Bad medicine:

Quote:Orlando Bloom spends over $10,000 on blood filtering procedure to remove microplastics from body



The "Lord of the Rings" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" star posted a picture on his Instagram story from Clarify Clinics in London. The treatment, called Clari, involves a two-hour plasma exchange process where blood is drawn, separated into red blood cells and plasma, filtered, and returned to the body.

Clinic representatives say the procedure can remove between 90% and 99% of microplastics, as well as other so-called "forever chemicals." Bloom praised the treatment for helping to clear his body of "toxic chemicals."

The treatment itself is not without potential risks. Dr. Dan Baumgardt, a physician and senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, noted that any procedure involving blood filtration carries some chance of infection or other complications. At the same time, experts remain concerned that decades of widespread plastic use have significantly increased our exposure to microplastic particles.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/arti...00668.html

It's hard to see how this will remove the microplastics from the body since microplastics are not just in the blood, and IV bags are made of plastic.

By contrast, at some point in his life he's managed to break both of his legs, his left arm, his right wrist, several ribs, his back, and his skull on three different occasions. I'm sure that those breaks were healthy, all-natural fractures. In terms of unhealthy chemicals in his system, he might want to look at the tattoo ink that he had injected into his hide.

That said, he seems like a decent person, just a bit susceptible to the quackery.

I’m not ready to discard this. Chelation therapy (the real stuff, not the woo version) is a valuable medical procedure. This - or some version of it - may actually turn out to be a similar thing.

Boru

This bold theory says we're not Earth's first advanced civilisation

In 2018, physicist Prof Adam Frank and Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller, published a paper exploring whether modern scientists would be able to detect evidence of an advanced industrial civilisation that ended millions of years ago.

They named this possibility the ‘Silurian hypothesis’, after an advanced reptilian race from the BBC’s long-running sci-fi show Doctor Who. They concluded that while it's extremely unlikely, evidence for such a civilisation might be hard to find.

Focusing on a period between 400 million and 4 million years ago, the researchers pondered what evidence might be left behind by this hypothetical society.

In just a few hundred years, our industries have made a huge impact on the world’s climate and ecosystems. But if the human race vanished, within a few hundred million years, any direct evidence of our society – or a previous one like it – would almost certainly be gone.

Our biggest cities would disappear in a geological blink of an eye, due to erosion and tectonic movements.

Instead, scientists searching for a long-lost civilisation would need to look for the geological fingerprints of their activities.

We might expect them to leave markers in Earth’s rocks and sediments such as evidence of massive carbon emissions, global climatic changes and sea-level rise.

The problem is that in the geological record, climate change caused by a fossil-fuel burning civilisation is hard to distinguish from climate change caused by natural forces.

In fact, there's an eerie similarity between modern climate change and events in Earth's history known as 'hyperthermals'. One such even occurred around 55 million years ago, when global temperatures rose by up to 8°C (14.4°F), but hyperthermals tend to coincide with intense tectonic activity.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-eart...vilisation

(June 16, 2025 at 11:50 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: This bold theory says we're not Earth's first advanced civilisation

This rubbish clickbait has a dishonest title. The authors of the paper never suggested that their thought experiment should be taken to have any real-world implications. This isn't particularly strange science, it's simply badly misrepresented to the public in order to get higher advertizing revenue. This sort of promotion of scientific illiteracy should be punishable by having the perpetrator's teeth dragged across concrete.

Quote:In 2018, physicist Prof Adam Frank and Dr Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller, published a paper exploring whether modern scientists would be able to detect evidence of an advanced industrial civilisation that ended millions of years ago.

They named this possibility the ‘Silurian hypothesis’, after an advanced reptilian race from the BBC’s long-running sci-fi show Doctor Who. They concluded that while it's extremely unlikely, evidence for such a civilisation might be hard to find.

