"This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle;
wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it."
- Thomas Carlyle
So, we rise from the rubble...
Sunday, December 20, 2020
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/20/20"
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/20/20"
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DECEMBER 20, 2020 AT 7:50 AM: "CDC Issues New Guidelines, Launches Probe After 1000s Negatively-Affected Following COVID-19 Vaccination" “But we just don’t know at this point.”
DECEMBER 20, 2020 AT 9:55 AM: "Scientists Warn UK COVID Mutation "Unlike Anything We Have Seen"; Cali Cases Near 2MM As Apple Closes Stores: Live Updates"
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Dec. 20, 2020 2:08 PM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 76,589,600
people, according to official counts, including 17,799,669 Americans.
At least 1,689,500 have died.
Dec. 20, 2020 2:08 PM ET:
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count○
"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases,
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
"2021 Is Going To Be Rough!"
"2021 Is Going To Be Rough!"
by Chris Martenson
"I can’t wait to get away from Covid coverage. I’ve learned a lot, helped many, and yet I’m really anxious to get back to my main work in the world, which has to do with cultivating resilience.
This has been a huge year for us here in the Martenson household. First, we moved right as Covid was breaking across the world. The closing date on our new 182-acre property here in beautiful Chester MA was January 28th. My first ALERT to the world about a mysterious virus was on January 23rd.
From that date and for the next 6 months I was producing daily videos. Oh, and writing weekly content for the Peak Prosperity website. Oh, and moving. Oh, and assembling my first ever real estate syndication deal. Oh, and converting our new property to a working farm. That’s a lot of “ands” for a given year. Thanks 2020! But what 2020 had taketh away (visitors and travel) it also giveth – lots of time at the homestead. And not a moment too soon!
Look, the world is an increasingly unstable place. It is absolutely correct and right that people should become more resilient. And that begins at home. Maybe even right on your own garden. If 2020 has done anything, it has normalized what was once ‘fringe” by making it completely obvious that the systems upon which we depend are rotten, unable to self-repair or reform, and therefore more fragile than we thought.
Our national health “managers” are not leaders, and are completely unable to escape whatever conflicts of interest bind their tongues as well as their hearts. The political system is corrupt through and through and completely uninterested in any sort of introspection, let alone reform.
I’ve had people tell me this was “the fairest election in recent US history.” I show them this map of Chicago’s 4th congressional district and ask them to point to its fairness so I can possibly see it:
Squint though I might, I just can’t see it.
Meanwhile the US Federal Reserve is busy exploding the currency supply as seen in this chart of M1:
Unbelievable!
As a reminder: M1 is the money supply that is composed of physical currency and coin, demand deposits (savings & checking), travelers’ checks, other checkable deposits, and negotiable order of withdrawal (NOW) accounts Looking at M1 in terms of its change from year ago levels makes it even more ridiculous seeming.
The only possibly response here ought to be WTF? What could possibly be going through the minds of the Federal Reserve to justify this sort of monetary madness? One more way to look at this is in terms of a percent change from a year ago. How does M1 look under this condition?
This is insane. Simply insane. On a percent change basis, the entire money stock of the US - which includes all of the money stock built up over its entire history - increased by 65.6%. In a single year!!! At the same time the US is doing the worst job out of any country in the world managing Covid. Simply terrible. Awful.
Of course, as you probably know, I respect the hell out of Covid, but I don’t fear it any more than I fear the flu. Why? Because of Ivermectin, which has been overwhelmingly demonstrated to all but entirely block the transmission of the SARS2 virus as well as prevent the development of serious cases of Covid the disease.
Nobody at the NIH is interested in this data for some reason. Fauci doesn’t care or want to hear about it. All the US medical establishment wants is a vaccine. That’s fine to an extent, but what about all the lives lost and ruined while we wait? Is there no accounting for them? How awful of the national health managers that they should not care about the most vulnerable, the weak, and the elderly. At all.
The US Government is out of control in its spending, too:
That gap between receipts and expenditures is as staggering as it is frightening. There’s just no possible way to get any of that back under control, especially not since 50% or more of small and medium sized bushiness (a.k.a. “the tax base”) have been destroyed for completely ill-advised and (as it turns out) completely unnecessary reasons — if only we had been using Ivermectin therapy and prophylaxis all along.
Against this backdrop the US dollar is busy falling, as it should. There’s simply nothing good happening in the US at the moment that should support the dollar:
Crikey that’s a terrible-looking chart!
