ZeroHedge, the successful bad boy financial news reporting site, is shifting to a subscription model.
I might subscribe if ZeroHedge knew what the fuck was going on in the world, but they’re as much in denial about human overshoot as the mainstream news outlets.
Granted, ZeroHedge is at least willing to report on the daily insanities of our monetary and financial systems, which everyone else conveniently ignores, and I do value some of their observations, but they assume some evil cabal of elites is plotting to enrich themselves, rather than understanding that we’ve hit limits to growth caused by non-renewable energy depletion (and soon other non-negotiable constraints like climate change), and central banks are desperately printing money and using every slight of hand they can think of to extend and pretend a little longer our system that requires growth not to collapse.
Basically ZeroHedge doesn’t have a clue, and they make a living by feeding the conspiracy hungry crowd that congregates there. Not only do they not make the world a better place, they foment social unrest to make it a worse place.
So no, I won’t be subscribing.
Where can you go for intelligent apolitical reality based news?
It’s very hard to find.
Nobody important talks about what matters, and I guess they wouldn’t be important if they did, because most people don’t want to know the truth.
It’s 24/7 tribal fluff and denial everywhere.
And they’ll say no one saw it coming.
A pox on them all.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/introducing-zerohedge-premium
INTRODUCING ZEROHEDGE PREMIUM
BY TYLER DURDEN
THURSDAY, DEC 10, 2020 – 23:35
When this website launched 12 years ago, little did we know – or expect – that it would grow to become one of the most popular and trafficked financial blogs, let alone websites, in the world. Since then, ZeroHedge has expanded from being focused on purely esoteric concepts in finance and capital markets to covering geopolitics, social, political (and recently, healthcare) matters (if for no other reason than the central bank takeover of markets has made discussing centrally-planned “markets” borderline absurd and often painfully boring).
In those twelve years we have had the pleasure of sharing hundreds of thousands of notable news items, events and market absurdities with you, our readers, creating a magnificent support base of millions of fans who – for one reason or another – come to this site daily, sometimes dozens of times. In that period we have, of course, also spawned countless critics and haters, and that’s perfectly normal: that’s what free speech is all about – the ability to exchange opinions, often in a less than glorified manner, in order to reach a consensus or optimal conclusion. After all, that is one of the anchors that made America great.
Which is why what troubles us most, far more than the Fed’s vain and futile attempt to control the business cycle and plan markets (for the eventual outcome, see USSR), are the creeping attempts by various multinational entities and corporations to quash free speech, both elsewhere and here. It started with Facebook, which in May 2019 became the first “social network” to ban ZeroHedge, only to reverse shortly after (admitting it had made a mistake); this was followed a little over half a year later by Twitter, which “permanently” banned our account, only to admit 6 months later that it had “made a mistake” and reinstated us. But barely had the digital ink on these “mistaken” attempts to censor free speech dried, when the world’s biggest online advertising monopoly, Google, took the unprecedented step of demonetizing the website (following a similar step taken by PayPal). Why? Because it disapproved of the language in our comments (how or why it picked on this website’s comment section as opposed to millions of others, we will never know). To avoid a shutdown, and against our wishes, we were forced to implement comment moderation as the alternative was insolvency. Also, contrary to occasional laughable rumors, we don’t and have never had access to outside capital – be it political or financial – and have been reliant on the same advertising model we have used since inception.
Needless to say, whether due to “mistakes” or overt attempts to demonetize us, the writing on the wall was clear: while they may be entirely within their rights to do whatever they want as “private” companies, pardon monopolies, the ‘social’ and ad-based gatekeepers of online content – the twitters, the googles, the facebooks of the world – had launched an overt crusade to upend the uncensored internet, to snuff out independent thought, contrarian views, and inconvenient opinions and create one giant echo chamber of consent straight out of George Orwell. To do that they would use any and every tool they have access to, and unfortunately we had to comply with the whims of these monopolies which nobody in Congress has the guts to challenge directly and to strip them of their too-big-to-question powers.
Until now.
When Google suspended us in June we said that a standalone website was in the works, one which is funded not by advertising – and is thus beholden to the biased internet titans of the world – but by you, our readers.
We are launching that website today, call it ZeroHedge Premium for lack of a better word.
Here’s what will happen next.
We will maintain the traditional zerohedge.com website as is, without a paywall and with ads… but since it has ads, it will also maintain the comment moderation – that, as we explained in June, was a prerequisite demand by Google. But parallel with that we are launching a “premium” website, where subscribers will not only never again have to see one more ad but more importantly will have access to a fully unmoderated comment section.
Our hope is to eventually have enough subscribers so we can do away with advertising altogether – call it a real-time experiment in media for the censorship age. Because “mistakes” and events in the past several years have made it clear to us – and we hope to you – that there is no such thing as free speech any more; if you really want “free speech” you have to pay for it (in the case of ZeroHedge, the premium subscription will be $1/day – less than the proverbial cup of coffee). We also hope that enough people sign up allowing us to aggressively grow our team and expand our coverage, both thematically and geographically, so we can provide you with better content, better coverage, better everything.
un-Denial 
My all time favorite song.
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While your site is not a news site I do find it to be a valuable source of information. I usually stop by once a day.
I have stopped visiting a lot of sites over the last 12 months. Zero hedge is one of them. There are only so many hours in the day and I came to the conclusion that I was wasting my life away sifting through a lot of bullshit for the odd gem.
Social media is nearly entirely bullshit. I don’t do Twitter and am an infrequent user of Facebook. I used to follow two people, but you quit, so now I only follow one.
I also find that the more I learn the more depressed I feel. The other day I was reading about China’s fishing fleet. Why I read about it I don’t know because it certainly didn’t make me feel happy. The exact opposite actually.
I think your right when you said that seeing reality and depression are linked.
On another note I just finished reading Breath by James Nestor. I was a bit sceptical when started reading this book but found it fascinating and would recommend it. As a chronic mouth breather I’ve started putting some of what I read into practice. James gives some interesting interviews on YouTube if your interested.
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Yes I agree social media is a disaster. I check into Twitter once in a while and am saddened to find that most of the few people I follow have lost their minds.
Thanks for the tip on Breath. I’ll check it out.
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I just finished reading Breath because of your recommendation. I thought it was interesting.
For anyone that doesn’t have time the key take-aways for me were: 1) breath through your nose, and 2) breath slower (5 seconds in, 5 seconds out).
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Good for you. I agree
Sent from my iPhone
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WOW,
Both really good comments. My personal all time favorite song is “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas (due to it’s truly existential take on our existence). I did like “Buy Myself Some Freedom”. As to Zero Hedge. I understand where they are coming from with regard to monetization vis-a-vie Google/Youtube/Facebook. But I couldn’t agree more with both Rob’s post and Perran’s comment above. I too used to read Zero Hedge almost every day but the left/right conspiracy theories just got too much (and too depressing). At this site I think there is a greater dependence on reality (science (physics/thermodynamics), logic, MORT and MPP).
Thanks,
AJ
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Nice hair.
