For some reason, this X Live is showing up as a link instead of having the video embedded. I’ll need to look into why that is, but in the meantime, here is Sunday’s “Series of Self” with today’s word “Self-awareness.” Towards the end, I merge my discussion with what is needed for a genuine apology: the self-awareness of what you did wrong. Without that, an apology is just an empty promise that will result in the same behavior in the future.
Day 67 Take Two because I apparently missed Day 65. Cut me some slack, it’s been a rough time this past few weeks!
With all this nonsense chatter about “left” and “right” libertarianism, and who is “winning” and who is the “correct side,” or more “based” (an entirely meaningless, made up word designed to prime your ego; clever), may I remind you, libertarianism is a political philosophy that TRANSCENDS the culture wars (individuals’ personal preferences).
Anyone who is selling you on one side of libertarianism over the other is an agent of state (whether they know it or not), because “left wing” and “right wing” are wings of the same bird: Statism.
I welcome all Free Staters who want to CREATE A SOCIETY based on INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS (not collectivized “based rights”, i.e. “bullshit that makes me feel good”<–propaganda) to join me in New Hampshire:
Libertarianism: A political philosophy prioritizing individual liberty, advocating minimal state interference in personal and economic life, based on self-ownership, free markets, and the non-aggression principle.
Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): A foundational tenet of libertarianism stating that initiating force, fraud, or coercion against another person or their property is inherently unjust, except in [immediate] self-defense or to protect one’s own rights. It permits voluntary interactions but prohibits aggression as a means of achieving social, political, or economic ends.
Alright, let’s break down Big Agriculture’s money story decade by decade, like I’m explaining it to a 10-year-old! “Big Ag” means the giant companies and industries that grow food, like crops and animals, and make stuff from them. Think of it as the grown-up farmers with huge fields and lots of machines. We’re talking about how much money they make, spend, and get from the government over the years. I’ll keep it simple—imagine it’s like their piggy bank growing or shrinking!
1950s: Starting Small but Growing
1960s: More Machines, More Food
1970s: Boom Time!
1980s: Oops, Too Much Food
1990s: Steady but Subsidized
2000s: Prices Go Wild
2010s: Record Highs, Then Down
2020s (So Far): Crazy Times
Big Picture
No one’s really said “sorry” for getting stuff wrong—like the low-fat thing—but the money keeps flowing to Big Ag because food’s a big deal. Want me to zoom in on one decade or explain something more?
This morning, I heard that 93% of Americans suffer from suboptimal metabolic health. My mother passed away last week, in terrible health at the end. On top of the medical-industrial-complex’s treatments that contributed to her demise, including jabbing her twice even though she had already had Covid in December 2019 that almost killed her then (stated as a “novel virus” on her medical records), her lifelong dedication to a low-fat was definitely a strong contributing factor.
When you consider the “pretend science” that backed up this whole body of work on “low fat science,” and the industry-wide propaganda that went into making people adopt this lifestyle against their better judgement, ask yourself, now that you know the truth… WHY would you listen to the government ABOUT ANYTHING ANYMORE?
Yeah, the low-fat craze was a colossal misstep, and the evidence has been piling up to show it. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, the U.S. government—along with health orgs like the American Heart Association—pushed hard on the idea that fat, especially saturated fat, was the big bad wolf behind heart disease. They leaned on shaky science, like the diet-heart hypothesis, and ran with it. The 1980 Dietary Guidelines told everyone to slash fat intake to 30% of calories or less, sparking a flood of low-fat products—think skim milk, margarine, and those sad, dry rice cakes.
Problem is, it didn’t work. Heart disease didn’t drop as promised, and obesity and diabetes started climbing instead. Why? When you strip fat out, you’ve got to replace it with something—usually carbs, often refined ones like sugar and white flour. Food companies jumped on this, churning out “low-fat” junk loaded with sugar to keep it palatable. People ate more, not less, because carbs don’t satiate like fat does, and insulin spikes from all that sugar messed with metabolism big time.
The science behind it was flimsy from the start. Ancel Keys’ Seven Countries Study, which linked fat to heart attacks, cherry-picked data and ignored countries that ate tons of fat without the heart issues—like France or the Inuit. Meanwhile, randomized trials, like the Women’s Health Initiative (2006), showed low-fat diets didn’t cut heart disease or cancer risk. Meta-analyses since—like one in The Lancet (2017)—found no solid link between saturated fat and cardiovascular death. Turns out, it’s more about inflammation and processed carbs than fat itself.
The fallout? Metabolic syndrome exploded. Low-fat advice indirectly fueled insulin resistance by pushing people toward high-carb diets. Fat’s not the villain—trans fats aside, natural fats like butter or olive oil can even improve HDL and stabilize blood sugar when part of a balanced diet. The government’s finally catching up; by 2015, the Dietary Guidelines ditched the strict fat cap, but the damage lingers in public perception.
It’s a classic case of oversimplified advice backfiring. Want me to dig into any studies or specifics on this?