But it’s well deserved. There really isn’t much going for the dollar right now. The terrible US economy is being destroyed by ill-advised policies and a horribly bad Covid response, out-of-control spending, and a print-happy Federal Reserve. Add it all up and you’ve got a lot of US dollars floating around. And a lot less to spend them on. So the dollar sinks.
As the USD sinks, other assets priced in dollars rise. Like Bitcoin. Congratulations Bitcoin Hodl-ers! (that stands for Hold On for Dear Life). You know what else the dollar has been falling against all year? Good real estate property, stocks, bonds, gold, and many other hard assets. The press says they are “rising in price” but really it’s not that. It’s too many dollars seeking a place to hide out and be safe. The conclusion to all of this?
The Logic Of Homesteading: We’re entering a period of volatility and uncertainty. Like myself and my fiancée Evie, many have come to the (proper) conclusion that the best way to hedge their bets is to build up their homestead, and make it more resilient. We’ve really thrown ourselves at this project this year and it’s been both challenging and rewarding.
Here on the day of our first and quite significant snowfall, it’s time to sit back, reflect on the mistakes and progress alike, and to share what we’ve done in case it helps to inspire or educate anyone. Make no mistake. You really should be thinking about growing your own food and building your soil, too. If any of the events outlined in The Great Reset come to pass, being as close as possible to your food production seems like a solid plan. The closer the better."
"A Gathering of the Tribe"
"A Gathering of the Tribe"
by Charles Eisenstein
"Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.
One day the shaman of the tribe called a meeting. They gathered around him, and he spoke very solemnly. "My friends," he said, "there is a world that needs our help. It is called Earth, and its fate hangs in the balance. Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing, and they will be stillborn without our help. Who would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place, and render service to humanity?"
"Tell us more about his mission," they asked. "I am glad you asked, because it is no small thing. I will put you into a deep, deep trance, so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life, and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world, and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will not know what it is you are missing. You will only remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge, as you plunge into the painfully marred earth, that a more beautiful world is possible.
As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety, and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened.
You see, even though you will feel, for a time, utterly alone, you will not be alone. I will send you assistance, help that you will experience as miraculous, experiences that you will describe as transcendent. For a few moments or hours or days, you will reawaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be. You will see it on earth, for even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real.
You will also receive help from each other. As you begin to awaken to your mission you will meet others of our tribe. You will recognize them by your common purpose, values, and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked. As the condition of the planet earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more. The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy, will be over.
You will find the people of your tribe all over the earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet. But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings in special places on earth. When many of you gather together you will launch a new stage on your journey, a journey which, I assure you, will end where it began. Then, the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness. Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful one.
In the time of loneliness, you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy. You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don't listen to you. You will be hungry for stories of wrongness, atrocity, and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists. But after you have fully received the help I will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that. Because, you will Know. Your energy will thereafter turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world."
A tribeswoman asked the shaman, "How do you know this will work? Are you sure your shamanic powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?"
The shaman replied, "I know it will work because I have done it many times before. Many have already been sent to earth, to live human lives, and to lay the groundwork for the mission you will undertake now. I've been practicing! The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once. What is new in the time you will live in, is that the Gatherings are beginning to happen."
A tribesman asked, "Is there a danger we will become lost in that world, and never wake up from the shamanic trance? Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin, and that we will separated from our beloved ones forever?"
The shaman replied, "That is impossible. The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help I will send you. You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, the loss of everything important to you. Later you will recognize the gift within it. We will never abandon you."
Another man asked, "Is it possible that our mission will fail, and that this planet, earth, will perish?"
The shaman replied, "I will answer your question with a paradox. It is impossible that your mission will fail. Yet, its success hangs on your own actions. The fate of the world is in your hands. The key to this paradox lies within you, in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal, secret struggles within, has cosmic significance. You will know then, as you do now, that everything you do matters. God sees everything."
There were no more questions. The volunteers gathered in a circle, and the shaman went to each one. The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his face. They entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today."
⁌⁍
"Who are these missionaries from the more beautiful world? You and I are surely among them. Where else could this longing come from, for this magical place to be found nowhere on earth, this beautiful time outside of time? It comes from our intuitive knowledge of our origin and destination. The longing, indomitable, will never settle for a world that is less. Against all reason, we look upon the horrors of our age, mounting over the millennia, and we say NO, it does not have to be this way! We know it, because we have been there. We carry in our souls the knowledge that a more beautiful world is possible. Reason says it is impossible; reason says that even to slow- much less reverse- the degradation of the planet is an impossible task: politically unfeasible, opposed by the Money Power and its oligarchies. It is true that those powers will fight to uphold the world we have known. Their allies lurk within even ourselves: despair, cynicism, and resignation to carving out a life that is "good enough" for me and mine.
