One may only hope:
Israel recorded almost 3,000 new coronavirus cases for the second day in a row, according to data released Wednesday, as the infection rate continued to climb and senior Health Ministry officials were reportedly weighing a switch to a policy of reaching herd immunity through mass infection.
I'm so very busy this week, but I will resume normal posting in the new year. I think that's when I'll take the final decision on moving this blog. Please stay tuned!
I have long been considering a switch to WordPress for a number of reasons, but now as it is so far and I have made an account there I'm still having my doubts. May be, it's just laziness, lol. Still, I'd like to know your experiences with this platform. Would it make blogging and interaction easier? What would you prefer, this blog staying as it is now, or a WordPress one?
Your opinion is much appreciated!
I'm planning to move my blog to WordPress. Probably after Christmas. I will post redirect link on this site and keep it up for some time, so don't worry!
Do I understand correctly that some people have trouble with posting comments on this site? What is the problem exactly?
If there is, it's certainly not because of anything I've done and I'm not sure how to fix it. I have been wondering about moving my blog to Wordpress lately, thoughts?
That's what we are getting tomorrow. Because you know Omicron is sooo very dangerous, especially for 70+ with overweight, though nobody apparently died from it yet, well, except in the UK there was someone who died with it, but they aren't in lockdown yet, but we have to, because reasons.
Thank you, Woodstock generation, you are keeping us hostage for 2 years already...
Shall I really go there? You bet I will:)
We've been reading out of the OT, namely about eating of the holy things (meat) in Leviticus. The priest's daughter who is a childless divorced or widowed woman who returned to he father's house is allowed to eat it, but a married daughter isn't.
This passage made me think about two things. First, many men, contrary to their protestations, support feminism because real patriarchy means a huge financial and otherwise responsibility for their womenfolk. If you had a misfortune to get a childless widowed daughter she would return to your house and you'd be expected to take care of her until death do us part, or until she marries again, and if father died the responsibility would go to her brothers and even male cousins, as it was the case here in Europe not so long ago.
And second, OT allowed divorce. And then by analogy, it also allowed polygamy. Of course, we as Christians should all hopefully agree that the ideal is one man one woman for life, as described in Genesis. Yet, there is also a difference between what the society deems an ideal and what this society tolerates.
Now Jesus Christ expressly calls divorce adultery except for fornication, and St Paul adds desertion, too. The only thing he says about polygamy though is that any man in church authority should be a husband of one wife. Polygamy is obviously not ideal, it's stressed once again, but there is no severe prohibition given against it, either.
In fact, early church tolerated both divorce and polygamy to a certain degree, just as most priests were married (Eastern Orthodox prohibited polygamy later on, but always allowed their priests to marry, and divorce for adultery for either spouse).
Here I'm going to open a big can of worms. I know that some of my readers are Catholics and I have respect for their faith, nevertheless I'm a convinced Protestant myself and I do think that modern pedestalisation of women and even feminism and other issues has its roots in some of the things the Catholic Church invented out of the blue, which were never in the Bible.
Under their doctrine of no divorce whatsoever, a man could have a wife who had slept with the whole town and he couldn't get rid of her, at least, officially (and honour killings fell out of fashion in many European countries somewhere around the time of the Renaissance). If he was lucky, he could get a divorce of table and bed, i.e. legal separation, which at least allowed him not to acknowledge any bastards she would produce, but he couldn't get remarried and have legal children, and having a legal heir was often very important in this period.
But he could take a mistress or go to a wh*rehouse or sleep with all the maidservants and the church authorities wouldn't say a peep.
Kinda not logical, don't you think?
In fact, many wealthy men used to have many mistresses (and still do) and sired lots of illegitimate kids as well. And as we all probably know, the Catholic stance on divorce was one of the reasons behind the European aristocracy's support of the Reformation which legalised divorce for adultery and abandonement but not polygamy, though some Protestant leaders pointed out it wasn't really prohibited by the Scriptures.
In Catholic France before the revolution, the punishment for bigamy was death by beheading. Yet prostitution and all sorts of fornication were tolerated, before and after. You couldn't sell your daughter to be a concubine of a rich man, but you could sell her to a br*thel and it was fine. (described in the classic literature abundantly). BTW, if we believe writers such as Honore de Balzac some of these girls were like 10 years old.
Our society was pretty selective in tolerating s8xual sins, it seems. Now please understand me correctly, I'm not suggesting men should all start taking many wives. In fact, many men nowadays can't even support one and send her to work while they search for the work-life balance and suffer burnouts from having to work the whole of 36 hours a week (by some reason, girls continue to marry these losers), but the fact is, that some sort of official contract, may be with lesser rights, but with financial obligations towards the 2nd wife and her offspring in combination with restrictions on extramarital s8x would probably be an improvement on serial monogamy, mistresses and prostitution.
