Here’s what happened when we asked a psychiatrist if there were any physical or biological tests to support the existence of mental illness.
Canadian Gov Database Reveals Catastrophic Reproductive Damage to Men and Women Post-mRNA Vaccine Rollout
This dataset shows clear evidence of an increased numbers of patients who sought medical care after the public rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in Canada, for reproductive disorders. The categories of reproductive disorders that showed increased starting in 2021 ranges from male infertility (low- and no-sperm count) to pelvic inflammation to menstrual disorders and post-menopausal bleeding to missed and incomplete abortions, or what is commonly known as miscarriages.
Tom: The reason I am reposting this is to reassure those having similar problems that it is not “all in your head”, the spike protein is responsible for a lot of harm to human bodies and there are actions you can take to reduce the effect of the spike protein on your body. Check out this one from yours truly: https://www.healthelicious.com.au/NutriBlast-Anti-Spike.html
https://bestofdailyclout.substack.com/p/canadian-govt-database-reveals-catastrophic
Hidden Ingredient in Your Food Is Hurting Your Health: The Phosphate Problem
- Phosphate additives in processed foods are disrupting the ideal 1:1 calcium to phosphorus ratio in our diets, potentially leading to health issues
- Modern diets often contain 2 to 3 times more phosphorus than recommended, while calcium intake frequently falls below recommended levels. Phosphate additives are prevalent in processed meats, cheese, baked goods, soft drinks, and even grocery store fresh meat
- Inorganic phosphates used as food additives are absorbed by our bodies at a rate of nearly 100%, compared to 40% to 60% for naturally occurring phosphates
- Excessive phosphate intake has been linked to metabolic problems, calcium-phosphorus imbalance, and increased risk of cardiovascular issues
- Food labels aren’t required to list phosphate content, making it difficult for consumers to track their intake. Strategies to maintain a healthy phosphate balance include choosing whole foods over processed foods, increasing calcium-rich food intake, and carefully reading food labels
Finish reading: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/08/13/phosphate-additives-in-food.aspx
We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’
The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/05/1095600/we-need-to-prepare-for-addictive-intelligence/
Optimizing your mitochondrial function with intermittent hypoxia
(Hypoxia is a condition of low oxygen in the tissues of your body. )
Dr. Arkadi Prokopov is a Russian integrative medicine physician who specializes in hypoxic training and mitochondrial medicine. Optimizing your mitochondrial function is, of course, one of the most important strategies you can do to optimize your cellular energy, so it’s at the core of almost everything that you do to improve your health.
Prokopov graduated from Moscow Medical University in 1980. Most of his work has revolved around biomedical research, specifically research with professional divers. He did his postgraduate dissertation on the improvement of stress resistance in deep-sea divers.
After a decade of doing these kinds of studies, Russia started cutting research funding, so he returned to medical practice, where he began to apply his knowledge of diving physiology and controlled intermittent hypoxia (low oxygen) to the treatment of diseases such as asthma, high blood pressure, chronic inflammation and chronic infections.
“I was always interested, what is the best application of oxygen treatment to stimulate nonspecific, nonspecific [general] stress resistance?” he says. “And from many, many studies, it became clear, paradoxically, that the most efficient intervention is intermittent hypoxic treatment.”
Intermittent Hypoxia Treatment
The scientific application of intermittent hypoxic treatment started in Russia in the late 1970s. Early research showed it was radioprotective. As explained by Prokopov, when you reduce the partial pressure of oxygen in tissues that are being radiated, there’s a significant protective effect on healthy tissues. Tumors are not protected, however, because they’re already hypoxic, so they’re not affected by the small, physiological decrease of oxygen partial pressure.
Early pioneers also discovered that intermittent hypoxia takes place during embryonic development. So, in utero, there are significant variations of partial pressure of oxygen.
It was not clear what the physiological purpose of these oscillations was, but now, decades later, “we understand that this is a powerful mechanism to control the quality of mitochondria,” Prokopov says. Intermittent hypoxia is also very common in other instances.