But we of the tribe know better. In the darkest despair a spark of hope lies inextinguishable within us, ready to be fanned into flames at the slightest turn of good news. However compelling the cynicism, a jejune idealism lives within us, always ready to believe, always ready to look upon new possibilities with fresh eyes, surviving despite infinite disappointments. And however resigned we may have felt, our aggrandizement of me and mine is half-hearted, for part of our energy is looking elsewhere, outward toward our true mission.
I would like to advise caution against dividing the world into two types of people, those who are of the tribe and those who are not. How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don't get it and don't care? The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way, deep down. When we are young the feeling of mission and the sense of magnificent origins and a magnificent destination is strong. Any career or way of life lived in betrayal of that knowing is painful, and can only be maintained through an inner struggle that shuts down a part of our being. For a time, we can keep ourselves functioning through various kinds of addictions or trivial pleasures to consume the life force and dull the pain. In earlier times, we might have kept the sense of mission and destiny buried for a lifetime, and called that condition maturity. Times are changing now though, as millions of people are awakening to their mission all at the same time. The condition of the planet is waking us up. Another way to put it, is that we are becoming young again.
When you feel that sense of alienation, when you look upon that sea of faces mired so inextricably in the old world and fighting to maintain it, think back to a time when you too were, to all outside appearances, a full and willing participant in that world as well. The same spark of revolution you carried then, the same secret refusal, dwells in all people. How was it that you finally stopped fighting it? How was it that you came to realize that you were right all along, that the world offered to us is wrong, and that no life is worth living that does not in some way strive to create a better one? How was it that it became intolerable to devote your life energy toward the perpetuation of the old world? Most likely, it happened when the old world fell apart around your ears.
As the multiple crises of money, health, energy, ecology, and more converge upon us, the world is going to collapse for millions more. We must stand ready to welcome them into the tribe. We must stand ready to welcome them back home.
The time of loneliness, of walking the path alone, of thinking maybe the world is right and I am wrong for refusing to participate fully in it... that time is over. For years we walked around talking about how wrong everything is: the political system, the educational system, religious institutions, the military-industrial complex, the banking industry, the medical system- really, any system you study deeply enough. We needed to talk about it because we needed to assure ourselves that we were not, in fact, crazy. We needed as well to talk about alternatives, the way things should be. "We" should eliminate CFCs. "They" should stop cutting down the rain forests. "The government" should declare no fishing zones. This talk, too, was necessary, for it validated our vision of the world that could be: a peaceful and exuberant humanity living in co-creative partnership with a wild garden earth.
The time, though, for talking merely to assure ourselves that we are right is coming to an end. People everywhere are tired of it, tired of attending yet another lecture, organizing yet another discussion group online. We want more. A few weeks ago as I was preparing for a speaking trip to Oregon, the organizers told me, "These people don't need to be told what the problems are. They don't even need to be told what the solutions are. They already know that, and many of them are already in action. What they want is to take their activism to the next level."
To do that, to fully step into one's mission here on earth, one must experience an inner shift that cannot be merely willed upon oneself. It does not normally happen through the gathering or receiving of information, but through various kinds of experiences that reach deep into our unconscious minds. Whenever I am blessed with such an experience, I get the sense that some benevolent yet pitiless power- the shaman in the story- has reached across the void to quicken me, to reorganize my DNA, to rewire my nervous system. I come away changed.
One way it happens is through the "gathering of the tribe" I described in this story. I think many people who attended the Reality Sandwich retreat in Utah experienced something like this. Such gatherings are happening now all over the world. You go back, perhaps, to "real life" afterwards, but it no longer seems so real. Your perceptions and priorities change. New possibilities emerge. Instead of feeling stuck in your routines, life changes around you at a vertiginous pace. The unthinkable becomes commonsense and the impossible becomes easy. It may not happen right away, but once the internal shift has occurred, it is inevitable.