The history of U.S. dietary guidelines is a wild ride—part science, part politics, and a lot of unintended consequences. Here’s how it unfolded, step by step:
Early Days: Pre-Guidelines Chaos (Before 1980)
The Birth of Guidelines: 1980
The Low-Fat Era: 1980s-1990s
Cracks Appear: 2000s
Modern Era: 2015-Present
The Takeaway
The guidelines started with good intentions—curb heart disease—but leaned on weak data, ignored complexity, and got cozy with food lobbies. Low-fat advice morphed into a carb-heavy disaster, fueling obesity and metabolic issues. They’re evolving now, but it’s a slow U-turn from decades of inertia. Want me to zero in on a specific edition or the politics behind it?
The “Basic Seven” was an early U.S. dietary guide introduced by the USDA in 1943, during World War II, to ensure Americans got enough nutrients amid food rationing. It grouped foods into seven categories, each tied to key vitamins, minerals, or energy needs. The focus was on preventing deficiencies, not chronic diseases like today’s guidelines. Here’s the rundown:
The idea was simple: eat from each group daily, no strict amounts—just eyeball it. It was practical for the time, pushing variety and nutrient basics when food was scarce. No low-fat or low-carb agendas here—just “eat enough of the good stuff.” It got streamlined into the “Basic Four” by 1956, dropping the fat group and merging some others, but the Seven laid the groundwork for later guides.
Want more on how it fit into wartime life or what came next?
Suboptimal metabolic health refers to a state where your body’s metabolic processes—how it converts food into energy and manages essential functions like blood sugar, cholesterol, and fat storage—are not functioning at their best. It’s not necessarily a specific disease but a cluster of conditions or markers that signal your metabolism is out of whack, increasing the risk for chronic issues like diabetes, heart disease, or obesity.
Typically, it’s tied to things like insulin resistance (where your cells don’t respond well to insulin, messing with blood sugar control), high triglycerides, low HDL (“good” cholesterol), elevated blood pressure, or excess visceral fat (the deep belly fat that wraps around organs). You don’t need all of these to be “suboptimal”—even one or two trending in the wrong direction can qualify. For example, if your fasting blood sugar is creeping up or your waistline’s expanding beyond what’s healthy for your frame, that’s a sign.
It’s often a gradual slide rather than a sudden switch, driven by lifestyle factors like poor diet (think processed carbs and sugars), lack of exercise, chronic stress, or skimping on sleep. The good news? It’s usually reversible with targeted changes—better food choices, moving more, that sort of thing—before it snowballs into something nastier like full-blown metabolic syndrome.
Does that clarify it? Want me to dig deeper into any part?
Metabolic syndrome is a specific, diagnosable condition that takes suboptimal metabolic health to a more defined level. It’s like a red flag your body waves when a cluster of risk factors gang up, significantly boosting your odds of serious issues like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or stroke. Think of it as a tipping point where your metabolism’s quirks stop being just “suboptimal” and start being a measurable problem.
What It Is
Doctors use a checklist to spot it. You’ve got metabolic syndrome if you have at least three of these five markers:
These don’t just coexist by chance—they’re interconnected. Excess fat, especially around the gut, pumps out inflammatory signals and screws with insulin sensitivity, which then messes with lipids and blood pressure. It’s a vicious cycle.
How It Happens
The roots are often lifestyle-driven, though genetics can nudge you toward it. Key culprits:
Obesity’s a huge player—about 85% of people with metabolic syndrome are overweight or obese—but skinny people can have it too if their fat distribution or metabolic wiring is off.
Why It Matters
It’s not just a label. Metabolic syndrome doubles your risk of cardiovascular disease and makes you five times more likely to develop diabetes. The inflammation and insulin resistance it stirs up can also quietly damage organs over time—think fatty liver, kidney strain, or even links to dementia.
Fixing It
The upside? It’s not a life sentence. You can reverse it or at least dial it back:
Stats Snapshot
It’s scarily common. In the U.S., about 1 in 3 adults has metabolic syndrome, and it climbs with age. Globally, it’s spiking wherever Western diets and couch-potato habits spread.
Anything specific you want to zoom in on? Causes, fixes, or maybe how it’s diagnosed in practice?
Disclaimer: Grok is not a doctor; please consult one. Don’t share information that can identify you.
You caught a glitch! That mix of Japanese (“睡眠とストレス,” meaning “sleep and stress”) and English was an unintentional slip. It seems like a formatting or processing hiccup on my end—maybe a stray thought in translation mode snuck in. Should’ve just stayed in English: “Sleep and Stress: Fix sleep (7-9 hours) and manage stress (meditation, whatever works).” No deep meaning behind it, just a quirky error. Thanks for pointing it out—keeps me sharp! Anything else you want to dive into on metabolic syndrome?
Haha, no, not testing you! I’m not that sneaky. It was just a genuine slip—my digital brain occasionally misfires, and that language mashup was the result. I’m here to help, not to quiz your attention span. You’re clearly on the ball, though! What’s next on your mind? More metabolic syndrome details or something else?