Which is still happening, btw. I once watched a British TV program about life of aristocrats. Some or other lord separated from his wife who had given him legal heirs, but they weren't officialy divorced, they just lived in different countries. He lived together with a woman 30 years his junior whom he called his wifelet. He told the reporter he had had many "wifelets" throughout the years.
I have a feeling he is not the only one...
Christian society the way we know it is nearly totally destroyed in all the Western countries. Victorian times or 1950s aren't coming back. If and when the revival happens, it's up to us to build something new. So the question is, should we turn to some OT things, yes or no?
So he painted the grips and finally installed them:
He is very content with the result...
as a pescatarian.
People seem to always like to know what someone eats, so here comes:)
Breakfast:
Teff porridge made with semi-skimmed milk mixed with full fat chocolate milk which I still have left from our St Nicholas party, fruit, a rye crispbread with butter and cheese (rye, water, salt) and hot water with a slice of lemon and half teaspoon of honey.
Teff grain is supposed to be very good for you, it's gluten free, high protein etc
but it's also pricey. I bought in on sale, otherwise I'd just eat rolled oats, 50c for 500g:) As chocolate milk is very sweet, I didn't need to add sugar or any other sweetener.
Lunch was nothing fancy:
Cucumber and toasted bread, one slice with hummus and processed cheddar (hummus was on sale, too; 50% off), the other one with butter and fish roe paste from IKEA:
Strictly speaking it's not really a health food, but I do like it very much:) Plus some water, as you can see. After lunch I also drank a cup of cacao (cacao powder, water and a splash of full fat milk), but no sugar since I still have some chocolates left from St. Nicholas, see above:
I figured out I deserve them since normally I'd eat one sandwich with something sweet, like apple butter, which is very popular over here. It's high in iron, too, so recommended for vegetarians.
Finally, dinner:
Parboiled brown rice, with a stir-fry of marinated shrimp, onion, bell pepper and tomatoes; plus avocado and chili sauce (love this, too).
And dessert:
plain 3.2% yogurt with flax seed and 1 tsp jam.
Well, that's about it. I also drank tea in between, with a bit of honey/molasses. Tomorrow will be my vegetarian day, so I'm planning to eat walnuts for dinner. What about you?
What my husband got from my parents for his birthday:
New sights and grip for his Beretta. He is very happy:)
with the current madness:
But nanny statism wins every time:
UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s says the country has secured an additional 114 million vaccine doses for 2022 and 2023 to “buy time” and that everyone over the age of 18 will be offered one by the end of January.
Dr. Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, questioned the logic behind this decision.
“Right now, there is no evidence that I’m aware of that would suggest that boosting the entire population would necessarily provide any greater protection for otherwise healthy individuals against hospitalization and death,” he said.
In a DailyMail discussion someone said he'd gladly take a booster shot every week if it prevented him from dying. Well, I have news for him (her?) and others like that. You can take a booster every day and YOU WILL STILL DIE. You aren't immortal, whatever lies you choose to believe. Seriously, Westerners have become pathetic.
The problem with many of those who are against the corona restrictions is the confirmation bias, they think that the silent majority agree with them or are just an innocent victim of brainwashing. The truth is, however, that the majority either don't care of downright agree with the government policies, as proven by the recent Swiss referendum.
Yet, the referendum also brought to light an interesting fact: the group who overwhelmingly voted for corona passports are 65+. Yes, we do have a boomer problem in our society, as the majority of the young people voted against the pass.
When I say "boomer" I don' mean it in the strict definition of the word, btw, but the fact is that the average age in Europe is about 50, and it will only get higher, so that soon a common flu will cause lockdowns and extreme measures.
And here secularism comes into picture. Many of those people and their families are terrified by the idea of dying any time soon, and they somehow have bought into the idea that they are entitled to live to 100 and that the government should ensure it happens.
Now please don't misunderstand me, the elderly deserve good care and there is nothing wrong with living long, especially if you manage to stay healthy. But let's be realistic: someone in his mid80s is on the death's door and no amount of temper tantrums is going to change the fact that humans are mortal. We all will die one day. Make peace with God, accept this fact and just move on.
Yet when I read Twitter discussions, folks will say things like: "my father of 83 had a right to live longer, but due to selfish antivaxxers spreading infections he died from corona". Not an exact quote. mind you, but someone did say it.
You see, religion, even a non-Christian one, usually teaches you humility, while secularism teaches you entitlement. So now we have to vaccinate little kids because otherwise a Grandma of 87 may die, and that's a great tragedy for humanity.
A funny thing is, there is a theory supported by the Scriptures that human beings should on average live to 120, however, I don't think that the way to long life goes through mandatory jabs, medications and surgeries. Many of the diseases people suffer from in old age, like diabetes type 2, were years in the making and are often preventable, yet the secular morals teach you that your actions should have no consequences.
