When doctors go on strike, death rates go down. In 2016 such an observation would be "provocative" party conversation but now that doctors are sacrosanct, it is grounds for instant disinvitation— the party has become a lynch mob.

The most comprehensive review of medical impact of doctors' strikes is published in the academic journal Social Science and Medicine. A team of researchers at Emory and Georgetown Universities in the US analyzed five physician strikes around the world, all between 1976 and 2003.

Doctors withdrew their labor, from between 9 days and 17 weeks. Yet all the different studies report population mortality either stays the same, or even decreases, during medical strikes. Not a single study found death rates increased during the weeks of the strikes.

For example, in Los Angeles County, California in January 1976, doctors went on strike in protest over soaring medical *malpractice insurance premiums*. For five weeks, approximately 50% of doctors in the county reduced their practice and withheld care.

Two of the articles reviewed by Cunningham et al, found the strike may have actually prevented more deaths than it caused.

With Black History Month in full swing, I was reminded recently of an odd “documentary” (really more of a time capsule piece) that I first watched over a decade ago now.

A thread on Black Power Mixtape.

This revisit was spurned by an editorial playlist that was advertised to me on Spotify (topical, in more ways than one). The music from the playlist is good; yes, I am a classic soul respecter. The promotion of the playlist made sense, given the upcoming month.

I don’t think the same could be said of the film, however. Even watching it at the time, as a young uninitiated normie, I remember finding it odd.

Obama was still in his first term. We had been sold the notion of a golden age of American racial recompense.

In some undeniably symbolic way, many felt a bill had been repaid.

A film pushed through the festival circuit with a clear sentiment of “so far to go” seemed like an activist gaslight. As we have come to learn, the tenor of the conversation was being nudged.

Looking at the release date, I can’t help but see a parallel between the suspicious uptick in the media focus on “Black Lives Matter” during election cycles. This seems oddly close to the start of the 2012 Presidential campaign, as well as the early-2012 Trayvon Martin hysteria.

Want to gain followers and get popular on Twitter? Here’s how… 🧵🧵🧵 1/

There are three types of popular twitter accounts, each with their own difficulty setting:

1. The Content account (easy)
2. The Brand account (normal)
3. The Cult of Personality account (hard)

The Content account is strictly focused on one subject, to the extent that the author is all but invisible. Followers follow the content account for information on *one topic* and if the owner strays too far, too often, he will lose his audience.

The Brand account has a theme (finances, fitness, politics etc) but with a highly present author. Followers want the author’s input on particular topic(s)- giving the author more room to incorporate off-brand takes as well. The average popular twitter account is a Brand account.

However, if you stray too far off brand, you will be destroyed….

My generation is going to be the last in the West to remember life before the internet. I don't think anyone yet appreciates the scale of this psychological rift, or how jarring it really is.

Virtually everyone I have met in the last decade has an online presence. I can follow a lot of what they do in life, and could reach out and speak to them instantly, if I chose.

By contrast, if I think of someone I remember from my childhood - my early teachers, the dinner ladies, the friendly old man at the post office - and look them up, there will be simply no trace of them online. The same even goes for places I visited, which no longer exist.

I came to maturity with the internet, so am unfamiliar with most of the old archival ways of finding information, parish records, birth certificates, and so on. I would struggle to produce evidence that many of the people I knew as a child ever existed at all.

This is true, despite the fact that a fair number of them will obviously still be alive. But now it feels, sometimes, as if they only ever existed in my head, because they never existed on the internet. This is genuinely psychologically distressing to me at times.

So I’m probably taking this discussion about ‘nationalism’ on Twitter with @nealjclark1 @AnarContrarian & @RizomaSchool way more seriously than I should, but it prompts me to say a little more about nationalism & localism – and why I don’t want to mix them up 🧵

We all know people, things, practices, locations & memories in places special to us that we feel emotionally connected to, give meaning to our lives & that we wish to cherish & protect...

...yet most of us are part of a modernist culture inherently scornful of such attachments, albeit happy to giftwrap them & sell them back to us as nostalgia if it can.

