Eine zweiwöchige, verdeckte Observation der Umweltaktivistin Cécile Lecomte (auch bekannt als „Eichhörnchen“) war rechtswidrig. Das hat das Verwaltungsgericht Hannover (VG) am Mittwoch geurteilt. Ebenso wie auch die Ausschreibung Lecomtes zur Fahndung, was einen Eintrag in das Informationssystem INPOL und ein detailliert geführtes Bewegungsprofil zufolge hatte.
Die Bundespolizei hatte die Maßnahmen etwa damit gerechtfertigt, dass sich die erfahrene Kletteraktivistin bei den Aktionen verletzten könnte. Das reiche in keiner Weise als Begründung aus, sagte das Gericht. Weiter erläutert das VG, inwieweit die Maßnahmen gegen Cécile Lecomte nicht rechtens waren: Eine Fahndungsausschreibung dürfe auf Seiten der Polizei nur zu einer Sensibilisierung bei einer Kontrolle führen und nicht zu einer so weit umfassenden Sammlung und Speicherung so vieler persönlicher Daten.
Cécile Lecomte erfurt 2015 in einem anderen Verfahren, dass sie bereits einmal als polizeilich „relevante Person“ eingestuft worden war. Im Zuge von polizeilichen Ermittlungen wird das bei politisch motivierter Kriminalität genutzt. Nach einer Prüfung wurde diese Einstufung durch das LKA Niedersachsen wieder gelöscht.
Friedlich gegen Atomkraft und fossile Energieträger
Lecomte hatte bei ihren Aktionen aber stets darauf geachtet, friedlich zu protestieren. Sie demonstriert bereits seit vielen Jahren etwa gegen Atomkraft und die Nutzung fossiler Energieträger.
Cécile Lecomte, die mittlerweile auf einen Rollstuhl angewiesen ist, äußert sich zu dem Urteil auf ihrer Webseite und vertritt dieselbe Argumentation wie das Gericht:
[D]ie Polizei argumentiert einerseits mit meiner Erfahrung und Expertise und ‚herausgehobener Stellung‘ in der Protestszene. Sie behauptet anderseits, dass ich mich verletzen kann, weil ich Schwerbehindert bin. Das ist zutiefst ableistisch und Unsinn! Klettern will gelernt sein. Wer nicht klettern kann, sollte es lassen. Das gilt auch für Polizeibeamt*innen.
Sie stellt aus ihrer Sicht klar, dass Klettern etwas ist, was man lernen kann und nichts mit der körperlichen Verfassung zu tun hat. Das Urteil des VG Hannover ist noch nicht rechtskräftig.
Three years ago, the Arch Linux community began a migration to the GitLab DevSecOps Platform to modernize our software development tooling and processes. We recently announced a major moment on that journey: migrating our entire packaging toolchain to Git and GitLab. This move completely reshaped our packaging workflow, tooling, and storage — the very backbone of our package creation process.
The move has been pivotal for our continued success as a project. Our package repositories contain nearly 14,000 packages at the time of this writing, and GitLab's collaborative features empower our package maintainers to seamlessly collaborate, promoting efficient and effective teamwork. Using GitLab as a central platform also enhances visibility across the project. We can now effortlessly trace the history of changes, collaborate on enhancements and bugs, and follow the evolution of each package — all in a single place.
I'm a devoted free open source software engineer and currently have the privilege of serving as the project leader of Arch Linux. In this article, I'll explain how and why we undertook this complex, but ultimately worthwhile, endeavor.
Understanding Arch Linux's infrastructure
To understand the complexity of this migration, you'll first need to understand the history of Arch's infrastructure.
Central to our distribution are our PKGBUILD packaging sources, which are the essential blueprints that shape each package installable with pacman from our official repositories. Previously, our packaging infrastructure relied on Subversion for managing our packaging sources.
For more than a decade of Arch Linux's development, Subversion served as a reliable companion for working with our packaging source code. However, the open source software development landscape has transformed significantly since the advent of the Arch Linux project; technologies have advanced and collaboration dynamics have evolved (note, for example, the popularization of DevOps processes and practices).
Recognizing the need to adapt and optimize, we started a journey that would shape the future of how members of the Arch Linux community work together. To enhance collaboration and pave the way for future improvements to Arch, we decided to undertake migration of our packaging sources to individual Git repositories, and we chose to host them with GitLab.
