Dec. 10, 2025 THE MENTAL FORECAST A new category of threat has entered human experience — not catastrophic or dramatic, but ambient, continuous, and built into the architecture of digital life. Neuroscience shows that even the anticipation of potential danger suppresses parietal-occipital alpha and central mu rhythms, preparing the organism for defensive action and heightening responsivity in individuals with elevated anxiety traits (Mirifar et al., 2025). In ancestral conte

Dec. 9, 2025 Digital platforms have perfected a class of design strategies that function less as tools and more as behavioral engines . What appears as a simple interface — an infinite scroll, an auto-play button, a vibrating notification — actually operates as an invisible governance system shaping vigilance, micro-arousal, and self-doubt. These techno-design pathologies exploit intermittent reinforcement schedules and frictionless loops described extensively in the behavior