If You Think You Can Hold a Grudge, Consider the Crow

I have considered it likely that groups of animals, obviously including crows are able to maintain a group memory and also achieve group cognition.

Here is a phenomena that conforms to that suggestion.

Most surely, all this inspired Hitchcocks movie ' the birds'

If You Think You Can Hold a Grudge, Consider the Crow

The brainy birds carry big chips on their shoulders, scientists say. And some people who become subjects of their ire may be victims of mistaken identity.

A murder of crows, which flock, en masse, every evening from across Greater Vancouver to a five-block section of Still Creek, Burnaby, British Columbia. Here they enjoy safety in numbers over the evening and night.Credit...

By Thomas Fuller

Photographs by Alana Paterson

Thomas Fuller traveled to Vancouver and Seattle to interview victims of crow attacks, and scientists who study the birds.

Published Oct. 28, 2024Updated Oct. 29, 2024

Over and over, the crows attacked Lisa Joyce as she ran screaming down a Vancouver street.

They dive bombed, landing on her head and taking off again eight times by Ms. Joyce’s count. With hundreds of people gathered outdoors to watch fireworks that July evening, Ms. Joyce wondered why she had been singled out.

“I’m not a fraidy-cat, I’m not generally nervous of wildlife,” said Ms. Joyce, whose crow encounters grew so frequent this past summer that she changed her commute to work to avoid the birds.

“But it was so relentless,” she said, “and quite terrifying.”

Ms. Joyce is far from alone in fearing the wrath of the crow. CrowTrax, a website started eight years ago by Jim O’Leary, a Vancouver resident, has since received more than 8,000 reports of crow attacks in the leafy city, where crows are relatively abundant. And such encounters stretch well beyond the Pacific Northwest.

A Los Angeles resident, Neil Dave, described crows attacking his house, slamming their beaks against his glass door to the point where he was afraid it would shatter. Jim Ru, an artist in Brunswick, Maine, said crows destroyed the wiper blades of dozens of cars in the parking lot of his senior living apartment complex. Nothing seemed to dissuade them.

Attacks by aggrieved crows can become the stuff of horror films, with lives being seemingly transformed into the Hitchcockian nightmare of “The Birds.”

Renowned for their intelligence, crows can mimic human speech, use tools and gather for what seem to be funeral rites when a member of their murder, as groups of crows are known, dies or is killed. They can identify and remember faces, even among large crowds.

They also tenaciously hold grudges. When a murder of crows singles out a person as dangerous, its wrath can be alarming, and can be passed along beyond an individual crow’s life span of up to a dozen or so years, creating multigenerational grudges.

Attacks by aggrieved crows can become the stuff of horror films, with lives being seemingly transformed into the Hitchcockian nightmare of “The Birds.”

Gene Carter, a computer specialist in Seattle, was followed by crows that lurked outside his windows for the better part of a year.

“The crows would stare at me in the kitchen,” he said in an interview. “If I got up and moved around the house, they would find any place where they could perch and scream at me. If I walked out to my car they would dive bomb me. They would get within an inch of my head.”

Mr. Carter knows precisely what set off the attacks. One day in his backyard, he saw crows encroaching on a robin’s nest and launched a rake into the air.

Image

Jim O’Leary, founder of CrowTrax, the crow-attack tracking site.

Image

CrowTrax, founded eight years ago, has received more than 8,000 reports of crow attacks in Vancouver, where crows are relatively abundant.

But he never imagined that the crows’ revenge would last so long. The mob learned to identify the bus he took on his way home from work, Mr. Carter said. “They were waiting for me at the bus stop every single day,” he said. “My house was three or four blocks away and they would dive bomb me all the way home.”

The harassment stopped only when Mr. Carter moved.

Experts say the majority of crow attacks occur in the spring and early summer, when protective parents are watching over their young and defending their nests from possible encroachers. But in other cases, the reason for an attack is not so clear.

When crows stalked her in July, Ms. Joyce noticed on a local Facebook group that several other women in her neighborhood were also being divebombed — and that they all had long blond hair.

“I wondered if there was a connection,” Ms. Joyce said. “Do they have a beef with a fair-haired person?”

After "Colossal" Exodus Of Subscribers, WaPo Boss Bezos Explains "The Hard Truth"

Legacy media has lost its way and we now have a return to sanity.

Yet they completely miss their best chance for both redemption and even restoration.  Seriously, the demand for information and novel ideas has never declined.  In fact idiots, I was the only chap walking down the street with a book in my hand.  sound awfully familiar?  today you all are doing the same thing.  just not a book.

We need a professional press that curates available internet content and writes about it.  And is inspired by it.  After all that is what i am doing with my portfolio of hobby horses right here.

