But on that Tuesday in April 2022, a compound in the substance called mitragynine took McKibban’s life, an autopsy report later showed. //
an 'all-natural' supplement you can buy at...
5 everyday foods and drinks silently damaging your long-term health, say nutrition experts5 everyday foods and drinks silently damaging your long-term...
I'm a neuroscientist — this 'one-page miracle' can boost brain health, plus why I nicknamed my mind 'Hermie'I'm a neuroscientist — this 'one-page miracle' can boost brain...
Health
exclusive
Our sons died taking an ‘all-natural’ supplement you can buy at gas stations — people don’t realize it’s so addictive and dangerous
By Anna Medaris
Published Aug. 6, 2025, 8:00 a.m. ET
Today's Video Headlines
00:00
/
00:51
Months before Jordan McKibban collapsed in his bathroom and never woke up, the 37-year-old prepared smoked salmon and home-grown canned peppers to entertain his big, blended family in their quiet Washington state community.
Weeks before, he told his mom, Pam Mauldin, things were getting serious with the woman he was dating — his “one big desire” to have kids was finally in reach, Mauldin recalled.
Days before, he helped a friend plant a flower garden for a baby shower. “He loved life. He loved doing things outdoors,” Mauldin told The Post.
Advertisement
00:00
04:14
Then, on the day of his death, McKibban went to his longtime job at an organic food distributor. When he got home, he mixed a tablespoon of a powdered kratom supplement into his lemonade.
Jordan McKibban preparing meat at a campsite
11
Jordan McKibban died at age 37 while taking kratom, an “all-natural” supplement available online and in stores.
Courtesy Pam Mauldin
Large family group photo including
Jordan McKibban (center in a red baseball cap) and his mother (second from right)
11
Jordan’s mom, Pam Mauldin (second from right), spoke to The Post to warn other parents — and thinks kratom should be pulled from shelves.
Courtesy Pam Mauldin
Marketed as an “all-natural” way to ease pain, anxiety, depression and more, kratom can appeal to health-conscious people like McKibban, who Mauldin says wouldn’t even take ibuprofen for the arthritis in his hands.
Advertisement
Get great tickets to see your favorite teams play!
Sponsored by Vivid Seats
But on that Tuesday in April 2022, a compound in the substance called mitragynine took McKibban’s life, an autopsy report later showed.
When Mauldin broke into his bathroom after a call from her grandson that day, she found McKibban lifeless. She performed CPR on her own son and shielded her eyes when medics carried his gray body away.
Explore More
An image collage containing 3 images, Image 1 shows Frozen meals may be convenient, but many of these options contain high levels of sodium and unhealthy fats, experts say. (iStock), Image 2 shows Sweetened coffee drinks can contain more sugar than some desserts, an expert warned, Image 3 shows Potato chips are high in sodium and fat, which can contribute to high blood pressure if eaten daily, say nutritionists
5 everyday foods and drinks silently damaging your long-term health, say nutrition experts
An image collage containing 3 images, Image 1 shows Portrait of Dr. Daniel Amen, Image 2 shows Woman writing in a notebook, Image 3 shows Hands holding a small black dish of lion's mane mushrooms
I'm a neuroscientist — this 'one-page miracle' can boost brain health, plus why I nicknamed my mind 'Hermie'
Several dozen cases of Vibrio vulnificus and nine deaths have been reported so far this year across Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi.
How to protect yourself against flesh-eating bacteria — as deadly infection sweeps 5 states
“I’ve lost my son. I’ve lost my grandchildren that I could have had, I’ve lost watching him walk down that aisle, watching him have a life that I get to watch with my other kids. I’ve lost enjoying these years with him,” Mauldin said.
Advertisement
“I have to go to the cemetery, and I hate going to the cemetery. He shouldn’t be there,” she added.
From dizziness to nonresponsiveness
Kratom products — sold in powders, gummies and energy-looking drinks — come from a plant native to Southeast Asia and can act like a stimulant at lower doses and a sedative at higher ones.
“Kratom does act like an opioid, and people can become addicted to it and have withdrawal from it and overdose on it.”
Dr. Robert Levy, addiction and family medicine doctor
While they’re readily found online, in brick-and-mortar stores and even gas stations as catch-all solutions to everything from fatigue to opioid withdrawal, the Food and Drug Administration says kratom and its key components are “not lawfully marketed” in the US as a drug product, dietary supplement or food additive. //
Experts are especially concerned with a highly potent, highly addictive kratom offshoot called 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, which seems to have infiltrated the market in the past few years, said Dr. Robert Levy, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota who’s board-certified in both addiction and family medicine. //
just last week, the FDA recommended classifying 7-OH as an illicit substance.
