What was a time when you drank the kool aid?
For those who aren't familiar with the term, it means believing something that probably shouldn't be believed, or being influenced to believe something that's not necessarily in your best interests.
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There was a time I actually thought that Elon Musk wanted to help save the planet by making electric cars mainstream to displace fossil fuel vehicles, and by helping humanity return to space simply for the science and exploration value.
Musk's "some kind of pedo guy" comment about the diver that dismissed Musk's efforts with the cave children was the first WTF moment, but I wrote that off has him just having a bad day as he apologized later. Musk fighting the COVID lockdown was also more evidence that concerned me. This was all before Elon's embrace of trump and GOP Nazism, and long before Elon's double Nazi salute on national television.
I tend to think at some point that was true, that Tesla was about saving the planet and SpaceX was about making humanity multiplanetary.
It could be he was always a wretched creep and just really good at hiding it, but it seems to me that the wealth and power just ruined him. He wouldn't be the first person to fall in that trap.
I'll append my confession here.
I supported Ron Paul once upon a time. The non-interventionism appealed to me in the context of the Iraq war in particular, and the rights-based libertarian philosophy seemed sound. I was young.
If it ruined him, it did so before he had anything to do with Tesla.
That Tesla started with reasonable (if misguided) intentions, I can believe. But only before Musk, who was born rich, got involved.
We must be twins!
Elon is a classic tale of surrounding oneself with sycophants and descending into the madness of their own bullshit. I think he started with pure-ish intentions.
I was a registered libertarian and a Ron Paul disciple. Easy trap to fall into as a relatively privileged white guy. Every self-described libertarian I meet now makes me ashamed of who I was then.
I always knew he was an arsehole, but I thought he was at least a like minded arsehole, when it came to saving the planet.
The trapped kids incident also the first proper crack I noticed in his image. Now, I wouldn't touch anything of his with a 40' pole.
Never liked the guy in the first place, but what really sealed the deal was when I heard him talk about the stupid fucking Hyperloop, and then later when he built the even more stupid Loop system in Las Vegas.
As a Swede who knows trains and remembers reading about Swissmetro, the Hyperloop system was not just a stupid idea, it was an old discredited stupid idea from the very start.
As for the Loop system, the less said about it, the more time is left to laugh at it.
Musk was already know for being a toxic asshole long before the pedo incident.
His was already establishing himself as anti-labor, a terrible leader and an asshole who screamed at employees and fired employees in front of other employees.
He only got into Tesla and spacex because he was able to establish himself as unremovable because every other company he had attempt to lead, fired his ass for being all of these things.
Absolutely, but little of that information was common knowledge at the time.
I'm not sure common knowledge is a appropriate here, most of what you and I listed still isn't common knowledge.
I recall all of this being covered and discussed. The main difference was the type of excuses being made becuase believe wanted to believe he was saving the world.
There are definitely people who still believe. But there are now fewer people proclaiming it and the excuses are gone.
Now the argument is if he's a Nazi or not. Few take his goals seriously, we're in some weird state where people are gaslighting themselves for various reasons. A big one is to protect the massive amount of money invested in his worthless companies.
Capitalist oligarchs are the ones who rule society, and so if there are problems in society, the fault ultimately comes back to them as they are the rulers. They, however, will never admit responsibility to anything, and so they will always seek to shift to blame to other people, but they are the ones who rule, so their blame must be shifted to the non-rulers, i.e. to regular people. Shifting the blame to all of regular people would be vastly unpopular, and so they instead pick out a subset of regular people to blame. Whether it is Jews, Somalis, transpeople, immigrants, etc, it is always the fault of some minority group of people who have no political power, and it is never the fault of those who control everything and are in the position of power to make all the decisions.
You couldn't tell he was a maniac grifter? The fact that his money comes from family mines in South Africa and he didn't renounce it but built upon it didn't let you know he was a villain? 😕
PS: Weird post to downdoot. Explain yourselves, you cowards, lol.
You're not wrong, you're just being a dick about it in a thread that is literally about the time one drank the Kool Aid.
Criticising people that have reflected their previous choices/views and are acting different now is unnecessary.
Where's the criticism? Stop having an emotional reaction to my actual bewilderment ("you couldn't tell...") and just explain it to me (or don't!). 🙃
Had I said something like "lol you fucking incompetent moron, you smoothbrain fucks", I'd get it, certainly. But I didn't.
You asked people to explain. People explained that you're coming across as a dick, in a thread explicitly about regrettable, gullible moments. I don't know what you're having a problem with here but it seems like you're the one having an emotional reaction, calling people cowards and refusing to hear people's explanations.
I think the reason your initial comment comes across hostile is because of the way it's written (chaining questions), and the way you're asking things that have an obvious answer.
However, you didn't write anything explicitly hostile. It's a question that could come across either way, and if you genuinely had no mocking or hostile intent I would have suggested rereading and rewording your comment to make that clearer, as it's tough to interpret that kind of thing through text. I've totally left comments that read hostile when I didn't intend it to, it just happens sometimes! 🤷♂️
Now this is a proper reply. Fair enough. I wasn't being hostile, more like 🤔😔, certainly not too positive. It's annoying that people can be this blind, it's a big reason why the world is so shit and why the West cranks and exports villains who are loved locally... it's triggering, for lack of a better word.
Just when you exhibited a moment of possible self-reflection, you just threw it all away and reinforced every negative connotation your prior statements have held.
😔
Maybe the criticism is valid, you just don't wanna hear it?
I had no idea he came from SA with wealth from mining until after I figured out he was full of shit and and absolute dickhead, only after that did I realize where it all started.
So don't blame people for not knowing what you knew at the time.
First of all, where's the blame? Don't get too emotional on me. Secondly, that's like the easiest and quickest Google research you could've done, lol. Finally, does anyone who isn't in the spectrum even have to Google anything related to him? The insanity and depravity was palpable, just like with Milei and Trump and the others. But if you are, then the little Google search would be absolutely necessary before you start praising him as if he's some messiah and not just another selfish capitalist amoral prick. Haven't y'all had enough experience with these folks to recognise it?!
This is where you put the blame in your comment:
This isn't even general knowledge these days, and has only started spreading in the last few years, you acted as if everyone knew it from day one.
Pretty normal expectation from a rich white guy in South Africa at the time, ngl.
It took me years to learn that he was from SA
Hang on, before I reply I have to research whether any people in this thread bought their computer with money earned through slavery.
I downvoted you for complaining about downvotes.
Understandable, lol.
He was a big figure before the Internet became what it is today. We only saw him through headlines, that he probably paid to have embellished in a positive light.
Before he started going on twitter and we all saw what a prick he was, he was Mr. Most-Likely-To-Be-Iron-Man-IRL. It's a shame really.
haha excellent edit/ps.
Divisive propaganda got me to vote for Jill Stein in 2016. I would still assert that Clinton was an awful candidate, but I should have voted for her.
Professional grifter Jill Stein
you must russian-backed grifter jill stein.
I fell for this, too. I felt like I needed to "punish" the democrats for corruption that blocked Bernie from what should have been rightfully his. It felt like the democrats were doing election fraud. I thought Trump wouldn't possibly win in my state anyway. Oh how naive I was.
Even if all Stein votes went to Clinton, she still would've lost, so the country ultimately followed your strategy of not voting third party. You need to take responsibility as the current situation we are in is the result of your endorsed strategy.
I mean, not really. You just said it wouldn't have made a difference if I voted for Stein vs Hillary. I got several lifelong Republicans to change their voter registration to Democrat to vote for Bernie. I do not endorse voting 3rd party anymore. I used to think you should vote your conscience no matter what. I believed in a free and fair democracy. Now I think you should strategize even if the democrats suck too.
I do take responsibility for being a dumb young 20s person falling for what I now think was Russian propaganda, but Trump winning a second time had nothing to do with me. That's on people who didn't vote at all in 2024.
I am not talking about "you." I have no idea who you are. I am talking about your strategy. People followed your strategy and it got us into the bind we are currently in.
And people have followed your strategy and it failed. It turns out that having no principles and endorsing warmongering fascists who promise nothing to their constituents will just make you lose the election.
