…and I’m still having fun.
In Case You Missed It
IN THE RAW: PHIL REDDALL
I was very pleased to be joined this week by Phil Reddall, author of a very interesting and unusual book on masculinity and self-development called Towards Awakening: An Odinic Perspective.
The book explores Western man’s detachment from his roots, a problem we’ve all thought about at length. The book is simultaneously a diagnosis and a cure. The cure consists of physical and spiritual exercises designed to bring the practitioner back into contact with the deeper Western traditions and nature itself.
We talk about why we’re living in “the Wolf Age,” man’s agency in cyclical history, what it’s like to spend the night alone in a forest and much, much more. This is great stuff and Phil’s a really smart cookie.
Click here to listen now.
OPINION PIECES
Lots more opinion pieces this week.
First off we’ve got a piece about the insanity of molnupiravir, a COVID-19 therapeutic that deliberately forces the virus to mutate. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the drug could create dangerous new variants. Which is exactly what’s happening.
Click here to read this piece.
Then we’ve got a piece on fat positivity and why it’s a boon for Big Food and Big Pharma.
I wasn’t surprised to see a detailed exposé in the Washington Post a week or so ago about Big Food’s new strategy to sell more of its processed products. The headline: “Big Food and dietitians push ‘anti-diet’ advice.”
Of course they do.
If you manufacturer sugar-laden snacks and microwave pizza, there’s no money in telling people not to eat those products. Try explaining that to the shareholders. Goodbye, high-paying job!
The Post article reveals, at length, how companies like General Mills are teaming up with so-called dietitians and using social media to promote “anti-diet” messaging. You can eat whatever you want. In fact, you should eat whatever you want. You can be healthy at any size, any weight.
Eat that second bowl of our delicious new cereal. I know it’s 1pm, but you deserve it. And if you want another bowl after that, that’s fine too.
Click here to read this piece.
And finally we’ve got an opinion piece I wrote today for Infowars on noticing. By which I mean, noticing. You know: inconvenient truths and things that are politically incorrect. Like the race and religion of all those men in grooming gangs in the UK. You’re not supposed to notice, of course. You’re just supposed to pretend you don’t see what’s staring you in the face.
After public outcry, there have been multiple official investigations. They’ve looked in detail at police procedures for handling complaints, interviewed survivors of the abuse and documented the cowardly failings of social services, local government and the police to protect vulnerable little girls from the depredations of hideous creatures like those convicted this last Friday.
All of these reports have shied away from addressing the obvious facts about the race and religion of the perpetrators and the race and religion of the victims. There may be a passing remark about policemen feeling anxious not to be labelled “racist” if they pulled over Asian taxi drivers trafficking white children around northern towns—but that will be the only trace you’ll find of the true story behind these avoidable tragedies.
Click here to read this piece on the Infowars website now.
THE OG: ARMS
There's a trend towards building big arms today. This is fine as long as two provisos are followed. First, an arm should have a balanced development between the biceps and triceps. Second, a grossly overdeveloped arm matched with a pair of puny legs or underdeveloped shoulders looks ghastly. I abhor seeing arms that are out of proportion with the rest of the body. Get big by all means, but keep the the physique balanced.
In this instalment, we look at Vince Gironda’s approach to building big, balance biceps and triceps. Vince noted that too many bodybuilders and lifters favour the biceps at the expense of the triceps, and therefore missed out on the fullest possible development of their arms. The triceps are the bigger muscle!
Click here to read this.
ANCESTRAL EATING: THE CASE FOR RAW MILK
A controversy has arisen in Britain and also in South Africa upon the important problem of a clean, fresh milk-supply versus the pasteurizing of all milk.
Speaking generally, a fresh milk-supply is advocated by the producer-distributor, while pasteurization is advocated by the large combines and milk-distributing companies, in many of which the Prudential Insurance Company holds large interests. The material for conflicting interests is obvious as between these contending organizations.
In this week’s instalment of ancestral eating, I present you with an important historical document: an essay by an eminent South African doctor on the benefits of raw as opposed to pasteurised milk. The essay is a reminder of the truth about the spread of pasteurisation—that it served corporate interests far more than being a matter of public health—and also shows that widespread pasteurisation was opposed by learned professionals with detailed scientific evidence. It’s all too easy, if you believe rags like Politico, to think that raw-milk advocacy has always been the preserve of cranks and “right-wing conspiracy theorists.”
Read the essay here.
STUDY OF THE WEEK
A new study in the journal Environmental Pollution suggests that skin exposure to microplastics could have a role to play not only in skin aging, but also in skin cancer, rates of which have increased massively in recent decades.
As the researchers behind the study note, this is the first study to look at the effects of microplastics on skin cells in particular. We’ve had studies of microplastics entering the body through the gut and the lungs, but not the skin.
Although this study wasn’t carried out on living creatures (humans or rodents), we can assume that the findings will hold for us and for other animals. I’m sure in the near future we’ll see studies that look directly at microplastic exposure via the skin, whether under experimental conditions in the lab or in the wild, among creatures that are habitually exposed to microplastics in significant quantities on the surface of their bodies—fish and sea creatures, for example.
It’s worth noting that microplastics can probably and do migrate into the skin cells via an internal route too. By that I mean, microplastics enter the body through the gut or lungs, pass into the blood and from the blood end up in skin tissue. This will make it more complicated, at least in the wild, to determine the extent to which microplastics enter the body via the skin, as opposed to through the mouth or nose. Experiments will have to be devised to quantify the proportion of microplastic particles that make it through the skin…
Click here to read more about this study, which has some pretty wide-ranging implications for our understanding of skin diseases in the modern world.
I wonder if, counterintuitively, bullying and fat shaming ("internalised weight stigma") along with controversies over big corporations producing and promoting processed foods that create ever more obesity in the population, might be a cause of fat positivity, in that the "fats" are another group that has come to see themselves as victims and take pride in their victimhood.
I am so lucky to have access to a 24 hour Milchautomat 10 minutes away from where I Iive in Switzerland. You bring your own bottles, pay in coins, and get fresh raw milk that comes from the cows you pass on the way, grazing on grass and clover. I also buy sheep and goat milk (this is unfortunately pasteurised but thankfully not homogenised). Whenever an American friend visits I take them to get some raw milk. It is for newbies eye-opening. Once you go raw, you are never the same. If only more people knew what they are missing.