Month: October 2020

Another good point in favor of natural life. I think that agriculture was a necessary step in human evolution but it is time to let it go and adopt some ways of living closer to nature. I read recently that at least 25% of humanity’s intake of proteins comes from fish. A part of this is from fish farming but nevertheless, it shows that we rely heavily on some food that is not from mainstream agriculture.

>>> “Playing through the greenery and litter of a mini forest’s undergrowth for just one month may be enough to change a child’s immune system, according to a small new experiment. “

www.sott.net/article/443577-Finnish-daycares-built-a-forest-floor-and-it-changed-childrens-immune-systems-for-the-better

I started to believe that when I was very young (around 16). It is something intriguing to think about. It is somehow logical on a certain level, since they have to fight for the same battleground, our body.

>>> ” It does seem to be the case that you cannot be sick with two viruses at once. A recent study from Yale University found that of 13,000 patients admitted to in a major hospital with respiratory diseases, practically no one ever had both a cold and the flu at the same time. In fact, lung tissue that had been previously exposed to the cold virus was immune to the flu virus.”

www.sott.net/article/443479-Flu-away-Scientists-baffled-at-disappearance-of-influenza-but-is-it-really-gone-or-just-masked-by-Covid-19

Massage is a very old practice. I once read that in order to control your stress level and the anxiety that comes with it, you have the choice of either relaxation/meditation or massage therapy (if you can afford it).

The theory goes like this; In order to eliminate the accumulated stress, you need to eliminate more that you accumulate each day. It has been observed and calculated that to get to an acceptable level of stress, a normal person, subjected to a normal dose of daily stress (noises, electromagnetic waves, social pressure, alarms, shocks, etc.), should eliminate twice that amount, daily,  for a period of three (3) months.

To do that, you may have two (2) seances of meditation/relaxation of about twenty (20) minutes each day for 3 months or, if you can afford it, you should have at least two (2) full-body massages per week for thirteen (13) weeks.

With either practice, you will get to a healthy level of stress that you only need to maintain with regular relaxation/meditation or massages.

As of today (04-Nov-2020), nothing else will work.

The practices I described above, will also change something permanently in you.

>>> “Research in osteopathy and manual therapy, where practitioners have been working closely with neuroscientists on affective touch, suggests that the beneficial effect of massage therapy goes well beyond the actual manoeuvre performed by the therapist. “

aeon.co/essays/touch-is-a-language-we-cannot-afford-to-forget

I like walking. I think it is very natural and very beneficial to the human body. Some people said that the hunting advantage of early humans was because they could walk a very long distance to follow their prey until the prey gets tired and drop.

>>> “Neuroscientist Shane O’Mara believes that plenty of regular walking unlocks the cognitive powers of the brain like nothing else. He explains why you should exchange your gym kit for a pair of comfy shoes and get strolling “

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/28/its-a-superpower-how-walking-makes-us-healthier-happier-and-brainier

Way to go!!

The removal of youtube-dl on a centralized repository has proven that we should put more eggs into the decentralization of all software repositories.

The software developer crowd is subject to the same tendencies to fads and trends than any other portion of the general population. That is a shame. We really should control ourselves better and not let our emotions put all our eggs in the same basket.

>>> “So that’s the practical and philosophical, and I guess I’ll call the third reason the “ironical”. It is a massive irony to move from many servers running the CVS and Subversion protocols, to a single centralized server speaking the decentralized Git protocol. Google Code announced its shutdown a few months ago, and their rationale was explicitly along the lines of “everyone’s using GitHub anyway, so we don’t need to exist anymore”. We’re quickly heading towards a single central service for all of the world’s source code.”

blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittorrent-a-decentralized-github/

More radiation leads to a multiple of side effects for earth, including more mutation on all levels, psychological effects, climate effects, etc.