Migrating 14,000 Arch Linux packages
This would be no small task. Currently, the Arch Linux community maintains 13,930 installable packages, all of which are now managed in 12,138 individual Git repositories. But we knew the benefits would be worth the effort involved in such an enormous migration.
For example, one of the standout advantages of Git is its ability to empower packagers with a new level of insight into their work. The ease of inspecting local history would become a game-changer, especially as packaging evolved into a collective effort, with multiple maintainers collaborating to refine and enhance individual packages (Subversion requires a client-server connection to inspect the history).
But the decision to migrate was not just about adopting Git. It also reflected our aspiration to provide our community with an environment that fosters extensive collaboration. Our history with Subversion had shown its limitations in this regard (more on that in a moment). The synergy between Git packaging repositories and the GitLab platform was evident; it opened doors to enhanced collaboration, offered powerful version control features, and laid the groundwork for more efficient packaging processes.
The migration of Arch Linux's packaging infrastructure to GitLab was the pinnacle of several factors aligning perfectly. The need for a more robust collaboration platform, the growing prominence of Git, and the desire to utilize the benefits of modern version control converged to make this move a natural progression for Arch.
We decided it was time to get it done.
Three years and a weekend
Arch Linux has been gradually adopting and migrating operations to GitLab over the course of three years. Extending that migration to our packaging infrastructure was the next vital step of the process — and the pivotal moment of switching to GitLab hosting and workflow for packaging occurred within the span of a single weekend.
A change of this magnitude touches the very core of our distribution, and it was only possible with thorough, meticulous preparation. For weeks, our migration team diligently crafted a runbook that ensured every major aspect and change were considered, minimizing risk and boosting our confidence.
When our concentrated migration effort began, the migration team focused entirely on this rollout, everyone collaborating in a Jitsi video call with screen sharing. The strategic choice of a weekend for performing the migration aligned perfectly with our volunteer-driven community, offering sufficient time for a buffer and quick resolution to any unforeseen hiccups.
The first challenge was transferring our extensive Subversion history to GitLab. For some time, we had been running git-svn with a timer to be able to provide some packaging history to another repository. Our custom tooling made use of git-svn imports, which was a gigantic monorepo containing all packages as individual branches.
Our migration solution was a carefully crafted script that used git-filter-repo, of which we could run several instances in parallel and which also supported the ability to convert only repositories that changed since the last run (determined by deltas). The script also filtered history, commit messages, rewrote author data to incorporate our GitLab user handles, filtered unwanted files, and more. Additionally, we tagged all previous releases where we could determine the origin of the exact commit.
But the migration wasn't confined to a mere transfer of Subversion history to GitLab; it involved revisiting workflows, tools, and all software that interacted with the version control system. From redefining workflows to embracing new tools, every step was vital to ensuring that Arch Linux developed in a coherent way.
We also wanted to seize the moment as an opportunity to reimagine and revamp package maintainer tooling. So we also created pkgctl, a modern interface that not only refreshed and streamlined our tooling but also enhanced user and contributor experience.
Fortunately, the entire migration flowed seamlessly. By the end of the weekend, we had succeeded.
Benefits of a journey with GitLab
Our packaging migration was the latest milestone in Arch Linux's overall journey with GitLab. Migrating our packaging infrastructure to GitLab allows us to maximize and enjoy those improvements even more.
Since the Arch Linux community began migrating to GitLab in 2020, Arch maintainers and contributors have enjoyed a significantly improved experience interacting with and contributing to the project. The advantages not only enhance our current workflows but also open up exciting possibilities for the future.
Here's a rundown of the benefits we've seen from our overall migration so far.
Deeper collaboration
Before the migration, for example, lack of a dedicated collaborative platform for our packaging sources posed challenges to both users and package maintainers. While Flyspray, our bug tracker, was valuable, its scope was limited to tracking issues rather than facilitating meaningful collaboration. Proposed changes were often submitted as patch files in attachments, resulting in a cumbersome experience for users suggesting improvements and maintainers reviewing these changes.
The process of iterating through these patch files was tedious because we lacked the ability to comment on specific lines (not to mention the ability to discuss diverse sub-topics in individual threads).
Today, GitLab's standard merge request feature has improved this process dramatically. It helps us collaborate smoothly, allowing threaded discussions, precise comments, and code suggestions on individual code segments. Although merge requests are a simple, staple feature, their impact on streamlining our processes is invaluable, serving as the bedrock of GitLab's collaborative strength.