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When I first frequented Zerohedge shortly after it started, it seemed they were far more focused on the economic/financial shenanigans of the ruling/political class but they did indeed, for whatever reason, drift into somewhat unrelated ‘news’. And its popularity also attracted some interesting and probably trollish characters to its comment section, including some of what Caitlin Johnstone would term ‘narrative managers’. I believe there are indeed conspiracies out there, some of which aim to ‘guide’ and ‘control’ our complex world as best as the conspirators believe they can (is this not what the ruling/political class is primarily about: controlling/expanding the wealth-generating systems that provide their revenue/wealth/power/prestige?) But we do, after all, live on a planet with finite resources and the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice our ‘elite’ encourage have some very real negative consequences that the vast majority deny or ignore to reduce the cognitive dissonance that is created when one comes to realise our plight. How this is all going to play out is anyone’s guess for as the saying goes: it’s difficult to make predictions, especially if they’re about the future.
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I think I need to drop it now as well as I waste too much time looking for the occasional gem in their huge pile of dog turd. And now they want $365 a year to read it without ads. By not going there I will achieve that anyway.
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Zero Hedge thinks infinite growth is possible if the Federal Reserve is eliminated. I think eliminating the Federal Reserve is a good start to living within the limits of a finite world. Too bad it’s not enough of a coalition to make it happen.
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Getting rid of our debt backed fractional reserve monetary system (aka the Fed) would force us to live within our means. But this is not what most people who want to abolish the Fed have in mind. They want more economic growth for themselves.
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ZH is an alt-right rage machine……. by design.
If you like any of the non anonymous authors they feature, most have personal blogs and/or write elsewhere.
I like ZH regular, Charles Hughes Smith – https://oftwominds.com/blog.html
Most American news media is designed to produce rage via pushing the chimps tribal/emotional buttons. It’s easy & formulaic – I know because I’ve pushed thousands of morons buttons in my trolling career. It’s like an experiment in which I’ve played many different characters of different ages & backgrounds – even women. Try it, it’s free & fun;)
Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another
Matt Taibbi
“In this characteristically turbocharged new book, celebrated Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi provides an insider’s guide to the variety of ways today’s mainstream media tells us lies. Part tirade, part confessional, it reveals that what most people think of as “the news” is, in fact, a twisted wing of the entertainment business.
In the Internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a rich taxonomic survey of American political journalism’s dirty tricks.
Heading into a 2020 election season that promises to be a Great Giza Pyramid Complex of invective and digital ugliness, Hate Inc. will be an invaluable antidote to the hidden poisons dished up by those we rely on to tell us what is happening in the world. ”
https://b-ok.cc/book/5264511/8ecafd
For seasoned doomers, what’s left to discuss? Not ‘the news’ which is trash & gossip. I’m still interested in reading insightful peoples take on some current events & the great unravelling.
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I’ve been toying with a thought experiment lately. Y’all feel free to weigh in.
Assume the plandemic & ‘great reset’ is real.
Who & Why in as few as words possible.
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If plandemic is real, it would need to be a very small group of smart like minded people with a lot to gain. That rules out governments who mostly don’t trust each other and are too stupid. And it rules out altruistic elites because none that I’ve seen understand reality. That leaves perhaps a small group of pharmaceutical investors who influence research dollars in the Wuhan lab, and who would profit from a vaccine. But I don’t buy it. Too risky, too much uncertainty in the outcome, and most people are not that evil.
Could a virus engineered by scientists seeking fame and fortune have escaped from the Wuhan lab by mistake? I think the probability is very high.
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Essentially it would be like the two season miniseries from Britain called utopia. Worth the time. Though knowing this would give a lot away.
In searching for the clip I found that Amazon has made a new US version, it looks bad in comparison.
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Utopia was a great series. I posted some clips 2 days ago here:
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Tis great. No denying it.
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Perhaps Steve St. Angelo is wrong.
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Occam’s razor
The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic
May 4, 2017
“On a hyperconnected planet rife with hyperinfectious diseases, experts warn we aren’t ready to keep America–and the world–safe from the next pandemic”
“From Ebola in West Africa to Zika in South America to MERS in the Middle East, dangerous outbreaks are on the rise around the world. The number of new diseases per decade has increased nearly fourfold over the past 60 years, and since 1980, the number of outbreaks per year has more than tripled.”
https://time.com/magazine/us/4766607/may-15th-2017-vol-189-no-18-u-s/
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Occam’s razor
The Next Pandemic: Not if, but When
By David Quammen – May 9, 2013
“TERRIBLE new forms of infectious disease make headlines, but not at the start. Every pandemic begins small. Early indicators can be subtle and ambiguous. When the Next Big One arrives, spreading across oceans and continents like the sweep of nightfall, causing illness and fear, killing thousands or maybe millions of people, it will be signaled first by quiet, puzzling reports from faraway places — reports to which disease scientists and public health officials, but few of the rest of us, pay close attention. Such reports have been coming in recent months from two countries, China and Saudi Arabia.
You may have seen the news about H7N9, a new strain of avian flu claiming victims in Shanghai and other Chinese locales. Influenzas always draw notice, and always deserve it, because of their great potential to catch hold, spread fast, circle the world and kill lots of people. But even if you’ve been tracking that bird-flu story, you may not have noticed the little items about a “novel coronavirus” on the Arabian Peninsula.
This came into view last September, when the Saudi Ministry of Health announced that such a virus — new to science and medicine — had been detected in three patients, two of whom had already died. By the end of the year, a total of nine cases had been confirmed, with five fatalities. As of Thursday, there have been 18 deaths, 33 cases total, including one patient now hospitalized in France after a trip to the United Arab Emirates. Those numbers are tiny by the standards of global pandemics, but here’s one that’s huge: the case fatality rate is 55 percent. The thing seems to be almost as lethal as Ebola.
Coronaviruses are a genus of bugs that cause respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, sometimes mild and sometimes fierce, in humans, other mammals and birds. They became infamous by association in 2003 because the agent for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, is a coronavirus. That one emerged suddenly in southern China, passed from person to person and from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, then went swiftly onward by airplane to Toronto, Singapore and elsewhere. Eventually it sickened about 8,000 people, of whom nearly 10 percent died. If not for fast scientific work to identify the virus and rigorous public health measures to contain it, the total case count and death toll could have been much higher.
One authority at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an expert on nasty viruses, told me that the SARS outbreak was the scariest such episode he’d ever seen. That cautionary experience is one reason this novel coronavirus in the Middle East has attracted such concern.
Another reason is that coronaviruses as a group are very changeable, very protean, because of their high rates of mutation and their proclivity for recombination: when the viruses replicate, their genetic material is continually being inaccurately copied — and when two virus strains infect a single host cell, it is often intermixed. Such rich genetic variation gives them what one expert has called an “intrinsic evolvability,” a capacity to adapt quickly to new circumstances within new hosts.”