>>> “Spaceweather.com and Earth to Sky Calculus have just released a new batch of cosmic ray balloon data. Their conclusion: Atmospheric radiation is near a 5-year high. This plot shows a 15% increase since the monitoring program began in 2015. “

www.sott.net/article/442986-Solar-Minimum-increases-atmospheric-radiation-by-15-reaching-a-5-year-high

Too many drug interactions and not enough follow up on prescriptions. It is getting more and more complicated each year. Why don’t we see any artificial intelligence in prescribing aid? Like driving a car, we could have some sort of program verifying some prescription and advising on them, leaving the final decision to the doctor-patient conversation.

>>> “The third problem is that patients, and especially elderly patients, see lots of different doctors. And one doctor usually doesn’t want to stop a medication that another doctor has started. The reason for this is that the second doctor generally doesn’t have full information on why the drug was started, and so doesn’t want to take the patient off a medication that they might “need”. “

www.sott.net/article/442976-Deprescribing

Another good reason to stay close to nature. Again, I am more and more convinced that agriculture is the source of the majority of our problems as human beings. There must be a way where we could still be civilized without farming. Fishing is the closest to that ideal that I can see right now.

>>> “Researchers in Finland found that when they brought nature into daycare playgrounds — including forest soil and vegetation — preschoolers’ immune function showed a change for the better. In simple terms, it shifted to a less inflammatory state. “

www.sott.net/article/442938-Bringing-the-forest-to-kids-daycare-may-boost-young-immune-systems

Maybe they will feel the difference later…

>>> “Centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEX) operators say they are unfazed by the increasing trading volumes on decentralized exchanges (DEX) because the latter’s liquidity is still too insignificant to cause user mass migration.”

news.bitcoin.com/centralized-exchange-operators-believe-low-liquidity-on-dex-platforms-stops-user-migration/

Yes, Bitcoin and cryptos seem to be getting more and more popular these days.

>>> “Former hedge fund manager Raoul Pal shared his view on the economy, gold, and bitcoin last week in a podcast interview with Daniela Cambone of Stansberry Research. “

news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-price-1-million-5-years/

With decentralization comes a few bad things. My view is that most people are good and there are very few exceptions. I am not saying here, that someone who is taking drugs is a bad person. I sincerely think that nobody has the right to force anybody to consume or not consume any substance.

For me, if you are selling drugs because you want to help people then you are a good person. If you are selling drugs because you want to hurt people then you are a bad person.

>>> “While many darknet markets have fallen to the wayside, a slew of new types of methods when it comes to selling illegal drugs online has risen. For instance, the world’s largest DNM in Russia, Hydra, leverages a complicated system of vendors who utilize drop zones. “

news.bitcoin.com/a-system-of-robot-drug-dealers-on-telegram-allows-people-to-buy-illegal-products-for-bitcoin/

This article is short and right to the point. It will show you how pandemics are transformative agents for society. A little lesson in history that is informative for me. I wish there would be more articles like this, on the internet universe.

>>> “Before March of this year, few probably thought disease could be a significant driver of human history.”

www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/10/12/covid-19-how-3-prior-pandemics-triggered-massive-societal-shifts/

Seasteading is an interesting notion. The reasoning is that on the sea there is no government and if you live there then you are free. In reality, anything on the sea that does not have a flag of a ‘recognized’ country might be fired upon by any vessels that see it, including big navy countries like the US and the UK.
Another problem with the notion of seasteading is that most projects are without possibilities of defending themselves and are subject to attacks by anybody ‘stronger’ than them. That goes contrary to one of the sayings of Machiavelli which says more or less that “Before all else, be armed!”.
I am a fan of decentralization projects, not because I like chaos but because the new decentralization techniques like blockchains and other “peer to peer” (P2P) technologies provide order without centralizing power in the hands of one or too few entities.
I have owned condos on multiple occasions and I do not think I will ever own one in the future because I feel less at home in one.
Condos do not solve the “musical problem” or when your neighbor plays his music too loud. When that happens in a condo you have almost no defense. You might lodge a complaint with local authorities but if you do it too often they will get angry with you. The condo administration will not be policing her members very strongly. Even when you own a house in a bad neighborhood, you are never completely at home. First, you still need to pay rent in the form of taxes to local authority and if you have a “noisy” neighbor, you are stuck with complaining to the police or public security.
I prefer to rent, in the current social paradigm. When I rent a place, I may always refer to the landlord for ‘justice’ and he is highly motivated to listen to me and resolve the situation, more so, if it involves more tenants.
I am ready to pay a little bit more by renting because then, the landlord is shielding me from higher authorities and that is a service I like.
Of course, I would not rent from a condo owner.
I wish them luck anyway, but I would prefer it if they would just rent the units on long terms (3,6,12 months).