“For instance, when we have some physical activity, when we stress our muscles, when they are contracted, the circulation is blocked and the muscle experiences [mild] hypoxia. Then, during relaxation, blood delivery [resumes] and muscles become again [saturated with] oxygen and nutrients.
This is the universal mechanism which is providing continuous repair and recovery of the mitochondria and other cellular structures. So why not to use this natural mechanism for other purposes, like enhancement of endurance in athletes? Now, this is this very well known as altitude training. Thousands of athletes use altitude training.”
As explained by Prokopov, one of the simplest ways to stimulate your mitochondrial function through hypoxia is simply to intermittently hold your breath.
Intermittent flow of oxygen-depleted air can also be administered via a face mask. These machines are known as hypoxic generators. The latest models also include computerized biofeedback, and allow for all sorts of protocols to be administered. I’ve been participating (involved?) in the development of such devices for the last two decades.
Basically, it cycles through the amount of oxygen you breathe, from the therapeutic low of 10% to 14%, to a high up to 21% to 34%.
Hypoxia and the Role of Carbon Dioxide
One of the mechanisms that helps explain the benefits of intermittent hypoxia training is that it raises your carbon dioxide (CO2) which, in turn, increases the efficiency of oxygen transport and metabolism. The hypoxia also relaxes your capillaries. In your brain, hypoxia increases blood perfusion up to 40%. This is a normal physiologic hypoxic response, and CO2 plays a significant role.
If you routinely overbreathe (breathe too deeply or too rapidly, or both), you end up with lower CO2 levels than are ideal. This kind of subclinical hyperventilation is frequently a learned response to stress, and needs to be unlearned — something we discuss in my interview with Peter Litchfield, which will be posted next week.
Interestingly, Prokopov claims that once people improve the quality of their mitochondria, they typically stop overbreathing automatically. He explains:
“Because where do we get carbon dioxide from? From the mitochondria. It’s an element metabolite, the byproduct of oxidative phosphorylation. And if the mitochondria are not active enough, they just don’t produce enough carbon dioxide.”
Normally, the urge to breathe is stimulated and regulated by a slight increase in CO2, which happens in any physical activity. But today, in stressful situations, we rarely switch on the “fight-or-flight” response that raves up metabolism and raises CO2 production. Instead, we have only a fast increase of CO2 removal by accelerated breathing, but without an increase of physical activity that would produce more CO2 and would compensate for its drop.
Add stress, when you hyperventilate even more, which further reduces your CO2 level. Before you know it, you’re in a vicious doom loop that can send you to the emergency room.
One way to increase the amount of CO2, thereby breaking this loop, is to breathe into a paper bag. That can reduce many symptoms of overbreathing and hyperventilating in just a couple of minutes. A hypoxia generator can also be used. The drawback of these kinds of tools is that they only offer temporary relief.
“It’s just a symptomatic treatment if used only sporadically,” Prokopov says. “As soon as you stop it, you overbreathe again and you have the same problems. But if regenerate your mitochondria, if you make them work more efficiently, more economically, it produces a much better level of endogenous carbon dioxide.
Normal partial pressure of carbon dioxide in blood plasma is from 35 to 45 torr, but most people are below 35. If mitochondria are functioning optimally, it automatically [resets the partial pressure of CO2] and we see reduction or complete elimination of all problems connected to overbreathing.”
The Most Efficient Way to Optimize Mitochondrial Function
One simple and most useful strategy to optimize your mitochondrial function is to eat the right carbs, in optimal amounts; simultaneously limiting fats. The reason for this is because glucose metabolism, when it occurs in the mitochondria, optimizes CO2.
As mentioned, virtually all the CO2 is produced in the electron transport chain of your mitochondria. Fat metabolism reduces mitochondrial efficiency by 25% to 50%.