The ability to seamlessly integrate issue tracking and merge requests within the same platform fosters a more cohesive and efficient workflow for our entire community. We're looking forward to tracking and managing packaging-related issues, bugs, and enhancements directly within GitLab soon.
Better automation
Our use of GitLab CI/CD has played a crucial role in automating our development work across our software projects.
We utilize CI/CD pipelines for everything from running tests to auditing dependencies—even publishing release artifacts, such as Rust crates, automatically using a tag pipeline. The efficiency we gain through this functionality is invaluable for ensuring the integrity and quality of our projects. We've realized some security improvements, too. Automating our usage of dependencies means we become aware of tracked security issues in our software projects used dependencies via commit pipelines, as well as scheduled pipelines (so we can bump and potentially deploy/release our software projects in case its necessary).
Adopting GitLab has helped us better serve our community. The Service Desk feature has emerged as a game-changer, offering a streamlined channel to manage specific user requests. This integration with GitLab enhances the workflow without sacrificing overview.
And recently, we've significantly increased our use of GitLab Pages. We rely on Pages for publishing documentation, monthly reports, our Web Key Directory and static sites, and we're enthusiastic about expanding its application in the future.
More than new tools
Arch Linux's migration wasn't just about adopting the latest tools. Our motivation for migrating — and the positive consequences of the upgrade — reflect the values of open source communities like ours, where working together is essential for moving forward. By adopting GitLab, Arch Linux is improving our project's overall atmosphere, creating a space where contributions are welcomed, reviewed, and integrated more easily, and in a way that conforms to contemporary best practices.
We're proud to be GitLab Open Source Partners, and we extend our gratitude to GitLab for providing a platform that seamlessly aligns with our vision.
Der Ukraine-Krieg hat zu Verwerfungen auch unter Linken geführt. Was tun gegen Militarisierung nach innen und außen? Ein Ratschlag in Berlin gab dazu wichtige Anregungen
8. September 1943. Kaum jemandem in Deutschland wird dieses Datum etwas sagen. An diesem Tag schloss Italien einen Waffenstillstand mit der der Anti-Hitler-Koalition. Für das Naziregime war dies eine besondere Schmach. War das Mussolini-Regime doch Vorbild für die NS-Bewegung und spätestens seit 1935 enger Verbündeter.
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Dass Italien nun ausscherte, lag an den Machtkämpfen im herrschenden Regime nach den ersten Niederlagen des Bündnisses mit Deutschland. Die deutsche Wehrmacht griff nun direkt in Italien ein, Mussolini wurde nun als Regent eines deutschen Marionetten-Regimes wieder eingesetzt und viele der ehemals verbündeten Soldaten wurden zur Zwangsarbeit verpflichtet.
Im Berliner Bezirk Schöneweide erinnert eine Gedenkstätte an die lange wenig bekannte Geschichte der Zwangsarbeit für die deutsche Industrie. Davon profitierten auch Rüstungskonzerne wie Rheinmetall. Deshalb nahmen die antimilitaristische Initiative Rheinmetall Entwaffnen und die Organisation Migrant Strikers Berlin, die Lohnabhängige aus anderen Ländern mobilisiert, den 80. Jahrestag des Beginns der Zwangsarbeit für tausende italienische Soldaten zum Auftakt für ein antimilitaristisches Wochenende.
Hier saßen nicht Linke aus Deutschland zusammen, die sich über ihre Haltung zum Krieg in der Ukraine streiten, wie das in den letzten 18 Monaten häufig vorgekommen ist. Hier gab es auch kein "Westsplaining", wie der Vorwurf der Linken heißt, die manchmal für mehr Waffen in die Ukraine eintreten, als sie die Bundesregierung erlaubt. Dabei wird immer wieder auf die Wünsche von Linken in der Ukraine verwiesen.
Dass es auch andere Stimmen gibt, zeigte sich bei dem Internationalen Ratschlag "Wir müssen handeln. Die Linke und der Krieg". Dafür wurden im ersten Block Linke aus der Ukraine und aus Russland zugeschaltet. Sie gehörten den eher kleinen kommunistischen Gruppen "Arbeiterfront der Ukraine" (RFU) und "Russische Arbeiterfront" (RTF) an. Beide Organisationen kämpfen gegen den Nationalismus in ihren jeweiligen Ländern und die Politik ihrer Regierungen.