The point of voting third party isn't even necessarily some expectation that the third party wins, but to pressure the Democrats to actually stand for something so that the Democrats will win. Your strategy of "vote blue no matter who" always leads to the Democrats not only losing, but also shifting farther to the right before losing because they have no incentive to have any populist principles, and then this hands the reigns into an even farther right Republican administration.
Again, Trump's victory is a result of your strategy. This administration is yours. Own it.
People did not vote third party in this election in significant numbers enough for it to sway the election. People did not do so last election either. People have been consistently following the "vote blue no matter who" for decades now, with the last time there was any serious backing for a third party was back in the 2000 election.
Russiagate in 2025 🤦♀️
Yeah, I'm sure it was those few hundred dollars in ads on Facebook and not open support for an industrial scale holocaust, an out of control cost of living crisis, shifting towards being jingoistic and running on wanting to massively ramp up military spending and constantly attacking Trump from the right saying he isn't hawking on the border enough.
Yeah yeah, I'm sure none of those had to do with people not being very inspired to vote for the Democrats. Democrats aren't popular because of a few Facebook ads, not because they've done anything wrong! Sure sure.
You take no responsibility for anything. You just constantly want to shift the blame elsewhere. Your failures are all secretly the fault of Russia or of other poor and struggling Americans. The problem is never you or your beloved fascist politicians. You do not have the level of maturity needed to admit when your strategy has failed.
It is the responsibility of a party to have a strategy to attract voters. Saying "we should have a strategy that appeals to no one" and then losing the election and blaming people for not voting for you just reveals that you, at the end of the day, genuinely do not care about the outcome of the election. This is why you try to shift the blame of your own failures onto other poor and struggling Americans.
I want the Democrats to appeal to non-voters so they will actually win. You want the Democrats to appeal to no one and then just shame non-voters as bad people for not mindlessly your beloved fascist politician, because you ultimately, at the end of the day, don't actually even care if the Democrats win or lose as politics is just a game to you. I want a strategy that actually wins elections. Your strategy has been the dominant one for decades now. As the old saying goes, insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
What was the intent of your vote? To voice displeasure with both candidates?
That, to demonstrate to the Democratic party that I don't want to support them if they actively fight against my policy goals, and to help develop a viable third party.
Wish voting third party could accomplish that. I want the same things. Thank you for sharing.
Shocked that a vast majority of this country doesn’t agree to exclusively vote for candidates whose primary policy position is electoral reform.
I believed the USA was a liberal democracy full of concerned citizens. I also had faith in the financial system at one point!
In fairness before the Internet we could pretend people were decent and thoughtful. Facebook well and truly ended that.
Americans would vote to cut off their own nose to spite their neighbor's face.
ya we do be doing that
So you just drank the socialist kool aid. Got it.
You say socialist like it's a bad thing and it screams "I'm ignorant."
If you hate socialism stop using the things socialism provides you. Mail, paved roads, power and water delivered to your house, fire and police, education, etc. Socialism is a big part of why our lives are so decent despite the capitalist hellscape the billionaires are pushing. They've lied to you that social programs are why your taxes are so high; they're high because the wealthiest among us aren't paying a fair share.
None of that is socialism.
All of that is infact socialism. Taxing individuals and creating community services. It’s like the core tenant or our education system which is socialist, even if it failed to teach you that. It’s the core tenant of social security and Medicare. Those third rail policies that everyone loves? It’s socialism.
None of that is socialism but alright I guess every country in the world is socialist so you've got what you want.
What’s the purpose of social security? A state run program to redistribute money from the working to the non working? A social safety net to protect vulnerable citizens.
So what is the difference between that and communism?
Sure it is. Are you using a different definition of socialism? Who owns the schools?? Who owns the roads?
Thinking everything is a "hellscape" and only those in your group are enlightened enough to see a better way (those outside the group are "ignorant") is what most people refer to as "drinking the koolaid".
Modern "socialism" is at best a grift, at worst a cult.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in...
...don't make me post the whole copypasta.
"socialist kool aid"
If caring about others is kool aid, call me the kool aid man because I am about to burst through the glass ceilings and bring delicious nectar to all.
Hahah socialism. Like subsidies for farmers who grow corn for ethanol? Or like subsidies for Amazon warehouses. Or should we only do socialism and when banks gamble to hard and collapse? Or socialism like getting a government/military jobs to avoid poverty?
Fallacious reasoning. I could also reference Stalin, breadlines, and the fact that the greatest famines in human history were the result of the authoritarian nature of socialism.
We could discuss the pros and cons of specific policies but instead the "socialist" kool-aid drinkers just tend to rant about capitalism = bad and therefore socialism = good without any grasp of any nuance or willing to do any critical thinking.
For example, with ethanol growing corn pulls carbon out of the air, burning the ethanol of course returns it back. It's carbon neutral, which is significant because Global Warming is a real thing. Pulling oil from the ground and burning it is obviously not carbon neutral. Ethanol is a much better fuel than burning oil.
Amazon was facing an anti-trust lawsuit: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power
But something has changed in the last year, so now it's drill, baby drill and corporations like Amazon can bribe the government to look the other way on their anti-competitive practices.
You've probably been convinced "both sides are the same" because that is the belief of your group. But it's in the the nature of cult behaviour to deny reality to conform to the group. Which is what the phrase "drinking the koolaid" is in reference to.
You know I picked the strawman out while I was skim reading this bullshit. Just wanted you to know whatever you typed was a huge waste of time. Because of the straw man in the last paragraph lol. I did get a lol outta the ethonol rebuttal. 1/10 bait
He did a good thing for sure
How to say you never studied government without saying you never studied government. Classic.
You have faith in the financial system?
When I was a kid, I watched Chinese dramas about the war of resistance against japanese invasion, and it portrayed the CCP as heroes...
The main fighting force was actually the ROC Army lol
I used to have more positive views on PRC, but then my mom told me about One Child Policy and I wasn't supposed to exist...
so yea, my opinion changed pretty quickly
No way in hell I'd support an organization that wanted to legislate me out of existence, also denying legal paperwork after I was born.
Also, cops.
I used to think they actually protect people, now I know they are just a bunch of useless assholes that sometimes harass innocent people. They never help with anything, always have this aggressive attitude, does injust arrests.
This view isn't based on the internet, it's from actual real life experiences.
I'm of the opinion that anyone who supports the police probably hasn't had an interaction with the police.
Like seriously, any time I've been the victim of a crime, the police have been the worst part of it. I guess I'm probably biased, maybe there's some place where cops don't suck, but I don't live there
I think people probably like the idea of the police: someone you can call in an emergency when you're in danger. But their response does not reflect their branding
Used to believe that humanity would inherently self-improve, especially the more easily information became accessible.
People couldn't read and write at first, and didn't know much about the world, and now we have instant communication and access to vast repositories of knowledge.
I believed that people were naturally curious, and wanted to learn and figure things out. Education systems sucked, but with improvement it could foster that curiosity in everyone!
Turns out that was incredibly naive. Humans have an inherent ego that tries to make themselves more than reality. Their problems are more real than another's. Their inconveniences are more important than anything bigger-picture. I thought religion were old dinosaur structures of primitive belief systems that lasted for too long, but humans will literally make shit up or believe in some made up shit from someone else if it helps them ignore the inconveniences of reality.
COVID-19 really helped sink that in.
Oh man. Yeah, I remember in middle school reading about WW1, WW2, Vietnam, the Civil War (USA) and thinking that thank god we're smart enough to be past that.
Yes, also, COVID killed any hope I had left. I remember before the pandemic thinking that if aliens landed all of humanity's petty bickering would end once we had something that united us all, and when COVID hit I thought "this is it, we have no choice but to come together as humans and face a challenge"...holy shit was I wrong. In the years since the pandemic I've had to actively try to forget most of what happened for my own sanity.
Humans are smart.
But this isn't our natural habitat. Its a laboratory and we are the lab rats.
Can you judge an animal's intelligence if they are in a controlled environment and manipulated by mad scientists? (mad scientist = the 1%)
People are naturally curious but we live in a system that punishes curiosity.
covid also shifted the anti-vaxers to the RIGHT.
Elon Musk in his early days. He was fresh, convincing and his ideas sounded good. It turns out they sounded a bit too good. With hindsight he really is the world greatest con-man. Why this still goes on its beyond me, though.