Here I am, a speaker and a writer, going on about how the time for mere talk has ended. Yet not all words are mere talk. A spirit can ride the vehicle of words, a spirit that is larger than, yet not separate from, their meaning. Sometimes I find that when I bow into service, that spirit inhabits the space in which I speak and affects all present. A sacredness infuses our conversations and the non-verbal experiences that are becoming part of my events. In the absence of that sacredness, I feel like a smart-ass, up there entertaining people and telling them information they could just as easily read online. Last Friday night I spoke on a panel in New York, one of three smart-asses, and I think many in the audience left disappointed (though maybe not as disappointed as I was in myself). We are looking for something more, and it is finding us.
The revolutionary spark of our true mission has been fanned into flames before, only to return again to an ember. You may remember an acid trip in 1975, a Grateful Dead concert in 1982, a kundalini awakening in 1999- an event that, in the midst of it, you knew was real, a privileged glimpse into a future that can actually manifest. Then later, as its reality faded into memory and the inertial routines of life consumed you, you perhaps dismissed it and all such experiences as an excursion from life, a mere "trip." But something in you knows it was real, realer than the routines of normalcy. Today, such experiences are accelerating in frequency even as "normal" falls apart. We are at the beginning of a new phase. Our gatherings are not a substitute for action; they are an initiation into a state of being from which the necessary kinds of actions arise. Soon you will say, with wonder and serenity, "I know what to do, and I trust myself to do it."
"Why?"
"Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people? The response would be… to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened."
- Harold S. Kushner
The Poet: Maya Angelou, “When Great Trees Fall”
“When Great Trees Fall”
“When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down in tall grasses,
and even elephants lumber after safety.
When great trees fall in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid,
promised walks never taken.
Great souls die and our reality,
bound to them, takes leave of us.
Our souls, dependent upon their nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly.
Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never to be the same,
whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be.
Be and be better.
For they existed.”
~ Maya Angelou
"What We Owe To Ourselves..."
“That we can never know,” answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”
- David Clement Davies
“Sunflower Seeds- Nature’s Anti-Depressant, And More”
“Sunflower Seeds- Nature’s Anti-Depressant, And More”
by NaturalNews
“Sunflowers are the earthly representation of the sun. They have such an affinity for the life giving force that they twist on their stems so their faces can bask in sunlight all through the day. Photons from the sun are stored in the DNA of the sunflower, making its seed resonate with the photons in human cells. This resonance is good for mind as well as body, and makes sunflowers one of the top foods for fighting depression.
If we believe that we are what we eat, it is clear that nerves depend on what they are fed. While all of the wealth of nutrients found in sunflower seeds contributes to nerve health, sunflower seeds are particularly rich in key nutrients that have a direct impact on alleviating depression. Their high levels of magnesium counterbalance calcium, helping to regulate nerve function. And the substantial content of the amino acid, tryptophan, enhances serotonin production and thus improves mood. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that pass messages between nerve cells in the brain. They have a tremendous impact on overall mood and feelings of well being. Serotonin is one of the body’s most important neurotransmitters. When released, serotonin gives a relaxing, content feeling that relieves emotional tension. This feeling is often described as mellowness. It is serotonin’s profound effect on the mind that makes Prozac, Paxil, and other antidepressants such popular drugs. These drugs act by artificially keeping serotonin levels high. Higher serotonin can be naturally achieved by eating sunflower seeds, and there are no side effects.
Carbohydrates are needed to help tryptophan cross the blood-brain barrier and get to where it can work its wonders. Sunflower seeds offer the perfect blend of tryptophan and carbohydrates making them an ideal functional food to fight depression. Dark meat from poultry is also high in tryptophan, but needs carbohydrates added to be effective. Increased serotonin is why a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, potatoes and stuffing provides such a relaxing sense of well being that the diner is soon asleep on the couch. Sunflower seeds are the perfect vegetarian alternative to such a food orgy. Vitamin B-6 is also necessary to fuel the body’s normal depression-fighting chemical reactions. B-6 deficiency is common in Americans, particularly when considered in light of the absurdly low RDA of two milligrams. Sunflower seeds are a good source of B-6, giving them a three way punch against depression.
Sunflower seeds are one of the first plants to be cultivated in the U.S. They have been used by Native Americans for more than 5,000 years as a food source and for their oil. Parts of the flowers, roots and stems have been used for varied purposes including pigment dye, but the bright yellow petals of the sunflower are considered poisonous to humans. Some people think sunflower seeds are for the birds. They can be seen picking through all the other seeds in the feeder to get to the prized sunflower seeds. Birds are smart enough to go for the finest in nutrition. Sunflower seeds also supply all the nutrients needed by the human body with the exception of vitamin D. They are extremely rich in vitamin E, the primary fat-soluble antioxidant in the human body. Vitamin E roams the body looking for free radicals to put out of business. This action keeps fat-containing molecules from being damaged and leading to early aging. Vitamin E protects against inflammation too, making it a potent fighter of arthritis, cancer and diabetes.