So wendet sich die RTF entschieden gegen den russischen Imperialismus, lehnt es aber ebenso wie ihre ukrainischen Genossen von der RFU ab, in diesem Krieg Partei zu ergreifen. "Das ist nicht unser Krieg. Lasst uns gegen den Nationalismus und die Angriffe auf die Rechte der Arbeiterinnen und Arbeiter in unseren Ländern kämpfen".
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Darin waren sich die russischen und ukrainischen Aktivist:innen einig. So schilderte eine Aktivistin der RFU, wie in der Ukraine verstärkt Arbeiter- und Gewerkschaftsrechte ausgehebelt werden. Diese Entwicklung ist gibt es schon länger, sie hat aber nach dem russischen Einmarsch in die Ukraine noch einmal zugenommen.
Mitglieder von RFU und RTF zeigten sich verwundert, dass selbst manche Linke in Deutschland und anderen westlichen Staaten so viel von der Verteidigung der Ukraine reden – und dabei meist nur in militärischen Dimensionen denken. "Warum gibt es so wenig Unterstützung bei unseren Kampf gegen die Einschränkung der Arbeiter:innenrechte?" Diese Frage richtete sich auch an die Teilnehmenden des Ratschlags.
Zwei zugeschaltete Rednerinnen des Kollektivs Non Una di Meno aus Mailand berichteten über ihre antimilitaristische Arbeit, die sie aus der trans- und queerfeministischen Perspektive beschreiben. Ein zentraler Schwerpunkt ihrer Arbeit ist der Kampf gegen Militärbasen, aber auch gegen die Militarisierung des Bildungswesen, die sich in Italien unter der aktuellen Rechtsregierung verstärkt.
Die Aktivistinnen schilderten anschaulich, wie sie in ihren Kampagnen den Kampf gegen die steigenden Militärausgaben mit dem aktuellen Widerstand gegen hohe Inflation und die Abwälzung der Krisenkosten auf die Bevölkerung verbinden. "So kann es auch gelingen, Menschen aus der Arbeiterklasse für den Kampf gegen Militarismus gewinnen, wie das in der alten Arbeiterbewegung bis in die 1990er-Jahre noch gute Praxis war."
Dieses Ziel hat auch Kollektiv CALP, in dem sich Hafenarbeiter aus Genua organisiert haben, die zusätzlich meist noch in linken Basisgewerkschaften aktiv sind. Maurizio Gueglio berichtete, wie die organisierten Hafenarbeiter schon seit mehreren Jahren Aktionen gegen den Transport von Rüstungsgütern über italienische Häfen in kriegführende Staaten organisieren.
Mehrmals haben die Arbeiter Waffenlieferungen nach Saudi-Arabien, aber auch in die Ukraine blockiert. Daneben organisieren die italienischen Antimilitaristen auch große Demonstrationen, in denen der Zusammenhang zwischen den Kürzungen im sozialen Bereich und der Aufrüstung in den Mittelpunkt gestellt wird.
Diese Frage ist auch in Deutschland aktuell, doch wesentlich schwieriger zu vermitteln, wie Jürgen Wagner von der Informationsstelle Militarisierung sehr anschaulich dargelegte. So sei er regelrecht beschimpft worden, als er bei einem Treffen des globalisierungskritischen Netzwerks Attac wenige Tage nach dem russischen Einmarsch in die Ukraine auf antimilitaristischen Positionen bestanden habe.
Über ähnliche Erfahrungen in der außerparlamentarischen Linken berichteten auch Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer des Ratschlags in der Abschlussrunde, in der um "Vernetzung und Praxis" ging. Dort wurde auch von einem Generationsproblem gesprochen. So habe man mit den jüngeren Menschen vom Bündnis Zwangsräumung verhindern in Berlin, das sich dagegen engagiert, dass Menschen mit wenig Geld aus ihren Wohnungen geworfen werden, nicht über antimilitaristische Positionen reden können.
Da stellt sich die Frage nach dem Grund gerade in außerparlamentarischen linken Bündnissen, in denen ja durch eine gemeinsame Praxis schon ein gewisses Vertrauensverhältnis bestehen müsste. Liegt es an der Angst, sich mit einen gesellschaftlich heiklen Thema zu beschäftigten? Oder ist es die Wirkung des deutschen Nationalismus, der paradoxerweise auch und gerade in linken Kreisen Einzug gehalten hat, die sich mit ihrer besonderen Beschäftigung mit der deutschen Geschichte Verdienste erworben hatten?