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Occam’s razor
Fact Sheet – October 2008
The Next Flu Pandemic: What to Expect
“A flu pandemic could touch us all A flu (influenza) pandemic is an outbreak caused by a new human flu virus that spreads around the world. Because the pandemic flu virus will be new to people, many people could get very sick or could die. Seasonal flu shots do not protect people from pandemic flu. It’s not a matter of IF, but WHENFlu pandemics have happened throughout history. They occur from time to time, and some are worse than others. ”
“Public health experts say it’s not a matter of IF a flu pandemic will happen, but WHEN. We cannot predict when the next flu pandemic will happen. Limiting contact helps to save livesWe have learned from past flu pandemics that during a pandemic, limiting contact among people helps to slow the spread of the virus and helps to save lives. Being around other people makes you more likely to get sick or to make others sick. The flu could spread and more people could get sick. Until a vaccine can be made, limiting contact among people will be our main tool for helping to contain the disease and to prevent others from getting it. ”
Click to access nextflupandemic.pdf
Clearly loads of infectious disease experts have been covertly working for a secretive cabal of Jewish super elites for decades – just waiting for 2020 to unleash the ‘plandemic’ on us cuz they hate Trump-N-stuff. They iz evildoers.
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Yup.
The best evidence for conspiracy is that most governments haven’t told their citizens to take vitamin D.
But incompetence is a much better explanation.
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Rob the UK gov has recently made a half-assed, better late than never, Vit-D gesture.
COVID-19: UK Govt to Distribute Free Vitamin D Doses for Winter Months to 2.7 Million Individuals Under Risk Group
” The tablets would supplied to care homes or residential addresses, and would be packed for usage throughout the four colder months beginning from January, said a statement issued by the Department of Health and Social Care.”
https://in.news.yahoo.com/covid-19-uk-govt-distribute-172817199.html
I always suffered moderate SAD living in the great west coast rainforest. Never realized it until I moved to Alberta (sunnier winters) at 28 years old. I started taking Vit-D when I moved back here in 2014. Worked. It’s one of the cheapest & safest supplements around. I’ve been taking 25% more during the pandemic. Cheap insurance.
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Yeh but, there’s always a but, the UK is recommending 400IU which is at least 5 times too little.
For Covid I doubled up to 2000IU per day. Some people I respect are taking more.
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400IU = “half-assed”.
I take 5000 per day, but I miss/forget a couple of days per week. You’d need to take a lot over an extended period to reach toxicity & living in Vancouver vs Miami makes a difference.
Caveat emptor
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These people don’t have a clue what it would take to do something useful about climate change, but they’re sure good at razor sharp critiques of other people that don’t want to do anything, even if not useful, about climate change.
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Makes me proud to be Australian.
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I don’t understand, what makes you proud? A satirist that doesn’t understand the physics of climate change? Or a government that plays make believe better than other governments?
You’ll know that a country is serious about climate change when they increase their interest rate by say 5%, and they implement a birth lottery.
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Sarcasm directed at the irony of all that you just mentioned.
Aussies are big into denial. i have given up talking about most of it these days.
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https://desdemonadespair.net/2020/12/covid-lockdown-causes-record-drop-in-carbon-dioxide-emissions-for-2020.html
Unfortunately a global pandemic is not sufficient. We’ve got to get the population down quickly, which, even if it’s too late to stop a runaway climate, will reduce suffering.
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I once was a senior executive reporting to a really, really smart and successful CEO.
I remember him lecturing me that markets were perfectly rational because participants integrated all available information to decide on a price.
I now know he didn’t know what he was talking about. Nevertheless, pretty much any company would love to have him as their CEO.
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K-Dog is taking over for sick RE, and he wrote a wise essay today.
I’ve long felt that citizens have the power to improve things, if they would somehow wake up from their denial stupor, and use their democratic power, while they still have it.
While I’m sure there are some shenanigans in the US electoral system, the fact that a candidate can be elected who half the country loathes, and who is opposed by both the elites and the bureaucrats, is proof that a vote still has power. Now if that power could just be used to elect someone wise and aware…
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2020/12/11/the-war-at-home/
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Here’s a very good summary of wind turbine technology, with an explicit acknowledgment that the success of wind is dependent on natural gas backup power.
As you watch this, pay attention to all the other fossil carbon, especially diesel, required for wind turbines that is not mentioned.
This entire industry will collapse overnight when diesel is in short supply. We’d be much smarter to conserve the remaining diesel and use it to build a softer landing zone.
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The pandemic’s most bitter pill
Plagues and disease are familiar villains in human history
” The most troubling reality of a sustained pandemic that has killed over 112,000 Americans (as of June 10), shuttered cities, and emptied stadiums, is this isn’t some fluke.
It has long been expected. It’s totally predictable. And an outbreak will happen again.
“The history of humanity is punctuated by pandemics,” said Dr. Richard Gunderman, an M.D. and medical historian at Indiana University. “This is just another chapter in that big volume.”
We all want to live healthy lives. And with the medical triumphs of the 20th century, we’ve largely come to expect it. Twentieth century physicians, armed with germ theory and soon potent bacteria-killing drugs, could do what previous practitioners couldn’t, explained James Kyung-Jin Lee, the director of the University of California, Irvine Center for Medical Humanities. Doctors became curers of many diseases.
This infused the following narrative into the American mind, said Lee: “Yesterday I was healthy. Today I am sick. But I’ll get better tomorrow.”
The idea is formally called the “restitution narrative,” meaning the belief that one’s health will be restored by the wonders of modern medicine. It’s certainly an attractive creed. “Who doesn’t want to live in a narrative of restitution and health?” asked Lee.
But a microbe that jumped from animals to humans in late 2019 has shaken this expectation.
“We’re now at a point in 2020 when the world has essentially been brought to its knees by this new coronavirus,” said Lee. This narrative isn’t infallible, he emphasized. It’s fragile.
Many of us alive today, particularly in the U.S., are too young to fully grasp this fragility. We haven’t lived through a pandemic event that threatens everyone. “We haven’t experienced a pre-vaccine virus with this high level of mortality circulating in the community in a long time,” explained Sara Keller, an infectious disease expert and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “And this is what it looks like.”
https://mashable.com/feature/coronavirus-pandemic-history-cures/
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Can’t remember if it was you that recommended it, but I just got this audiobook, and it’s next up for my reading walks.
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Dr. John Campbell tiptoes around not having today’s video deleted by the YouTube censors.
I have a family member who is a retired veterinarian and I asked him to get some Ivermectin, which is used by vets, to have in the cupboard for a rainy day. He thinks I’m a whack job.
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Getting to the truth on all these Covid deals is a shitload of work which I decided not to do. So much dishonesty, financial & idealogical agendas. I know all about scuzzy big Pharma, but the ‘all natural’ supplement industry is $150 billion annually & growing & their pimps, Alex Jones, The Health Ranger, Dr Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow, et al, are just as scuzzy. Fuck them too. My buddy is one of these ‘all natural’ dupes. Arsenic & mercury are all natural buddy, so supplement away dude.
I’ve opted for the ounce of prevention strategy. – mask mask mask & vit, D, C & zinc. Covid free so far.
Stumbled across this. Arguments are full of holes on both sides.
No evidence ivermectin is a miracle drug against COVID-19
‘CLAIM: The antiparasitic drug ivermectin “has a miraculous effectiveness that obliterates” the transmission of COVID-19 and will prevent people from getting sick.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.