One-quarter cup of sunflower seeds contains over 90% of the daily value of vitamin E. This makes sunflower seeds extremely helpful in protecting cardiovascular health by preventing free radicals from damaging cholesterol. Only after being damaged can cholesterol stick to blood vessel walls and begin the process of atherosclerosis which leads to clogged arteries, heart attack, and stroke. People with a high intake of vitamin E are at much lower risk of dying from a heart attack than are people whose vitamin E intake is inadequate.
Sunflower seeds are loaded with potassium, so needed in the American diet to balance the effects of sodium. Potassium controls the pressure inside cells while sodium controls the pressure outside cells. Sodium concentrations are more than ten times lower inside than outside cells, and potassium concentrations are about 30 times higher inside than outside cells. The concentration differences between potassium and sodium across cell membranes create an electrochemical gradient known as the membrane potential. A large amount of energy in the body is dedicated to maintaining the sodium/potassium concentration gradients, underscoring the importance of the balance between sodium and potassium in sustaining life. Tight control of cell membrane potential is critical for heart function, nerve impulse transmission, and muscle contraction. This dedication of body energy to maintaining sodium/potassium balance is what makes fatigue the most obvious symptom of potassium deficiency. Heart rhythm irregularities also signify the need for more potassium.
One-quarter cup of sunflower seeds contains more than 30% of the daily value for selenium in a form with much greater bioavailability than can be obtained from selenium supplements. Selenium has been shown to protect against cancers by inducing DNA repair and synthesis in damaged cells, by inhibiting the proliferation of cancer cells, and by inducing cancer cells to die. Selenium is incorporated at the active site of many compounds, including cancer fighting glutathione peroxidase, one of the most powerful antioxidant enzymes found naturally in the body. When glutathione peroxidase levels are too low, toxic molecules are not able to be disarmed, and are left to create havoc in the body damaging DNA and promoting cancer. That same quarter-cup of sunflower seeds also contains more than 32% of the daily value of magnesium, a mineral that does a lot more than keep people in a good mood. Magnesium is natures channel blocker, preventing calcium from overly activating nerves, sending too many messages, and causing excessive muscle contractions. Magnesium deficiency contributes to high blood pressure, muscle spasms that include the heart muscle, and spasms of the airways that characterize asthma. Migraines, muscle cramps, tension, soreness and fatigue are also symptomatic of magnesium deficiency.
A quarter-cup of sunflower seeds is a rich source of manganese, containing 37% of the daily value. Manganese is critical in the activation of enzymes without which many key nutrients will remain unused by the body. Some of these enzymes are necessary for bone formation and may be needed for thyroid hormone production. Manganese is a component of nerve health and is another player against depression. It is a catalyst in the synthesis of fatty acids and cholesterol, and facilitates protein and carbohydrate metabolism. Many physiological processes are impacted by manganese deficiency. Some of the symptoms of shortage are loss of hair color, hearing loss, dizziness, skin rash, bone loss and osteoporosis, excessively low cholesterol levels, and reproductive health issues.
Sunflower seeds act as a natural pH buffer because of their high mineral content. Keeping the body at optimal pH, which is slightly to the alkaline side, has been recommended as one the best means for protecting the body against the ravages of Morgellons disease, cancer, and other degenerative diseases. Although some people like the hands on involvement of shelling sunflower seeds as they are eaten, buying them already shelled is easy to do. The seeds should be kept in an air tight container in the refrigerator. Kids like a snack bag of seeds to take outside, or as an addition to lunch. An adult snack bag makes a great mid-morning or afternoon energy booster.”
- http://www.naturalnews.com/026165. html
"The Radical Act of Letting Things Hurt: How (Not) to Help a Friend in Sorrow"
"The Radical Act of Letting Things Hurt:
How (Not) to Help a Friend in Sorrow"
by Maria Popova
“Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted,” Elizabeth Gilbert reflected in the wake of losing the love of her life. “Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.”
Like love, grief swells into an entire inner universe that comes to color the whole of the outside world. Like love - that rapturous raw material for most of the songs and poems and paintings our species has produced - grief lives itself through the grieving and can’t but speak its truth. Unlike love, our culture meets the voice of grief with an alloy of disquiet and denial. We want to make the sadness go away, to lift the sorrowing heart out of its sorrow immediately. Often, we mistake for personal failure our inability to salve another’s grief or mistake for their failure the inability to snap out of it on the timeline of our wishes.