So berichtete Jürgen Wagner, dass er sich in der eher antideutsch orientierten Antifa-Bewegung politisiert habe. Da habe es schon vor bald 25 Jahren einen Bruch gegeben, weil ein Großteil seiner Mitstreiterinnen und Mitstreiter schon Ende der 1990er-Jahre den Krieg gegen Jugoslawien unterstützt habe.
Damals aber gab es auch im Umfeld von Zeitungen wie der Jungle World noch einen klaren Widerstand dagegen, dass ausgerechnet Deutschland wieder in den Ländern Krieg führt, in denen die Wehrmacht schon schwere Verwüstungen und Massengräber hinterlassen hat.
Das war noch ein Abglanz der "Deutschland- Halts-Maul" Position der 1990er-Jahre. Davon ist heute bei Zeitungen wie der Jungle World nichts mehr übriggeblieben. Noch schlimmer: darüber wird nicht einmal mehr kritisch diskutiert.
Daher war der internationale Austausch in Berlin schon ein Wert an sich. Denn dort wurde miteinander geredet. Wenn nun das Motto des Ratschlags lautet "Wir müssen handeln" war es natürlich ein hoher Anspruch. Aber gerade die Beiträge aus Italien können ein gutes Beispiel sein.
Auch in Deutschland wird im sozialen Bereich gekürzt und die Hetze gegen Menschen, die Lohnersatzleistungen ziehen und angeblich gar nicht oder nicht um jeden Preis arbeiten wollen, beziehen, wird von bürgerlichen Parteien von der AfD bis zur FDP verstärkt. Da muss man nur an die Debatte um das Bürgergeld und die Kindergrundsicherung denken.
All dies sind Schritte zur Formierung einer militarisierten Gesellschaft, die kriegsbereit gemacht werden soll: Während die Aktien der Rüstungskonzerne steigen, sollen Menschen mit wenig Einkommen den Gürtel enger schnallen. Dieser Zusammenhang sollte bei jeden Sozialprotest, bei jeder Kundgebung gegen Sozialabbau und Teuerung klargestellt werden. So könnte der Kampf gegen Militarisierung und Krieg auch wieder in größeren Teilen der Gesellschaft in Deutschland an Boden gewinnen. (Peter Nowak)
This month, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, was photographed wearing a “biosignal processing disc” affixed on her left wrist. The product, sold by a company called NuCalm, promises to transmit signals to the brain that makes the wearer feel peaceful and relaxed. NuCalm has reportedly been used by sports coaches and active military members to combat the high-stress lifestyle that comes with their jobs.
The brand’s website is filled with so much jargon that it should be studied in every marketing class: allegedly, NuCalm’s “neuroacoustic technology” harnesses oscillations, frequencies and vibrations to change a person’s brain waves. The “NuCalm experience” is reportedly “fast-acting, deep, and long-lasting”.
NuCalm sent me a pack of stickers free of charge, which I used for this story. After I unwrapped the package, these discs looked just like the type of stickers you’d find at a toy store. There was no extra heft or weight. They really were just stickers, as far as I could tell.
“It does indeed just look like a sticker,” Matthew Burke, a cognitive neurologist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, told me. “NuCalm is not actually claiming that they’re processing signals from the body such as heart rate or skin conductance and analyzing that data. They’re just saying that these stickers pick up on bio-frequencies, which somehow exist, and fixing those.”
If one is to believe the NuCalm website, and its bullish CEO, Jim Poole, this “technology” is something like a miracle cure, providing the type of anxiety-relieving effects some people take pills for. “Change your mental state with no drugs,” screams a banner on the website.
NuCalm’s primary service is a system that involves downloading an app, where users can find ambient, spa-sounding music. The idea is to listen to it with an eye mask on, while wearing the stickers, for 10 to 15 minutes. The result is supposed to give you the best nap of your life – 20 minutes of NuCalm rest is akin to about two hours of regular sleep, according to NuCalm.
The system is based on NuCalm’s original product, a $6,000 FDA-approved medical device sold to doctors, which pulsed micro-currents into the cranium to reduce stress. According to Poole, the company decided to pivot to selling its app subscription and stickers in an effort to reach more people.
