aurum

The risk of being shot is just par for the course if you’re running for president. Which is partially why most normal people don’t want to do it.

Very cool. Are you doing bloodwork?

I experimented with medical medium years ago. He's not good.

Great insight.

Oh yes, Jason and I have tangled on here about this same topic. I don't doubt that scientists may be stuck in some ways. Our understanding of health is obviously evolving. But personally I can't say I'm clear how PUFA --> Disease, especially if you are only willing to look at mechanistic studies. If you're willing to enlighten me, I'll listen. Yes I think that will provide some context. My diet journey started more than a decade ago when I experimented with keto. I had no scientific background and so I just studied protocols I found online. The results were most definitely not good, but that got me started. Over the years I experimented with pretty much everything. Paleo, veganism, carnivore, animal-based, long-term fasting, intermittent fasting, all kinds of supplements, juicing and whatever else I'm forgetting. I came back to eating meat after a fast I did while vegan. I had been vegan for about a year. Usually I had no problem with meat cravings, but on this fast I just started to crave meat. I don't know why other than I guess my body just hit some limit. So after the fast, I just decided to go with the cravings and started eating meat again. And I haven't stopped since then. I continue to do well physically and really enjoy how I eat. I also was never looking to cure some disease and no diet was ever that bad for me. Mostly I was just motivated by taking my health to the highest level I could, because that's just the approach I take towards life. But through all that process, you can probably imagine I ran across a lot of junk. A lot of ideology. A lot of false or even dangerous claims. I got burned a few times, and I've developed a strong skepticism from all of that. I also came to appreciate more the importance of science. I sort of fancied myself as a rogue health explorer, unencumbered by the limitations of mainstream science. But once you've been burned enough by bad science, you start to value the filter the scientific process brings a bit more. In addition, I also learned of some of the incredible scientific advancements coming out in modern healthcare. This made me realize how foolish I had been for thinking I was above this. In reality, science is likely the best collective tool we have for advancing human health. And it's the best tool we have for sorting out BS, however flawed it might be at times. I don't really see a better option. Hopefully we can improve on science's flaws in the future, but that will not happen if people think it's not worth engaging in. So my goal at this point is really to try and merge the two worlds and bring some of the things I've learned to more mainstream healthcare. I’m tired of just listening to people on the outside talk about how bad it is while doing nothing to help the situation.

Don't push that new-age garbage on me.

The challenges with nutritional studies you pointed out are correct. However, I still think it would be unwise to dismiss human outcome studies so strongly. Even those synthetic chemicals you avoid needed to be studied, which is how we know they might be dangerous. And those studies present many of the same challenges as nutritional studies, such as long-term follow-up and confounding variables. It seems to me you are mostly just making an appeal to ancestral wisdom. For instance, high PUFA is bad not because we have any studies suggesting it's bad, but simply because it is ancestrally inconsistent. That's really the crux of your argument, and I find that dubious. Same thing goes for your concerns about EMFs and chemical products. Sounds like a Ben Greenfield paradise. I'm sure if someone did your protocol, they would certainly live a healthy life relative to their genetic capacity. But "super human" it is not. No ancestral-based protocol is going to get you to that point. For that, you need science and technology. Areas such as gene therapy, regenerative medicine, anti-aging and AI-precision medicine are probably the closest we will get in our lifetime. But right now, the efficacy of these treatments is very speculative and experimental. These areas are also filled with grifters and self-deception of all kinds. Look at some of the controversy coming out around David Sinclair, that could be a huge blow to the anti-aging community. Or Bryan Johnson and his absurd "Don't Die" philosophy.

I get your point, but how far do you take this? If we can't extrapolate anything from human outcome studies, we might as well throw out vaccines, pharmaceuticals, physical therapy and all the other myriad forms of healthcare that is based on those. Or do you believe there is something unique about the inefficacy of nutritional studies? "Super human function" seems like a pretty bold claim. If you really think you're onto something, I would like to know about it. But don't mind me if I raise an eyebrow in the meantime.