Someone else should pay the bill. That's why it's OK to punish non-vaccinated, but it's not OK to discuss obesity, for instance.
The current division in society about the ways to fight pandemic goes along both class and age lines. It's young vs old and technocrats/office workers against mostly blue collar workers.
We'll see how it ends, but my bet is on the young and productive.
P.S. The root of the problem is not that people on average live longer, it's that they live unhealthier longer. 40 years ago most would die after their 2nd heart attack, now they have like 8 bypasses. Modern medical care doesn't heal people, it gives them a quick fix and then the virus comes and here you have it.
Tradwives still going strong in England, here are a couple of recent stories:
A CAREER woman with a degree in Japanese has revealed she's quit work to become a 1950s-style housewife - who has her partner's dinner on the table when he gets home from work.
Part of a growing movement of ‘tradwives’ - short for traditional wives - Jayne Hall is very happy letting engineer Allan be the breadwinner, while she stays home doing the cooking and cleaning.
This one isn't technically a housewife, since she works part-time, but her dedication to cleaning is remarkable:
Speaking exclusively to Fabulous, the married mum-of-three said: "I spend a good seven hours-a-day cleaning and tidying.
"My favourite trick on a weekend is to get up early when the kids are asleep, about 6am. That way, I can get a good three hours in before the kids are even awake.
"I've got a carpet cleaner, so once-a-month I'll give the carpet a clean. I sound obsessive talking about it, but it is so rewarding.
"I know it sounds like the most boring thing in the world and there are some bits I don't like, like ironing.
"But I like pretty much all of it, just spraying things, smelling things. When the kids smell nice in the morning, I know I have done my job."
And the younger generation of British women is quite promising, too:
WHEN mum Rebecca Conway heard about the TradWife movement - where wives do everything and their husbands are the main breadwinners - she was all for it.
The 25-year-old, from Manchester, believes that women should be feminine and obedient for their husbands, take on all the household chores like cooking, cleaning and tidying up, and freely admits her man has never made the bed, emptied the dishwasher or done a load of laundry in the six years they've been together.
(Her husband is quite a bit older, btw, and has his own business.)
Getting married at an early age appears to be back in fashion, too:
WHEN Madison Dastrup finished high school she didn’t start filling out college application forms or applying for jobs.
Instead she donned her pinny and grabbed her rolling pin as she embraced the TradWife movement, where wives do everything and their husbands are the main breadwinners.
Her happily ever after came to life when she got engaged at 18, and was married at 19.
By 21 Madison and her husband had moved into their first home together, welcoming their first daughter Ellie Louise that same year.
Madison now considers herself a homemaker, spending her days cooking, cleaning, sewing, mending, as well as taking care of the family finances and being a mum while her husband goes out to work.
They just escaped the EU and the traditional values are making a comeback. A coincidence???
Here is a decent article by Dr Axe, whose book on Aromatherapy I highly recommend, btw.
Best and Worst Meat Substitutes for Your Health
It's quite long, but worth reading. I should add that personally I can't eat soy products whether fermented or not without it wreaking havoc on my system and my husband dislikes them so we never eat them, but beans, lentils and nuts are OK.
Considering his worst substitutes, I tried to make seitan at home several times, and it was just not eatable, but I somewhat disagree about cheese. I think It's OK if you don't go overboard on it. but it's probably the best to combine several different protein sources in one dish, like some cheese and nuts.
He also doesn't mention eggs by some reason, but the Dutch Veg society suggests that you could substitute 3 oz meat with 2 eggs, which is more or less adequate, in my experience.
There is a discussion going on about health benefits of eggs, but the general consensus seems to be that 6 or 7 eggs a week is fine, especially if you go easy on red meat.
(The Dutch Vegetarian society, btw, also recommends about 0.5 lt dairy a day for your b12 and calcium).
Anyway, meals should be built around a protein source, so broccoli and carrots aren't a good meat substitute, they are a side dish:)
Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!
(It's OK to be a non-vegetarian, we don't discriminate over here:)
Yes, yes, I know, it's an oxymoron:)
But those are really good and they were even better the next day. Of course, they have all the right ingredients, mushrooms, oats, cheese, eggs etc:
Chef John's Meatless Meatballs
And they are probably much healthier than some fake burger from the store!
Othello not woke enough:
This absurd kind of situation is also happening in Britain, and I’m sure there have been worse instances of ridiculous demands by spoiled students, except that here in America it reflects more of a class struggle than it does overseas. It has nothing to do with moral rights, it has to do with the new elite versus those Middle Americans who were the nucleus of the American republic once upon a time. Now it’s the unholy alliance of the media, the Academy, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley that holds all the cards. This hostile ruling class is new but determined to wipe out that middle who voted for Reagan, Obama, and Trump, among others.
You read it here first:
Kyle Rittenhouse has been acquitted...