“7-OH is an opioid that can be more potent than morphine,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, said in a press release. “We need regulation and public education to prevent another wave of the opioid epidemic.”
In the meantime, according to Levy, parents should be having open conversations with their kids about the appeals, dangers and addictive potential of kratom — and the fact that “all-natural” or “plant-based” doesn’t necessarily mean safe. “Arsenic is also from a plant,” he says.
Nearly 90% of aid trucks collected by the United Nations along Gaza’s border didn’t make it to their intended destination since mid-May due to looting from starving Palestinians or “forcefully armed actors,” officials said.
The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) found that of the 2,604 aid trucks that entered the war-torn enclave from May 19 to Aug. 5, only 295 vehicles, or 12%, were spared from theft or mass looting, according to the agency’s Monitor & Tracking Dashboard.
Israel has repeatedly blamed Hamas for looting aid trucks, however, the UNOPS report did not name //
Israel has repeatedly denied that its forces have fired on aid-seeking Palestinians, with the military claiming to have only fired warning shots after groups were spotted trying to approach the food sites before they opened. //
As it faces global backlash over the ongoing war, Israel has maintained that the death and suffering falls on Hamas, which has rejected cease-fire deals calling for the terror group to disarm and exit the Gaza Strip.
Hyman's 30-minute talk, while spellbinding, raised issues of feasibility that seemed insurmountable. Would audiophiles want to spend the time required to rip their favorite tracks to a computer's hard drive? And wouldn't a drive large enough to hold high-definition audio files be prohibitively expensive?
Only three years later, Hyman's dream has materialized. Hard-drive storage capacity per price point has jumped almost a hundredfold. Gracenote has become the international leader in digital media technology and services, providing complete management systems for digital media. There has been explosive growth in the number of online music vendors—iTunes.com, Rhapsody.com, Urge.com, and Napster.com, to name a few—that sell or rent downloadable music to music lovers.
With the new firmware I got control of the Roku M1000 from my laptop using SoundBridge Commander, which is handy if I'm at my laptop and out of the range of the remote. This software also displays what the VFD is displaying. I can't believe how awesome this device is!
There is a man who can mend Roku Soundbridges. He is called Pete Hillyer. You can contact him at
hillyp02-roku@yahoo.co.uk
I've had mine minded twice, and it cost about £30 plus postage.
You would cry too, if you were losing a compensation package bigger than the salary of the president of the United States. In 2022, CPB CEO Patricia Harrison’s compensation was $524,000, according to the CPB’ most recently available 990 tax exempt form. //
Each year, Congress gives CPB loads of federal taxpayer money, and CPB decides the amount to give to 1,581 public radio and television stations. But the Big Beautiful Bill trimmed CPB out of appropriations, meaning it gets zero money instead of the $1.07 billion it expected for 2026 and 2027. //
In 2022, CPB gave KSDP $211,000. The radio station’s total revenue was $265,000. The CPB portion could have been paid by Harrison’s salary alone for two years. The folks at KSDP might be angry to learn that their annual budget for the compensation packages for all employees combined that year, ($141,067), was slightly less than Harrison’s 2022 bonus ($144,645). At least one person on the KSDP staff has a second job.
If the CPB board really cared about keeping broadcasting viable in small towns like Sand Point, it would not have a huge, overpaid staff in Washington, D.C.
In 2022, CPB spent $19.3 million on salaries and benefits. At least 14 CPB employees that year had compensation packages worth more than $260,000. Of those, five employees were paid over $470,000. //
The Aleutian Islands are not a typical U.S. community and there KSDP radio may actually be a treasure to the 6,000 residents in its listening area, but in 2022 it only took in $1,650 in contributions; zero in membership drives; and just over $18,000 in “underwriting,” which is tax-free advertising. The station is almost fully subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. That is how it works at most public broadcast outlets.
U.S. military members, their family members, and other overseas citizens have been allowed to vote absentee since 1986 under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). But 38 states, like Georgia, and Washington, D.C. permit non-military citizens who have “never resided in the U.S.” to vote so long as they have a parent or legal guardian that was last registered in that state. Even if the voter’s parents no longer live there, their last registered address can still be used. Citizens currently living overseas can also vote using their last U.S. address of domicile, even if they no longer currently reside there or have any affiliation with the state. //
The legislation would amend UOCAVA to require that non-military overseas voters to prove they or a spouse or parent/guardian hold current residency in a state in which they are trying to vote. If a voter cannot prove a current residence of himself or his parents, spouse, or legal guardian in the state in which he is trying to vote, he will be able to vote as a federal-only voter in Washington, D.C.