THE FACTS: During a Senate hearing Tuesday, a group of doctors touted alternative COVID-19 treatments, including ivermectin and the anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine. Medical experts have cautioned against using either of those drugs to treat COVID-19. Studies have shown that hydroxychloroquine has no benefit against the coronavirus and can have serious side effects. No evidence has been shown to prove that ivermectin works against COVID-19. ‘
‘In June, Australian researchers published the findings of a study that found ivermectin inhibited the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in a laboratory setting, which is not the same as testing the drug on humans or animals. Following the study, the FDA released a letter out of concern warning consumers not to self-medicate with ivermectin products intended for animals.
“It is a far cry from an in vitro lab replication to helping humans,” said Dr. Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection prevention at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital. ‘
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9768999400
Starts in the headline. There is no such thing as a ‘miracle drug ‘ period.
“Dr. Pierre Kory, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Aurora St Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, described ivermectin as a “wonder drug”
Miracle & wonder are not in the scientific lexicon. I get suspicious when any doctor refers to any medication as a “wonder drug”.
Claims of wonder drugs & miracle drugs are a big part of the reason medical regulatory bodies were created.
I also find it curious that so many plandemic sceptical anti-vaxxer, anti big Pharma types are suddenly such enthusiastic proponents for a select few big Pharma drugs which are still in the infancy testing phase for treating a novel virus that’s less than a year old. You would think that would make them more sceptical, not less. I wonder if they’ll keep their scepticism bar that low come vaccine time?
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Thanks it is all very confusing. My evidence in favor of Ivermectin is thin and solely based on who I have chosen to trust on Covid issues: Chris Martenson and John Campbell. I don’t listen to anyone else.
Martenson is not perfect but he’s worked very hard from the beginning to analyze the data objectively, and his track record is pretty good. Campbell is even more squeaky clean. I think today is the first day he’s said Ivermectin should be reviewed by medical experts, which is why I posted it. Martenson has being talking about Ivermectin for a long time.
To date I’ve done exactly as you. Vitamin D & C, zinc, and masks.
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I have been following Martenson and Campbell from the beginning of Covid. I think that Martenson has consistently been in favor of Science/published results of well designed studies/with rigorous statistical analysis. He has no money in the game with big Pharma and seems to have integrity. I suspect all of the governments and experts have lots of prestige and or money riding on big Pharma/Sickcare stocks or jobs – so they are suspect.
Our local farm supply store has been selling ivermectin paste for horses. I picked up a couple of tubes just in case.
AJ
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This favorite song of mine is dedicated to retired blogger friend Gail Zawacki, who spent many years writing about the global decline of tree health caused by a rising concentration of ground level ozone, which is a byproduct of industrial combustion, and which is an issue we don’t talk about because it’s so depressing that planting trees is no longer a viable climate change mitigation strategy, and because there’s nothing we can do about it except shrink the economy and/or the population.
I initially thought Gail was a crazy person, but then I started to pay more attention to tree health in my area, and I read her research more carefully.
Here are some of Gail’s excellent essays:
https://un-denial.com/?s=Zawacki
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The pandemic has further exposed a great many westerners for the over privileged coddled babies they are.
You know that adage about how one’s reaction to adversity brings out their true character?
Thanks to the internet, the west’s character has been exposed & found lacking. Hundreds of millions have opted for conspiracy crisis cults & the test of resilience has a long way to go.
The infantilization of Western culture
August 1, 2018
“Society-wide arrested development
The dictionary defines infantilizing as treating someone “as a child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience.”
What’s considered age-appropriate or mature is obviously quite relative. But most societies and cultures will deem behaviors appropriate for some stages of life, but not others.
As the Bible puts it in 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
“..we’ve witnessed the rise of a “therapy culture,” which, as sociologist Frank Furedi warns, treats adults as vulnerable, weak and fragile, while implying that their troubles rooted in childhood qualify them for a “permanent suspension of moral sense.” He argues that this absolves grown-ups from adult responsibilities and erodes their trust in their own experiences and insights.”
“While we might find it trivial or amusing, the infantilist ethos becomes especially seductive in times of social crises and fear. And its favoring of simple, easy and fast betrays natural affinities for certain political solutions over others.
And typically not intelligent ones. ”
https://theconversation.com/the-infantilization-of-western-culture-99556
Of all the consequences of Overshoot, having to listen to the temper tantrums, bitching, moaning & blaming are what I dread most. I’ll opt for extra physical hardship just to not have to listen to them.
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Mac10 is funny today. One of these decades his predictions will come true.
https://zensecondlife.blogspot.com/2020/12/fomc-fear-of-missing-crash.html
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Paul Beckwith published last week a nice summary of climate change impacts on the global food supply.
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Sabine Hossenfelder says singularities do not occur in reality.
Ajit Varki says singularities do occur in reality, provided that they deny reality.
I side with Varki because I don’t see any other species praying to gods for new technology, to save themselves from their old technology, while denying their core overpopulation and energy depletion problems.
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Albert Bates today on the overpopulation of a single family…
http://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-great-pause-week-39-amishmash.html
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Steel production is #1 for CO2 emissions and #2 for fossil energy consumption. Modern civilization and “renewable” technologies require lots of steel.
Dave Borlace here makes a good effort to explain how we’ll produce steel without fossil energy.
I don’t buy it because it requires huge up front capital (debt) and government subsidies (more debt), both of which require robust economic growth, and growth is no longer possible because we’ve burned all the cheap fossil energy.
I also doubt that the extra steel required to make the extra wind turbines required to make the extra power required to make the extra steel is autocatalytic like coal and oil were.
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I am no scientist, but I have some questions. How much energy does it take to produce one ton of steel with the current coal/coke process? How much energy does it take to produce one ton of steel with the hydrogen process? I don’t know the answer, but I looked an article on energyskeptic.com and thought it was more than an order of magnitude more. That cannot be right, can it?
Then I thought that this process requires very high temperatures. Fossil fuels (oil the most but coal) are quite dense. If it takes “x” joules of coal in the current process, is it really going to take “x” joules of electricity, too? Unless I missed it, there was no mention of this in the video. Nor did he utter the phrase “net energy.”
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David Goza in today’s Sunday school lesson provides an insider’s view of Christian fundamentalism. He was for a brief period in his 20’s an Arkansas pastor. Content warning: there’s some partisan politics here that you should fast forward past.
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Andrew Glikson on Varki’s MORT, without knowing that’s what he’s talking about.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-myth-of-net-zero-emissions-by-2050.html
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Hi Rob.
This is completely off topic, but I wanted to ask if you’ve ever discussed this common meme: giving up meat and dairy will save us (from just about everything these days LOL but mainly from climate change). I think there are good points on both sides of the debate, but it entirely misses the mark. After all, people having been eating meat and dairy for millennia without sending the world into a death spiral. It wasn’t cow farts that got us into this predicament, but somehow so many people are convinced that if they don’t eat certain things it will “save us”. Seems almost religious to me. Meanwhile it is blasphemy to suggest that we won’t drive cars in the future and that we might have to give up iPhones and flying.
I would love to hear your perspective on this.
P.S wishing you a Happy holidays and thank you for sharing all your perspectives with us.
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Good question Monique, and happy holidays to you too.