Glucose metabolism also increases structured water (mitochondria-produced water), also known as deuterium-depleted water, and reduces reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in the mitochondria. Naturally, oxidative damage is a major contributor to ill health and premature death, so you want to minimize ROS production as much as possible. Prokopov comments:
“First of all, I must say that if you don’t load your mitochondria continuously, they automatically degrade. What do I mean by load? The mitochondria can feel only two interventions, two inputs — the amount of fuel, and the amount of oxygen.
If there is a continuous flow of fuel — nutrients — and a continuous, stable level of oxygen, the mitochondria undergo degradation, because during this ad libitum nutrition and ad libitum oxygen, oxidative damage in mitochondrial DNA results in a growing population of damaged mutated mitochondria, and mutated mitochondria have smaller DNA molecules.
Normal metabolism results in continuous mutation and it makes the mitochondrial DNA smaller, because mutations are repaired very insufficiently. In a stable situation, what molecules will reproduce faster?
The smaller molecule will make copies a little bit faster than the larger, therefore, if everything is stable, normal, the mutated disadvantaged mitochondrial DNA will dominate, and we see it with the normal aging process (as clonal expansion of mutated mtDNA).
We see it in some diseases also, especially in neurodegenerative diseases. And of course with chronic infection. So the task is to continuously eliminate, or help the natural process of elimination of mutated mitochondria. If we just help this natural process of mitochondrial regeneration, we prevent accelerated decline of mitochondrial quality.
And the best tool for this is intermittent hypoxic training, because … the aged mitochondria are much more sensitive to O2 oscillations. They don’t have enough protective mechanisms because mitochondrial DNA protects itself, but mutated mitochondria don’t have enough of these [protective] enzymes, so they are just killed by the oscillations [intermittent highs and lows of O2].”
Why Intermittent Fasting Doesn’t Always Work
So, to summarize, your mitochondria need fuel and oxygen, but both of these inputs are needed in a cyclical or intermittent fashion. Continuous fuel is a disaster and so is continuous oxygen. Both need to be augmented and throttled back at intervals. This would suggest that intermittent fasting is an ideal strategy. Or is it? Prokopov comments:
“What I see, and a lot of research and experience in the clinical field [shows], is that in the fasting state, when your ketone metabolism is much higher, the mitochondrial energy production is more optimal when we have healthy mitochondrial population.
But when the mitochondrial population is a mix of mutated and healthy mitochondria, [fasting] can cause problems. Many people cannot start fasting, they cannot start intermittent fasting or go on a ketogenic diet, because they have, let’s say, 50% mitochondria that are dysfunctional.
As soon as we repair the mitochondria with gradually introduced intermittent fasting, gradually introduced ketones, and in parallel, intermittent hypoxic training, we see immense improvement of energy metabolism, we see improvement of OXPHOS and ATP production, and most interestingly, much more economical [energy production].
So, mitochondria in an idling state consume much less oxygen. On the other hand, they’re much more efficient. So, we’re improving quality of the mitochondria … Most patients [with mitochondrial dysfunctions] show very low mitochondrial energy production.”
Once your mitochondria are sufficiently healthy to handle intermittent fasting, Prokopov suggests an 8/16 schedule, where you eat all your meals within an eight-hour window, and fast for the remaining 16 hours.
As your metabolic flexibility improves, which is also wholly dependent on the functionality of your mitochondria, your eating window can be narrowed to six hours or even less. Prokopov personally eats all his meals within a four- to five-hour window. Intermittent fasting also works synergistically with hypoxic training.
Reconciling Seemingly Opposing Concepts
Now, I used to intermittently fast and eat a ketogenic diet until I discovered the work of the late Ray Peat, which convinced me the high-fat/low-carb science had it all backward. When you don’t have enough glucose to fuel the mitochondria, when you deplete your glycogen level, then stress hormones — adrenaline and cortisol — are released to trigger endogenous production of glycogen.