TheAmerican1
10 hours ago
When my son was little, at bedtime, I would scoop him up, throw him on my shoulders, run up the steps, and toss him into bed. We did this for years.
And then one day we stopped. I don't remember the specific date. I suppose it was a matter of him getting too big.
But that's a bittersweet part of parenting. The special things you do with your kids? One day, you won't. There won't be any fanfare. It'll just stop. And all you'll have are memories.
My son's an adult now, and he lives far from us. We see him a couple times a year. Would we like to see him more? Of course. But he's happy and doing well and, most importantly, living a proper life and contributing positively to society.
Not a day passes when one of us doesn't use one of his toddler words -- the unique phrasing or terms that kids delightfully create -- and, thank goodness, we live in an age when he's only a FaceTime call away. So, in a way, he's still with us.
There was an old Army commercial with this tagline: "It's the toughest job you'll ever love." I think that applies to parenting, too. No, it's not easy. It's not supposed to be. Nothing worthwhile ever is.
So, yes, if you are a parent of young ones, I know precisely what you're going through. But as they say, "The days are long, but the years fly by." Yeah, that's spot-on. If you're a parent, you know how difficult it can be. But before you know it, there's your kid turning into a young adult, walking across the stage, diploma in hand, going to college, becoming an adult...
Being a good father is the most important thing I'll ever do.
Using the Sound Bridge Commander
SoundBridge Commander v1.0.1
Control your Roku SoundBridge from your Windows, Macintosh or Linux PC!
Control of the device can be done by faking a click on each of the buttons, or submitting a value in the case of the volume control. This can all be done via standard http POST commands.
First, the basic commands. The number after "x=" can vary, I think it's actually the x location on the button image where the mouse was clicked. That doesn't matter since each image only controls one function.
- Play
curl --data Play.x=1 http://192.168.1.45/Forms/SoundBridgeNP_1 - Pause
curl --data Pause.x=1 http://192.168.1.45/Forms/SoundBridgeNP_1 - Others
- Rinse and repeat for the remaining buttons on the page, if desired:
Prev
Stop
Next
RptOff
Shutoff
- Volume Control
For volume control, you POST a number between 0 and 100:
curl --data gPageVolume=80 http://192.168.1.45/Forms/SoundBridgeNP_2
I was rummaging around the other day and found my old streamer, a Roku SoundBridge M1000. This was Roku's first(?) product way back before there was any such thing as video streaming. I got it in 2005, so it's about 16 years old. It is long since abandoned, but I'm guessing if I hooked it up it would still work. I still have the original packing stuff, and bonus, an actual printed User Guide with detailed instructions, diagrams, screen shots, and everything.
While Russia frequently accuses the West of escalation, we look at all the times Russia has made nuclear threats against the West. //
... [List from 6/2024 -- 10/1999] ...
Practically, if Russia wanted to launch a nuclear attack, it wouldn't send a geriatric alcoholic out to make an announcement, and if we were going to attack Russia, we wouldn't announce submarine deployments in advance. With Russia's record in engineering and maintenance, there is a non-zero chance that its nuclear arsenal has been disabled by mice nesting in the controls. The fact is that Russia uses the threat of nuclear war as a frequent tactic to increase the sales of Depends in some parts of the West.
This is a list of Russia's threats to use nukes since the beginning of the Ukraine war and ending in June 2024.
... [List of 74 instances between 2/2022 - 6/2024] ...
A high-profile, public reaction to Russian threats has been needed for years. While we may not take Russia's bluster all that seriously, what we ignore is that Russia's threat messages aren't aimed at us. They are aimed at our allies or unaligned nations who see Russia threatening us while we do nothing. Hopefully, this will also be a sign to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the stories he read about Russia's influence over President Trump in the Washington Post were fake news and a warning to the Russian simps who have been invited into the Defense Department in large numbers that it's time to choose a side. //
KJSpeed
3 days ago
It should be interesting watching Trump's enemies try to accuse him of being "Putin's Puppet" while simultaneously shrieking that he's pushing us headlong into WWIII by standing up to Putin. Cognitive dissonance overload!!!