It's startlingly easy. You probably won't find much in the way of large structures, though where you do those will be a giveaway. Look instead to any depositional environment. Any river delta or oceanic floor will record a layer of burried micoplastics and fucked up isotopic signatures. Any landfills not erased by erosion will preserve an impressive record of our civilization, as will the shattered foundations of our cities. Even the ones that erode will leave an unmistakable mess downstream.

What are they using for energy? 2LOT demands that any energy use will leave residue or evidence. That may be chemical. That may be structural. That may be hydrogeographic. We see evidence of hominid species using technology as simple as burning wood or knapping blades. More complex technology should almost certainly leave more complex -- and more to the point, more durable -- evidence.

What are these supposed high-tech primordials using to power their civilization, and do we see things like effluents, pollutants, residuals, or evidence of the infrastructure that would be required by a high-tech society? You write: "But if the human race vanished, within a few hundred million years, any direct evidence of our society – or a previous one like it – would almost certainly be gone."

But the fact is that we humans, even with our limited scientific understanding, have found direct evidence, not of civilizations, but of invertebrates at least half-a-billion years old. Don't you think if we can find evidence of charnia as small as one centimeter that we might be able to find evidence of the energy-production plants that would be required to power any advanced civilization, which must of course be immensely larger?

Smells like bunk to me.

And since I find that clickbait rubbish so offensive:

You Won't Believe This One Weird Trick That Scientists Are Using to Help Predict The Future!!!

Low Cost Smart Pads!!!

Tardigrades
   In
      Space!

Meet Magnetic Fields In Your Neighborhood That Want To Connect

This Tiny Fish Is Louder Than An Elephant!!!

You Won't Believe What These Nematodes Do Next!

Do You Need To Check Uranus For Backward Moons???

Scientists Did What To The Axolotl?

Seriously though, we live in an age where scientific advance is finding things so strange and wondrous that it nearly defies reason. If you can't manage to sell people on these real-world miracles without further embellishing them then I have no sympathy for you whatsoever.

(June 17, 2025 at 3:13 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: What are they using for energy? 2LOT demands that any energy use will leave residue or evidence. That may be chemical. That may be structural. That may be hydrogeographic. We see evidence of hominid species using technology as simple as burning wood or knapping blades. More complex technology should almost certainly leave more complex -- and more to the point, more durable -- evidence.

What are these supposed high-tech primordials using to power their civilization, and do we see things like effluents, pollutants, residuals, or evidence of the infrastructure that would be required by a high-tech society? You write: "But if the human race vanished, within a few hundred million years, any direct evidence of our society – or a previous one like it – would almost certainly be gone."

But the fact is that we humans, even with our limited scientific understanding, have found direct evidence, not of civilizations, but of invertebrates at least half-a-billion years old. Don't you think if we can find evidence of charnia as small as one centimeter that we might be able to find evidence of the energy-production plants that would be required to power any advanced civilization, which must of course be immensely larger?

Smells like bunk to me.

Ever wonder what happens to a reactor core or a spent fuel pool after the grid fails and the last of the backup generators run out of diesel? Very Bad Things. Even assuming humanity doesn't extinguish itself with a thermonuclear firestorm, we're going to leave a pretty interesting layer of chemical and nuclear residue. Advanced civilizations don't sneak worth a damn.

(June 17, 2025 at 3:45 am)Paleophyte Wrote: Ever wonder what happens to a reactor core or a spent fuel pool after the grid fails and the last of the backup generators run out of diesel? Very Bad Things. Even assuming humanity doesn't extinguish itself with a thermonuclear firestorm, we're going to leave a pretty interesting layer of chemical and nuclear residue. Advanced civilizations don't sneak worth a damn.

Right, that infrastructure is not melting away any time soon, and I'm pretty sure we'd be able to detect and analyze remnants of nuclear or solar energy plants big enough to power a large energy ecosystem. The architecture as well may be discernible, even after a few million years; I mean, we analyze natural architecture such that we know a landslide happened here or the Chixulub comet left a deadly shower of fragments in modern-day North Dakota -- the latter evidence largely microscopic.

But somehow we can't see evidence of an energy-consumptive, advanced society and still, erm, want to believe.