Those stress hormones are pathologic, and if they’re continuously released at high levels to compensate for insufficient glucose, it will accelerate disease and premature death. There’s no question in my mind that these stress hormones are bad news. Cortisol, for example, drains the amino acids, the protein, from your tissues, thereby decreasing bone density and muscle mass, which is bad news.
But, if all of that is true, how do we reconcile that with the finding that intermittent fasting and ketone metabolism optimize mitochondrial energy production? Prokopov comments:
“This is a very important issue. First of all, gluconeogenesis is an extremely important evolutionary biological mechanism. If we take, let’s say, an herbivore, a cow or deer, and we measure their glucose level, it’s about 100. If we take a cat, or a lion, and if we measure their glucose level, it will also be about 100. Why? They don’t eat any carbohydrates.
[The answer is] they get glucose from gluconeogenesis. And glucogenesis consumes amino acids. A normal liver produces about 180 grams of glucose a day. But you should be healthy enough. You should be metabolically flexible. You should have good mitochondria, then it functions better.
Our erythrocytes, red blood cells, survive exclusively from glucose. That’s true. But, stress hormones, when they are continuously released, it’s a catastrophe.
Endurance athletes, if they’re overstressed, they get injuries and aerobic power will be reduced. But with properly organized training, they have recovery periods when they replenish all the exhausted hormones. So, it’s the combination [intermittent inducement] of stress and relaxation, stress and relaxation [that brings benefit]. Any continuous stress depletes hormones, exhausts steroid hormones and induces oxidative stress.”
So, to rephrase, a key part of the answer to this to-fast-or-not-to-fast dilemma is that your liver stores glycogen, and if you have sufficient glycogen stores, you can easily intermittently fast for 16 hours and not activate your stress response hormones like glucagon, cortisol and adrenaline.
If you go for a lot longer, certainly after two or three days, then your glycogen stores will be completely depleted and your stress hormones will be activated, because that’s the only route left to remain alive. The stress hormones will prevent your glucose level from dropping too low, as that could cause you to go into a coma and eventually die.
The problem is that 30% of adults in the U.S. have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which impairs your body’s ability to produce glucose through gluconeogenesis. You also can’t store as much. If your liver function is impaired, you will not be able to store as much glycogen in your liver. Then you have to be more careful about not letting your glucose level drop for too long, because then the stress response will kick in as there is less reserve glucose in your liver.
How CO2 Affects Your Microbiome
There’s no question intermittent hypoxia training works. I suspect one of the primary mechanisms, but certainly not the only one, is because it increases CO2. CO2 attaches to and forms an electric cloud over proteins, specifically lysine and histidine, which protects them from oxidative damage from LA metabolites like OXLAMs.
CO2 also modulates the functional expression of the proteins. This is important as nearly all hormones are proteins, and their function can be modulated by CO2 levels. So, you can activate and radically increase the efficiency of proteins and hormones in your body. Histones are proteins that surround nuclear DNA, and they modulate the expression of that DNA.
Akkermansia muciniphila, a specific type of anaerobic bacteria increases glucagon like peptide (GLP), which can be useful in the treatment of diabetes and obesity. Ideal levels of Akkermansia are about 10% of your microbiome. But most populations now have less than 1%, likely due to inadequate mitochondrial function and resultant oxygen leakage in the gut.
Akkermansia is a gram-negative bacterium, but it does not produce lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or endotoxin. In fact, if their population is increased, they will crowd out the endotoxin-producing gram-negative bacteria by competitive inhibition. Akkermansia also produces mucin, a thick, protective gel-like substance that lines the gastrointestinal tract.
Mucin forms a protective barrier on the gut lining, shielding the epithelial cells of the intestinal wall from mechanical damage, chemical irritation from stomach acids and digestive enzymes, and pathogenic organisms like bacteria and viruses.