WaPo could become an exciting must have and even save document of record for the internet.

After "Colossal" Exodus Of Subscribers, WaPo Boss Bezos Explains "The Hard Truth" About Not Endorsing Kamala

by Tyler Durden

Tuesday, Oct 29, 2024 - 05:35 AM

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/colossal-mass-exodus-over-200000-wapo-subscriber-cancellations-after-bezos-blocks-harris

In what is likely even more harrowing for the Op-Ed editors at The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos has just penned an explainer for his decision to not allow the liberal rag to endorse Kamala.

We present the opinion piece here in full (with some emphasis by us) - this is shocking levels of honesty!

The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media

The credibility gap can be bridged by independence.

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.

Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.

I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.

When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.

You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.

Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a return to the past, and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new, of course. This is the way of the world. None of this will be easy, but it will be worth it. I am so grateful to be part of this endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed.

The irony, of course, is that the alt-media space (and most non-liberal reporters) have been saying much of this for years - only to be cajoled, banned, black-balled, refused-access.

The question is - now that Bezos has smashed the glass ceiling of elite aloofness - will we see the usual tsunami of screaming, hysterical resignations ("I could never work for someone who said those words in his out loud voice") - or...

Is this the turning point - is this the moment when media reverts back to news and not opinion?

Where will all those 'resigning' reporters go to work if other media owners follow Bezos' path? Substack? How's that working out for the liberalati?

We suspect (strongly) that this will not be a quick turnaround. The blinkered libtard defense of all that is righteously progressive (and therefore 'the truth') will not disappear overnight.

A generation of so-called 'journalism students' need to be de-programmed from "their truth" (preferably not in camps), and they (and their professors) won't go quietly into the night, that is for sure.

And along those lines, shortly after Bezos dropped this op-ed, another major mainstream news outlet decided NOT to endorse Kamala...

* * *

As we detailed earlier, Jeff Bezos' decision for The Washington Post not to endorse a presidential candidate this year has resulted in a total shitshow for the progressive newspaper, with staffing members having epic meltdowns and editor-at-large Robert Kagan (husband of Victoria Nuland) walking off the job on Friday. Even more troubling for the paper is the mass exodus of liberal subscribers being reported by NPR News on Monday afternoon.

According to two sources within the paper and familiar with the subscriber exodus, over 200,000 digital subscription cancellations had occurred by Monday afternoon.

Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper's paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon. -NPR

Former Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli told NPR, "The problem is, people don't know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made, but we don't know what led to it."

The editorial page editor, David Shipley, told colleagues that WaPo's publisher, Will Lewis, said the reason for the lack of a Harris-Walz endorsement was to create an "independent space" where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.

WaPo has mostly endorsed Democrats for nearly a century (with only 3 Republicans since 1928):

• 1932 to 1944: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat)

• 1948: Thomas Dewey (Republican)

• 1952 & 1956: Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)

• 1960: John F. Kennedy (Democrat)

• 1964: Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat)

• 1968: Hubert Humphrey (Democrat)

• 1972: George McGovern (Democrat)

• 1976 & 1980: Jimmy Carter (Democrat)

• 1984: Walter Mondale (Democrat)

• 1988: Michael Dukakis (Democrat)

• 1992 & 1996: Bill Clinton (Democrat)

• 2000: Al Gore (Democrat)

• 2004: John Kerry (Democrat)

• 2008: Barack Obama (Democrat)

• 2012: Barack Obama (Democrat)

• 2016: Hillary Clinton (Democrat)

• 2020: Joe Biden (Democrat)

• 2024: Neutral

Back to WaPo's mass exodus of subs, Google search data shows "cancel Washington Post subscription" has gone parabolic nationwide since the weekend. Most cancelations are based in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.

Nine Months of Javier Milei as President of Argentina: A Critical Assessment

It is still early days but not that promising. Yet it should sort itself out over the next two years

Of course, it is my contention that the purpose of state intervention is the outright elimination of poverty.  however poorly done because all the rest will do just fine.

Argentina happens to be an ideal place to invest heavily.  once they stop the bad practices of the past century.

Nine Months of Javier Milei as President of Argentina: A Critical Assessment

Tags:Big Government,Bureaucracy and Regulation,Global Economy,Inflation

https://mises.org/mises-wire/nine-months-javier-milei-president-argentina-critical-assessment?

In office for just over nine months, Argentine President Javier Milei continues to face enormous economic and political challenges. His support from Congress and the Senate is fragile, and the president’s opponents are trying to mobilize the masses against his policies. This makes success in the economic sphere all the more urgent. The aim here is to find a way out of stagflation—the simultaneous occurrence of stagnation or recession and inflation—in which the Argentine economy currently finds itself as quickly as possible.