Meat is a complicated and emotional issue.
Our species evolved to eat some animal protein and fat, and so they should be included in a healthy diet, but most people in rich countries eat too much, and it is possible to have a healthy diet without animal protein and fat, if you’re very careful (read Lierre Keith’s book for a cautionary tale).
Meat is more nutrient dense than grains and vegetables, which is why it takes more inputs to produce a pound of meat than a pound of grains or vegetables. So meat does have a bigger impact on the environment, especially how it is produced today, but you also need to eat less to achieve a healthy diet.
I think the main environmental problem is far too many people on the planet, and a secondary problem is that rich people eat more meat than they need to be healthy.
I do not agree with the ethical argument that it is wrong to kill other sentient life to survive. Life should eat whatever it evolved to eat. That’s what life does. Those eating grain and vegetable based diets for ethical reasons might be shocked at how many small animals are cruelly killed by tractors and combines. There is no government inspector ensuring that the mouse is painlessly dispatched as it is maimed by combine blades.
As our society becomes less complex due to energy depletion, we will be forced to eat locally produced foods. In the colder climates, like here in Canada, I don’t think it will be feasible to have a healthy local diet that does not include some animal protein and fat. We can’t grow avocadoes and cashews.
In the longer run, the only form of farming that might be sustainable without fossil carbon derived inputs, is a mixed farm that produces grains and potatoes (for calories), legumes (for protein and soil nitrogen fixing), vegetables for vitamins and minerals, and livestock (for meat, fat, milk, eggs, fiber, and manure for fertilizer). The farm will require careful crop rotation and livestock movement to be sustainable, and even then if much food is sold to customers, those customers may have to return compost and waste to not deplete the soils. There is no free lunch. If you export nutrients from the farm they must be replaced (unless you are a rice farmer in Asia that replenishes nutrients with glacier melt water).
Most importantly, when fossil energy depletion really starts to bite, we will be very grateful for whatever calories we can get our hands on, regardless of how they are grown, or what diet they belong to. And we’ll marvel at the energy we wasted on irrelevant issues as we go to bed early with sore muscles from working all day in the fields.
What do I eat?
I eat a balanced diet with a lot of vegetables, a modest amount of butter, cheese, meat, fish, and eggs, some grains, and as little seed oils and sugar as I can, but I frequently cheat on the sugar. 🙂
And I am very, very grateful for every meal.
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Tim Watkins today wrote a nice political history of Brexit. He thinks UK leaders are idiots for causing a self-inflicted wound. I usually agree with Watkins but today not so much. He knows better than anyone that energy constraints will soon force every country n the world to become less complex and more local. So what’s the problem? Brexit is just accelerating what’s going to happen anyway. Might as well get on with it.
Next up the UK needs a referendum for rapid population reduction policies, otherwise they’ll be very hungry. But first they need to do something about that pesky reality denial thingy.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/12/14/the-final-curtain/
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Charles Hugh Smith today wrote a good primer on the many complex feedback loops at play in the oil industry we depend on for our survival.
His punch line is that we are about to transition from relatively stable prices and availability to wildly unstable prices and availability.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/12/one-little-problem-with-all-electric.html
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Here’s an interesting new browser plugin that tells you if a news site is biased, and in what direction. It will also tell you if a financial site has a bullish or bearish bias. They’re working on a feature to let you know if you can trust health advice.
https://nobias.com/
I tested it and it doesn’t have an opinion yet on unDenial.com, megacancer.com, or Al Jazeera, but definitely says Fox News is highly credible and leans center left.
Now if they would extend it to tell us if a site denies reality we could solve all of the world’s problems. Should be an easy feature to add. All they have to do is display STRONG DENIAL for every popular site on the internet.
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Why would anyone trust them? They also could be honest & well meaning, but wrong and/or biased.
Kinda reminds me of the ‘true or false’ website snopes that became popular with leftys a few years back. I dug around. snopes is run by a US, progressive husband & wife team from their home.
Step #1 declare your site/tribe/king/experts/priests/god the authority on all matters.
My favourite lazy man site:
“Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.”
https://answersingenesis.org/
No pesky bible reading needed. You don’t even need to use your memory. If you forget, just google again again again – copy-N-paste……you’re a neo scholar.
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Unbelievable how many wacky sites and people there are in world. Reality is vanishingly rare.
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The more I watch Steven Van Metre, the more I respect him. He’s not energy or overshoot aware, but he has a good handle on the economy, and doesn’t blame evil cabals.
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December 15, 2020
Menacing Methane – An Analysis
“The story of methane really is a story of a very serious definitive threat to our future existence on this planet.” (Peter Wadhams)
Dr. Peter Wadhams (A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic, Oxford University Press) delivered the principal lecture for a very special presentation by Scientists Warning/Europe ‘20: “The Threat from Arctic Methane” Nov. 24, 2020 (1:32 m)
In his lecture, Dr. Wadhams accentuated profound Arctic changes unprecedented throughout recorded history that go well beyond the context of NOAA’s Arctic Report Card. He discussed far-reaching Arctic changes with a distinct possibility of dire consequences for the planet’s climate system.
Based upon his presentation, highlighted herein, unless and until ongoing experimental efforts in England for remediation of the Arctic are proven to work, meaning revival of the Arctic, the planet is destined to become a vastly different place, not for the better, and likely not in the distant future but much sooner than that. The Arctic is changing too fast for comfort.
“The Arctic is no longer the Arctic” (Wadhams). It is something entirely different. The change is palpable. It has morphed into a looming threat of radical climate upheaval.
Regrettably, neither the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) nor any major nation/state is braced for Arctic upheaval. It is not universally recognized as an impending threat in the near future.
World opinion is broadly shaped by the IPCC narrative, which does not recognize a methane threat from the seas off Russia’s northern coastline. But, according to Professor Wadhams: They’re wrong!
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/15/menacing-methane-an-analysis/
Yabut the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is governmental & governments never fuck up, nor obfuscate & they are certainly not responsible for killing more humans than all serial killers, crimes of passion murders & hungry man eating carnivores combined.
Governments combined killed about 130 million last century, but obviously that sort of thing will never happen again since the humans have evolved beyond slaughtering & starving each other.
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Yabut we are in really serious trouble even if Arctic methane doesn’t materialize, and even if we stopped all CO2 emissions today, which we can’t and won’t.
I watched Wadhams’ talk instead of the usual M.A.S.H. with my dinner. Wadhams is very good but less fun. I was going to watch it later this evening but didn’t want bump Hogan’s Heroes.
The severity of the situation is underlined by the lameness of his proposed solution: machines to create water vapor clouds.
Not a single mention by Wadhams or the audience of rapid population reduction policies.