Akkermansia probiotic supplement are available, but the good news is you can easily enhance the akkermansia levels in your gut through dietary interventions. Eating foods that support Akkermansia, such as polyphenol-rich fruit, and other beneficial bacteria, and avoiding processed foods and seed oils that contain linoleic acid will help to restructure your microbiome in a positive way. Other tips include:
Eating more fiber — The short-chain fatty acids that form from fiber as it ferments in your intestines feed beneficial bacteria, including Akkermansia.
Increasing FODMAPs in your diet — FODMAP refers to “fermentable oligo-, di- and mono-saccharides and polyols,” which include fructose (found in fresh fruit) and lactose (found in milk and other dairy products).
Boosting intake of dietary polyphenols — Black tea, red wine grape extract, cranberry extract and Concord grape, specifically, have all been shown to significantly promote growth of Akkermansia.
Avoiding alcohol and high-fat diets — Several studies have shown a correlation between high-fat diets (60% fat or higher) and significantly reduced Akkermansia colonization. Ditto for alcohol consumption.
Supplementing with probiotics and prebiotics that promote Akkermansia growth in the gut — Specific examples include Lactobacillus rhamnosus, Bifidobacterium animalis, Lactococcus lactis (probiotics) and oral fructo-oligosaccharides (oligofructose or FOS, a common prebiotic).
As noted by Prokopov, CO2 also neutralizes peroxynitrite, one of the most damaging oxidants known. Peroxynitrite damages DNA, so CO2 helps support genome stability and slows down the aging process. This is something I was unaware of and am certain it is a major reason why increasing CO2 levels improves your biology.
More Information
To learn more about intermittent hypoxic training and Prokopov’s work, visit his website, www.oxyesta.com, follow him on Facebook, or subscribe to his YouTube channel. You can also find more information on cell-oxy.com’s science pages.
For those interested in using hypoxic training for Lyme disease, see his 2020 book, “Undoing Lyme Disease: How to Make Your Mitochondria Fight Lyme Borreliosis by Surfing Oxygen Waves.”
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/03/31/intermittent-hypoxia.aspx
Censorship vs Freedom of Thought and Speech
Keihatsu pens a great post on The Road to Fascism and Totalitarianism.
https://keihatsu.substack.com/p/censorship-vs-freedom-of-thought
MEI – Merit, Excellence, Intelligence
Yet another great piece from Robert W Malone MD MS.
Silicon Valley experienced an earthquake on June 13, 2024. This geological event was definitely not televised, but it triggered aftershocks from progressive corporate media like Fortune magazine (which, in a typical propaganda move, cites unnamed “experts” in its reporting on the topic). The earthquake was a consequence of the widespread excesses and consequences of the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) hiring and promotion policies that have been actively promoted by the World Economic Forum and its leading corporatist sponsors including Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street and World Economic Foundation (WEF) favored consulting group McKinsey & Company.
To advance and enforce their DEI agenda, which plays a key role in the WEF-promoted vision of “Stakeholder Capitalism”, the WEF has created the “Global Parity Alliance”. The WEF, which defines itself as a key player in an emerging global government (in partnership with the United Nations), has structured this alliance of corporations to implement DEI initiatives across the globe rapidly.
The Global Parity Alliance, a cross-industry group of companies, is not just taking action, but accelerating it. Their urgency to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in the workplace and beyond is palpable, and their commitment to this cause is unwavering.
This group, the Global Parity Alliance, is not just a collection of companies. It’s a community of like-minded organizations, all striving for the same goal-better and faster DE&I outcomes. By sharing proven DE&I best practices and practical insights, they are inviting others to join them in this important work.
· To realize the promise of diversity, the Global Parity Alliance members and identified DE&I lighthouses will work to close opportunity gaps faster in the new economy.
According to Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, the WEF DEI initiative intends to (quite literally) force the implementation of social engineering/”stakeholder capitalism” DEI policies as the basis for corporate hiring and promotion rather than focusing on profitability, return on investment, and shareholder/owner value measured by financial outcome measures.