The signs are not good. When the Western industrialized nations fell into stagnation in the 1970s, it took almost a decade for price inflation to be defeated to some extent and for economic growth to pick up again. Milei doesn’t have that much time, even though a lot has already been achieved. Since taking office on December 10, 2023, Javier Milei has the following advantages:Surplus since January 2024

Restriction of money creation by the central bank since April 2024

Reduction of the inflation rate since April 2024

Abolition of various price regulations (e.g., on the housing market)

Reduction of various price subsidies

Abolition of eight ministries, partly with complete closure and dismissal of around 30,000 state employees

However, the negative side still has a heavy impact:Price inflation remains high (237 percent per year)

Unemployment rises (7.6 percent)

Labor force participation is very low (48 percent)

Industrial production is negative (-5.4percent annual)

External debt rises to around $290 billion

Insufficient level of foreign exchange reserves (currently $21.7 billion)

Devaluation to 975 pesos from 322 to the dollar when he took office

In presenting the budget in September, the Milei government announced the following expectations for 2025:5 percent increase in gross domestic product

Reduce price inflation to 18 percent per year by the end of 2025

Devaluation of the currency to 1207 per dollar by the end of 2025

Achieve a primary budget surplus of 1.3 percent of gross domestic product

If you take a closer look at the current figures, doubts grow whether these goals can be achieved. Worrying indicators are that the central bank money supply is not falling further and that the so-called M1 money supply is even increasing. Inflation expectations fell sharply in the first half of the year but have remained steady at 50 percent per year since then. With price inflation remaining high, the central bank may have cut interest rates too much and will be forced to reverse them when the rate of inflation picks up again. This, in turn, would further delay the recovery of industrial production. In addition, high payments for the interest on foreign debt are due in January next year.

2025 will be the critical year for Javier Milei, also because midterm elections are due in October 2025. By then, the president will have to whip his electoral alliance into shape to have enough votes in the legislature for the next stage of his policy.

To understand why Milei—an avowed “anarcho-capitalist”—came to power in the first place, it is enough to point out that Argentina has experienced a loss of prosperity for more than fifty years. While many other emerging markets have achieved massive gains in prosperity, the level in Argentina has fallen. But this is not the only reason why frustration is so widespread. One trigger to try something completely new is price inflation. This was already very high in all the previous decades, but in the past two years, it has risen rapidly. While the annual inflation rate was still around 50 percent at the beginning of 2022, it had risen to over two hundred percent when Javier Milei took office in December 2023. It was above all the promise to finally put an end to inflation that brought Milei into office.

Now the task for him is whether he can keep his promise without the recession deepening. In a nutshell, the task is that the reduction in the money supply and the reduction in government spending will be compensated for by a corresponding increase in private sector activity so that unemployment does not rise too much. Thus, much depends on the extent to which the government succeeds in strengthening the private sector through deregulation and privatization.

In addition to the domestic political problem areas, foreign trade is a decisive factor. Argentina is almost completely cut off from private foreign financing. New loans can only be expected from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but Argentina is already the country most indebted to the IMF with $42 billion in outstanding loans. Regarding the foreign debt of currently $287 billion US dollars, an estimated $15 billion US dollars are due to interest and partial amortizations starting in January of next year. Financially, Argentina will be very dependent on foreign exchange income. These can hardly be provided by the country’s export industry. Compensation would have to be made by foreign direct investment. There are already some positive signals here. But it remains to be seen whether the announcements will be followed by action because the economic climate is getting cloudy in the industrialized countries.

Argentina belongs to the large group of countries that have been systematically ruined by their own governments. Whether more “right” or more “left,” these politicians had in common a deep penchant for interventionism. What distinguishes Javier Milei is that he offers an alternative to the Argentine people. He calls himself an “anarcho-capitalist,” but what he promises and wants to implement is essentially a sound economic policy. Therefore, one should not expect too much anarcho-capitalism from the president. Even if he wanted to, he could not push it through politically. However, much would already be gained if he prevails in macroeconomic matters and succeeds in taming inflation and bringing about an economic upswing. This alone would have a signal effect worldwide, but especially for Latin America, where the tendency towards socialism is still widespread.

Where is Milei’s anarcho-capitalism, one wonders? There is little to see of this. He is pursuing a policy that the International Monetary Fund has already prescribed for many debtor countries. Governments have often followed the IMF’s requirements rather reluctantly. The Argentinian president does it voluntarily and to an even harsher extent. To reform an entire country abruptly in an anarcho-capitalist way is an impossibility. It would probably be better if Milei took a different path: that of private free cities or special economic zones.