In early days of Tesla I felt pretty sure a Tesla was going to be my first car. Now, I’m kind of just happy not having a car at all.
I knew of Tesla and SpaceX and I'd vaguely heard of him but didn't really care so I wrote him off as another rich asshole immediately. Then I had some friends raving about him going to Mars and saving the world. I almost bought in but within a few weeks of that happening he called the guys who rescued the kids trapped in a cave a pedo just because he couldn't use his sub. That started my hatred of the man.
I remember when Reddit was in love with him. I never really engaged with him either way. It's probably indirectly thanks to him that my opinion on self driving cars has soured, and I theoretically stand to gain the most if it ever becomes a thing since I can't drive. We shouldn't try to make a machine learn the messy landscape of roads designed for humans, we should develop better rail and bus infrastructure and make cities more pedestrian-friendly.
wild to think that whole house of cards of his collapsed because his PR person wanted a raise and being the greedy little ratfuck he is he refused.
cleanly they earned it
kimd of makes me wonder who all else out there is a complete piece of shit but we just don't know/realize it
Never heard about this. Do you have a source I can get some further reading on this?
don't have any links off the top of my head but it should be easy enough to find.
it could just all be coincidence but the timing of public-facing downfall and that event seems too good to be true imo.
Ok I'll have a look. Thnx for the interesting info
Report back. I remember somethingabout there being a musk cleanup team who followed him around and put right everything he meddled with. But internet search is so shit now that this is the best I can find. SpaceX employees denounce CEO Musk as 'distraction' in letter
For a while there with the "Not a flamethrower" and stuff he did manage to put a veneer of "Wacky" over the way he conducts business.
It was embarrassingly late in life before I realized how much of a farce that was.
Oh man! The pieces of myself I gave working for companies that gave zero shits about me! I worked way too hard for way too little. I was nothing to them.
Kids if you're reading this unionize your workplace. Through a union is the only way I've gotten a decent wage, benefits package, and shield from the whims of management. They're nothing without us, they produce no value.
An oldie but a goodie
I was raised insane and religious and ended up listening to Alex Jones every day for a year or two in highschool. I was also insufferable about it.
How did you escape? Because it seems a lot of people can't
No useful tips for deprogramming, I'm afraid. The two most critical things was an honest desire to know the truth / challenge my own beliefs, and learning empathy which helped a bunch. The rest was part of a larger shift in my life.
(Edit: Not being entirely isolated in the crazy is probably the most reproducible aspect. Gaining contact with people outside of that sphere was important, though my motivations can't be replicated...)
Paragraph 2 from the long version AKA my life story and shift to the left
But I also fell in love with a cute lefty boy around the tail end of my Alex Jones phase of life, which certainly spurred a lot of change and self-reflection... I had already started cutting through a teeny tiny bit of the bullshit myself, but that really pushed things along and on a grander scale.
Have you ever listened to the podcast Knowledge Fight?
No I haven't. Since AJ, the only podcast I've watched has been LinusTechTips' WANshow (and Level1Techs [prev. Tek Syndicate] very rarely). I've never really been big into the format.
I watch Belle of the Ranch for political commentary, news, and anything that matters. Vaush, SomeMoreNews, and a bunch of urbanist channels like Not Just Bikes for pol / pol-adjacent entertainment.
I’m also a big fan of Some More News!
If hearing Alex Jones again wouldn’t be upsetting to you, I really recommend Knowledge Fight. They cut clips from Info Wars and dive into the reality of the stories behind his nonsense and break down the propaganda. They actually helped the lawyers for the Sandy Hook families. And the Formulaic Objections episodes where they listen to the depositions of the Info Wars employees are really good
Neat. I'll check them out. Thanks
I ran 5 km every day and ate very low fat, mostly plants. Ended up with non alcoholic fatty liver.
seems inherited, did you ever find a cause?
No one else in my family or extended family has had fatty liver. Fortunately yes, I reversed my NAFLD by eating a low carbohydrate high fat diet.
Countless times throughout my life. In fact, a big part of my life is slowly deprogramming from years of propaganda. Whether it is religion or politics the amount of misinformation is enormous as it is prolific.
Even something very personal like relationships is fraught with tons of negative cultural issues around control and love. Most of what society teaches is a lie designed to perpetuate things like the Patriarchy.
Edit: After reading a lot of these I would like to offer an alternative to what a lot of people have said.
I learned about a conspiracy back in the early days of computing that was essentially that the US was intercepting all emails and all phone calls around the world.
There was a lot of good evidence including a spy pact with Canada where we had an installation on their soil and they had an installation on ours so we could spy on our own citizens without breaking the letter of the law.
Also good evidence that AT&T and other providers had let the government access their major server trunks to install their own hardware.
Well Snowden proved it was all real. This was probably the biggest conspiracy theory of my lifetime.
Go all the way back to the echelon conspiracy. You were a crazy person to believe the government could intercept your phone calls at any time. 30 years later it’s an accepted norm.
I thought the Mueller report was going to be a big bombshell and end a bunch of shit but it did almost less than nothing.
I thought "loose change" had more merit than it did when it came out. still sus on wtc7.
i thought 'What the bleed do we know" had more merit when I first saw it.
so there, I admit being human and getting swept up in confirmation bias, etc.
The Mueller Report was hamstrung at release by William Barr’s summary that effectively contradicts the contents of the report.
If it makes you feel better, political bombshells don't work anymore because nothing will ever phase the Republican voters enough to turn against their own politicians. Nothing, ever.
they had fox, newsmaxs, OAN, russian backed grifters to astroturf with propaganda to, hypernormalize it. its very effective with conservatives, because they are terminally drama/emotionally stunted driven people.
What the bleep has zero merit. What in that movie isn't bullshit?
what can I say, it took me a second watch for bs alarms to trigger. I was familiar with the double slit experiment but their framing of it was ...unique.
Me too. I really thought that one day my dad would say "You were right. I'm sorry." There is nothing that can change their minds, and I don't know what the solution is.
Ancient Aliens.
It was about 2002. I was 20.
Yes the internet existed back then but it just wasn't so pervasive. As in I didn't own a computer and that wasn't uncommon.
I bought a second hand book called Ancient Astronauts (?) by a guy called Erik Von Daniken. He's absolutely the 80s / 90s version of Graham Hancock. All the same pseudoscience strategies to popularise a bullshit theory.
I think I could best be described as a troubled young man. I drank heavily, smoked weed every day, party drugs on the weekend. When I was 18 I had left my home and a deeply religious background. I guess I was looking for some kind of secret arcane understanding of the world that wasn't religion.
I honestly don't know what I would have said if someone had have asked me directly - do you really believe that extra terrestrial beings have visited the earth in it's distant history. Like I don't know if I really truly believed it. I sure loved thinking about it though.
I changed my position over a decade or so. I went to uni, got a degree, started my career in accounting. Completely un-related to science or history or anthropology but, I certainly realised that people who have spent a lifetime studying to become experts in their field really know what they're talking about. Like it's just stupid to suggest that "every real archaologist in the world is stupid and only I can explain earth's real history".
I still am a weird guy but I don't believe in weird stuff like that anymore.
Conspiracy nonsense is one of my favorite hobbies to the point where I read your first sentence and immediately thought 'Erich von Däniken!' and two sentences later he is mentioned, coincidence, I think not!
He is one of my favorite weirdos, humans developing through aliens fucking apes? That's exactly the kind of freaky shit I'm in to chef's kiss
Hollow earth is also great.
I read von Daniken knowing he'd already been thoroughly debunked as a crank, it's actually highly entertaining if you don't take it too seriously.
The extraterrestrials have visited earth. It was so long ago we have forgotten that we were the aliens. We were fleeing from a dying planet, which we killed. Rinse and repeat.
Chariot of the Gods, by Erich von Däniken, was actually published in 1968. The nonsense has been going on for quite a while.
That could be me. I swapped christianity for the burgeoning new-age and neopagan stuff that was having a moment.
Once thought that Google eas a great company and earnt evil.
I gushed over them when Android Open Source Project, Chromium, and the Google summer of code were new. I still think the free and open source projects they maintain are positive things, but I'm disgusted with just about everything else they do.