The problem with this globalist “can’t we all get along” Kumbaya naïveté is that the dogs of investment are not eating the dog food. And, of course, inquiring minds are raising questions after the serial DEI financial fiascos of Target and its line of transgender attire for infants, InBev with its transgender Bud Light advertising campaign, Disney with its corporate commitment to woke/grooming everything, farming icon John Deere’s surprise discovery that flyover state farmers were not buying into its DEI genuflecting to the WEF, and WEF partner CrowdStrike crashing the world wide web. To say that the financial genius of the WEF globalist leaders is looking a bit threadbare is a self-evident understatement. Oh yeah, and then there is the US Secret Service and the attempted Trump assassination. As covered in this recent Fox Business News segment, the natives are becoming restless, and drumbeats are being heard in the distance.
Now is an excellent time to remind all concerned that Larry Fink and Blackrock’s corporate financial ascendency is just another classic tale of DC/Democrat crony capitalism. Fink and company are not business masterminds. They are merely garden-variety Obama cronies parading around and masquerading as captains of industry. I admit to a growing sense of schadenfreude with the perverse logic inherent in all this. Perhaps merit-based selection of federal contractors actually results in better outcomes than just allowing politicians to develop public-private partnerships based on cronyism?
Please consider this AI-generated summary of BlackRock’s rise to global financial dominance, primarily based on “Times of India” reporting, for those who are not singing along with the bouncing ball.
During the 2008 financial crisis, BlackRock played a significant role in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) under the Obama administration. Here are key points:
- TARP’s Legacy Securities Program: In 2009, the Obama administration’s Treasury Department partnered with BlackRock to manage the Legacy Securities Program, a component of TARP. The program aimed to remove toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets, stabilizing the financial system.
- BlackRock’s Acquisition of Merrill Lynch’s Assets: In September 2008, BlackRock acquired a significant portion of Merrill Lynch’s troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities, for $3 billion. This deal helped stabilize Merrill Lynch and prevented a systemic crisis.
- BlackRock’s Management of TARP Assets: As part of the Legacy Securities Program, BlackRock managed a portfolio of troubled assets, including mortgage-backed securities and other complex financial instruments. This role allowed BlackRock to profit from the recovery of these assets, while also helping to stabilize the economic system.
- Larry Fink’s Relationship with Obama: BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, developed a close relationship with President Obama and his administration. Fink was a key advisor on financial matters, and BlackRock’s expertise was leveraged to inform policy decisions.
- Thomas Donilon’s Connection: Thomas E. Donilon, former National Security Advisor to President Obama, is currently the Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute. During his tenure as National Security Advisor, Donilon worked closely with Fink and other financial leaders, including Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.
Key Takeaways
- BlackRock played a crucial role in the Obama administration’s TARP program, managing troubled assets and helping to stabilize the financial system.
- Larry Fink’s relationship with President Obama and his administration was significant. Fink served as a key advisor on financial matters.
- Thomas Donilon’s connection to BlackRock, as Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, highlights the firm’s continued influence in Washington, D.C.
What the AI missed is that BlackRock was able to leverage its special relationship with the Obama administration and the TARP program to produce the most globally comprehensive database of business transactions that the world has ever known. And then to exclusively datamine this rich insider resource to generate forward-looking predictions, which it leveraged to yield a globally dominant investment portfolio. And now, BlackRock has captured the exclusive (US, of course) contract to manage the rebuilding of Ukraine. Once the US/NATO military-industrial complex has succeeded in depopulating and then occupying that region. See how that works? Thanks, O’Biden/Uniparty. Let’s watch to see how that plays out.
Getting back on track.
As exemplified by the overlapping fiascos of CrowdStrike and the US Secret Service, the whole problem with DEI-based hiring and promotion policies is that they result in a gradual, creeping degradation of organizational competence, which I have previously covered in my recent substack essay titled “The Great Enshittening.”