This concept states that the government of a country designates certain territories, and the state largely withdraws administratively and leaves most of it to the private sector. Low or no taxes and almost no regulations are the incentives for companies and private investors to settle there. The labor market in these zones is almost completely free of regulation, and people come there voluntarily to work and do business.

Argentina’s location, in particular, is ideal for such a strategy because of its many almost completely uninhabited regions. The Argentine government could designate areas the size of Holland and lease these selected territories to a private company, the amount of which would vary according to the economic success achieved there. A comparison of the circumstances with the already existing administrative special zones in other parts of the world indicates that the chances of success in Argentina seem very favorable. This would be particularly the case if a libertarian government, such as that of Milei, undertook to extend the absence of state rule in such a special zone as far as possible, and accordingly to create a comprehensive space for a private legal system. Such a project could have a signal function for the whole world and provide practical proof that and how anarcho-capitalism works.

Tree Shaping Tech

Take a look at what we can do.  A large ring on a crane arm can be used to set the limbs slowly upward while an operator on the ground uses a pole to wrap a cable around the forced in limbs.  obviously needing attachment as well as it is done, but otherwise is all looks plausible.

Most of our superior hardwoods form a spreading ball.  Yet good husbandry calls for limiting the circumference and extending upward allowing ample sunlight.  this leaves real spacing between trees to allow a ground cover.

I also add that the limbs will also grow inward to support interior foliage and fruit.  Understand that a ball forms an interior empty space as any small boy can tell you.  A cylindrical shape reduces this space while densifying the outer wall.

This all controls orchard spacing beneficially.  imagine an apple tree using a robust root growing a twenty foot diameter cylinder upward for ultimately a fifty foot stem.  Apple collection may even be at least finished by shaking using a standard catchment net.  olive would be easier.

row spacing allows equipment access and also ample sunlight.

 <iframe width="315" height="560" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E2enZfxWQzA" title="This man gave a Beautiful Shape to this tree 😍❤️#shorts" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Single-track Pegasus flies vintage racecar vibes above the waves

This may well do it, though cost has to come down hard to mass production levels.  We are rid of the old propulsion choices and it is battery and EV motors.

Actual speed is at thirty knots tops and this should be safe enough.  Slamming into a log will still ruin your day, but stay survivable because the running gear will sheer.

I wonder how it works in six foot seas.  Should be fine.  We need vessels like this for a single operator and possibly a passenger version as well.

Why this matters, is that we stop pushing water which has limited boats forever.

Single-track Pegasus flies vintage racecar vibes above the waves

By Paul Ridden

October 25, 2024

https://newatlas.com/marine/foil-one-pegasus-single-seat-electric-hydrofoil/?

"Designed with simplicity, durability, and innovation at its core, the Foil.One boat delivers a groundbreaking on-water experience"

Foil.One

If you like the idea of rising above the waves on foiling e-boards but would rather be seated, Finland's Foil.One has launched the Pegasus – a sporty electric hydrofoiling boat for one that was inspired by vintage F1 racing cars.

Despite hydrofoil technology being more than a hundred years old, there's still something sci-fi futuristic about a boat rising out of the water and "flying" above the waves. With a new, erm, wave of electric transportation making a dent in carbon emissions, we're now seeing more of these kinds of watercraft being made.

The configuration of the foils mounted under the body of the Pegasus is a little different to the multi-passenger boats and ferries now in production. According to Foil.One's Eric Smits, the single-track design was inspired by the work of Japanese pioneer Kotaro Horiuchi – allowing the boat to "be controlled like a bicycle."

foilone PEGASUS - 100 % Electric Hydrofoiling Boat

The company has developed a novel steering mechanism that is said to mimic "the intuitive feel of handling a high-performance motorcycle." It features split left/right handles, and the system is designed to make electric foiling accessible to newcomers and veteran flyers alike.

"What truly sets Foil.One apart is how incredibly easy it is to fly," said company CEO, Mathias Heinnonen. "Our intuitive steering system ensures that no special skills or prior experience are needed – if you can ride a bike, you can fly this boat. It’s a seamless blend of innovation and accessibility."

The single-occupancy watercraft is fashioned using carbon fiber for lightweight strength. It's been molded into an aero form reminiscent of 1950s Formula 1 race cars or perhaps even vintage aircraft for a "fusion of historical elegance and contemporary boldness."

An 18.8-kW electric propulsion system at the rear can get the boat up to a top speed of 30 knots (~34.5 mph), though cruise speed is between 18 and 22 knots. And two 5-kWh (48-V) Torqeedo battery packs provide the juice, with Foil-One reporting that users could get more than 2 hours of electric thrills per charge. With batteries on board, the Pegasus tips the scales at 200 kg (441 lb), but comes in at 128 kg sans batteries.