The jury reached their decision after four days of deliberations, which lasted longer than anyone - including Judge Bruce Schroeder, had expected. It came amid two mistrial requests
from the defense over high-definition video evidence which was withheld
- possibly unintentionally - by the prosecution. Rittenhouse's
attorneys claimed that an inferior copy of a potentially crucial video
could have affected their defense.
The danger of being ruled by nerds:
Early on in the pandemic, to get a sense of Gates’s views, I watched his TED talks. I began to realize something astonishing. He knew much less than anyone could discover by reading a book on cell biology from Amazon. He couldn’t even give a basic 9th-grade-level explanation of viruses and their interaction with the human body. And yet here he was lecturing the world about the coming pathogen and what should be done about it. His answer is always the same: more surveillance, more control, more technology.
This is truly a bizarre story:
An 11-year-old girl caught gonorrhoea from a natural thermal pool in Italy while on holiday, doctors have revealed...
She is believed to have caught the infection, which is usually transmitted sexually, from the water, which had been used by a person with gonorrhoea.
Temperatures in the pools can come close to body temperature, and in this case could have provided a way for the bacteria to infect the young girl, experts claimed.
Of course, there was a discussion on Twitter where I found the story, along the usual lines, but personally I do believe it's possible, even though "experts"" long denied it, just like with the HPV which I had written about on this blog some time before.
Remember how we were told that in Middle Ages people were dirty because they supposedly hated bathing? The truth is that they actually used to have public baths before, but then the plague and other epidemics started and they figured out it had something to do with water, so people stopped using them.
Cholera is spread through water, too. Same was true about polio and some other diseases. My mother was a health and safety inspector and I remember her controlling water in lakes used for swimming, to check for infections. Sometimes I wonder if the elimination of polio had something to do not only with vaccines, but with the disappearance of open sewer systems.
For instance, in some rural parts of the Netherlands they still used an outhouse till somewhere in the mid 1960s (!), and they were mostly situated above channels (just read an article about it in Country Life) so that everything dropped into (you guessed it) water, and probably found its way into nearby lakes which the kids then used for swimming in summer.
Of course, commercial pools nowadays are using such amounts of chlorine they'd probably kill anything (whether it's good for your health, is another story), but our modern obsession with swimming in natural waters unless it's a sea/ocean could be something to ponder about...
Just as we are heading into the new wave of restrictions and lockdowns, comes this article from Daily Mail:
How Sweden swerved Covid disaster
They actually have less corona deaths than the majority of the European countries:
Sweden has suffered fewer Covid deaths than most of Europe and is still recording lower infection rates, according to figures that suggest its lockdown gamble has paid off.
The
Scandinavian nation became an international outlier last year when it
defied scientific advice and refused to follow the rest of the world in
shutting down society to curb the virus' spread.
Or rather, may be the science wasn't (isn't) settled?
Not only has Sweden's economy bounced back faster than any other country in the EU, latest data shows that it has also fared better than most in terms of lives lost during the pandemic.
Sweden has suffered almost 1,500 confirmed Covid deaths per million people, according to Oxford University-based research platform Our World in Data, which is lower than the European average (1,800).
The UK — which has endured three national lockdowns and several regional fire-breakers — has recorded 2,100 per million, for comparison, while Belgium and Italy both have rates above 2,000.
It probably also has to do with the fact that they have fewer obese people running around, as according to our data the average BMI of those hospitalised is 30 (not you aren't healthy at any size, sorry).
When looking at excess mortality during the pandemic, Sweden ranks just 21st out of 31 European countries with 5 per cent more deaths since March last year than would be expected. Britain, Italy and Spain, on the other hand, have each suffered around 10 per cent more deaths than average during Covid...
Sweden also has a lower infection rate currently than most EU nations, with just 100 per million people testing positive daily compared to 800 in Austria, nearly 700 in Belgium and Ireland, and 500 in the UK.
They just basically let the disease run its course, with some common sense measures:
Although Sweden chose not to lock down completely early in the pandemic, it did introduce stricter legally-binding curbs last winter as cases and deaths rose.
These included a ban on groups of eight or more people, limits on numbers in gyms and shops and an 8pm curfew on pubs and restaurants.
We had gyms closed which probably contributed to the rise in bmi, btw. Children certainly became plumper during lockdown. As of now, you aren't even allowed to practise indoor sports unless vaxxed or in possession of a negative test, which surely won't improve the health situation any further, but who cares?
While Sweden appears to fared done better than continental Europe during the pandemic, it has performed significantly worse when compared to its closest neighbours.
Norway and Finland, for example, have suffered about 200 Covid deaths per million people since the virus was first seeded on the continent — seven times lower than Sweden's toll.
In Denmark the rate is around 400. All three nations have had tougher restrictions during much of the pandemic, which are likely to have played a role.
It all depends on your priorities, I guess. (Mental) health and well-being of younger people was probably at least just as important to the Swedish as extending life of (obese) boomers with comorbidities.