Here’s the thing: In the 21st century, we are the inheritors of an interlaced network of complex systems, each requiring considerable competence to maintain and almost all of which are currently strained to the breaking point. Electricity grids, air traffic control networks, server farms, food supply chains, global shipping, petroleum, finance, the internet—the list goes on and on. They are all interdependent and at risk of cascading failure. And into this mix, the self-proclaimed geniuses of global governance have injected themselves and their untested theoretical fantasies of “Stakeholder Capitalism.” Which unproven theory is just another way of saying Marxist social engineering lathered up with a thin veneer of Adam Smith to reduce the friction of forced introduction.
Returning now to that Silicon Valley earthquake that I mentioned in the opening.
A young entrepreneur-genius (named Alexandr Wang) has taken a stand, provided leadership, and is triggering a new movement—sort of a back-to-the-future moment. Hiring and promotion based on MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence. What a novel concept! Many (including Elon Musk) are jumping on this bandwagon and endorsing this breakthrough concept <sarcasm mine>, which was just the way things were in my youth. Little things like acceptance into medical school. Hiring and promotion. Back in the day, it was understood that the business of business was producing quality goods, services, and value, and deriving wealth from honest productivity.
Mark my words, keep your eye on Alexandr Wang. He is going places.
To provide perspective and put in another plug for the Dean of anarcho-capitalism, Murray Rothbard, there are only two ways of accumulating wealth:
- Labor: Wealth can be accumulated through productive labor, where an individual creates value by providing goods and services to others. This approach is based on voluntary exchange, where individuals trade their labor for compensation, such as wages or profits.
- Theft: Wealth can also be accumulated through theft, where an individual takes wealth from others without their consent. This approach is based on coercion, where one party uses force or fraud to seize wealth from another.
Rather than quote derivative reporting from Fox Business News or even Callum Borchers of the Wall Street Journal, I prefer to let AI technology leader Alexandr Wang do the talking (originally on “X”, of course).
MERITOCRACY AT SCALE
In the wake of our fundraise, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about talent. All of our external success—powering breakthroughs in L4 autonomy, partnering with OpenAI on RLHF going back to GPT-2, supporting the DoD and every major AI lab, and the recent $1bn financing transaction—all of it is downstream from us hiring the best people for the job. Talent is our #1 input metric.
Because of this, I spend a lot of my time on recruiting. I either personally interview every hire or sign off on every candidate packet. It’s the thing I spend the plurality of my time on, easily. But everyone can and should contribute to this effort. There are almost a thousand of us now, and it takes a lot to hire quickly while maintaining, and continuing to raise, our bar for quality.
That’s why this is the time to codify a hiring principle that I consider crucial to our success: Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one.
Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale.
It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.
That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart.
We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual.
We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic.
There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.
Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do. This approach not only results in the strongest possible team, but also ensures we’re treating our colleagues with fairness and respect.
As a result, everyone who joins Scale can be confident that they were chosen for their outstanding talent, not any other reasons. MEI has gotten us to where we are today. And it’s the same thing that’ll get us where we’re going, as we embark on our next chapter focusing on data abundance, frontier data, and reliable measurement to accelerate the development and adoption of AI models.
Alex
This statement quickly picked up an endorsement from someone who knows something about promoting excellence.
If you are committed to Making America Great Again, then be like Alex. Pursue MEI, not DEI, in all of your management practices.
For the sake of the broader community and mitigation of enshittification risk, if for no other reason.
Squats, Pullups and Pushups
- Compound exercises target multiple muscle groups and joints at the same time. They mimic real-life activities, allowing you to build strength and stability, improve functional fitness and achieve a more balanced and coordinated body
- A study in the journal Frontiers in Physiology found that people who performed compound exercises have better muscle strength and VO2 max, a key indicator of aerobic fitness and cardiovascular endurance
- Compound exercises fall into three primary movement patterns — squatting, pushing and pulling. A well-rounded compound training routine features a combination of these movements
- As you increase the intensity of your compound training routine, you also optimize your body’s cellular energy production. However, make sure to stay within the Goldilocks zone for resistance exercises, otherwise your hard work will backfire
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/08/02/compound-exercises.aspx
Studies on Blushield Anti-EMF Technology
BLUSHIELD FOR CHICKENS
A farmer in Minnesota (USA) reported a hen house being affected by the Blushield device placed in the barn being used for cattle. It turns out the adjacent hen house was producing twice as many eggs as normal.