The Pegasus boasts a single-track hydrofoil design, with the rear foil home to an 18.8-kW propulsions system for speeds up to 30 knots

Foil.One

"The height of the boat is controlled automatically, and it's a mechanical system that basically uses a surface sensor to move a flap," explained Smits. "The flap is in the front foil, which is also the steering foil. The pilot doesn't have to fly the boat, this is completely automatic. So you only need to worry about steering the boat."

The boat is reported to be highly maneuverable, and reckoned capable of sharp turns, hard carving and even banking 45 degrees or more. Being an electric foiler, the vessel can likely be used in locations where combustion-engine boats are not allowed – it leaves little to no wake behind it and benefits from relatively quiet operation.

After 4 years in development, the Foil.One Pegasus was launched at the Cannes Yachting Festival last month, and is currently up for pre-order. The boat itself is priced at €139,900 (which converts to about US$150k, though we've no word on availability over the pond).

Each hand-crafted e-foiler will be built to order, allowing for a degree of customization and personalization. The ticket price above doesn't appear to include the cost of the Torqeedo batteries and charger though. The video below has more.

Meditation And Mindfulness Have a Dark Side We Don't Talk About

We need to do a lot more with this.    Brain monitoring has become practical as well and combining this with solid meditation sessions is indicated.  find out what is going on and also how to ameliorate it.

What happens when the other side comms?

We can now monitor this.

Very important.

Meditation And Mindfulness Have a Dark Side We Don't Talk About

Health25 October 2024

ByMiguel Farias, The Conversation

https://www.sciencealert.com/meditation-and-mindfulness-have-a-dark-side-we-dont-talk-about?

Since mindfulness is something you can practice at home for free, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues.

Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you're sensing, thinking, and feeling in the present moment.

The first recorded evidence for this, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can occur after meditation.

It also details cognitive anomalies associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation, and depersonalisation (when people feel the world is "unreal").

In the past eight years there has been a surge of scientific research in this area. These studies show that adverse effects are not rare.

A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.

According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalisation, and fear or terror.(Egoitz Bengoetxea Iguaran/Canva Pro)

Research also found that adverse effects can happen to people without previous mental health problems, to those who have only had a moderate exposure to meditation and they can lead to long-lasting symptoms.

The western world has also had evidence about these adverse effects for a long time.

In 1976, Arnold Lazarus, a key figure in the cognitive-behavioural science movement, said that meditation, when used indiscriminately, could induce "serious psychiatric problems such as depression, agitation, and even schizophrenic decompensation".

There is evidence that mindfulness can benefit people's wellbeing. The problem is that mindfulness coaches, videos, apps and books rarely warn people about the potential adverse effects.

Professor of management and ordained Buddhist teacher Ronald Purser wrote in his 2023 book McMindfulness that mindfulness has become a kind of "capitalist spirituality".(dmitrynaumov/Canva Pro)

In the US alone, meditation is worth US$2.2 billion (£1.7 billion). And the senior figures in the mindfulness industry should be aware of the problems with meditation.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a key figure behind the mindfulness movement, admitted in a 2017 interview with the Guardian that "90 percent of the research [into the positive impacts] is subpar".

In his foreword to the 2015 UK Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Report, Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests that mindfulness meditation can eventually transform "who we are as human beings and individual citizens, as communities and societies, as nations, and as a species".

This religious-like enthusiasm for the power of mindfulness to change not only individual people but the course of humanity is common among advocates. Even many atheists and agnostics who practice mindfulness believe that this practice has the power to increase peace and compassion in the world.

Media discussion of mindfulness has also been somewhat imbalanced.

In 2015, my book with clinical psychologist Catherine Wikholm, Buddha Pill, included a chapter summarising the research on meditation adverse effects. It was widely disseminated by the media, including a New Scientist article, and a BBC Radio 4 documentary.

But there was little media coverage in 2022 of the most expensive study in the history of meditation science (over US$8 million funded by research charity the Wellcome Trust).

The study tested more than 8,000 children (aged 11-14) across 84 schools in the UK from 2016 to 2018. Its results showed that mindfulness failed to improve the mental wellbeing of children compared to a control group, and may even have had detrimental effects on those who were at risk of mental health problems.(Monkey Business Images/Canva Pro)

Ethical implications

Is it ethical to sell mindfulness apps, teach people meditation classes, or even use mindfulness in clinical practice without mentioning its adverse effects? Given the evidence of how varied and common these effects are, the answer should be no.