I believed that I had to be certain way in society or I was fundamentally flawed and bad.
I dropped that belief, acknowledge that to some point it's convenient for me to follow societal norms but trying to fit in makes me mostly miserable. I naturally don't want to do things that bother other people but I also don't really want to be around them so why should I try to be likeable to them any more than is normal to me. This way people who like me, are sure to like me as I am. If I like them enough, I'll naturally also want to be considerate of them, even if I have to occasionally behave a little different.
I somehow made it very complicated with just beating myself up for being bad/stupid/ugly/broken because I kept believing people who I don't even like.
I once watched a documentary on all-natural child birth. I remember it made some believable points about how terrible epidurals were and how bath tubs and pools were better methods for birthing, all the while vilifying the medical establishment for not giving women choices.
I ate it all up thinking doctors were bastards for this until I finished my second semester at college for my medicine-adjacent degree. Oh, the shame!
What were the worst misconceptions?
Oh, I'm not entirely versed in child-bearing, but they claimed doctors didn't give women the option of giving birth in any other position than lying on their backs, but now I know this is false. You can request to give birth in any position that feels more comfortable.
Another was that giving an epidural would create a cascading effect of needing another drug to cover the side-effects, and then needing another to cover those side-effects as well, and so on just to tack on the bill. Of course, that's not how it works.
Oh really? What changed your mind??
Studying medicine. 😅
Mine have generally been mentioned. In my early 20s in the early 2000s. Got into the ancient aliens stuff briefly.
Believed in supernatural and past life stuff for a good bit.
By the mid-2000s, having "pulled myself out of poverty" (I didn't do it on my own; I had help and support for family after having been homeless at one point) and gotten a salaried job, started listening to rightwing radio hosts. Thought I just needed to work a bit harder and success would come. All the other people were lazy and social programs were bad with the possible exception of something like WIC. Nah, I was just fairly lucky to have survived some stupid situations, had help from family, and was generally just way too entitled and thinking I was special. I was fairly insufferable for a good while.
I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000
But he was a great tennisman ! Who wouldn't vote for him ?????
If only everyone else did.
I was raised evangelical Christian in the Bible belt. I was a "true believer" I call it now. I literally believed there was a hell that people were going to. I'm glad I'm out of that.
In college I fell pretty deep into the nopoo conspiracy, that shampoo manufacturers get you addicted to the cycle of stripping off your hair's natural sebum and replacing it with conditioner that attracts dirt... literally rinse, repeat.
I think I was frustrated that I couldn't figure out how to take care of my scalp and hair, and here was this social group with an explanation and a scapegoat.
I still think that shampooing every day is probably too much for me, and embraced mechanical cleaning, but I've relaxed the conspiracy thinking.
Wait, what the f...
...oh, thank goodness.
I don't know about the conspiracy, and every body is different, so I don't believe there's a best solution for everyone.
But no shampoo works very well for me. Only wash my hair thoroughly with water and brush it afterwards.
It's never looked and felt better. I used to have horrible dandruff which is now completely gone.
And if it smelled bad, there are enough people in my life who I know wouldn't be too polite to tell me.
Yeah I've come to accept that everyone is different, but it makes it so hard to learn the right way to care for long hair lol.
What works for me now is I brush close to every day, and I clean the brushes. I sometimes wash with just water but my hair will start getting greasy if I don't shampoo once in a while. I try to use a minimally bad shampoo just on the scalp/roots and conditioner just on the ends.
And once in a while I get seboritic dermatitis / dandruff, and I use a medicated anti fungal shampoo that clears it up.
Almost sounds not like dandruff, but psoriasis. I have it on my scalp only. Tea Tree shampoos work for mine (head and shoulders type stuff is overly harsh). Sometimes it flares up badly and a medicated shampoo will clear it up.
scalp psoriasis is pretty silvery flakey skin on the scalp with redness surrounding it, my bro had it. if its excessively itchy it could be atopic dermatitis on the scalp rather than sebboric/
Same here, also mostly cured my scalp psoriasis idk whatever it is. Water wash only. BUT I have a dry skin disease called ichthyosis vulgaris and another called episcleritis. My skin isn't the norm. The immune system overreacts.
My roommate is super oily not just his hair, so no way that'd work for him. He"s in the bathtub every day.
My daughter has this too.
How do you manage it?
My advice can't be one sized fits all since this hereditary disease doesn't have the same symptoms person to person or with different sex. I'm male so some of this probably won't apply. Actually from what Dermatologists have told me, it's much less common that women have symptoms at all, usually skips them. Then again, they also told me I'd grow out of it and that it was a youth disease that faded in adulthood. Never did for me.
I find water itself is a skin irritant especially if it's hot. Cold showers are ideal but it's unpleasant so I compromise with luke warm showers to avoid opening skin pores as much as reasonably possible.. Pat dry, no rubbing skin with a towel. Want to keep what little natural oil we make in place. I'm of the opinion that people with our condition shouldn't shower as often as is socially pressured. Certainly not daily. I do every three days. Of course, spot clean where you sweat or excrete more often. No romantic partner of mine has ever complained, quite the opposite in fact. Obviously take nuance into account. Working a dirty/sweaty job changes things. Where you live changes things. It does for me, I'll get into that when it comes to lotion/cream.
For laundry, no fabric softener. No scented detergents. Maybe try to wear less moisture wicking fabrics during winter...keep in mind I live in an arid frigid climate during the winter, but hot humid in the summer.
So onto the daily skin care routine then.
Year round I swear by Ammonium Lactate Lotion 12% especially for the tender/thinner skin on our faces/heads/ears. Personally I get a lot of skin flaking in my eyebrows and glabella (the stretch of skin between the eyebrows) and this lotion will do a good job of dissolving dead skin flakes and also keep my face from drying out all day while also letting skin breathe enough not to cause profuse facial sweating or any discomfort. It does sting a little or used to when I was a child at least. I don't feel it anymore unless I accidentally get it in my eyes or something.
I apply in the morning and again in the evening. Have to after any bathing too of course.
Currently I use this brand, but I buy whatever is cheap with enough Ammonium Lactate in it. The prices change quite often. Sometimes they get unreasonable, so no brand loyalty: https://media.piefed.social/posts/HA/0Y/HA0YPXJeVhRqHzA.jpg
For my feet I use an Electronic Foot File and then use Vaseline before putting my socks on. Every morning.
For full body, it depends on the season here. Winter I use: https://dierbe.ca/collections/eczema-care/products/super-dry-patch-body-butter
Super Dry Patch Body Butter is intense. It's far too much moisture capture for summer heat/humidity. You can't use it on your face, you'll rain sweat. This one is for cold and dry air in the winter months of Edmonton, Canada for example. Lasts all day though when it's appropriate. Very very good at what it does.
For the summer months I use 20% Urea lotion, this brand currently: https://media.piefed.social/posts/Mk/yJ/MkyJ0UOAaExGaEV.jpg with the same caveat regarding price fluctuation. This one burns when putting it on, much stronger acid of course. Again, lasts all day and is comfortable to wear.
I don't have a solution for "strawberry skin" patches on the back of my arms or calves. Basically, a bunch of body hair that can't quite break through the skin and leaves tiny red bumps on some hair follicles. I just live with it.
One WARNING is regarding the use of Ammonium Lactate lotion. It's the opposite of sunscreen and you'll absorb more UV radiation in direct sunlight. Please keep that in mind.
I'm more prone to a scalp outbreak in spring/fall temperature swings. I keep my hair very short in those months sometimes, and I use Ammonium Lactate lotion on my scalp only if I'm having problems. Otherwise I'd be spending 15 minutes scraping my damned head every morning knocking all the flakes out. Doesn't happen every year, but if it happens I buzz cut myself and use the lotion on my scalp until I'm good again.
Hopefully some of this helps!
TYVM!
Yours sounds way more aggressive, so good luck managing it!
She uses a urea lotion nowhere near as high as 20% though. She did try ammonium lactate, but i think that was just for her face. We're in new Zealand, right under the ozone hole, so UV is ridiculously strong here, so we didn't continue with it.
One thing our dermatologist said was to avoid abrasive skin cleaning entirely.
Best of luck my dude.