Cambridge University epidemiologist Raghib Ali told MailOnline: 'Whether you think Sweden's strategy was a success story comes down to which countries you compare it to.
'If you think it should have a similar rate [of Covid deaths] to its neighbours Finland, Norway and Denmark or other countries like Germany and the Netherlands?
See above.
Dr Ali said that one takeaway from Sweden's voluntary lockdown system was that it shows the power of people's small behavioural changes.
'Although Sweden didn't have a Government-enforced lockdown, it did have a type of voluntary lockdown that was well-adhered to.
'What we've learned from Sweden - and the UK - is that people's voluntary behaviour can get countries over a peak without mandated restrictions, even though they alone cannot prevent big outbreaks.'
The takeaway is that people are much more inclined to follow reasonable restrictions/commands than unreasonable ones. Push them too hard and the chance is they will rebel.
Also the real crisis is obesity. People can't help getting older (we all will) and obviously the elderly are entitled to good care, but you don't have to be obese.
I wonder if Sweden offers asylum to refugees from Western Europe?
are Austrians, closely followed by the French:
countries by alcohol consumption
Lack of time prevents me from writing more on the subject of alcohol abuse, but just one thing to consider is the fact that alcohol is one of the very few drugs where withdrawal can cause death. (Google delirium tremens).
Safe dose of alcohol of any kind is zero.
This standard was in use in all the Christian countries until about mid-1940s but only fully disappeared in the end of the 1960s.
To begin with, women were supposed to cover their head in public, which was a pretty universal rule and now disappeared completely, unless it's very cold/hot. Sometimes you will encounter it in more conservative churches, but outside royalties and Mennonites hardly anyone is doing it anymore.
Women were also supposed to wear skirts or dresses, but they started wearing pants during WWII when working in war factories (war situation was used to push a lot of societal change, just like "the war on the virus" now).
In countries like Mexico and some African countries only women of easy morals used to wear pants until about 1980s or even later, btw.
Skirts had to cover the knee when sitting and not to be extremely tight. You were expected to cover your elbows, too, the standard which gradually got relaxed in the 20th century. The necklines had to be not lower than 2 fingers under the collarbone.
Of course, we know that the upper class women disregarded the decollete rules already in the early 19th century and earlier, but at least, it was done during private parties in the evening, with bad light, and not in the streets during the daytime.
However, if you look at Medieval or Viking clothes (and we went to many a Renaissance fair), the styles weren't as different as what the Muslim ladies wore, except for the veil, but even those, though never mandatory in the West were more or less in fashion until the 20th century.
Somewhere along the way pretty reasonable early Medieval clothes changed into high court fashions complete with low necklines, corsets and crinolines and headcoverings into tiny hats, and then it all disappeared completely.
So unless we are Amish, none of us adhere to this modesty standard since we never routinely cover our heads in public as women. I'm adding this to show that I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou since I'm not following this minimal mid 20th century standard, either.
When I used to read the discussions on this topic, people would mention movie industry and how they would portray hip cowgirls in jeans, but I believe that the 20th century obsession with fitness had probably more influence. Somehow it became fine to run around in underwear if it was for sport or swimming. And then the underwear just kept getting skimpier and skimpier.
Of course, in Ancient Greece the Olympians competed naked. They were also heathen, and ladies weren't allowed to watch, they had the competitions of their own where men were not allowed in turn. (Free women had to fully cover their bodies in public as opposed to slave girls which indicated their status as sexually available.)
Some call it progress, some call it degeneracy...
And not for being good wives and mothers or even overall decent human beings, either...
When you browse on your smartphone, YouTube keeps pushing videos into your timeline, if you hit on one, you'll get the whole series, that's how I grew addicted to reading UTube discussions on the Magnificent Century, a Turkish historical drama/soap I'd written about before.
Yesterday, I was reading comments on Prince Mustafa's relationship with one of his girlfriends. After his father prohibits their marriage since she is of low birth, he lets her go.
But he still took her virginity, remarked someone indignantly.
Well, she was a Christian, and it's not important for Christians anyway, was the answer.
That's what they think about us, and honestly, who could blame them? Of course, many Eastern people somehow still mistakenly consider modern Western countries Christian, and I realise that Christian generally means white/Western to them, but even among those who call themselves Christians virginity and chastity aren't exactly hot topic, either.
In fact, I remember how a Christian site (I think it was Boundless but could be mistaken, so don't take my word for it), had a discussion where virgins were told that virginity was their idol. Also, have you seen what "chaste" Christian girls wear to church nowadays?
I seldom write about modesty on this blog for several reasons. First, is it any use flogging a dead horse? Modesty in clothes is a totally foreign concept to 99% of the citizens, often including non-Western immigrants and fundie women, too. The first group will cover their hair (and that not always) but dress in pretty Western styles for the rest, the latter will wear a short skirt provided it's black/dark.