However, many meditation and mindfulness instructors believe that these practices can only do good and don't know about the potential for adverse effects.

The most common account I hear from people who have suffered adverse meditation effects is that the teachers don't believe them. They're usually told to just keep meditating and it will go away.

Research about how to safely practice meditation has only recently begun, which means there isn't yet clear advice to give people. There is a wider problem in that meditation deals with unusual states of consciousness and we don't have psychological theories of mind to help us understand these states.

But there are resources people can use to learn about these adverse effects. These include websites produced by meditators who experienced serious adverse effects and academic handbooks with dedicated sections to this topic.

In the US there is a clinical service dedicated to people who have experienced acute and long term problems, led by a mindfulness researcher.

For now, if meditation is to be used as a wellbeing or therapeutic tool, the public needs to be informed about its potential for harm.

A Giant Hidden Source of Lithium Was Just Discovered in Arkansas

The usual excess enthusiasm and no one asks if it is possible to economically mine it all.  It really does not matter. China was merely the first to work up their mines and take the price up and huge reserves will be qualified.

There is obviously zero shortage.  Just like Uranium.  Back in the day ,we all got excited it we got three pounds per ton of rock.  then Saskatchewan brought in deposits carrying several hundred pounds per ton needing robots to mine.

Any good brine source can surprise us with excess lithium.  You can hardly drill deep in sediments without hitting salt.

A Giant Hidden Source of Lithium Was Just Discovered in Arkansas

Environment25 October 2024

By

Jess Cockerill

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-giant-hidden-source-of-lithium-was-just-discovered-in-arkansas

The Smackover Formation, and sampling area in the lower portion of Arkansas (highlighted with red stripes). (USGS/Public Domain)

Suspended in the relic of an ancient sea beneath southern Arkansas, there may be enough lithium for nine times the expected global demand for the element in car batteries in 2030.

A collaborative national and state government research team trained a machine learning model to predict and map the lithium concentrations of salty water deep within the porous limestone aquifer beneath southern Arkansas, known as the Smackover Formation brines.

The model was trained on existing and new brine lithium data from the region, factoring in known variations in geology, geochemistry, and temperature.

The results suggest there is anywhere from 5.1 to 19 million tons of lithium in the brines, which could account for 35–136 percent of the current estimated lithium resources in the US.

This map of the US shows an inset area displaying highlighted areas for the Smackover Formation and sampling area. The sampling area is located in the lower portion of Arkansas (highlighted with red stripes). (USGS/Public Domain)

And that could reduce dependence on lithium imports, something US Department of Energy officials have their sights set on.

The study also indicates that in 2022, brines brought to the surface by the oil, gas, and bromine industries contained 5,000 tons of dissolved lithium – a resource that is becoming increasingly critical as we turn away from internal combustion engines driven by fossil fuels, and towards battery-powered electric and hybrid vehicles.

Lithium is the material of choice for electric vehicle batteries, and demand for these is sharply rising. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), electric vehicle batteries accounted for about 85 percent of total lithium demand in 2023, an increase of 30 percent from 2022.

"Mining and refining will need to continue growing quickly to meet future demand," the IEA reports.

Demand for electric vehicle batteries is increasing in all regions worldwide. (International Energy Agency, 2024)

But any mention of new mining and groundwater extraction can and probably should raise an eyebrow.

Other forms of lithium mining involve strip mines – which decimate everything above ground along with the deeper layers, and evaporation ponds – which produce only small amounts of lithium at a cost of enormous amounts of water, along with clouds of toxic dust.

In south Arkansas, on the other hand, the bromine industry already uses a process in which brine is pumped out of the aquifer, bromine is extracted, and then the resulting wastewater is pumped back down.

Lithium is, potentially, just an extra mineral to be salvaged in the process – and the researchers suspect this means lithium resources haven't yet been depleted by existing mining, either.

But this process doesn't guarantee zero environmental impact; rather, it's a major unknown one. And a lot of companies are lining up to drill new wells.

Patrick Donnelly, a conservation biologist and the Great Basin director for the Center of Biological Diversity, told Jack Travis from Ozarks at Large:

"We are in favor of electric vehicles and battery storage as a part of the transition off of fossil fuels… [but] we are sort of actively searching for where is lithium production in the United States that is not going to harm communities and the environment."

"There is no such thing as a free lunch. And there are impacts from [direct lithium extraction]," he says.

No doubt this will be a tricky balance to strike, but this new research could be used to help get it right.

"Lithium is a critical mineral for the energy transition, and the potential for increased US production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply-chain resilience," US Geological Survey director David Applegate says.

"This study illustrates the value of science in addressing economically important issues."