So I agree with @AnarContrarian that rural people’s children & grandchildren were functionally confiscated from them – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that in many ways modernist culture has functionally confiscated us from ourselves

Nationalism is part of this modernist culture. Its force comes from taking those powerful emotions we have about people & places we know, & sprinkling people & places we don’t know with the same emotional fairy dust...

Catholic prayer

An explanation of the first levels of prayer, some of their purposes, and how to get started if you haven’t already.

Even though prayer has 9 levels, the first 3 are more like phases. 1/25

The first phase is vocal prayer, which is all traditional written prayers like basic prayers, litanies, novenas, rosary, chaplets, etc. 2/

This phase is learning how to talk to God by way of these structured prayers. Many of us are reluctant to pray because we’re unsure how to approach God, and these prayers guide us to develop the language of prayer. 3/

Next is meditation. Catholics who pray the Rosary mysteries have already been praying a type of meditation. Its purpose is to change our mental visions and thoughts from worldly things to things of God. This method also helps us develop the virtues and detach from this world. 4/

Last is contemplation. Once we have practiced meditation for a time, we will get to a point where we will no longer be able to visualize during meditation. This phase sets up the higher levels of prayer by teaching us to rest in God and to love Him alone. 5/

The only food that has every single substance to sustain life:

Honey.

A single bee produces just half a teaspoon in a lifetime

It’s the only natural sweetener that heals

You’re probably not having enough honey

Here’s the breakdown:

You must be thinking:

I’ve had honey before and I don’t think its that amazing?

Well I hate to break it to you but the honey you bought from that supermarket in the past may not be what I’m talking about

When I talk about honey, I’m talking about Raw Honey

Yes, raw in its most natural unfiltered form

Straight from the honeycomb -> In your mouth

That’s where all the nutrition is

Anything you get that isn’t raw, is pasteurised — meaning its heated to the point where most of the good stuff dies

And we don’t want that

So the next time you head to the market (hopefully after this thread), look for Raw, Organic, Unfiltered honey

Even better if you know someone who makes it locally

Local Honey will help you with your seasonal allergies

It’s the original [redacted]

Now let’s get to just why honey is such a superfood

1. HONEY HEALS

Honey’s been used as a natural remedy for over 8000 years

It’s able to act as a natural cough syrup & is also able to seal wounds because it has enzymes that naturally create hydrogen peroxide

There's a clear satanic inversion in the rhetoric re "conspiracy theories".

The party line is that people believe conspiracy theories because they are stupid/weak and need bad things to be the result of agency instead of disconnected and complex factors.

Those who peddle this line can hardly conceal their pride in their presumed mental, emotional and moral superiority.

The exact opposite is true.

People who wrestle with conspiracy theories know they are against formidable forces. They know they can't even begin to make sense of everything. But they just can't shake the nagging feeling that the official narrative just doesn't add up.

This is what sends them down the rabbit hole in the first place. They know people won't believe them, they know they will be made fun of, but they feel a duty to follow the truth wherever it leads, whatever the cost. This shows great intellectual honesty, courage and moral fiber.

It's the people who are happy to toe the party line who need the comfort of the world making sense.

If you believe the official narrative, everything always makes sense. Those in power are always good. No rights are ever being taken away from you.

Very cozy world to live in.

There is something vaguely off putting about this game and games like it. It only recently occurred to me what exactly it is.

Cards Against Humanity is a game that allows people who don’t really like each other to pretend to be friends.

Games can be a kind of psychic prison. Although your actions in a game may feel natural and spontaneous, the options available to you are tightly scripted according to the intent of the game’s creators.

The intent of the creators of CAH is to present you with a serious of building blocks to, more or less, simulate cracking slightly transgressive jokes.

In other words, it is a game designed to simulate the vibe that usually only exists between people who really trust each other.

I’ve lost count of the number of times a particular kind of person has brought up CAH as though it represents the very apogee of “off colour” humour. I’m sure you know the type. They love a good graph, they’d never be caught dead in a gym, and enjoy making others uncomfortable.

But more than enjoying making others uncomfortable, they desperately crave the kind of easy, relaxed mood that only comes in the presence of real friendship - something from which they are more or less completely shut out.