Second, you easily get accused of being "jealous" of younger women and their beauty. The accusation is ridiculous, of course, since it's not only the problem of the young women any more, and those young women in 15 years will be older, too, so what is there to be jealous about? But, of course, those who hurl it won't care.
Third, Western men, despite what they will tell you, love it. Muslims will often avert their eyes even talking to you, because that's the way they are taught, but I have yet to encounter a Western man of whatever age and religion who would do it. Oh yes, they sometimes decry it online but keep watching.
In general, the reaction to this show is eye-opening. It depicts, among other things, infidelity, fornication and abortion. Muslim viewers decry it. How could you kill an innocent child? Why is Sultan not monogamous, asked someone from Pakistan (!), that's just so horrible and immoral. How could you commit adultery and fornication with your best friend's wife? Why are ladies' decolletes so low? That's the issues which bother them
Western people are bothered primarily by the lack of feminism and the lack of equality as in the Royal family being arrogant and having more rights than their slaves/servants and commoners.
The East is the East and the West is the West and never the twain shall meet, I guess...
Can somebody tell me? Since Will from Patriactionary stopped posting I get no reliable information. Are there any freedoms left for unvaccinated?
In January 2022 the Government are launching a new App to help people make positive changes to their diet and physical activity. A pilot will see users wear wrist-worn devices that can generate personalised health recommendations such as increasing their step count, eating more fruit and vegetables, and decreasing portion size. Users will collect points for their healthy behaviours, which will unlock rewards...
Well, at least they are out of EU and can't force it on us, I guess. Heaven knows, we have a lot of problems of our own and new restrictive measures looming...
When I read internet discussions, I notice how people will often go and search for a magic ingredient which is responsible for (presumably them) being fat and unhealthy.
Often it's "the government", "medical system", "seed oils", "corn syrup" and as I have found recently, apparently folic acid. (Those are just examples, by the way.)
One thing that is seldom named is personal responsibility. Your health is your own and if you don't trust medical advice, it's up to you to search for better info, what with the resources we have nowadays at our fingertips.
In my experience, it's not so much one certain ingredient or a type of food, but rather, your overall diet. People will often say they are fat because of the official "food pyramid" as it promotes eating too much carbs. However, I have yet to encounter where the official health advice promotes drinking liters of soda, and eating high GI sugary foods or even white bread. Vice versa, nowadays they are on a very vigourous anti-sugar crusade and will warn you against stuff like French fries or white rice.
I have no opinion about seed oils as I try to only use cold pressed virgin olive oil and butter, as for corn syrup, I have been forever eating jams containing it and it hardly ever influences my weight. May be because I restrict myself to 2 teaspoons a day?
Have been forever taking folic acid and it didn't make me fat, either. I have read about many diets through the years and one of the most researched and beneficial appears to be the Mediterranean diet. It's quite common sense and not very restrictive, allows for both meat and poultry but emphasises fish, allows you some high quality alcohol, too, and stresses minimally processed foods. Sweets and quick carbs are restricted. It's not low fat, either, since you are encouraged to use plenty of olive oil. It encourages you to cook your food instead of going for TV dinners.
It's quite difficult to change your eating patterns but I do believe it's worth it, and it will benefit you more than supplements though they have their place, too.
Half year ago it was dismissed as a "conspiracy theory", yet here we are:
The booster jabs are intended to deal with waning immunity among groups which first received the vaccines at the start of the year – but the number administered each day has been a fraction of the rate during the initial programme.
It's not only for the older folks, either:
The jabs will not be rolled out to the under-50s until a greater proportion of the older age group have been jabbed, which at the current rate is expected to be in early 2022.
It's your patriotic duty, citizens!
The most senior doctor in the NHS has called on Britons to take up the offer of booster jabs to 'help save Christmas'.
NHS England's national medical director Professor Stephen Powis said getting a booster will 'protect the freedom and Christmas that we have all earned'.
Since the virus is now endemic, it starts looking as a life-long subscription to boosters at this point.
I especially liked this one:
A recent modelling study calculated that jabbing all 12- to 15-year-olds could prevent tens of thousands of hospital admissions, mainly of older people, saving thousands of lives. If most of this age group remains unvaccinated, however, these benefits will not materialise.
Remember when kids had to be vaccinated against polio to save Grandma? Me neither. Why is nothing said about the vaccine benefits for this specific age group? What about side effects? As a society, we have officially arrived at the point when we are experimenting with the health of our young to extend life of the elderly, most of them severely ill.
Makes me think of the Bible story about sacrificing your children to Molech, It was to be expected actually, after we allowed sacrificing of the unborn to convenience.
Western "science" in the current year starts looking downright satanic:
Day of reckoning can't be that far away any more. Just don't expect to be raptured out of it, we will all bear the consequences, I'm afraid...