This research was published in Science Advances.

War Making Capacity.

 

War Making Capacity

There is no human activity more economically obsolete than making war, but it remains entertained as a handy way to force a change, any change, not necessarily good either.

However, back in the day, with the rise of industrial war, it proved possible for a country to put ten percent of its population under arms.  What I am now saying is that modernity and technology has changed that by empowering the full participation of women.  That said, full mobilization will conscript twenty percent of the whole population.

Understand that we still need the MkI combat male doing his thing.  However he now has drone wingmen able to support his activity.  This can mean literally a million drones packing all sorts of munitions operated far away.  All this and other support roles can easily use up all female manpower away from actual harm.

My take home is that a modern society, converting to a War economy can combine robot factories and twenty percent of the population into a far larger war machine than historically imagined.  yet without proper training we are watching replays of WWI. 

You cannot win a battle without accepting casualties and without training, those expand exponentially.

Far too often decision makers are fooled into throwing the dice because they expect their opponent to roll over.  Certainly the south could not have expected a determined response by the North at the beginning of the USA Civil War.  The exact same holds true for the current Ukraine war.  When that does not happen, access to war material decides the contest.  This does not get better for Russia simply because their tech cannot be replaced with better gear.

Home Made Yogurt to Replace Antibiotics and Herbal Detoxes For Slow Gut Sepsis

We already suspected as much and the good news is that the actual science is moving ahead fast.  Gut problems all look like a problem wanting a natural solution.

This guy is in the middle of all this and needs to be followed.  understand that a wide range of therapies are indicated the biology and they all need to be tested and used as benignly as possible.

sauerkraut is now coming back, and that really means we have a way to deliver product to the retail market.

Home Made Yogurt to Replace Antibiotics and Herbal Detoxes For Slow Gut Sepsis

By Wayne Lusvardi

October 26, 2024

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/10/wayne-lusvardi/home-made-yogurt-to-replace-antibiotics-and-herbal-detoxes-for-slow-gut-sepsis/

Leaky Gut Breakthrough: Dr. William Davis, MD, 36-Hour Cultured L-Reuteri Home Made Yogurt

NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, LAYMEN’S OPINION

Dr. William Davis, MD, is a former cardiologist who left the profession. He is also the author of the famous book Wheat Belly, which explains how the gliadin protein in wheat damages the small intestine resulting in a leaky gut and autoimmune reactions. Davis is an unusual person; has a dry wit and is not just another snake oil salesman or alternative medicine detox guru. Dr. Davis is the kind of person who might ask: “Would you like a side of poop to go with your favorite gut destroying wheat bran cereal and antibiotic-laced sausage for breakfast?” He reminds me in appearance of the TV comedian of the 1960’s Red Skelton. But Davis is no medical TV guru or impersonator but a serious medical practitioner. Davis warns people not to rely for their health on pharmaceuticals or procedures based only on observations or bogus testing based on relative probability.

Davis has recently been interviewed by several internet podcasters in mind blowing discussions about his breakthrough findings and home remedy treatment for Small Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth or SIBO (aka endotoxemia, leaky gut sepsis). According to Davis “just about every modern chronic condition must be reexamined in light of the contribution of the gut microbiome via endotoxemia” (endotoxemia means internal toxicity without an external germ). Davis’s major insight on health is that fecal microbes are climbing back up from the bowel some 24 feet into the small intestinal chamber where food transfers into the bloodstream for nourishment and that a probiotic called L. Reuteri is an antidote with no side effects. All humans once had the L. Reuteri bacteria but around half of us lost it presumably due to antibiotics, GMO wheat and sugar.

Davis says what changed his mind about the significance of bacterial and fungal overgrowth in the small intestine is a hand held device called AIRE that came out in 2018 that can map where in the GI tract microbes are located. Previously, neither colonoscopies nor intestinal scoping could detect and identify what was going on in the over 20 feet of the lower small intestine. Davis says it is uncommon for anyone to test negative with the AIRE device to having endotoxemia. The device works by testing for the timing of the release of hydrogen gas (hydrogen functions to keep the human body hydrated and a balance between acid and alkaline). The AIRE device reveals that Small Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth (SIBO) and Fungal Intestinal Bowel Overgrowth (FIBO) are everywhere in modern society due to the modern diet and drugs. Loss of stomach acid can also contribute to ascending fecal microbes says Davis.