Luck to her as well, glad to hear it's less aggressive. Your local climate certainlly helps at least a little with that.
I'm still in that cycle of thought with these influencers selling skincare routines. They'll all just shill the latest thing theyre paid to, and tell you "its an essential part of their daily routine and they never go without it because its that good honestly guys" and before you know it you've got way more products than you need, that are likely interacting with eachother in negative ways making your skin worse. So you turn to your influencer of choice who has perfect skin and they have over a million followers so they must know what theyre talking about, and wouldn't you know it they've got another essential cream to recommend you.
Well most manufacturers are definitely using the kinds of chemicals you would use to strip floors in industry. Not exactly the best stuff to put on your skin.
Not really. But that is the kind of conspiracy thinking that exists in the nopoo spaces.
Every conspiracy theory has truth to it. The truth is the chemicals they use to clean floors in industrial plants are the same that are in major shampoos.
Industrial floor cleaners and shampoos share key cleaning agents with personal care products, primarily surfactants like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) or its ethoxylated cousins for foaming and lifting dirt, along with alkaline builders (like Sodium Hydroxide) for tough degreasing, and solvents/alcohols (like ethanol) for dissolving oils, all mixed with water and other specialty additives for different surfaces.
You could argue they are perfectly safe of course.
Yes, and it is also incredibly misleading to say that with no context. I often use the same chemical I use to clean tables and counters in my soups.
Acetic Acid 5% w/v.
Aka distilled white vinegar.
The truth is that shampoo companies are generally not using unsafe chemicals in unsafe amounts, because of the laws and legal processes that people in my country (USA) have fought so hard for over the years. There is no big conspiracy here, just normal capitalism and marketing BS.
Everyone is different though and IMO people generally do not need to shampoo as often as they do.
Actually it is not. If you understand history and the way these chemical were used in personal care you would learn some disturbing truths.
For instance, in the US the government uses an innocent until proven guilty approach whereas most of Europe uses a guilty until proven innocent to the use of chemicals when they come into contact with human beings.
This means a lot of these harsh industrial chemicals have actually not been tested safe for human use. This results in a lot of chemicals used in food and personal care products that will never be allowed in Europe.
We have some consumer safety laws from the era where companies literally put poisons in food, but today most of our protection comes from the threat of lawsuits.
It is not perfect, for instance Monsanto's round-up was on the market for 25 years, presumably scientifically "safe" before a plaintiff was able to win a case proving they were harmed. This is why the culture-wars "litigious society" bullshit is so dangerous. The justice system is our last resort for protection.
There are problems in every system, but when people hear about problems in the USian system, for some reason they think the whole system is worthless vs. the very real protections we have, and the people who died before we got them.
I would love it if ingredients had to be proven safe before they were used. It would make us so much healthier. But like with Monsanto it is not the end-all-be-all, and we need lawsuits as well.
Everything you say is sane and accurate. The devil is always in the details. When when you dig down into these conspiracy theories you find surprising truths but also a lot of nonsense.
I used to be a bit of a Microsoft shill, after the first known knowledge of “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.”
I saw them as an underdog in topics like the phone market, gaming, and a few other subjects, and wanted the competitors to try a bit harder instead of controlling market dominance. I’m still sad MS lost out with their HTML5 engine and went to WebKit - even if I root Firefox, having more competitors against WebKit is a good thing.
What shifted me over was first, them firing the team that made Hi-Fi Rush, Xbox’s ONLY claim to GOTY, and then learning how much they lick Netanyahu’s boots. My PC runs Linux now.
(WebKit is Safari, which is related; but you're thinking of Chromium/Blink)
Yes, but the inverse is also true. Chromium derives from Webkit, and the two were maintained in close proximity for a while.
From ordinary routes, Gecko, MSIE, and Webkit are the true "origins" of the web. Even if many considered it the worse one, losing MSIE, especially after its devs had given it a big boost in standards compliance, was a blow to shared standards.
OK but Chromium browsers are no longer WebKit. They've diverged pretty far. And the root there was khtml.
Agree on more options being good. We also lost Presto (Opera) too.
I tried so hard to be a Pentecostal Christian.
But they were flouncing about and I was just... standing there. Aghast.
Everyone was crying in the ecstasy of religious fervour and despite the emotional high I, wasn't.
I haven't drank the kool aid. Kind of a shit answer to this question TBH but there it is.
When did I succumb?
Okay. Here's as close as I got.
It's early 2000's.
I am in Whitehorse, YK.
I am am a supervisor for a contract inventory company.
We are waiting, around 40+ of us in the cold, to inventory the Walmart up there at 5:30am in the morning.
To be clear, some of us were up at 3:30am when it was still sunny out the "night before" living our best lives.
There is a drunk, and high, native. He's in the parking lot we're all gathering in. And he's making everyone uncomfortable. He's bouncing around a bunch of people who have no idea how to deal with him but I see he's got a line I can understand...
Me, being me, decides my white ass (I have a lot of indigenous ancestry that isn't readily apparent) gets it.
So while 50+ people make a circle around him, I walk up to him. Sit down, and talk to him.
He tells me about the Sun God.
I am an atheist, then I was more agnostic but close enough.
And y'know what?
He tries, maybe in spite,, maybe* because*, he was high as a kite, to sell me on the Sun God.
And, he does.
I am Atheist. There are no gods, no Divinity. No souls. But I mother, fuckin, listen.
If I were to believe in a god, as an atheist, The Sun God would be it.
Because of this high, random ass fuckin' native who sold me on it in a parking lot while the 50 other people watched and judged him without actually listening didn't actually listen.
Pentecostal god: believe in me despite no reason to.
Sun God: I am a FUCKING SUN. I give warmth, I am here, on time. Every day. I am life sustaining. I create and I destroy.
I'm still an atheist, I don;t actually believe in the sun god, but if, as an atheist, I was pinned down? The Sun God is about as close as I could get to divinity.
I mean, the sun provably exists.
"probably exists"
Exactly.
No love for radical skepticism round here I see.
Apparently not lol.
I'm a moon god fella myself. Nothing against your sun god, but moon is there for us in the dark and scary night. She not afraid. Once a month, she gives us 5 nights of moonlight so bright we can hunt and feast in the nighttime. She doesn't hurt you when you make eye contact with her.
I wish to know more about this sun god
I'm an atheist. I saw the faces of god once on mushrooms. I still do not believe in god. It's not necessarily a contradiction.
For the record Jonestown didn’t use real Kool Aid
But the cyanide was real
Someone was telling me it was Kool Aids competitor which they did such a good job discrediting that eventually the Kool Aid brand got the association.
I believe it was Flavor Aid
Calories in, calories out.
For years I believed that the only reason people got fat was because they ate more than they burned and ended up with an excess of energy. It was also the view pushed by the medical profession, by health education at school, and by society in general. I spent years trying to get my weight under control by eating less and moving more.
After a particularly strict period of literally weighing the margarine container before and after buttering toast so I knew how many calories of margarine I used I had gained weight rather than losing even with a 500kcal deficit. I listened to a podcast (Skeptics with a K) in which they interviewed Gary Taubes about the non-caloric hormonal model of obesity. It basically said that if your insulin level was up you couldn't access body fat, so all the thoughts of that fat being available were flawed and you couldn't really lose weight in that state. What ended up happening was a reduction in calorie burn and loss of muscle. Fixing the insulin is the first step to managing weight and if you do that you can access your body fat for energy.
It took another year before I actually tried keto and I lost 20kg in the first two months and another 10kg over the next few. It was a massive change but I didn't sustain it given the environment I was in and ended up gaining a fair bit of the weight back (though not all).
Years later (over a decade, oh no, so old) and I have a much more comfortable body fat percentage and lots more muscle. I carry only a little more than I want and honestly it is too much effort to get down that last little bit, but I feel better now in my late 30s than I did in my early 20s in terms of movement, energy, and cognition. When i get injured I recover quickly, and when I get sick it is usually very short and then over. I used to get sick for weeks at a time and many times per year, now I have only been sick twice this year and both times in December (filthy children, gross but fun).
If you had asked me in 2010 how to manage weight I would have told you, nose firmly in the air, to eat less and move more. So glad to have been wrong.