>>> “Ocean Builders, a company that builds “seapods” or floating homes for seasteaders, has unveiled “The Crypto Cruise Ship” called Satoshi. It is being prepared to set sail from the Mediterranean and will anchor in the Gulf of Panama.”

news.bitcoin.com/crypto-cruise-ship-satoshi/

Why are we still using lockdowns after 6 months of this virus presence? It should have been enough time to adjust and adapt by any social system.

>>> “Dr. David Nabarro from the WHO appealed to world leaders yesterday, telling them to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method” of the coronavirus. “

www.sott.net/article/442733-Coronavirus-WHO-backflips-on-virus-stance-by-condemning-lockdowns

This is to encourage creativity or the human need, and duty, to create. It is something that everyone should try to experiment with. Cryptos are getting really, really popular these days. In my opinion, it is the perfect medium to change the world into a decentralized system. Order without centralized power.

>>> “In the last few months the non-fungible token (NFT) art space has exploded and data shows that there’s been over 4.9 million sales worth well over $128 million to-date.”

news.bitcoin.com/nft-craftiness-mint-a-non-fungible-token-art-collectible-in-less-than-15-minutes/

Did you know that you and I are cousins?

I find this very interesting. It is not something I was aware and it is very surprising.

What it is saying, in short, is that we are all, more or less, cousins on this planet. With every person on earth, right now, you and that person will find a common ancestor somewhere in the past. That past might not be that far, most likely a few thousand years, not a hundred thousand.

The notion of isopoint is also worth discovering.

>>> “Imagine counting all your ancestors as you trace your family tree back in time. In the nth generation before the present, your family tree has 2n slots: two for parents, four for grandparents, eight for great-grandparents, and so on. The number of slots grows exponentially. By the 33rd generation—about 800 to 1,000 years ago—you have more than eight billion of them. That is more than the number of people alive today, and it is certainly a much larger figure than the world population a millennium ago. “

www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-all-more-closely-related-than-we-commonly-think/

I tend to agree with this. The current ‘civilization’ paradigm is not sustainable in any way we can come up with. The maths is just not there. Nature has the most efficient way to convert the energy we receive from the sun to something useful (life).

Anything that we try to do better is doomed to failure. It is not even to our advantage to try to beat nature. Just let it go and it will sustain itself and us with it.

If we observe nature and just take our share of food by using some clever ways to get it, we work a lot less than trying to produce some tons of the same plants (say cabbage) from a square mile. If we let nature go, it might not produce a few tons of cabbages, but will produce a variety of plants and animals that will lead to a real sustainable cycle only because of the variety it will provide.

Look at fishermen today that are able to provide food for many people using those special nets. They do work a lot and hard, when they are fishing but they are not fishing all the time. When they do fish, they provide food for a lot more people than themselves and their family.

>>> “In fact, our civilization’s sustainability is zero. Aside from the pollution, poisoning and intoxication that we leave around us, our mostly western civilization has used natural resources at the rate of 3 to 4 times in excess of what Mother Earth so generally provides us with. We, the west, had passed the threshold of One in the mid-sixties. In Africa and most of Asia, the rate of depletion is still way below the factor of One, on average somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6. “

www.sott.net/article/442305-The-insanity-of-elite-defined-sustainability