When psychotherapist Megan Devine - creator of the excellent resource "Refuge in Grief" and author of its portable counterpart, "It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand" (public library) - watched her young, healthy partner drown, the sudden and senseless loss suspended her world. As it slowly regained the motive force of life, she set out to redirect her professional experience of studying emotional intelligence and resilience toward better understanding the confounding, all-consuming process of grief - the process by which, as Abraham Lincoln wrote in his immensely insightful letter of consolation to a bereaved friend, the agony of loss is slowly transmuted into “a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before”; a transmutation in which skillful loving support can make a world of difference - support very different from what we instinctively imagine helps.
In studying how people navigate intense grief - the loss of loved ones to violent crime, suicide, disaster, infant death, and other abrupt catastrophic traumas - Devine arrived at an arresting insight. Again and again, she observed that our most intuitive impulses about helping those whose suffering we yearn to allay - by cheering them up, by reorienting them toward the lighthouses in their lives amid the darkness - tend to only deepen their helpless anguish and broaden the abyss between us and them. And so she began to wonder what does salve the immense sorrow we encounter in the world and experience in our own lives. This is what she learned:
Complement with a soulful animated short film about depression and what it takes to recover the light of being, an uncommon children’s book about that nonjudgmental place of permission for sadness where all healing begins, and Nick Cave on living with loss and the central paradox of grief as a portal to aliveness."
Timely Re-Post: “Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent”
Full screen mode recommended.
“Neuroscience Says Listening to This Song
Reduces Anxiety by Up to 65 Percent”
By Melanie Curtin
“Everyone knows they need to manage their stress. When things get difficult at work, school, or in your personal life, you can use as many tips, tricks, and techniques as you can get to calm your nerves. Sound therapies have long been popular as a way of relaxing and restoring one’s health. For centuries, indigenous cultures have used music to enhance well-being and improve health conditions.
Now, neuroscientists out of the UK have specified which tunes give you the most bang for your musical buck. The study was conducted on participants who attempted to solve difficult puzzles as quickly as possible while connected to sensors. The puzzles induced a certain level of stress, and participants listened to different songs while researchers measured brain activity as well as physiological states that included heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing.
According to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, which conducted the research, the top song produced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date. In fact, listening to that one song- “Weightless”- resulted in a striking 65 percent reduction in participants’ overall anxiety, and a 35 percent reduction in their usual physiological resting rates. That is remarkable.
Equally remarkable is the fact the song was actually constructed to do so. The group that created “Weightless”, Marconi Union, did so in collaboration with sound therapists. Its carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines help slow a listener’s heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
When it comes to lowering anxiety, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Stress either exacerbates or increases the risk of health issues like heart disease, obesity, depression, gastrointestinal problems, asthma, and more. More troubling still, a recent paper out of Harvard and Stanford found health issues from job stress alone cause more deaths than diabetes, Alzheimer’s, or influenza.
In this age of constant bombardment, the science is clear: if you want your mind and body to last, you’ve got to prioritize giving them a rest. Music is an easy way to take some of the pressure off of all the pings, dings, apps, tags, texts, emails, appointments, meetings, and deadlines that can easily spike your stress level and leave you feeling drained and anxious.
Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson said, “‘Weightless’ was so effective, many people became drowsy and I would advise against driving while listening to the song because it could be dangerous.” So don’t drive while listening to it."
"Why Not Now..."
"You cannot run away from weakness;
you must some time fight it out or perish;
and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?"
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Saturday, December 19, 2020
"2020: The Year We Let Ourselves Be Infantilised And Dehumanised"
"2020: The Year We Let Ourselves Be Infantilised And Dehumanised"
by Rob Slane
I recently wrote a satirical speech by our Prime Minister, in which I imagined him coming up with all sorts of absurd rules for the Christmas season. It was really hard. Not because I was unable to come up with hundreds of such rules, were I minded to do so, but because the whole point of satire is to raise the absurdities up a step or two, in order to highlight the ridiculousness of what is happening. But how do you do this when the real-life absurdities have already been turned up to 11 on the amplifier? I kid you not when I tell you that my original list included a rule against playing certain board games over Christmas - which I rejected - only to see a few days later SAGE coming out and advising against the playing of board games.