While it is more complex, regarding how brains and other metabolic systems signal and process desire to eat etc., it IS calories in / calories out, I believe. If one eats a 500 calorie deficit, they will lose weight. It borders on impossible for some for completely understandable and forgivable reasons, but I’m sorry to say, I suspect you accounting of either calories in or calories out was mistaken.
Yes, there are differences in bioavailability across foods and people but still carbon goes in, breaks off, and is mostly breathed out.
To anybody that downvotes this, I challenge you to suggest what chemical atoms are you adding to your weight when you gain even while eating at a calorie deficit. Don’t mistake me for saying insulin and such don’t play a huge role; they do. But the role they play is in the delicate balance of calories in and out. So, too, does one’s microbiome, which weighs more than one’s brain; so who is doing the thinking. Complex processes that all affect calories in and out.
This assumes a whole bunch of things. First, do you actually absorb all of the calories through your gut? Does your body maintain the same base rate of expenditure (BMR) in both the short and long term of restriction?
When you look at people who did The Biggest Loser they did the exact thing you are talking about. They had a significant caloric deficit through eating restricting and massive amounts of exercise. In the short term they did lose weight but it also ruined their BMR. Years later they had mostly put the weight back on and had a lower BMR than at the start. It damaged them.
If you lose weight through caloric deficit you may not notice any change but your body will stop prioritising things like your hair and skin, muscle growth, and bone maintenance. All of those are low priority for an organism in caloric deficit. Instead your body will focus on the most important thing, getting more food. You become food obsessed, thinking about it all day, and you will eat almost anything you can access. You also end up with a lower body temperature, less immune activity, and lower drive for exercise and sex. It is an absolute nightmare.
The end result is that calories in calories out assumes a perfect and simple system. It does not take into account things like proton uncoupling in brown fat, differing levels of absorption through digestion, body temperature, hair growth, cell turnover, and tonnes of other things. It can appear to work for a short time but long term it breaks down and deviates more and more from the data.
You do not absorb all the calories. Those, therefore, are part of neither calories in nor out. I make no assumption here. BMR is a closely related topic but doesn’t change the calories in / calories out impact, which is what I am getting at and what most the remainder of your post says.
Nearly all of what you say here is correct and I wouldn’t dispute it. Except the last paragraph. It is, I’m sorry, categorically false. Calories in and out, in fact, simplifies nothing and does take things like brown fat and body maintenance prioritization into account; those simply change those two variables. I’m not saying the systems are simple. I’m saying the amount of carbon atoms absorbed into your body via energy stored in food and drink as one of a few macronutrients less the carbon atoms breathed out via respiration is a fairly accurate account of weight change. Everything else you’re saying is not in dispute. It isn’t easy and it isn’t simply, but calories in / out is not inaccurate, if still reductive.
I disagree, but I think we agree on a lot here.
Colorimetry measures calories in food by burning the food and measuring the amount of heat generated. This is different to what happens in cells for a huge number of reasons, so it isn't really reasonable to think of it as a good starting point for nutrition. If you take a substrate, say for example a fat, and you use it to make a hormone it is not being burned for energy and thus breaks the calorie in calorie out model. That is a simple way it fails.
I am not saying the disconnect is 100%, I am saying it is not 100% accurate and depending on how disregulated your system is it may be more or less accurate. Someone who is super healthy and of a low body fat percentage with a reasonable amount of muscle mass would probably end up fairly close to CICO for the first few weeks of a dietary change. This is not really in dispute.
The dispute comes from the rest of the population. We have more deranged systems which are less in line with CICO due to metabolic issues like insulin resistance, gut damage, gluten issues like celiac disease, and so on. The more deranged the body the more CICO loses its predictive value and becomes a bludgeon.
When I went to the doctor about my weight they told me to eat less and move more. My insulin resistance was not measured and the dietary recommendations led to more muscle loss and body fat gain. I had tonnes of issues with acne, dandruff, terrible body odor, mild scurvy, and overall ill health. Adding more food that I could actually digest and switching from my broken glucose metabolism to a ketogenic metabolism allowed me to repair damage, absorb vitamins more effectively, and fix all sorts of seemingly minor but overall stressful issues. My caloric intake was higher but I lost excess weight first by dropping glycogen and associated water but then by dropping fat while also gaining muscle. I felt like moving, I wanted to move, so I moved, but it wasn't willpower driving that like on CICO, it was hormones driving the change in output.
The calories being low led to conserving energy and being depressed and inactive. Adding good calories I could actually use led to more activity along with better mood and brain function. CICO is not a good model for making changes, it is just accounting. If you want to say "this many carbons came in, this many left" that is fine, but there is no why in that and no guidance on what to do from there. If you try changing how many calories go in or go out you shouldn't be surprised when the self regulating system regulates itself and changes something else, such as making you burn less energy or eat more food.
I can tell we agree on a lot here too. I’m simply saying calories in and out isn’t wrong, it just isn’t the full story. And you’re right to be suspicious of anybody that says it is. It can be a good jumping off point. Like “eat less”. “Great, how do I actually reliably eat less, doc?” The answer there is the nuanced point you are making, about changing how the body responds.
And like you said, the “move more” thing goes out the window if you aren’t able to get your energy out of storage well. One just feels sluggish.
I lost about 30 kg, and that was primarily by just tracking what I ate. Even just knowing is helpful for accountability.
Yeah, it is like saying "Recessions are caused by GDP reducing for at least two consecutive quarters". I mean, yes, that does describe what a recession is, but it says little about what the cause of a recession is. In the same way, having less fat in storage is the way you lose body fat, but the mechanisms of actually making that happen are way more complex and trying to reduce it to eat less move more is unhelpful.
It is inaccurate, food manufacturers are allowed about 20% error margin when measuring calories. Calories have nothing to do with what our bodies do with the material we eat, since everything is a chemical process and we aren't closed systems. When we mobilize fat we create ketone bodies which are exhaled in our breathing, how do you propose to measure 'caloric expenditure' then? It is far too reductive.
Calories on a label are not the calories in the metabolic equation, so I don’t see how that is relevant here. Calories in are calories absorbed by the body, which is some subset of those taken in. Some come right back out the other side; we don’t count those. To say calories have nothing to do with it is bonkers to me. It is precisely the chemical process to which you refer. When we expend energy / heat / calories, we get that from food and drink. Yes, more immediate from one of the three major energy distribution mechanisms, but it all comes from what we put in. Then the carbon atoms stripped off of saccharides are bonded to oxygen and exhaled as CO2.
And all this to say, one cannot gain weight while eating fewer calories than being expended, reductive or not.
The calories on the label are what is used to make decisions when it comes to using CICO to decide what to eat, which is why it's relevant. I see now where you are coming from though, because I'm speaking from a pragmatic stand point, but yours is a theoretical one.
We do however appear to be in agreement, too. Due to these chemical processes CICO is highly reductive and pretty pointless for losing body fat, because what our bodies do in response say to 100 kcal of sucrose and 100 kcal of protein is entirely different, and result in entirely different biological outcomes.
Yeah it definitely isn’t the whole story. And protein is a great example. It takes about 15% of the calories in proteins just to break down the protein, so you sort of get that as a discount. But that can be said as calories out immediately goes up by that 15%. :)
How dare you call out people for their bias. Lol
I mean, calories in/out is real, you can't get fat if you're eating less than what you're spending. On the other hand you definitely can thin up eating more calories than you spend by for example going into ketosis where calories don't matter all that much.
All of that being said, calories in/out is not the whole picture, like you mentioned there are plenty of other stuff that might make it so that two people eating the same and exercising the same amount get drastically opposite results. At the end of the day our bodies have a calorie budget they're trying to stick to, eating less (or actually eating better) is the solution, exercising helps but not in increasing your calorie budget, only in directing your budget to be more healthy.
People are just very judgemental when it comes to weight. I think a lot of people like to believe that it all comes down to self-control, which is not the case. That can be very harmful. People are blamed for their own medical situations. Their self esteem is harmed and they are made to suffer through years and years of diets making the situation worse without getting the appropriate (medical) help they need.
We also judge people by their face all the time, and there is nothing they can do to change it.
And because of our animal side, we value beauty higher than almost anything else, which makes us stupid and easily manipulated.