Now, Poole advises using the stickers during a session with the ambient sound app. “The disc is an add-on,” he said. NuCalm used to sell anti-anxiety tablets and cream, but the company settled on stickers after years of testing.
If you don’t want to use the full system, the sticker can be worn by itself, as Meghan did. Be warned, as the sticker’s packaging told me: “Do not wear the NuCalm while driving or operating machinery.”
Can a little sticker be Xanax-grade? Most of us with an ounce of critical thinking skills might think: probably not. Guy Leschziner, professor of neurology and sleep medicine at King’s College London, told the Telegraph that the brand’s promised results “stretch the realms of credibility”.
When it comes to alternative health products, I am not a hard-nosed cynic. I’ve studied my birth chart. I love talking about my pelvic floor. But when I slapped a sticker on my wrist, I felt nothing – no vibe shift, no wave of zen, just the slight annoyance that comes with feeling totally punked.
It’s easy to dismiss these stickers as merely pointless. But I am one of the 40 million adults in this country who lives with an anxiety disorder and has to navigate the hellscape that is the American mental health care system. It’s nearly impossible to find a good therapist who is accepting clients these days – and I’m lucky enough to have a pretty decent insurance plan. I don’t take kindly to brands that exploit this crisis to make a buck. Giving someone who’s just had a panic attack a stress sticker feels akin to asking them if they’ve ever tried meditating or taking a few deep breaths. We need something that works.
Christy Harrison, a journalist and author of The Wellness Trap, which critiques the self-help industry, agreed with me. “These kinds of companies are preying on people’s vulnerabilities – whether intentionally or not – because there’s a real void in our healthcare system for addressing issues of mental health,” she said.
One of NuCalm’s most enthusiastic promoters is Tony Robbins, the infamous self-help guru who became a millionaire through hawking cheesy personal development seminars that often involve guests walking barefoot over hot embers or coals.
NuCalm’s website is full of psychobabble that felt intentionally misleading, like when you ask a salesman a direct question and he instantly changes the topic. But if you can manage to follow the website’s claims, everything sounds pretty impressive. That includes the assertion that Harvard Medical School researchers found using the system for 20 minutes can “give you the benefits of over 2 hours of restorative sleep”.
I spoke with Chung-Kang Peng, who directed the lab that ran that study. He said the results had never been published. Peng did think the relaxation effect that came from using NuCalm was “quite impressive” But the study had too small of a sample size to be conclusive, so it was never published.
How small? About 12 people, Emma Cui, who ran the study as a postdoc student, told me. She can’t remember the exact number, though, because this study took place 10 years ago.
Peng’s team was also studying the older version of NuCalm, which included cranial electrical stimulation – notthe subscription as it’s sold now, or the stickers. Anyone who doesn’t read NuCalm’s website too closely might miss this fact, and think that the Harvard study relates to the brand’s current offerings.
The brand also says that its product produces “clinical-grade results”. But what does that mean, exactly? Next to nothing, says Rina Raphael, author of The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop and the False Promise of Self-Care, because “clinically proven” is not a regulated term. “Anyone can use that term for basically anything,” she said. “It does not mean that their product has been proven to be effective.”
Raphael refers to NuCalm’s barrage of official-sounding data as “science washing”, which is when companies attempt to validate their products with impressive-sounding but meaningless claims.
“The average reader sees that and thinks, ‘Wow, look at all this evidence,’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean that their exact product is effective,” she added.
I called Poole, the brand’s CEO, and asked him to put in simple terms how frequency stickers work.
“I can tell you with great confidence: 99%of the human population still doesn’t understand this,” Poole explained.
Poole is not a neuroscientist. He does have a BA in psychology and says he worked in mental health facilities for five years before getting an MBA. He then worked on Wall Street doing mergers and acquisitions of medical device companies. Poole took NuCalm over from Dr Blake Holloway, a naturopath, 14 years ago. (Holloway died in 2020.)
Explaining the product, he said: “We’re gonna go hardcore, high-level science.” Inside the sticker, Poole said, is a Tesla coil. That’s a device invented by Nikola Tesla in 1891 that produces high voltage. The sticker also has a “metallic design” that Poole describes as a “six-layer multi-wave oscillator”. This holds the sticker’s “energy source”.
According to Poole, said energy taps into the “pericardium meridian”, a pathway that, according to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), flows to the heart. The disc, he says, presents the brain with Gaba, a neurotransmitter known to produce a calming effect on the body. (People seeking an alternative to pharmaceuticals sometimes buy Gaba supplements to reduce stress, though there’s limited evidence this works.)