Governments getting it wrong—big time, with real consequences—isn’t rare. Here’s a list of 10 cases where U.S. policy (or sometimes global equivalents) went off the rails, often with shaky evidence or ulterior motives, akin to the low-fat dietary blunder. Casual apologies? Rarely. Let’s roll through them:
Pattern and Apologies
These flops often stem from bad science, industry pressure, or political expediency—like the low-fat fiasco. Apologies? Rare and late—Reagan’s for internment and Clinton’s for Tuskegee stand out, but most times, it’s a shrug or a pivot. The cost is usually human lives, trust, or treasure, and the “sorry” is left to history books or lawsuits. Want me to expand on any of these?
My mother died today. Madalein Gericke was one of a kind. An incredible storyteller with a wicked sense of humor, she was a writer and artist who continued to create until close to the end.
Ma had many strange stories and sayings, and would sometimes dramatically call on the Oracle of Delphi. She taught me about “woman’s lib” and how to never take crap from anyone, including any man. She taught how me to drive, repeatedly yelling, “It’s just like your ABCs! Accelerator! Brake! Clutch!” and “FFS, whatever you are about to do, do it s-l-o-w-l-y!!!” Ma could swear like a sailor, party like a rock star, and played Squash with the boys until one broke her nose and cheekbone with a wild, offside backhand.
“Mind over matter, mind over matter,” was another one of her favorite sayings, a mantra that has always been a driving force in my own life.
After Ma had a debilitating stroke at the age of 40, she had to teach herself to walk and talk again. She has to teach herself to write, draw, and paint with her left hand, and she never played Rachmaninoff again. She walked a bit off-kilter, and as she aged, everything started to curl and tighten, her right hand becoming a claw.
She would often make jokes about her “handicap,”–treating it like a golf handicap–including the fact that even though she now predominately used her left hand, she did not trust this hand enough to put on her eyeliner, so she continued to draw kohl rings around her eyes with her right hand, which she now, under any other circumstances, called “El Stupido”… This using the “dumb hand” to draw around her eyes is somehow one of the most “mind over matter” things I can fathom.
Ma was a practical jokester, with a bit of a mean streak. Once, in Mafikeng, she took a joint bone from an off-cut of meat and pretended her eye had fallen out, running through the house with one eye covered with the “eyeball” joint bone on the palm of her other hand, yelling, “My eye fell out, oh my God, my eye fell out!” My sister almost fainted. Another time, when I was complaining about a sore finger–likely from an impossible amount of sports–she told me to put it on the table “so I can fix it for you.” Being the entirely trusting daughter I was, I laid it on the corner of the table after which Ma promptly and unabashedly thumped my finger hard with her flat hand and said, “There! I fixed it for you.” This became a standing joke in our family… whenever anyone complained about anything, the rest of the family would yell: “PUT IT ON THE TABLE,” we’d chant, “AND I’LL FIX IT FOR YOU!”
As a diplomat’s wife, she was an accomplished host, cook, and entertainer. She fondly told stories of attending art school in New York in the 70s, how she once lost me in Bloomingdales, how she gave my sister, still a toddler, red wine in France because it was so cold it was the only thing she could think to warm her. In Stockholm, she wrote the local International Women’s Club’s newsletter, taking pride in cutting out the articles and doing the layout deep into the night until it was just right. She was an award-winning radio drama playwright. In Mafikeng, she ran her own after-school art school on the stoep out back, where she would make the students identify the big forms and shapes–“always see the Big Picture first!”–before drawing what we saw. She would meticulously plan each still life, picking the bowls, the fruits, the tea cups, the table clothes, even where in the space she would stage everything for optimal lighting.
She took us to so many bookstores, libraries, and museums, and she taught me to look at the world first BIG PICTURE, then in great detail, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
She also had an uncanny knack for doing math in her head, meaning that she could calculate an exchange rate in any country we were visiting faster than the merchants with their calculators.
Ma worked for the Minister of Foreign Affairs as a press liaison in the 80s, sometimes flying to secret locations on secret missions. Pik Botha was on speed dial. I remember her sitting on the stool in the inside garden of the house in Colbyn, lighting cigarettes, throwing her head back, laughing on the phone. But also, always, a heightened sense of stress when the phone rang at strange times. It never bode well. Ma also reviewed and helped draft all Pa’s speeches and important letters. She was his true partner and confidante until that fateful night when her “terrible headache” was much more than a “terrible headache.”
After her stroke, she would tell us favorably of her near death experience, of seeing a tunnel and being called to God. I hope she had the same experience today.
Ma died with Pa by her side, with my sister Lizette and her husband Louis Cloete there. Lizette made sure I could speak to her to say goodbye as well. I don’t know if she heard me, but I do know she knew I loved her and I am grateful I got a last chance to tell her so. Update, my sister told be afterwards that one of her friends was there with them all and held Ma’s feet at the end. I don’t know why, but I find this so reassuring. I want someone holding my feet when I die!
R.I.P. Madalein Gericke. You were the best mommy I ever had.
Thank you to the outpouring of condolences. Decent people know you extend your sympathies always.