I agree. That happens too. But I think the process of judging people by their face is largely an implicit and unconscious one. I do not think that many people will actually claim that they believe that you can decide whether someone is a bad person by e.g., the shape of their chin. (Although you always will have exceptions.) This makes it very hard to change.
Many people will claim that overweight is just the result of a lack of self control. This is something they believe explicitly and consciously. It is possible to change that believe and it should change as it is incorrect.
Even if it would be lack of self control, I dont see why people get to judge that person for it. The old saying that you need to walk in someones shoes to truly understand them is very true...
Why not support people who struggle instead of tearing them down? Specially now when we live in a society and a person being fat is no downside to the group. I can see how it could be an issue if you are a group in the forest and you have to walk long distances and the fat person slows everyone down and it endangers the group. But we dont have that situation today at all. So why not lift them up and help?
I agree with that. There is no reason to not just accept overweight people like anyone else.
To play the devil's advocate, there's some nuance to this. If someone is metabolically unhealthy and obese, they impose an on-going cost to society if only in terms of healthcare. It's somewhat on the same lines as
Shaming fat people and blaming them for being fat surely isn't constructive. It very rarely, if ever, is a lack of self control. But I also don't think we should accept a metabolically diseased state as normal.
I think obese people should get the help they need, but we should accept them for who they are as a person. It is the same as with other physical or psychological issues or disabilities. It is very rude to keep reminding people that they cost a lot and are a burden to society because of their disease. People's value as a human being should not be determined by that and it should not affect whether they are accepted.
Calories in / calories out works perfectly and predictably for fat loss as long as you're measuring correctly and most people don't. I used to follow it religiously in the run up to fights in order to make weight.
I would look at my weight, look at the weight I need to be 8 weeks later, figure the calorie hole I needed and follow it incredibly closely.
It worked every single time without fail. I always stepped into the ring lean as fuck and having lost zero muscle because I was training twice a day six days a week and keeping protein intake high. I allowed one maintenance calorie day per week on my recovery day.
There are other things that account for weight loss (e.g. loss of sugar from muscles and the associated water loss that comes with that) if you're using keto but most people are after fat loss more than weight loss.
9/11 truther. Missile pods on military jets and fed reserve gold heist. WTC7 got me in. But I was also a welder and I'd been making thermite for fun since I was a teenager so I knew that jet fuel didn't have to melt steel beams to significantly reduce its tensile strength, just several hundred degrees was enough to weaken steel. And I know the difference between thermite products and liquid aluminium pouring from the buildings, thermite looks like straight up lava, and in any case, you need way, way more thermite to melt through a steel girder than you might expect from watching movies. It takes at least half a kilo just to melt through the hood of a car, let alone and engine block like the anarchist cookbook would have you believe, I know because I did it.
I remember watching one of the Flash animated "truth" "documentaries" on flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon.
It talked about missiles being used and similar stuff, I was 13-14 at the time and I showed my parents, they rightfully explained that this was just a random video that anyone could have made.
They brought up the importance of using trusted sources, but also emphasized that they didn't have the facts either.
They told me to calm down and wait for verifiable facts to surface.
Yeah the Pentagon impact site never made any sense and the government was never open about the evidence. I was never convinced the official explanation made sense based upon the damage to the building.
The US government could easily clear it up by realizing the footage, but they won't.
It makes perfect sense to me, what issues do you see with it?
I don't really care to talk about this unless you have researched this thoroughly because the damage to the building was always inconsistent with the official narrative including the wreckage that was extracted from the building.
This makes me skeptical and the government has never released the footage when they definitely have lots of video evidence that can demonstrate exactly what happened.
Ok, if you are going to play this game...
This will let me know both were you stand and what level of discussion you expect.
Hard pass. I can already tell what you are up to. Acting like an asshole isn't the move you think it is.
lol, calling me an asshole when you were the one who started acting all high and mighty, talking about how a normal person wouldn't understand your special research.
I won't deny that my last reply was a bit assholish, but that was just a reply to you rudely implying that normal people wasn't worth debating.
spongebob meme dot gif tventy foor yeers later…
I once watched a 9/11 truther type program that hand waved away this issue by simply stating the government used "nanothermite". What is "nanothermite"? It's thermite but acts in whatever way it needs to when somebody pokes holes in the idea of thermite.
Ok, I've always wondered what's up with WTC7, but I could never be bothered to wade through the noise. What was up with that?
It's still a very strange looking collapse. But the sort of damage caused to it by two giant skyscrapers collapsing next to and into it must have subjected it to stresses is was never designed to take.
And a raging fire inside the building near it's base that was left to burn mostly unchecked because most of the firefighters were already killed or their equipment destroyed by towers 1 and 2.
Controlled demolitions target the very weakest parts of a structure, causing a cascading failure throughout the structure. In a huge uncontrolled fire and impact, the same weakest points are by definition the most likely to fail first, so the collapse looks similar. Also WTC7 was built above an existing building, so it's vertical columns didn't go straight down into bedrock, they went down to near street level, and then transferred the load horizontally around the existing building. From the outside it looked like a regular rectangle, but on the inside, it effectively had a giant unsupported hole on the inside. Under normal conditions, structurally sufficient, but if you shake the ever loving fuck out of it twice and then light it on fire with no firefighters nearby...
Still waiting for any other buildings to collapse like these three buildings did. It will never happen though. Three nearly perfect collapses in the same day in a row was a pretty insane random occurrence.
Just about anything is possible and able to be proved through science. This doesn't necessarily mean that is what happened though.
Counter argument: if you did this at home on a hobby budget, imagine what is possible with a high tech lab and a military budget.
Not a terribly convincing start to a hypothesis.
The start was what they achieved with no resources. Keep up.
You are grossly overestimating military budget spending. Now, a private contractor with a government contract, on the other hand, maybe. As long as they didn't waste it and delivered on schedule. Wait, that doesn't happen either.
IF a private contractor can hijack 4 planes in the most heavily guarded airspace in the world without scrambling a single defence fighter, then they can source Nanothermite on schedule.
Not saying that happened, but suitable explosives are not the weakest link in the 9/11 conspiracy theories.
I used to believe tae-kwon-do was good for self defence... But all that kicking is not useful in an actual fight where people can punch you in the face.
A lot of the martial arts have rules that makes them bad in a actual fight. Its a bit strange that they even have those rules if the objective is to be good at fighting.
It's because they're sports. You're not trying to hurt anyone. MMA is where you learn to make contact and do damage. The training you need to fight MMA includes martial arts but the objectives are way different.
MMA also has rules and it's also a sport, but it has the less amount of rules so it's the sport that more closely resembles real fights. But still self-defense (think Krav-Maga or similar) has lots of stuff that is not allowed in MMA. That being said, MMA is the safest way to train against a fully uncooperative attacker, so it's the best way to train self-defense on the long run, but some classes and training on how to properly kick balls, bite, and gauge eyes are a great addition for real life-or-death situations.
True, but I imagine anybody who trains agility and reactions are better off then many.
I thought there was once an article about kung fu masters that were mugged in an alley, and panicked, surrendered, without even considering their training. Psychology is far more influential sometimes.
Muggers probably had Guns and/or knives.
The US state apparatus probably knew about 9/11. I can't probably prove this and I don't feel like debating it but I feel this strongly. They knew it was gonna happen and let it because they understood how much they could benefit from it. Anyway I didn't drink enough koolaid to think they orchestrated it.
It has been proven that parts of the US government did know something was being planned, but had little information about what.
Intergovernmental rivalries prevented an effective action to prevent or reduce the impact.
I did believe the US government orchestrated it for a while, but I'm not sure anymore. It's still one of those "holy shit, this could go either way" conspiracies for me. I'd love to find out the truth once and for all.
Those passports that were intact whilst everything else burned, and previous false flag projects undertaken or just planned (information mostly freely available online btw), pretty much indicates the main culprit is the US government. 🤷
I used to believe in god about 45 years ago, does that count?
yes.
Antitheism and egalitarianism (read anti-feminsm). I was an ubsufferable cunt. Not to excuse my cuntness, I was raised Mormon: condescending hatred of all those not like me was all I knew.
Tends to be the way things go. You see the flaws in something you believed in and go too far to the extreme opposite direction.
would antitheism be a common thing for recent converts to atheism? i was the same way for a few years back when i ditched christianity.