There could be different reasons for it, but most people probably are doing it for their health and not out of any ideological reason. I know it was for me. Money saving factor could also influence some people.
Anyway, from what I read (correct me if I'm wrong) Americans on average eat much more meat than we do here in Europe, some probably 3 times a day, with every meal.
We usually ate meat once a day in the evening, with dinner, for the rest it was mostly cheese/dairy and eggs, with cold cuts sometimes, so it made the switch much easier for me.
The problem is, you can't just cut a major source of protein out of your diet and expect that nothing bad happens. I guess we all know horror stories about vegans losing their hair and getting quite sick in the process. I'm not a big fan of veganism in general, though some of my readers pointed out the diet worked for them. I guess it could for some people, especially middle aged men with heart and circulation problems.
This has been a subject of many heated discussions, but as somebody pointed out, there exist cultures which have been vegetarian for many generations, but none has been vegan. In my opinion, you should at least eat some dairy and/or may be fish, because we need at least some amount of animal fat (not so much animal protein) in our diet.
Anyway, if you cut out meat you will need to substitute it with something. You could start by eating more chicken and fish. The current guidelines in the Netherlands is to eat fish at least once a week, but the American recommendation is to eat it at least twice and better, 3 times a week. That would give you 3 meatless dinners already.
Health benefits of fish are well-known, just to add anther one: apparently, researchers in UK found out that women who ate more fish had a delayed menopause, which means that their fertility lasted longer.
If you decide for a more vegetarian approach, you can substitute one meat portion (3-4oz) with 2 eggs or 70g of regular cheese or with higher amounts of low fat cheeses like vegetarian mozzarella (6g fat per 100g) or cottage cheese or skyr. The important thing is to look at protein amounts. Many factory made meat substitutes have very low protein content, which makes them rather inadequate. Cottage cheese, on the other hand contains 26g of protein per 200 g with very low fat content. However, it's also low in zinc.
You should take care to get enough B12 (fish, dairy products, eggs) and zinc, since fish doesn't have much of it, unlike some other sorts of seafood.
I'd also like to say a few words about soy. Soy is a very controversial food, supposedly it lowers testosterone in men and makes them effeminate (some researchers deny it), then there is a discussion whether it's good or bad for breast cancer (inconclusive), some of it is genetically modified and it can also lower your thyroid function. It can also suppress your ovulation and disrupt your cycle, so if you are a woman of child-bearing age, it's probably wise to avoid it, or only consume in small amounts.
Many people switch to (semi) vegetarian diets to prevent heart disease and hypertension, and it's generally recommended that such people follow a low-fat diet.
This type of diets aren't well-suited for non-menopausal women, unless there are very fat, of course, and need to lose weight. If you are a normal weight and stop eating meat and poultry for whatever reason, you'll need some butter and full fat dairy in your diet, since it's been shown by research that low fat dairy interferes with ovulation (again). That's why so many vegan women become (sub) fertile, they miss animal fat in their diet.
In general, if you are under 30 and normal weight, you can probably eat anything and stay healthy. And women are protected from heart disease generally, as long as they menstruate and don't use the pill (which raises the chance of blood-clotting, btw). After they go into menopause the risk starts increasing and catches up with men at some point. At this age, soy probably won't hurt you any more.
So that are just some tips I've learned. As of now I'm following a pescatarian diet. I'm not losing weight this time as I take care to eat more eggs, butter and fat, and eat fish 3 times a week. I'm not ideological about it, so will probably eat meat in future, in any case with Christmas as I'm not planning to cook 2 Christmas dinners.
And yes, quitting red meat did improve my health in some ways, so that's the reason for it.
Or rather, first it was J.K. Rowling and now it's other feminists' turn. I guess The Handmaid's Tale doesn't cut it in the current year:
No more martinis for Her Majesty
The monarch is rarely seen drinking in public but according to palace sources, just like her son Prince Charles, her alcoholic beverage of choice is often a dry martini.
The 95-year year-old is also believed to enjoy a glass of sweet wine with dinner, while her late cousin Margaret Rhodes once reported she was known to drink a glass of champagne before bed.
'The
alcohol has gone, her doctors want to make sure she is as fit and
healthy as possible,' a second source was quoted as saying by the
magazine.
Are we sacrificing our young so that our elderly could feel safer?
This is straight out vampirism...
But then, what else can be expected from a society which defends offering its unborn for personal convenience?
Today is Old Michaelmas Day, so it's a reason to celebrate!
The weather is still quite nice, though it's raining now and then, but it does really feel like autumn now.
You can read more about this festival on Wikipedia:
The gasoline price recently rose above 2 euro per liter, it had never been so high before. Prices of consumer goods are rising, too. I've heard stories of shortages in other countries, like the USA.
What's going on in the world???
