intentionally now is a good idea.

Christians should be pro-technology and pro-human. God gave humans the ingenuity to make such tools, and they can be used to glorify Him and love others. However, tools—like their users—need a purpose grounded in God’s design for reality. The moment our tools begin using us, or severing our relationship with that reality, something has gone wrong.

We need wisdom in the days ahead, not just artificial intelligence. [source]

Good principles to live by. 

When Intelligence Is Stupid

From R. J. Snell on The Public Discourse.com (July 10, 2022):

I’ve long engaged a group of close friends in political and theological discussion. As it happens, two of us agree on most topics and ally against the others. Mostly in banter, although not entirely so, we refer to ourselves as “Team Intelligence.” It’s friendly and jocular, even if somewhat ridiculous.

Who could be against intelligence? Who would wish to be dimwitted or slow; or worse, to be thought dimwitted and slow?

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes intelligence or understanding (nous) as the intellectual virtue by which we apprehend first principles. Such principles are known, but as first, they cannot themselves be demonstrated or based on other more fundamental premises. The intellect grasps them as true by an insight that is neither an intuition nor a conclusion. Thus, all other theoretical reasoning depends on intelligence, which provides fundamental principles.

Nonetheless, it is obvious to any person of experience that intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom, morality, or even basic decency. The intelligent person may turn out worse than the dull precisely because he is clever and scheming. Just as one eventually concludes that interesting people are fine but solid and serious people make better friends, perhaps maturity requires moderating our admiration for the intellectuals, the clerks, and the clever types.

If honorable stupidity is a weakness of understanding, the dishonorable version “is by far the more dangerous.” It is not the absence of intelligence so much as “failure of intelligence.” Intelligence is present but out of balance and “misshapen and erratically active,” diseased in some manner. The “higher stupidity” is a “misculture” causing not dullness of mind but a kind of blindness or refusal to see.

Musil suggests three primary qualities of this kind of intelligent stupidity. First, it claims accomplishment and facility in matters beyond its competence. Second, it gives way to emotions at the expense of reason. Third, it is clever enough to invent rationalizations for its views, no matter how bizarre the view or silly the excuse. As a result, intelligence does not orient toward true knowledge of first principles and reality, as in Aristotle’s vision, but confuses the spirit. It results in a flight from reality, with all the cultural and spiritual pathologies attendant on living in an ersatz reality. Of course, given the unity of the human being, stupidity of this sort affects sensibility, causing taste and emotions to unmoor. Such intelligence becomes a dangerous disease of the mind and “endangers life itself.” [read more]

The difference between intelligence and wisdom. Aristotle was talking about wisdom.