The zeal of a convert.
I dunno, my crisis of faith went from mourning to anger very quickly. I was quick to anger and held grudges like any immature man back then. Perhaps I just needed to work it out of my system. Now I'm more let live and let live, but it was a slow process filled with people with more patience than I deserved.
I still think organized religion is a net drain on society but I'm generally ok with private faith. (I was raised secular though, never had my own faith to lose)
Me too, I just also think that the antitheist movement (mostly vocal and unempathetic antitheists such as I was) is also a net drain on society.
I think people create god in their own image. They use doctrine to justify what they would have believed anyway. I was taught to be homophobic by homophobes, Leviticus was just the tool used to deliver the lesson.
Stopping being Mormon didn't stop my homophobia, the lessons were deep and that came later. I think instead if I had internalised homophobia=bad earlier, I would have left the church as a by product. Internalising bigotry=bad got me to leave antitheism, is where I got that from.
So that's where I'm at: champion human rights and people will leave toxic structures as a by product.
That's a big part of the problem but I think the worst part is that religious upbringings train people to accept irrational explanations for things. Magical thinking, unfounded claims, unquestioning adherence to authority, this is the fertile soil for all manner of nonsense from astrology to vaccine hesitancy to "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears."
Perhaps. Irrationality in itself isn't evil though. We're all irrational about somethings sometimes, that's just what it is to be human. We just be meat sacks powered by cornflakes, it would be weird if we weren't irrational.
My biggest problem with religion is the bigotry, religion certainly doesn't have a monopoly on it though, and antitheism doesn't make you immune. Antitheism is fertile ground for bigotry and the irrational justifications for it.
Anti-intellectualism, and the harm spread from anti-intellectualism, is awful though, no arguments from me. A lot of evil can arrive from believing one is "rational" while they're blind to their own limits of perspective.
There was a part in my life that I was in the antitheistic crowd, I was annoying, but as I grew up I switched to a more sane viewpoint.
These days I am mostly atheistic but with a healthy dose of agnosticism thrown in.
What changed you?
Which change? My crisis of faith was because I went before God and got nothing. That's not really supposed to happen in Mormon Doctrine.
My move away from antitheism was some people, well person actually, with more patience than I deserved. They slowly showed me bigotry, all bigotry, was wrong. By challenging my beliefs gently and letting me reveal my bigotry to myself. I was, thankfully, in the listening mood so I got there in the end.
Antitheism, at the time, had R. Dawkins, as a champion, skeptictube was doing it's alt-right reveal with "feminist owned" vids every where. So yeah... Bigotry was/is in its bones
Not sure I got sucked into anything like conspiracy theories, but as far as "I swear this is my life now" I have quite a few. I have ADHD and with it comes the usual fleeting obsession with hobbies. It gets expensive and I always end up abandoning it for something else. Then I feel sad because I spent a ton of money that ultimately didn't result in anything permanent.
When I was going hard with ham radio I dug a huge trench in my backyard and installed a grounding system connected to the house ground, now I barely use my radios. Same with the KX3 I bought. It's an eye-wateringly expensive portable radio. My excuse was it was a reward for passing a difficult certification exam and I would use it all the time in the park near my house. That turned out not to be the case.
That sounds a bit like me. I haven't gotten into anything terribly expensive, but I've come to terms with my pattern and now contend that my hobby is hobbies. I do something for a while, and then do something else. That being said, I've been between hobbies for a while now and am feeling a restless and bored. Now I just need to figure out what I want to try next.
I've tried homelabbing, ham radio, fountain pens, DIY electronics, Python...
Some stuff is more expensive then others. amateur radio is stupidly expensive in every conceivable way. It starts out with a cheap RTL-SDR dongle. You set it up and start scanning around VHF and UHF to see what's out there. Some stuff catches your attention and soon enough you want to transmit as well as receive. You buy the license manual and get your ticket (honestly not hard if you've passed high school science class) and you buy a cheap questionably legal Baofeng walkie-talkie. So far the 'feng, the SDR dongle, and the license manual and FCC testing fee set you back maybe $80 all in. Not bad for a few weeks or months of entertainment.
Then you look at what a "real" rig costs, thinking that the absolute pinnacle must be maybe $2000, like a good gaming PC. Nope, turns out the cheapest radio you can buy that's considered 'good enough', the venerable Icom IC 7300, is $1000, and it swiftly climbs from there. Then you need an antenna. Surely an inert hunk of aluminum is cheap? Nope, also hundreds of dollars. If you want to cut your own you'll need an SWR meter, and those are also hundreds of dollars. Now you need coax to connect that antenna to the radio, a way to get that coax from the inside of your house to the outside, etc. It's all $$$.
That's not getting into the non monetary expenses like space for your shack and antennas and time to actually use the radio when the ionosphere is cooperating and people are actually on the air.
Compare that to my other major pastime, conlanging and worldbuilding. You already have everything you need, just something to write with and time to daydream. Maybe that's why this is the one thing I've stuck with for 25 years now.
Pizza party, soccer practice, Christmas, whenever it's served really
I believed I was a man.
And here I thought your username was a euphemism.
Just randomly, you woke up believing to be a man?
Force fed day 1. Babies were given flavor aid in Jonestown... of course I drank it. 100% non-consensual flavor aid drinker.
I actually genuinely believed for awhile as a kid/young adult that ADHD was a gift and that society wouldn't try to strangle and kill me for having it in a million ways.
Kony 2012, not the genreal idea of raising awareness about Joseph Kony, but that it would actually lead to his capture.
I drank the atheist nihilistic hedonism kool aid when I was a kid (Christianity is too contradictory and that soured my view on belief in general) and I didn't get out of that "lol I just wanna have fun, what's personal responsibility?!" Ideological hole until my mid 20s. 🥲
"Nothing matters so just have a good time" doesn't necessarily mean you also can't be a "good" person.
At some point your hedonistic desires clash with moral frameworks and you don't do the wrong thing, best case scenario. "Nothing matters so just have a good time" erases that paradigm/doesn't allow for one to exist in the first place. You're going mostly on vibes and maybe more money means you could get nicer things and comfier toys and have more fun so you start your OF/sell drugs/scam your way into millions and now you scam more because you're the prez of the free world (lol)... get it?
I get your point but being nice to people and acting in a fair and moral way feels good to most people, myself included so I don't personally see nihilistic self fulfillment and moral behaviour as mutually exclusive (in most cases, billionaires not included).
But at some point, when virtue doesn't taste as nice as forgoing it, you'll fall. And you might have not had you had some form of moral framework in place and not just our inner "noble savage" nature.
How do theists rationalise this when they do awful things like buggering children?
They don't, those who transgress in those ways never believed in God's judgment (or suddenly developed some brain tumor that radically changed their behaviour, but that's mega rare, lol). They just say they do, and those who don't know how to judge people (by their fruits!) keep getting swindled. I'm sure Trump has made allusions to being somewhat religious lol, you don't think he believes in any of that, right?
So you're claiming now that no Christian ever committed a sin because they weren't really Christians anyway?
I think you need to look up what the concept of noble savage actually means.
I know what it means but I'm repurposing it because, well, it sounded nice. Perhaps I shouldn't have. 🤷
Don't mix up optimistic nihilism with moral wrongness, you can be "nothing matters let's have a good time" while at the same time wanting everyone else to also have a good time.
I'm glad you have an imaginary sky friend to prevent you to from being a bad person. /S Denjin is correct nothing matters do no harm is an option.
I used to think that thinking had deep intrinsic significance. (That's what I get for growing up in a thinking-obsessed culture)
I always thought Kool-Aid just tasted like water
It did in our house because mom wouldn't add sugar.
I didn't realize you were supposed to add sugar
Apple products through the 2010s.
I'd watch their WWDC presentations online religiously
Not a hard experiencer of the highly strange, but I'm becoming less and less of a skeptic.
"I figured out what was wrong with the shell script I just had to update the #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/bash . Using the upgraded bash was a no brainer"
Little did I know my shell script updates were just not posix complaint and used bashisms. Its been nearly a decade and I'm still haunted lol
"Quantum computing is just like regular computing". That one still bothers me.