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Martenson broadcasted from Vimeo today so he could say what he wanted to say about Ivermectin.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/war-on-truth/
Source info:
https://covid19criticalcare.com/
https://covid19criticalcare.com/i-mask-prophylaxis-treatment-protocol/i-mask-protocol-translations/
Click to access FLCCC-Ivermectin-in-the-prophylaxis-and-treatment-of-COVID-19.pdf
Click to access FLCCC-IVERMECTIN-Summary.pdf
Click to access Meta-analysis-of-COVID-19-therapeutics-Dr-Paul-Marik-FLCCC-Alliance.pdf
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Great post, Rob. On a similar note, I just read the article below on the high prevalence (much, much higher than I previously realized) of a plethora of LONG COVID symptoms even in very young humans (as young as age 15 months). I’m still often reading, including on Surplus Energy Economics, multiple commenters writing that they think COVID is a hoax. It’s disgusting and whether they acknowledge it or not these people have blood on their hands (as do those who spew and blather anti-mask bullshit). The virus that is conspiracy theory which seems to be increasing worldwide at present is likely more dangerous and damaging than SARS-2.
https://www.vox.com/22166236/long-term-side-effects-covid-19-symptoms-heart-fatigue
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The outstanding documentary “The Social Dilemma” makes a good case that social media is to blame for every person on the planet now having a different reality.
How can we make progress on anything when we can’t even agree on a base set of facts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma
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I viewed it last night and it does make a good argument that social media has massively contributed to this ontological schism. Without a common ground of reality all meaningful discussion and argument is DOA. This problem seems to be metastasizing by the second. I see it, like overshoot and climate disruption, as a wicked problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem
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Facebook is not evil. Their business model and stock holder demands for growth create evil results. The solution that worked for me and that can work for anyone else is very very simple. Close your account.
Overshoot is much more wicked because anything we do to improve the long term makes the short term worse, and we evolved to give priority to the short term.
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I did not want to close my YouTube account because it has a lot of good information and entertainment.
My compromise is that I never ever look at the YouTube home page because that’s where their AI feeds suggestions and fucks with our brains.
I only open my subscription page which shows me content I’ve already vetted and selected.
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Rob,
I appreciate the suggestions. I had scrubbed my YouTube account of all videos I had made and deleted all my subscriptions – I’m sure that those plus my viewing habits were what the AI used to make “suggestions” for my home page (it must be a pretty simple AI as all the “suggestions” seem obvious). From now on when I use it I will only view my subscriptions. I trust Google even less. I used to trust (very qualified) the internet searches to bring me truly unbiased results. Now it seems that every search is only designed to sell me what Google wants me to buy or their pre-approved story line (like no Covid treatment other than vaccines or Big Pharma crap). Other than your site and Megacancer there are few not in denial places. Who do you use for new? I got rid of NYT, WaPo, Guardian long ago and just recently got rid of AP. What’s left?
AJ
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My favorite news source is Al Jazeera. I detect less obvious bias from them. They also do a good job of covering global news, and they produce great documentaries.
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A different way of youtubing.
Never use their app.
Use firefox in private mode.
install adblock plus and ublock origin addons.
Never sign in unless commenting.
Bookmark the channels you want to see in firefox.
This way they can’t track you and if a channel you watch is shadowband you still see their videos.
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Very good tips. Thanks.
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If you want Ivermectin or any Covid related product try & get some from a local established source, like AJ did, first. The online Covid scamming is just mental. Dark Web is mental x 2. Vampires selling Covid vaccines on the dark web & the desperate & fearful are buying. Nuts.
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Thanks for the tip. Sounds like US people are buying Ivermectin as horse paste from the local feed shop. Wonder if that works in Canada? My family member retired vet seems like a dead end since he thinks I’m crazy.
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We use ivermectin as part of our sheep drenching programme. We usually buy it in 5 litre bottles from online farm suppliers. I’m sure you’d have multiple options in Canada. I’m not sure if it is available in smaller quantities. Have you got any friends with sheep?
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I do, but too far away in Alberta. Thanks for the tip. I’ll check the local feed stores.
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Coronavirus Vaccine Side Effects: Some Suffer Bell’s Palsy After Inoculation, FDA Reveals
https://www.ibtimes.com/coronavirus-vaccine-side-effects-some-suffer-bells-palsy-after-inoculation-fda-3102900
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We’re at what, T+2 days? You can’t make this shit up.
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The Nicole Foss that I knew and loved 10 years ago is back with a focus on the coming crash (with little partisan politics).
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Must be something in the air. Charles Hugh Smith agrees with Nicole and predicts we will completely unwind the asset bubble that we built over the last 20 years in the next 2 years.
Thing is, he’s blaming it on the virus. But he was predicting a crash due to energy depletion prior to the pandemic. Smells like subscription growth opportunism because pandemics sell better than overshoot.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/12/can-20-years-of-deflation-be-compressed.html
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Like I’ve been saying for months, Overshoot/limits to growth, & all it’s consequences have been psychologically transferred to Plandemic Super Jews, especially if you’re a white American.
N0 no no, Overshoot/limits to growth, & all it’s consequences have nothing to do with the last 5 generations of white westerners living as the most obscene fucking degenerate pigs in human history. It’s not on us. Everything was awesome until 5 minutes ago when the Super Jews unleashed their evil plandemic upon the pure humans (white American gentiles).
IT WASN’T ME!!! IT WASN’T ME!!! IT WASN’T ME!!! IT WASN’T ME!!!
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I don’t want to post it here because it’s crazy talk, but Nicole Foss yesterday with the same interviewer posted a discussion on politics and global conspiracy.
It’s quite remarkable how a brain can be sane on one issue and insane on another.
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Must watch explanation of how the global plastic recycling business never was sustainable, and how it is now completely broken.
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Vulfpeck is a great band with the world’s best bass player.
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This was my introduction to vulfpeck too.
The bass playing is brilliant.
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Funktastic! I’m hearing a strong Steely Dan influence in there.
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Greta does not appear to be aware that we need rapid population reduction policies, and in the interim, all we need to do is raise the interest rate.
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Friedemann on Smil on battery powered ships.
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/battery-powered-container-ships/
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No real effort to curb growth will ever be made. The talk & empty promises/policy will go on until the energy to maintain that charade is no longer available.
Here’s some news – woe – on slowing population growth.
COVID baby boom? No, 2020 triggered a baby bust – and that will have lasting impacts
“COVID baby bust:Experts see spike in birth control orders
30% change their family plans
In a survey published Wednesday by Modern Fertility, about 30% of nearly 4,000 people with ovaries expressed that they were changing their fertility/family planning timelines this year.
Of those who said they were changing their plans:
The pandemic “made me look at the people around me — and that was my family, that was my children,” she said. “We still love each other, and I want another child to join.”
Top reasons for people delaying or questioning having kids altogether included feeling “unsure about my financial position,” seeing “the challenges of parenting this year” and being worried about “safely accessing prenatal care/healthcare.”
“”Both Urbanski, 33, and her partner have pivoted to egg retrievals and plan to pick up their donor conversation in 2021. Still, it’s been difficult to delay the major life milestone — something she recognizes may be a shared experience for other prospective parents, now more than ever.
“There’s the importance of allowing yourself to be flexible with your plans, but also grieve what you were initially trying to do,” she said. ”
Up to half a million fewer babies in 2021, lasting impact
Urbanski is not alone. In a June report, Levine and Melissa Kearney, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, projected that the nation could see 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births in 2021.