We have now had nearly nine months of being treated like utter imbeciles. A once great country with a once free people has been reduced to the level of being governed by pathetic, childish slogans. And for some reason we have allowed ourselves to be infantilised
I am utterly baffled as to how people can have sat through some of these slogans being introduced without responding with howls of laughter.
“Stay Alert. Control the Virus. Save Lives.”
What on earth is this actually supposed to mean?
Stay Alert? For what? Are we supposed to be on our guard for a virus that is approximately 120 nanometres, or around 1,000th the width of a human hair? Are we to carry an electron microscope around with us wherever we go, just in case? One of my favourite signs is an electronic one I sometimes see on my occasional drives into the office. On one day, it says, “Stay Alert. Control the Virus.” On another, it says, “Stay Alert. Watch out for Cyclists.” It should be noted that cyclists are considerably bigger than 120nm and even often wearing the kind of hi-vis jackets that coronaviruses refuse to wear.
Control the Virus? Say what? You mean they actually think we’re stupid enough to think they’re clever enough to devise schemes that can actually control those little invisible 120 nm virus particles that are in the air and on surfaces. Apparently so.
Save Lives? I am yet to hear a convincing argument as to how I and my family, not having any symptoms and thus not being infected by the virus, can possibly stop the spread of said virus that we don’t have by staying at home or wearing a piece of cloth over or respiratory passages, such that we save lives.
More recently, it has been decided that the slogans were maybe a bit too high-brow and needed to be simplified further, this time into monosyllables: “Hands. Face. Space.” Although I tend to avoid watching Comrade Johnson and Co as they spout this nonsense at their regular stand-ups, on the occasions when I have had that misfortune, it has felt eerily like suddenly being thrust into the world’s largest Kindergarten with teacher talking down to his little charges as if they were really, really stupid.
I won’t sport with your intelligence by mentioning all the other mind-numbing slogans we’ve been fed this year, suffice it to say that phrases such as “social bubble” and “Covid-secure” would be deeply funny were it not for the seriousness of the situation into which those coming up with such tripe have placed us (as an aside, are such buildings for which it is claimed that they are “Covid-secure” also “Flu-Secure” and “Cold-Secure”?)
But the infantilising of an entire population is by no means the worst thing they have done to us. Worse by far has been the dehumanising of millions of people, which has been done via a number of enormously destructive methods.
Chief of them is the idea that we must all avoid each other. I cannot even begin to think how destructive this has become. In a normal society, if you or I have symptoms of a particularly nasty seasonal respiratory illness, which is what Covid-19 is, we would avoid one another. Obviously. But the idea of perfectly healthy people avoiding other perfectly healthy people must qualify as one of the most absurd concepts ever dreamt up. Not only is it self-evidently unnecessary, it is bound to have long-terms consequences for the way we view one another, the way we relate to one another, the way we behave around one another. It turns us from seeing one another as humans, made in the Image of God, to walking virus carriers and a potential risk. Some people now literally behave as if they are navigating their way through a crowd of potential terrorists, rather than simply walking through a group of fellow humans.
People avoidance is not just deeply destructive from a psychological and social perspective, it is also deeply cruel. The idea that a grandparent cannot have contact with their children or grandchildren is just obscene. And the very thought of the elderly being left to fester away in care homes, rather than being allowed contact with their families is sick. Yet that’s what we’ve done, or allowed to be done.
And of course, I cannot leave off talking about dehumanisation without mentioning masks. These wretched things were introduced in the Summer, long after the epidemic had waned, at a time when they could not possibly have done any good, even if they had been capable of doing any good. Why were they introduced? Partly to keep the fear-narrative going, even though there was extraordinarily little risk of dying of a seasonal respiratory virus at that time of the year. But even more important, they are a sign of submission. They are a, “we can do with you what we like moment.” They are nothing to do with health. They are a psychological mask, and even more than the social distancing, they have served to alter the way we see one another and are seen by others.
Millions of people humiliated by the Marketing Team of Covid-19 and their infantile slogans. Millions of people dehumanised by having their faces, their smiles, their laughter, their thoughtfulness etc covered to make them into expressionless drones. That was the year we just lived through. Will 2021 be the year a critical mass try to escape the Kindergarten and return to being human?"