But the probiotic Lactobacillus Reuteri does not sequester itself in a part of the human body but can take up residence in the entire length of the small intestine and the large bowel and thus can deter ascending fecal microbes. It produces antimicrobial Bacteriocins to push SIBO back into the bowel where it belongs. L. Reuteri acts like a backflow valve on your home plumbing that prevents sewer waste from back flowing into your drinking and cooking water line (ergo the medical term “sepsis”). Additionally, L. Reuteri produces the hormone Oxytocin that produces positive mood, sexual arousal, and increases contractions during labor at birth. It doesn’t take much deductive logic to understand that fewer birth contractions may lead to a greater revenue stream for doctors from more cesarian-sections, although Davis doesn’t mention this.

Davis says it was from cancer research that the probiotic L. Reuteri was initially found to be a game changer. L. Reuteri made experimental rats stay young until death even if fed a bad diet. Rats fed a bad diet of GMO grain and sugar without L. Reuteri got sick, emaciated and died prematurely. L. Reuteri is found only in the guts of mammals not in soil or plants. It was initially harvested from a woman in Peru who never ate a western diet of GMO grain or sugar nor was administered antibiotics.

Davis found that the only commercial strain of pure L. Reuteri was in a product called Bio-Gaia Gastrus that deals with abdominal bloating and discomfort in babies. However, the dosage was too low for adults. So, Davis fermented it 1000-fold in a yogurt maker for 36-hours to create an adult dosage of 250 to 300 billion colony forming units or CFU’s. Remarkably, the beneficial effects of L. Reuteri for experimental rats were the same for humans. In 90 percent of a group of 40 women monitored by Davis, it eliminated emotional depression, shrank waist size, smoothed out facial wrinkles, thickened hair, boosted libido, replaced lost muscle tone, and reduced inflammation.

Davis asks:

“Rather than taking an antibiotic or a detox herb for this (leaky gut) condition, what if the solution is a form of yogurt that restores a bacterial species you were supposed to have anyway but lost due to taking antibiotics, GMO grains and sugar? Micro-biotic medicine to treat disease and chronic conditions is evolving. Things are changing at breakneck speed. I don’t have all the solutions and maybe my answers will change in three months. We’re not quite there, but we’re getting close. Even now:

If you want a healthier, normally developed and higher IQ baby (without chronic conditions like asthma or allergies) try Bacillus Infantis

If you want to reduce joint pain, take Bacillus Coagulans

If you want smoother facial skin, smaller waist, revived libido and renewed strength take L. Reuteri

If you want to vastly reduce the likelihood of potentially deadly intestinal sepsis, take L. Reuteri

If you want to be faster and smarter at what you do, take Bacillus Brevis

If you want to control diabetes, get a unique non-drug probiotic product called Sugar Shift which performs equal to Metformin (Davis has no interest in this product)

Davis has a new high dosage L. Reuteri commercial product labeled “My Reuteri” (https://www.oxiceutics.com/products/myreuteri). But his website and podcasts detail how to cook it in a yogurt maker at home. According to Davis, a dosage of at least 50,000 CFU’s is needed if one takes another L. Reuteri product. He also advises to avoid unfermented plant-based foods and instead eat at least one fermented vegetable with every meal (e. g., sauerkraut). Davis reminds us that what halted fermenting food was the invention of the modern refrigerator.

Davis warns that the probiotic industry is highly competitive and the heightened interest in probiotics has resulted in a lot of marketing gimmickry. Two marketing claims are a probiotic should be soil-based and spore forming (such as Bacillus Subtilis) and should be double encapsulated to get through the acid in the stomach. But Davis says it is “really dumb” to want a probiotic not to release in the small bowel because it needs to control fecal microbe penetration. And soil- based probiotics such as spore-based B. Subtilis are a marketing gimmick and derive from septic cesspools (as also pointed out by polymath Pat Jordan at Vaccine Fraud @ Substack).

Back in 2017, Davis wrote the book Undoctored: How Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Be Smarter Than Your Doctor. In his online interview Davis says:

“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it is a new age in health. It is not health care because health care is corrupt. Health care is in the business of generating revenues to profit insiders through products and procedures. Health does not come through stinking pharmaceuticals and procedures”.

Davis’s approach offers a new paradigm of self-managed health as opposed to coercive pharmaceutical medicine. Davis never claims to treat or cure any disease, instead only offering to deal with preconditions. This approach debunks both conventional drug-based medicine and herb-based alternative detoxification medicine, both of which only address symptoms, despite that their respective advocates pointing fingers of blame at each other about COVID. Davis points out that dental decay can come from grain acidification of the oral cavity (Davis, Super Gut, page 44). Moreover, Davis blows up the conventional medical model when he says colon cancer is now suspected to come from a microbe in the mouth that ends up in the colon where it is not supposed to be due to a leaky gut.

Dr. Davis says microbiome strategies outperform antibiotics, are vastly cheaper and have spectacular effects with no real downside.