briefcomment

frustrating

It may be better for me to rephrase this part of my post like this:

> ""public health" is now likely to be a part of the surveillance justification tool kit too"

I don't have any specific examples, but this article gives a good gist of what might be at stake. [1]

I think this is a key quote

> "The Snowden disclosures came twelve years after the initial implementation of the Patriot Act, and it was only last year that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the subsequent dragnet surveillance employed by the NSA may well have been unconstitutional."

[1] https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/government-data-collect...

It might hard to accept this, but "public health" is now a part of the surveillance justification tool kit too. When it's impossible to argue against measures taken in defense of public health without seeming selfish, why wouldn't it be?

Accepting proof of antibodies would be an even better way for everyone to get what they want right?

People who don't want the vaccine and don't want to be harassed for it.

Why does the Atlantic devote an article to a syndrome with 4000 cases and under 40 deaths over a year, as if it's something the general population should be worried about?

Why is there no widespread antibody testing to see if we've reached herd immunity? The push to vaccinate is only necessary if we're not there yet. I recall a study from a couple months ago claiming several times more people caught the virus than was generally thought.

Looked him up and came across the fact that he evaluated the Club of Rome's overpopulation model and concluded it was wrong [1], and that he eventually (decades later) disappeared at sea. Almost certainly unrelated, but it's hard to escape conspiratorial thinking these days.

His widow did not provide consent [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/14158894550057164...

I doubt Epstein could draw anyone that Gates couldn't draw himself.

The second to last demonstration blows my mind. I can't help but feel like I'm being duped, the result is so sharp.

If you thought the world could only survive with a much smaller population, and you had enough money to buy out all decision makers and media, what would you do? Sit around and wait for the world to end, or take matters into your own hands?

I don't think I caught your point then. What exactly are you arguing?

As far as I remember, the prominent people who were talking about this a year ago did not say "it definitely was a Chinese lab's fault", just that it was seriously suspicious and needed further investigation, and that they were upset that people who were bringing it up were getting prematurely dismissed. Who exactly (other than random conspiracy theorists) was saying it was definitely a Chinese lab?

Who was saying that?

Since we're giving anecdotal evidence, I know people who eat whatever they want, whenever they want, don't exercise, and are thin as a rail.

I'm not following your rebuttal here. s1artibartfast says that the sun can provide much more power than we currently consume. The limit from your link from earlier is not a limit on how much power the sun can provide, but rather a limit on how much power we can produce before we produce too much CO2. With power production methods that produce less CO2, we won't run into that limit, and we obviously won't run into the solar energy limit.

The Club of Rome is a standard bogeyman in conspiracy circles [1]. They are painted as pushing for significant depopulation, through whatever means necessary.

If you consider involuntary depopulation as a form of societal collapse, I wonder how much of this will be a self fulfilling prophecy.

[1] http://conspiracywiki.com/new-world-order/club-of-rome/

> "new communication control channel in biology"

Not necessarily new, "The Body Electric" which Levin himself cites as his inspiration, has been around for almost 50 years [1]. It's sad that something so revolutionary can be sidelined for half a century, but it's exhilarating to see the rapid progress that really smart people can make when they consider some fringe ideas.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Body-Electric-Electromagnetism-Founda...

I think that just means that your subconscious cost benefit analysis concluded that it wasn't worth it. I think that's normal. You'll probably try out a bunch of hobbies/habits in a lifetime, and only choose to stick with a couple.

The section on Altitude and Watershed quality is really interesting.

I would agree. To be pedantic, I still wouldn't say that the evidence for mask wearing was overwhelming, but rather, the cost benefit analysis clearly put mask wearing ahead, regardless of how clear the evidence was, just because the cost was so low.

I don't see any of this covered in the second or third article (apart from a comment in the second article that provides some additional interesting details on this hypothesis).

There may be a generational effect at play, causing the symptoms to be more pronounced in the offspring of the high margarine cohort. Certain interventions effect second and third generation offspring. You can induce sterility in the third generation by an intervention in the first generation for example.

That being said, canola oils and soybean oil are more used than ever.

I agree with your points, which is why I think people should almost never be sure of one side or another. Necessarily, they should have some self doubt, just because it would be impossible to do all of the above. The only stance I think is indefensible is to think that one side is definitely correct (outside of extremely well defined problems).

Is maintenance the cause of burnout then?

> "overwhelming evidence"

Unless you're going through _all_ the source material yourself, and making educated judgements on the quality and implications of the data, I don't think you can ever claim there's "overwhelming evidence" for any side, especially if the topic is controversial. If you're consuming information through secondary sources, basically every source will look at subsets of the data, will misinterpret data, and will have a bias, either intentionally or unintentionally.

I was curious what the vaccination rate was in South Korea, and was surprised to see that their first-vaccination rate was below 30% just two weeks ago [1].

[1] https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1451900/south-korea-vaccinatio...

Eating isolated oils is decidedly different from eating whole foods, as there are compounds that counteract each other when taken as a whole. For example, fish have long chain fatty acids which counter some effects of the Omega oils.

I think it's much easier to consume large portions of soybean oil if you're using it as an all purpose oil, than if you were just eating tofu, bean curd, natto, etc.

> "Something seems to have changed. But surprisingly, we don’t seem to have any idea what that thing was."

We have ideas. Polyunsaturated fats (shortening, margarine, soybean oil, canola oil, even chicken fat) is a promising culprit. Consumption of those have skyrocketed in the last half of the 20th century [1]. Full study here [2].

It seems that polyunsaturated fats induce hibernation like symptoms, which could explain weight gain. This blog is a fascinating look at some of the literature [3]. Good summary post [4].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076650/figure/...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076650/

[3] https://fireinabottle.net/every-fire-in-a-bottle-post-from-t...

[4] https://fireinabottle.net/are-you-in-deep-torpor-scd1-theory...

> "critical thinking ability—measured by an open-ended test emphasizing several areas of critical thinking ability in the context of argumentation"

This sounds similar to standardized tests like the LSAT