In the middle of this rundown, Poole interrupts himself, scoffing: “I can’t imagine any of this is print-worthy for the consumer, but I’m trying to help you understand what we do, OK?”
I agree with him: this all sounds like gibberish. Poole may think that he’s testing my intelligence with his product description, but it feels more insulting to me. Before shelling out $80 for a pack of stickers, customers deserve a coherent explanation of how something works.
Also: I cut the sticker in half, and saw no visible coil.
Poole insisted that NuCalm has been “working with the Department of Defense for 13 years”, though did not provide corroboration of this claim to me. He also said that he lectures at the Pentagon and trains FBI recruits at Quantico. Representatives for the FBI and DoD declined my request for comment, although the Guardian has learned that NuCalm is not covered as a health benefit under the DoD’s plan.
A representative for the military operational medicine research program (MOMRP) said its department “is aware of NuCalm” but was unable to comment. “This most likely [means] MOMRP is not involved with the product,” the representative added.
It’s unclear how these agencies might use NuCalm – whether they are working with the original FDA-approved medical device, or the current system of stickers, ambient music and an eye mask.
Poole also said that FedEx pilots used NuCalm to improve pilot safety and reduce fatigue. A representative from the Air Line Pilots Association, a pilots’ union, said that FedEx had worked with NuCalm to offer the app system to their pilots. This rep added that the union does not officially endorse NuCalm.
NuCalm claims that it has been used in “2,000,000 surgical procedures as a replacement for general anesthesia without a single reported adverse event”, which, again, I could not confirm.
One small study from 2019 compared the use of NuCalm as an alternative to anesthesia in rhinologic procedures, saying it “may enhance pain control and anxiety management”. There are dentist offices around the country that use NuCalm and cranial electrical stimulation to help reduce pre-appointment jitters.
Burke, the neuroscientist, believes that a wellness sticker could potentially help someone chill out – though not for the reason advertised.
“If these products work, it’s almost certainly because of the placebo effect,” he said. “The likely explanation is that these stickers help people through the psychological intervention of making them feel like they are being treated.”
When people are put in a state where they expect to get better, it changes the brain biologically. The placebo effect kicks off a reaction that releases endorphins and dopamine, two neurotransmitters known for making people feel good. Those effects won’t cure anyone – a patient with cancer will still have cancer – but they might feel a little less depressed, more hopeful, in less pain.
Is that such a bad thing? Burke warned that when people feel good because of a placebo, they’re less likely to seek out treatment that might work more permanently.
“If someone believes that their bio-frequencies are out of whack, they might not address some of the actual underlying factors that might be driving their depression, insomnia, or pain,” Burke said.
Dr Tara Swart, a neuroscientist and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, told me it was a “red flag” that NuCalm doesn’t list the ingredients in its sticker. (On the site, it says the patch is made of “a proprietary blend of inhibitory neurotransmitters”.)
“I just can’t trust anything that isn’t open about its ingredients,” Swart said. “The website is confusing, because it says the patch is using frequencies, but it also says it’s releasing a substance through your skin. I’d like to know what that substance is. Why the secrecy?”
Kristofer Rau, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, was similarly skeptical. He found it difficult to make sense of NuCalm’s meandering explanation of how the stickers work.
“NuCalm’s site has a lot of descriptions of biological mechanisms and various neurotransmitters, and there’s a lot of accuracy in those descriptions, but they tie in a lot of wild assumptions about what their product does,” he said. “That’s what a lot of biotech companies do when they’re trying to sell their stuff. Without any specifics or better research, it comes off as quackery.”
I wanted to speak to a true NuCalm believer, so I found Kacie Corbelle, a 37-year-old hair and makeup artist who lives in Boston, on TikTok. She spent $2,000 on her NuCalm subscription back in 2020, when she was stressed out and unemployed due to Covid lockdowns.
Corbelle’s friends describe her as an “al dente hippie” – not entirely a crunchy, granola type, but certainly willing to venture outside the mainstream. She’s a proponent of “biohacking”, a Silicon Valley buzzword for “optimizing” your body in hopes of living better and longer.
“My family literally doesn’t understand,” she said. “I know it sounds crazy, but when I use it, dude, I feel like I go to a different planet, a different universe.” Corbelle lost 110lb in a year, which she credits in part to NuCalm.