In a December update published Thursday, Levine and Kearney stood by their initial prediction of a large reduction in births. But projected that the number would likely be closer to 300,000.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/16/covid-19-baby-bust-coronavirus-pandemic-lead-birth-decline/6507974002/
Next to day to day survival, the drive to reproduce, via fucking, is the strongest drive. The notion that any signifiant number of humans can control their breeding drive is absurd. That would imply the humans are calling the shots, not evolution & the MPP.
C’mon people we must replenish our ranks of worker-consumers – probably going to need more cannon fodder soon as well. Do your part & start fucking like Catholic rabbits.
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An unfriendly state broke into, and has been roaming around inside, thousands of secure networks, including the US government, for several months. I first heard about this yesterday on Security Now, a computer security podcast I monitor. I’m thinking it’s a pretty big deal.
https://krypt3ia.wordpress.com/2020/12/16/supply-chain-attacks-and-nation-state-pwnage-a-primer/
h/t Yoshua
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Chris Kresser is someone I trust on health issues. Today he interviewed Dale Harrison, an expert on Covid testing, and they provide an excellent overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tests.
In summary, you can trust a positive test but you cannot trust a negative test. What this means for my life is that I will not seek out a test, and I will continue to assume everyone is infected.
https://chriskresser.com/what-covid-19-testing-can-and-cannot-tell-us-with-dale-harrison/
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Rob, I’ve always assumed everyone is infected, but it don’t have nuthin to do with Covid.
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LOL, me too…
Just got back from my daily 7 km walk on a beach. I ran into another old timer and I asked him if he noticed how completely dead the beach is compared to what it was like in the 70’s when we were kids. He got defensive and argued the beach is not dead. Just like the parrot in Monty Python.
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Speaking of the 70’s and seeing what you want to see…………
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I’ve been tested twice, both with a negative result. Once during April (no symptoms, but had been exposed) and again during early November (when I had mild cold-like symptoms and a few unusual symptoms). I work with street homeless persons and have been exposed multiple times to persons having tested positive for COVID. I always wear a mask and try to physically distance but it’s (the physical distancing of six-ish feet) simply not possible sometimes due to the nature of the work. Many of my colleagues at the office have tested positive and some have had mild and even severe symptoms (one was hospitalized, but not ventilated) so I may have been exposed there as well.
I’m highly skeptical about the negative result for my second (November) test due to the very high false negative rate for the COVID PCR/RNA test. I didn’t lose smell or taste but I had some very strange symptoms (earaches, in particular) which I hadn’t had since I was a young child when I had chronic ear infections. After a few days of these symptoms I was pretty much back to 100% but I lean toward it being very mild COVID.
Since February, I’ve daily taken 5000 IU vitamin D3 (+ K2), zinc picolinate, n-acetylcysteine, quercetin (+ bromelain), vitamin B-complex, vitamin C, and omega-3. Maybe these supplements have reduced my risk of severe symptoms – difficult to be certain about this. I just purchased three tubes of ivermectin paste from Tractor Supply Company for 10 dollars to treat worse symptoms if they occur.
As you mentioned Rob, assuming everyone is SARS-2 infected is without a doubt the best approach.
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Thanks! Can you tell us a little more about the Ivermectin paste? I assume it is for topical use? How do you take an appropriate dose internally?
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I’m learning as I go with this stuff and so I’ll have to wait until I receive the tubes before I can provide a more informed response.
To the best of my current knowledge, it can be taken topically (for conditions such as rosacea) or orally (for conditions such as roundworms) but for COVID it needs to be taken orally to be effective. In the video below, the gentleman provides a nice overview of how to measure the dosage based upon one’s body weight.
Honestly, I’m still a bit skeptical about using it in this form (as it really is designed to be used with non-human animals) but the more I’ve read about farmers and ranchers having accidentally swallowed it without adverse effect when giving it to their livestock or horses, and others who have used it intentionally to very effectively treat other conditions, the more I think it’s perfectly safe as long as it’s dosed correctly.
I’ll provide an update here once I’ve received it and thoroughly analyzed it.
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Thanks, please do let us know what you learn.
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I can get 2 tubes on Amazon for $20 delivered. But it’s coming from the US and I have no control over the best-by date. There are 3 feed stores in my town that probably carry it. I’m going to try them first.
My retired vet relative says to make sure it only has Ivermectin. Some horse dewormers also have Praziquantel which you do not want.
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Sorry Rob,
I wasted a lot of time on this recommendation. Yesterday I watched 30 minutes of this video and then wrote a long negative critique and deleted it numerous times. I would not trust either of these commentators. What agendas do they have? Where’s the money? Are they true scientists or shills for the established sickcare/pharma industries?
I won’t say more.
AJ
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Are you talking about Chris Kresser? He’s about as squeaky clean as they come and works very hard to stay up with the latest research. When he makes a mistake he admits it. What error did you spot?
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Rob,
Yes, I mean Mr. Kresser and the person he interviewed. Just googling Kresser and https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chris_Kresser (do I have the wrong guy??)
Really, acupuncture? (woo), Paleo diet (woo)(besides who really knows what our distant ancestors ate and which ones – the ones in Africa, the high Arctic, the steppes?). He is suspect. Sure the wiki could be wrong but I don’t have time to waste. AND my big beef was with the statementthat PCR testing has low false positive? Says who (WHO – pun). I read quite a bit that said it had a high false positive because they are doing to many cycles. BUT I could be wrong. I follow Chris Martenson’s recommendation to look at people dispensing advice and see if they are making reputations or money by promoting the status quo in the sickcare/big pharma industries. Both of these people seem to have that incentive?? (not that it’s automatically disqualifying but I get suspicious and then look for mistakes. Like PCR testing, where there is a perverse incentive to make people trust a testing procedure and then label them infected (hospitalize them and give them worthless treatments at great expense all to further the dominant narrative). I’ve rambled enough.
AJ
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I’m also allergic to woo. I’ve been following Kresser for 4+ years and have never heard a hint of woo. He may have been involved with acupuncture early in his career but I have never heard him mention it once in 4 years. He does not advocate any particular diet. He thinks we should be eating a balanced diet of mostly unrefined and unprocessed foods. People can learn and change. I thought environmentalists were idiots 10 years ago when I was engaged in the industrial machine. With regard to PCR, I thought they made the point that too many cycles made results suspect, and I thought they also made the point that a positive result does not mean you are sick or going to get sick, nor that you are spreading the virus.
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Good, I should know that you would be skeptical 😉 of any junk science. I just have become too emotional about all the evil and anti-scientific thought that is foisted on the public by the media and the sickcare/big pharma/gov entities that are supposed to be purveyors of truth.
AJ
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I think there has been a bit of a smear campaign against Kresser because he has been vocal that a healthy diet should include some animal protein/fat, and that a vegetarian/vegan diet can be ok if you’re really careful but they have some health risks. He speaks from personal experience having been a vegan. Kresser engaged in 2 very public debates on the Joe Rogan podcast and most people think he lost. I think he is perceived to have lost because he stuck to the high ground with credible science and did not engage in a dirty fight like his opponent. He’s just a nice guy trying to make sense of the latest very complex and confusing health science.
