All posts tagged: spreading

Your Teenager May Be Spreading Himmler’s Favorite Myth

Your Teenager May Be Spreading Himmler’s Favorite Myth

Published by José Betancourt

Heinrich Himmler and other Third Reich occultists in the 1930s latched onto the strange idea that the Aryan race was not the product of evolution but descended from semidivine beings who left the heavens and established a secret civilization on Earth, possibly beneath Central Asia. Himmler, the head of the SS, was so enthralled by the possibility of what he considered celestial proof of the superiority of the white race that he provided funding for an SS expedition to Tibet in 1938 in the hope of locating his utopia, according to Black Sun, a 2001 history of Nazi occultism by the British historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. Almost a century later, this idea of a lost Aryan civilization, called Agartha, has caught on again, this time with teenagers posting memes online. If you’re older than 25, you likely missed it. But over the past year, memes about Agartha—a mystical, underground city in the center of the Earth full of flaxen-haired, blue-eyed people—kept going viral and have become a staple of the youth internet. If you search for …

Mpox may be spreading asymptomatically, greatly increasing its threat, finds new study

Mpox may be spreading asymptomatically, greatly increasing its threat, finds new study

Published by Sam Flores

Mpox was first detected in the late-1950s, and there have been sporadic outbreaks of the virus in the years since. The largest outbreak to date began in the summer of 2022, a variant of the virus known as clade II spread through the Western world, including in Britain, the US, and large parts of Europe, mainly between men who have sex with men. At least 114,000 people have been infected with the variant in the last four years, 220 of which have died. More recently, a new variant of the virus, clade 1b, emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in late 2023 after undergoing a rare mutation. The virus spread rapidly through the war-torn DRC and the exact figures have still not been verified, but it is thought that there were at least 71,000 cases and almost 2,000 deaths – mainly in young children with weakened immune systems from malnutrition and the impact of other diseases like measles and malaria. The variant has also been detected in several other countries, including Britain, the …

What Is the ‘Super Flu’ That Is Spreading in Europe and the United States?

What Is the ‘Super Flu’ That Is Spreading in Europe and the United States?

Published by skeptic

The spread of influenza became more severe this fall, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has designated the 2024-25 flu season as the most severe season since 2017-18. In the UK, the spread has begun earlier than at any time since 2003-04. Against this backdrop, some media outlets have begun using the term “super flu.” However, this term is not an official medical term. The actual name is “subclade K,” a new variant of influenza A H3N2. This variant has multiple mutations in a protein on the surface of the virus called hemagglutinin, making it antigenically different from the variants used in existing vaccines. This allows it to partially evade immunity acquired through previous infection or vaccines, making people more susceptible to infection. Genetic analysis by the UK Health Security Agency has revealed that 87 percent of H3N2 viruses detected since late August 2025 are subclade K. The Outbreak Began Earlier Than Usual The term “super flu” is not necessarily scientifically accurate. The H3N2 …

how the Kremlin is spreading its ‘west v the rest’ narrative to a global audience

how the Kremlin is spreading its ‘west v the rest’ narrative to a global audience

Published by Sam Flores

On a recent visit to India, Vladimir Putin personally announced the launch of RT India, a new Kremlin-funded broadcaster. It is part of the established RT (formerly Russia Today) network. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RT lost its license to broadcast in the UK, was banned in the EU and was forced to close in the US. But the closure of RT’s western broadcast operations did not mark the end for the network. It has been using creative tactics to reach western audiences, including allegedly covertly funding Conservative influencers in the US. As the launch of RT India shows, it has also been reorienting towards audiences further afield. Based on our prior research, we know how RT tailors its operations for different audiences, and how it adapts to changing political realities. This means we can start to unpack where the launch of RT India falls within Russia’s broader information strategy, and what we can expect from it. The first important point is that RT India didn’t come from nowhere. It’s part of Russia’s broader …