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DEC 19, 2020 - 22:30: "California Reports Record COVID Cases And Deaths... Despite Strictest Lockdown"
"30,000 Quakes In 4 Months! Melting Antarctic Ice Heading To Planetary Disaster Of Epic Proportions"
"30,000 Quakes In 4 Months! Melting Antarctic Ice
Heading To Planetary Disaster Of Epic Proportions"
by Epic Economist
"In a year devastated by natural disasters, the melting of Antarctic ice has been worrying the scientific community. NASA has recently discovered that under the continent of Antarctica, there is a mantle plume producing almost the same amount of heat as the Yellowstone supervolcano. Consequently, ice plates have been melting at an extraordinary pace and the results of it could generate an apocalyptic catastrophe all around the planet. That's what we are going to discuss in this video.
It's no news that 2020 has been marked by tragedies. So far we have had a health crisis that fast spread around the globe, taking millions of lives and harming millions of others. Floods, droughts, and pests decimated crops and created a worldwide food shortage of grains, also contributing to the break of food supply chains. And now, a recent report has featured warnings of researchers of the University of Chile that revealed more than than 30,000 tremors have been registered in Antarctica since the end of August.
Scientists stated that although the majority of the quakes had small proportions, some of them hit magnitude 6. The shakes were detected in the Bransfield Strait, and although the surroundings of the strait have numerous tectonic plates and microplates, the center's experts say that such a staggering incidence of tremors in the area has been utterly unusual.
Trembling episodes have become so recurrent the strait itself, which used to increase in width at a rate of roughly 7 or 8 mm - or 0.30 inch - a year, now has been expanding 15 cm - or 6 inches - a year, the center informed. “It’s a 20-fold increase, which suggests that right this minute the Shetland Islands are separating more quickly from the Antarctic peninsula,” described Sergio Barrientos, the center’s director.
The peninsula is one of the fastest-warming places on the entire planet, and scientists have been carefully watching the impact of climate change on icebergs and glaciers. What is happening in Antarctica right now has become a very relevant and rather alarming discussion amongst experts. Especially because the melting of Antarctic ice could impact on the quick rise of sea levels and provoke cataclysmic accidents all around the world.
Massive ice shelves have been melting from underneath for quite some time now. NASA has discovered a mantle plume almost as hot as the Yellowstone supervolcano that appears to be responsible for melting part of West Antarctica from beneath. Experts say the existence of an immense mantle plume could be the reason why this land is so unstable today, and why it collapsed so fast 11,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age.
Analysts the continent's conditions are starting to become unsettling. If that's the case we could soon be witnessing a scenario we have only seen before in dystopian movies. Live Science has reported that "half of Antarctica’s ice shelves could collapse in a flash". In fact, the rise in sea level is a phenomenon that has been preoccupying academic circles for decades. Considering the average expansion of all the seas on the planet, the land is being gradually swallowed up by ocean water and the tendency is that this situation will only worsen.
If you're wondering what could happen if Antarctica's ice melting process vastly accelerated and suddenly pushed sea levels up, National Geographic has published a projection on how the world would look like if all the ice melted, and their study uncovered that "the entire Atlantic seaboard would vanish, along with Florida and the Gulf Coast". That is to say, every city that sits along the east coast of the United States would disappear. In California, San Francisco’s hills would become a cluster of islands and the Central Valley a giant bay. The Gulf of California would stretch north past the latitude of San Diego - not that there’d be a San Diego.
These changes are about to affect our lives in ways we could never have imagined. And no place on the planet will remain untouched by the calamities brought by environmental catastrophes. We are just at the start of a process that will alter the Earth's landscape and all of our lives forever. That's why experts say that if the ice in Antarctica starts to melt much more quickly, nothing will ever be the same."
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You know, folks, I could barely force myself to post this. This is the last thing we need to hear right now, on top of everything else, but it's reality ... God help us. See Comments below...
- CP
"A Look to the Heavens"
“From Sagittarius to Carina, the Milky Way Galaxy shines in this dark night sky above planet Earth’s lush island paradise of Mangaia. Familiar to denizens of the southern hemisphere, the gorgeous skyscape includes the bulging galactic center at the upper left and bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri just right of center. About 10 kilometers wide, volcanic Mangaia is the southernmost of the Cook Islands. Geologists estimate that at 18 million years old it is the oldest island in the Pacific Ocean.
Of course, the Milky Way is somewhat older, with the galaxy’s oldest stars estimated to be over 13 billion years old. (Editor’s note: This image holds the distinction of being selected as winner in the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition in the Earth and Space category.)“
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110924.html
"Butterflies..."
“I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories… and when humans are broken, they’re like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn’t form when the person wasn’t broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It’s during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know that it doesn’t matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! What matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile!”
- C. JoyBell C.
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