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This one makes a number of good insights & contains some fine comic relief
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Population Bomb
“People don’t like to admit this uncomfortable truth. If there’s a problem, we look for someone to blame. Newspapers fill their pages blaming politicians and bureaucrats, businessmen and corporations: the Strangeloves of our world. All the problems of the world fall upon their shoulders. If they fail, we demand their heads.
If a flood occurs, it’s the fault of the engineers or the mayor or someone in power. They should have done something! If our prosperity declines or our freedoms erode, the cause is evil politicians scheming to increase their control.
To blame overpopulation is to admit our freedom is chained to circumstance. That forces beyond our control govern our lives. We’d have to admit we’re just an animal in an ecosystem.
Yet there are people alive today who have seen the global population quadruple: from two to almost eight billion people. That dwarfs the entirety of human history. Lone countries now contain the population of the planet at the turn of the last century.”
View at Medium.com
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Thanks for the intro to Bill Burr, he’s excellent. I added it to the unDenial gallery. https://un-denial.com/gallery/
You’re probably right that a majority will never vote for population reduction laws. I still find it amazing that we are unable to even discuss the issue in elections given that pretty much every health indicator for the planet is flashing bright red. The strength of denial is gobsmacking.
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Population reduction the hard/historical way.
The Only Thing, Historically, That’s Curbed Inequality: Catastrophe
Plagues, revolutions, massive wars, collapsed states—these are what reliably reduce economic disparities.
“Calls to make America great again hark back to a time when income inequality receded even as the economy boomed and the middle class expanded. Yet it is all too easy to forget just how deeply this newfound equality was rooted in the cataclysm of the world wars.”
“This equalizing was a rare outcome in modern times but by no means unique over the long run of history. Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/scheidel-great-leveler-inequality-violence/517164/
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Dr. John Campbell today tries not to get emotional about the inexplicable and inexcusable incompetence of health authorities in most countries on Vitamin D.
A year’s supply costs about $5. I do not understand why we would be willing to print trillions for stimulus and billions for vaccines and not spend a few million handing out Vitamin D.
It is very very strange.
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It’s par for the course IMO. The short explanation is an axis of
evilgreed – Big Ag, Big Pharma & Big Gov (eg:FDA). Legitimized by greedy status seeking scientists going back many many decades.Dr. Campbell ‘s mention of pre WW2 ‘forgotten’ German nutritional science is a story I’ve heard before & the vitamin D evidence is but one of many instances. It’s not exclusively German – Austrian, Soviet, UK, US etc, research as well.
It’s a rabbit hole as deep as any I’ve come across. Do you want to go down it?
Y’all likely know a bunch of it if no all the connections & depth.
Where to start? It goes back a ways but, I might start here first.
The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains
Robert H. Lustig
“Explores how industry has manipulated our most deep-seated survival instincts.”—David Perlmutter, MD, Author, #1 New York Times bestseller, Grain Brain and Brain Maker
The New York Times–bestselling author of Fat Chance reveals the corporate scheme to sell pleasure, driving the international epidemic of addiction, depression, and chronic disease.
While researching the toxic and addictive properties of sugar for his New York Times bestseller Fat Chance, Robert Lustig made an alarming discovery—our pursuit of happiness is being subverted by a culture of addiction and depression from which we may never recover.
Dopamine is the “reward” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we want more; yet every substance or behavior that releases dopamine in the extreme leads to addiction. Serotonin is the “contentment” neurotransmitter that tells our brains we don’t need any more; yet its deficiency leads to depression. Ideally, both are in optimal supply. Yet dopamine evolved to overwhelm serotonin—because our ancestors were more likely to survive if they were constantly motivated—with the result that constant desire can chemically destroy our ability to feel happiness, while sending us down the slippery slope to addiction. In the last forty years, government legislation and subsidies have promoted ever-available temptation (sugar, drugs, social media, porn) combined with constant stress (work, home, money, Internet), with the end result of an unprecedented epidemic of addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic disease. And with the advent of neuromarketing, corporate America has successfully imprisoned us in an endless loop of desire and consumption from which there is no obvious escape.
With his customary wit and incisiveness, Lustig not only reveals the science that drives these states of mind, he points his finger directly at the corporations that helped create this mess, and the government actors who facilitated it, and he offers solutions we can all use in the pursuit of happiness, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Always fearless and provocative, Lustig marshals a call to action, with seminal implications for our health, our well-being, and our culture. ”
https://b-ok.cc/book/3352415/fb2920
http://audiobookbay.nl/audio-books/the-hacking-of-the-american-mind-the-science-behind-the-corporate-takeover-of-our-bodies-and-brains-robert-h-lustig/
I have not seen ‘The Social Dilemma’, but I’m certain the tech scumlords are just the latest to follow this play book.
Most are defenceless & will remain that way & not necessarily due to ignorance or lack of effort.
It’s very easy to evolutionarily hijack humans. It takes 1000 times the time & effort to reverse it.
Healthcare among most corrupt sectors, warns UN expert, backing “citizen whistleblowers”
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22283
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Thanks, I’ve read a lot about the disgraceful history of heart health and diabetes/obesity science: animal fat bad, eggs bad, cigarettes good, sugar good, margarine good, German science bad, etc.
I can understand why a country with looney tunes corrupt politics like the US might go down the wrong path.
But our leaders in Canada don’t seem crazy. Dr. Bonnie Henry here in B.C. is not corrupt. Why hasn’t she mailed vitamin D to every household in B.C.? Screw the rest of the world. We should be able to get our shit straight at home.
I don’t understand, it doesn’t compute, and I don’t buy conspiracy.
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Anyone working in BigPharma and the government sickcare industry (FDA, CDC, WHO) is suspect to me. If they are like Dr. Campbell or Chris Martenson and have earned my respect by being science centered and logical then I will listen.
AJ
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BMJ editor Fiona Godlee takes on corruption in science
“It’s unusual to watch one of the world’s most powerful editors in scientific publishing play with a marionette puppet.
But Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, specializes in the unexpected.
The puppet she’s holding is dressed as a doctor, complete with a stethoscope around its neck. Its strings represent the hidden hand of the pharmaceutical industry.
Godlee keeps it on her desk to remind her of the dark forces at work in science and medicine. And she is blunt about the results.
“I think we have to call it what it is. It is the corruption of the scientific process.”
There are increasing concerns these days about scientific misconduct. Hundreds of papers are being pulled from the scientific record, for falsified data, for plagiarism, and for a variety of other reasons that are often never explained.
Sometimes it’s an honest mistake. But it’s estimated that 70 per cent of the retractions are based on some form of scientific misconduct.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/bmj-fiona-godlee-science-1.3541769
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Former NEJM editors on the corruption of American medicine (NY Times)
March 20, 2012
” Marcia Angell MD is a well-known, respected physician, long-time editor of NEJM. So it was a bit of a shock today when Amy Romano, blogger for Lamaze International, sent me this quote:
It was from Dr. Angell’s review Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption. ”
https://participatorymedicine.org/epatients/2012/03/former-nejm-editors-on-the-corruption-of-american-medicine-ny-times.html
Editors from two of the most prestigious medical journals on the planet. Not exactly your run of the mill conspiracy tards.
They are not alone among professionals in medical research. Far from it.
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