The designers of the NTSC system knew theoretically that it would be possible to properly separate Y and C, but did not have a cost-effective way to do it in the early years. In fact, the more sophisticated methods of separation through "comb filters" did not arrive in the market until the late 70's, more than 20 years after the system was adopted.
So, early television receivers used the notch/bandpass filter system for Y/C separation because the method is low cost and easily implemented with reasonable results. In many situations, that approach is used today. In fact, most all of the digital decoders on the market automatically switch back-and-forth between notch/bandpass and combing as required. Watching a VHS tape? You'll most likely be operating in the notch/bandpass mode even if you have a comb filter in your display. Why is it called a notch/bandpass filter?
No cheating. Here's a simple math test for you.
A traveler must make a 60-mile round trip between two towns, Aliceville and Bobtown. The distance each way is 30 miles. Going from Aliceville to Bobtown, the traveler drives at exactly 30 miles per hour. By the time they reach Bobtown, they decide they want to average 60 miles per hour for the entire 60-mile journey.
Question: How fast must they drive on the return trip from Bobtown to Aliceville to achieve an overall average of 60 mph? https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1951494116488978447?t=hy7wFm-BLUY0FJnG3TN4jw&s=19 //
RubyPorto
•
7mo ago
•
Edited 7mo ago
Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Commenter Top 1% Commenter
To average 60mph on a 60 mile journey, the journey must take exactly 1 hour. (EDIT: since this is apparently confusing: because it takes 1 hour to go 60 miles at 60 miles per hour and the question is explicit about it being a 60 mile journey)
The traveler spent an hour traveling from A to B, covering 30 miles. There's no time left for any return trip, if they want to keep a 60mph average.
If the traveler travels 120mph on the return trip, they will spend 15 minutes, for a total travel time of 1.25hrs, giving an average speed of 48mph.
If the traveller travels 90mph on the return trip, they will spend 20 minutes, for a total time of 1.333hrs, giving an average speed of 45mph.
The first widespread success in curing HIV may come from children, not adults.
Vintage Wings of Canada is a not-for-profit, charitable organization with a collection of historically significant aircraft and is run entirely by volunteers. It is our mission to acquire, restore, maintain and fly classic aircraft significant to the early history of powered flight in Canada, focussing largely on the aircraft of the Second World War. We run education and flying programs with our own aircraft and in concert with the aircraft collection of our founder, Michael Potter. It is our goal to inspire and educate future generations about the historical significance of our aviation heritage and to demonstrate that these aircraft are more than just metal, fabric, and wood artifacts. We seek to keep the souls of these aircraft alive through the thundering sound of engines, the smell of leather, glycol, oil and sweat, as well as the laughter of their pilots as they dance with them in their natural element in the skies over Canada.
"AI solutions that are almost right, but not quite" lead to more debugging work.
The feathers can emit two frequencies of laser light from multiple regions across their colored eyespots. //
Peacock feathers are greatly admired for their bright iridescent colors, but it turns out they can also emit laser light when dyed multiple times, according to a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. Per the authors, it's the first example of a biolaser cavity within the animal kingdom.
As previously reported, the bright iridescent colors in things like peacock feathers and butterfly wings don't come from any pigment molecules but from how they are structured. The scales of chitin (a polysaccharide common to insects) in butterfly wings, for example, are arranged like roof tiles. Essentially, they form a diffraction grating, except photonic crystals only produce certain colors, or wavelengths, of light, while a diffraction grating will produce the entire spectrum, much like a prism.
Both are naturally occurring examples of what physicists call photonic crystals. Also known as photonic bandgap materials, photonic crystals are "tunable," which means they are precisely ordered in such a way as to block certain wavelengths of light while letting others through. Alter the structure by changing the size of the tiles, and the crystals become sensitive to a different wavelength. (In fact, the rainbow weevil can control both the size of its scales and how much chitin is used to fine-tune those colors as needed.).
Even better (from an applications standpoint), the perception of color doesn't depend on the viewing angle. //
quackmeister Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
8y
162
If this didn't already appear in a scene from the Incredibles set in the villain's palatial gardens, it should have. //
Chuckstar Ars Legatus Legionis
22y
35,919
Gives me an opportunity to link to my favorite video of a wild peacock in action. In case anyone wondered if the peacock's tail really acted as a proxy that the individual had to be fit enough to simply survive carrying such a thing around (if the embedded time stamp doesn't work, the action starts at 1:15):