There's a terrible power in controlling how we collectively imagine the future. Right now the options seem to be a plutocrat-led Metaverse+pod lifestyle, or gathering apocalyptic collapse. Some want to return to 2019, but is this desirable?

What about a different imagining?

What about a renaissance of domestic manufacturing, of a mass rejection of the administrative culture for a return to trades? To make cities and small towns hum again, not with throwaway culture, but with the art of making lasting beauty?

What about a return to seasonality and animal husbandry, golf courses with sheep and chickens in every yard? An end to CFOs and a restoration of family farms to the many who yearn to work with their hands? Attention to the needs of the body rather than the algorithm

A dwindling work week, an end to instant gratification culture. Yes, less travel. Yes, less restaurants. Sorry. But: more fruit trees. More time off work. Local goods you know, less time spent shopping and maintaining throwaway plastic culture.

Herbalists in walking distance, doctors who know your name, neighborhood co-ops rather than factory schooling, an end to putting our elderly in institutions to die alone, an end to advertising blight, a restoration of canals lit at every lock by a Marian grotto

@Edward__Bernays @buzz_chronicles save

@buzz_chronicles @threadreaderapp unroll

Couple of facts from the Rittenhouse Trial that I tell folks when they aren’t following the trial.

-Kyle worked near Kenosha and drove through the area where the riots happened on a regular basis before the riots.
-Kyle didn’t bring the weapon to WI it was already there. 1/

There was an entire summer of riots carried out with the full support of the democrat party and international capital and people who spent that time tucked away in their homes poasting can only interpret doing something about it as murderous intent. LMFAO. //

"akshually the issue is that Kyle wasn't clever enough to spot that he was participating in the spectacle. Akshually the issue is that he didn't have an intellectualized concept of private property. akshually i cant comprehend anyone would ever use guns for community protection."

This is kind of unreal to me. If someone wanted to have a semi high-minded take on this that didn't "take the bait" maybe it would be something to the effect of if police simply allow rioters to burn down buildings shit like this happens.

If it was your fucking business about to be burned to the ground I doubt you would be on here insisting that "akshually no it has nothing to do with making sure the community you work in isnt decimated".

if middle American towns are gutted and raped by international capital then we can bemoan it for heckin online populism points, but if some fucking blue hairs and DMV creatures do it at the behest of those forces then we jump to eviscerate anyone doing something about it.

Avoiding "bad foods" and eating only "good foods" is a great way to develop a bad relationship with your food.

I spent years avoiding "this" and "that" because I heard someone say they were "bad" on the internet.

When I started tracking properly, I realized it's mostly BS.

You can lose weight eating pretty much anything if you're in a calorie deficit.

I'm sure I'll get "bUt YoU'rE nOt HeAlThY iF yOu EaT " comments.

Sure, eating 'clean' foods is a good idea.

But thinking you messed up because you had an Oreo, your mindset is fucked.

This constant obsession with clean foods and eliminating a zillion 'factors to obesity' is a non-starter when you track your food.

And for many, having some "forbidden" treats periodically (when they fit their calories/macros) is *EXACTLY* what they need to stay on track.

I tried the whole "can't eat sugar, don't eat this oil, don't consume that artificial sweetener" route.

Didn't do shit for me.

If it works for you, GREAT.

But I'm sure there's other people out there who can't "just eat whole foods, bro".

I know I sure was...

Now here's the kicker... when you get fit and lean, your bloodwork and biomarkers for health will improve dramatically.

*Weight Loss* improves health biomarkers for health more than any other factor.

ANY other factor.

Regardless of if you consumed a 'dirty' food.

And The NYT calls it! Sex positivity is out.

H/t to the ladies who started ringing this alarm bell first or set the scene for people to notice: myself, @Louise_m_perry, @moveincircles, @kaschuta, @annakhachiyan and MANY others.

The infamous blog post that got quoted by @DouthatNYT:

brilliant piece on The Sexual

has a lot of great work out there, this interview with @kaschuta is a great

And I would be remiss not to mention Red Scare— an important piece in how discourse has changed. My first exposure to people who weren’t explicitly in right wing spaces who were open to critiquing mainstream ideas was RS. It kicked the door open.