So a trial was conducted to test and prove the hypothesis. This was carried out at a poultry farm in Te Puna, situated on the outskirts of Tauranga, New Zealand.
The farm had two completely automated hen houses. House 1 was selected as the test house and House 2 as the control house. Each house had approximately 10,000–15,000 laying hens at any one time.
Five hens from each sector were taken and blood tests carried out on them, noting such things as parasites, blood cell count and platelet shape and size. Also, the general health of the chicken was noted as to feather loss, weight, skin rashes and any other features that were relevant.
The weight of the eggs laid each day was averaged out with samples taken from each sector. The same applied to quantity, shell thickness and yolk quality. Blood tests were carried out at one month and three- month intervals.
After One Month
Before installation, the mortality rate in both houses had been approximately 60–100 per month, and in the weeks immediately after installation the death rate in House 1 dropped to zero and rose to four and six respectively in the following two weeks. Egg production before installation was between 74–78 per cent of the total flock in House 1, and after one month the average rose to between 82–84 per cent. The yolk size had improved, and the yolk colour had changed to a deeper yellow.
After using Blushield, the mortality rate went from 60–100 deaths per month to less than 20 deaths per month.
After Four Months
Health of the chickens appeared to be at a constant level; parasites appeared to have been eradicated from the blood; cell count remained even, and platelet size and shape remained regular. Deaths dropped to between eight and 15 chickens per month in House 1.
Egg production rose to between 84–87 per cent of the total flock in House 1. A slight average increase in yolk size was noted, and the shell became stronger and less brittle.
After One Year
Even though there were several changes in the flock during the year regarding culling and new pullets being introduced, the blood samples taken showed no signs of parasites returning. The health of the hens remained at a good level with no skin diseases evident.
The noise levels were constantly lower at all times compared to the control house, and there was less pecking between hens. There was also a drop in the amount of food eaten by the chickens, yet the output in eggs and quality increased. The appetite in the control house, however, remained the same.
The mortality rate was the most significant factor of these tests. Before Blushield, there were 60–100 deaths per month. After Blushield, at no stage did this go over 25 per month and averaged out at about 16–18. The hens also appeared to have lost a lot of their aggressive nature and cannibalistic habits.
Egg production rose as high as 89 per cent at times but ended up averaging between 84–87 per cent which equates to a good 10 per cent increase in production for the farmer. The quality of the eggs remained at a high level throughout, with a consistent improvement in colour of the yolk and better viscosity in the egg whites. The average egg weight went from 63 grams to 66 grams. The shell did not improve greatly in thickness; however, crack testing gave an indication that the shells were stronger.
Longer-Term Effects
One of the longer-term effects the Blushield helps with is the term of the hens’ laying life, which was extended out by as much as 20 weeks per hen.
It is clear that Blushield has a significant effect on egg-laying chickens.
(Sources: GreenMedInfo.com, 28 June 2024 and Blushield.com)
“French farmer wins battle to turn off 4G antenna after claims of damaging cow herd’s health.”
Plucky French dairy farmer Frédéric Salgues sued a cell phone provider earlier this year claiming that, since the cell tower’s July 2021 installation about 200 yards away from his farm, 40 of his 200 cows died, and milk production decreased by 20% — starting mere days after the antenna was switched on.
Hard to believe, but there it was.
After evaluating the evidence, the French court agreed. The court-appointed expert testified that, “I have no medical explanation for the sharp drop in milk production, from 15% to 20%, in the days following erection of the antenna.” The judge ordered cell provider Orange to temporarily disable the tower, while the expert evaluates whether the remaining cows recover.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/dont-mention-the-war-tuesday-august