Part of what drew her to the system was the suggestion that “high-powered people” rely on it to get things done. “I think a lot of CEOs will use it during lunchtime, and I’m just this makeup artist from Boston,” she said.
NuCalm’s marketing touts testimonials from Jim Kwik, a “brain coach” who sells speedreading workshops. Terry Tallen, a 1970s college football star and current CEO of his eponymous investment group, is also a fan. He helped train the Golden State Warriors in how to use NuCalm during the 2018 season.
In a statement sent to Page Six, Poole added that “hundreds” of celebrities rely on his company, but he would not share any names to respect their privacy. “If an athlete or celebrity wants to share, that is their prerogative,” he added.
Even before Goop, pseudoscientific products have long relied on the super-rich to legitimize their products. Robert MacDougall, a professor at Ontario’s Western University who studies pseudoscience, said that the discovery of electricity in the late 19th century coincided with the dawn of the electrical medicine fad, when it was en vogue to carry around belts that pulsed mild currents through the body. Some men wore these devices near their groin, in an attempt to increase their sexual potency. Patients were usually part of the Gilded Age’s aristocracy: it was believed that members of the upper class had finely tuned nervous systems and were more susceptible to mood disorders.
“In a weird way, these were almost fashionable disorders, which could be a status symbol: it was a sign that you were highly civilized and evolved,” MacDougall said.
In the 1930s, a San Diego optics engineer named Royal R Rife claimed that a machine he invented used electromagnetic waves to destroy bacteria. He went so far as to say his device cured 15 “hopeless” cancer patients in 30 days. The American Medical Association banned the use of his beam ray, which his supporters said was part of a vast conspiracy to cover up his supposedly brilliant work. To this day, there are contraband clinic operators who offer Rife machine treatment.
In 1996, a Washington state couple were convicted of medical fraud and spent time in prison after posing as doctors and fraudulently claiming their Rife machine could cure cancer. At least one patient died in their care after opting for the Rife treatment over a surgery that could have saved his life.
Richard Eaton still believes in Rife’s machine. He is the president of AlphaBio Centrix, another stress patch company he says his father founded after working on a contract to produce space suits with Nasa. (The contract, he says, fell through, and the agency never actually used the product.) Eaton counts Rife as a pioneer in the bio-frequency industry who was unfairly targeted.
“His machine worked, but big pharma could not make money off of it, so they went back to pills,” he said. I told him that sounded conspiratorial. “A little bit,” he said. “But I don’t think so.”
In 2017, AlphaBio Centrix produced a white-label version of its stickers for a company called Body Vibes, which promised to “rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies”.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop began stocking Body Vibes, advertising the stickers as made with “the same conductive carbon material Nasa uses to line spacesuits so they can monitor an astronaut’s vitals during wear”.
Then a representative from Nasa told a Gizmodo reporter that its spacesuits were not lined with “any conductive carbon material”. The former chief scientist at Nasa’s human research division called Body Vibes “a lot of BS”. Goop issued an apology and no longer stocks the stickers.
Eaton agrees that Body Vibes was “blasting out false information” about its products, but says it was all a misunderstanding. “Nasa ultimately did not develop my dad’s material,” he said. “Gwyneth Paltrow and Body Vibes didn’t know how to develop the vocabulary of their marketing.”
Another brand of stress stickers, ZenPatch, says it uses a “specially-crafted formulation of essential oils” to calm its customers down. On Amazon, where a pack of 24 goes for $14.99, it’s marketed to children – or, more accurately, parents who wish their kids would chill out.
The stickers are shaped like cartoon animals, and one ad features a photo of a young boy lying on the grass, staring hazily at the camera as if he’s just eaten a massive edible.
So NuCalm has some competition. Stress stickers are a growing industry and will only get more popular with Meghan’s endorsement – which, according to NuCalm, was not sponsored. Despite this, after trying NuCalm, I’m just as stressed as I was before putting the sticker on my arm. Maybe more so, actually, because attempting to understand what’s going on here puts me in a very bad mood.
I wish I had more to report about how the sticker made me feel, but absolutely nothing happened when I put it on. The only time NuCalm made me feel anything was when a barista nodded at the small blue sticker placed on my left wrist and asked me: “Are you trying to quit?” A wave of embarrassment washed over when I had to tell her I wasn’t a pack-a-day smoker, but testing out an anti-stress sticker I saw Meghan wear.
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