Well you seem to have found a diet that works for you. Indeed, I actually eat fairly similar to you and find myself doing very well. Despite all the meat I eat, even my lipid panel shows no issues. My last doctor chalked it up to genetics, so I am skeptical of people who paint a simplistic picture of meat = bad health. At the same time, I'm also skeptical of extrapolating my personal experience into a generalized theory of nutrition. For instance, I have a food intolerance to eggs. If I ate a single egg I would be rolling around the floor in agony for god knows how long. And I also didn't get even 1/10 of the problems you seemed to have on a vegan diet. So now what? How much should I assume my personal experience is generalizable, especially when you can find anecdotes with seemingly similar results for any diet? This of course is why you need to do studies. But why do you have faith in mechanistic studies and not human outcome studies? Especially when we know mechanistic studies are notoriously bad at translating to actual results in humans? Don't you need the human studies to really say anything conclusive? This is a hunch on your part. Which is fine, but you can't corroborate it with any kind of data. What if humans genetically engineer a food one day that is superior to meat? Maybe it will be the other way around. But how do you know you've arrived at that answer? And why should anyone take that strategy seriously when you don't have the science to back it up and they have to change their entire life?

It's a fair point. But this argument kind of works against meat as well. If you have to do all that just so meat isn't detrimental to your health, then you're probably better off just not eating meat. Because you know no one is going to do that. You might as well say "if someone lived in a perfect health bubble, then meat wouldn't negatively impact their health". Well yeah. But they don't, they live in a world with suboptimal health conditions. So they have to eat accordingly. And I could flip this same argument you just made, but in favor of veganism. If the vegans did everything you described, how do you know they would get significantly worse results than the meat-eating group? In which case you could just as easily be vegan, and you're really only eating meat because you want to.

@SageMind concern yourself primarily with your own work.

Were you really expecting the shooter to be a political scholar?

Ironically, those are all beliefs the new age spiritual community was founded on. The corruption of survival at its finest.

I don’t know anything about her. Maybe she’s had some legit spiritual experiences and is motivated by some higher values. But also, it should be obvious that new age spirituality has turned into a tool for human survival. Almost exactly like religion. You can sell your courses, meet a romantic partner, gain community etc. It’s a whole industry you can go into if you’re willing to play the new age spirituality game and not think too deeply about it. So you have to be careful of what you assume about these people. I’ve had new agers try to pitch me on pyramid schemes before. Just because someone uses spiritual buzzwords and can play the spiritual part doesn’t mean a lot.

The irony is that while the shooter was apparenly quite concerned about the Trump threat to democracy, political violence itself is an undemocratic act. Which is partly why it is condemned in all developed democracies. One guy with his AK-47 is trying to unilaterally decide that a candidate that almost half of Americans want should not be allowed on the ballot. That is not democracy. This also doesn't factor in the importance of civil due process and the inevitable chaos and further violence that would result if Trump was killed. Which just further erodes all the essential foundations for democracy to exist. The guy was a known criminal who clearly had a penchant for violence. That's what is really going on here.

No I don’t live in a swing state. I have done some canvassing but that kind of thing is not really my expertise. So no, I can’t say I have any brilliant ideas on getting out more voters that aren’t already being implemented. I leave that part up to activists who understand that world better.

That’s just my analysis of the overall situation. Trump will win a couple swing states and Kamala will win a couple. So the election is basically coming down to a coin-toss for Pennsylvania.

The polls are accurate in this case. There’s no good reason I see to assume either candidate is going to blow the other one out. It will be a close race.

Maybe. We can nitpick about what we think tips the scales, but the reality is it’s going to be an extremely close race. Kamala is no longer surging in the polls like she was. We’re back to almost a statistical tie.

Debate seems to have been almost irrelevant so far: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/14/politics/video/enten-harris-trump-poll-debate-digvid https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4x71znwxdo.amp

That Lankford interview was months ago, and he got ripped by a lot of the right-wing for that. There is no big backlash still to come from the right, they have mostly all fallen in line around the decision. A more recent FoxNews article: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-run-border-bill-republicans-say-was-never-designed-solve-problem.amp So it doesn’t matter whether Trump did or did not kill the bill for political reasons. What matters is that people don’t believe he did. I won’t say it has no impact though. I just think a 10 point swing is way too much.

But you do realize how many people make this claim, correct? Which one of you right? It can’t be all of you.

Have you looked into MAT? A practitioner *might* be able to help with some of that tightness. https://muscleactivation.com/

I was commenting specifically about the effects of the bill itself. Going from +25 to +15 I think is way too much. +10 overall in the polling on this issue could certainly be right.