I had a dream tonight. Or, rather a nightmare. In my dream, I wanted some love from my husband and he told me, he told me that the government made a new rule saying that you first must fill in the form and submit it to the public health official, to prevent corona infections.
I looked at the form and it had 3 pages, the 1st page demanding all your passport information. I said, it was ridiculous, surely it wasn't the government business and what about our right to privacy? But he still insisted on filling it in.
Then I woke up. My husband was just leaving for work and he laughed when I told him. He was against this whole nonsense from the very beginning. I know it all sounds far-fetched and yet, after all we've been through and considering apartheid passports we have now, who knows what the next step will be?
And while all this is being done supposedly to save the elderly, has any "health official" asked himself what is the effect of all this horror propaganda on the old folks' minds? I know many who have locked themselves in their homes from the very beginning.
They are vaccinated and still afraid, because don't you know, you still can get it? Will it ever be over for them? Someone told me, they will only go out when corona disappears from the whole world. Which basically means never, because the virus is endemic now.
And, of course, we all know that isolation at this age can lead to dementia rather quickly. how many of those who were balancing on the edge before were pushed over it? And will anyone take responsibility for what was done to these people?
For any person who is in the same situation and by any chance reading it, snap out of it now, while it's not too late. Stop feeling yourself a victim. Don't shut yourself off from friends and family, you need their support. We are all going to die one day, a proverb says that a brave man dies once while a coward dies every day.
Don't spend the rest of your life in fear, it's not worth it.
This is a post which I have been planning to write for more than a year, actually right before the whole corona stuff started last spring.
As we all know, the reason many married women work is to pay the mortgage, especially with the modern real estate prices. However, as I have said so many times already, while a big house is certainly a bonus, you don't always need it. And lo and behold, in 2020 IKEA made a catalogue featuring 3 families living in small spaces.
Now I'm not saying that all these were 1 income families (though the folks with many kids probably are), in fact, I don't know anything about them at all, however, this IKEA promo gives you an idea of how you can manage.
Family number one, 3 grown-ups (parents +granny) and 2 kids:
I'm afraid the quality of the pictures isn't great, but if you look closely, you see that the youngest child sleeps together with his parents in the master bedroom:
while the little girl and her Grandma share a sofa bed:
The next family have 5 kids, with at least 1 teenager:
The living room becomes the master bedroom at night:
Three eldest children sleep in one room (the one on the right below), with the oldest sister sleeping in one corner behind a curtain:
and a sister and a brother sharing a bunk bed
The two youngest ones share the room with 2 beds behind each other:
The third family have the smallest accommodation of all, a house on the ground floor with a tiny back garden:
It has 2 rooms, a living room and a bedroom. The living room also functions as a guestroom for the grandparents as it also has a sofa bed:
The son shares the bedroom with his parents (a small bed in the corner on the floor plan):
Have you noticed anything special about these families? Being of minority origins they apparently don't think they are entitled to a castle...
P.S. I couldn't find any copyright statement and anyway, the catalogue was only valid till 31 July 2020.
Influenza (flu) is more likely to cause severe illness in pregnant people than in people of reproductive age who are not pregnant...
Flu also may be harmful for a pregnant person’s developing baby...
...the pregnant parent passes antibodies on to the developing baby during pregnancy...
Seriously, WTF??? Is this an example of "science" which we hear so much about? Like biology and reproduction of mammals, that sort of thing?
Note the source of it, and then they are surprised that people aren't taking them seriously on other topics.
It's just a step above bodies with v8gines, I guess (which could be a female dog or cat, btw, since they also have it), because it at least acknowledges personhood.
I have a message for these "medical professionals", how about you all f888 off and leave WOMEN alone, you disgusting freaks???
I have always maintained that femanists and meninists are two sides of the same coin:
I highly recommend the whole series, btw, it's very entertaining.
As a new vegetarian (technically a pescatarian) again, I thoroughly enjoyed Hunting And Outdoor Fair which we attended on our way home from our mini-vacation. After nearly 2 years without any sort of fun events, now that 1.5m is officially abolished, it felt like the good old times again.
Live music, drinking a cup of tea/coffee on a terrace, and lots of people everywhere. They didn't only send weapons, of course, but all sorts of things, like this:
There was a BBQ competition using fresh meat, shooting clay pigeons, and also bow and arrow, stuff for dogs, clothes and even Christmasy stuff. (Poor folks missed all these Christmas markets last year!)
Made with a chainsaw:)
One of these rifles, I'm told, costs 9 000 euros!
It was all close to this nice village:
The weather was great, too, but now it's finally autumn...
I first saw this on Twitter where somebody mentioned this guy and his YouTube channel. Honestly, it is shocking. Just imagine if it happened somewhere in White Russia or Iran, the newspapers would talk about it for days, demanding interference. But if it happens in an enlightened Western democracy, then it should be fine, amirite???
I'll be away from computer for about a week, all comments will go in moderation till I return
Cheers!
