You might be referring to a quote from Paul Stamets. I am not an expert, so here's my anecdotal take on it: when I drink alcohol, my mild tinitus completely fades away. I'm highly suspecting it has something to do with lowering blood pressure. Psylocybine is also known to affect blood pressure, (both rising and lowering). Then again, so is trying to relax. Being a micro doser myself, I have become very sceptical about the psylocybine craze lately. It's being advocated as a panacea, which it's obviously not. I know you are referring to an anecdote, but it's not far off from what I've seen being pushed by these so called 'institutions' without any substantial evidence. The quackery going on is pretty worrysome and will end up damaging the image of psylocybine yet again, imho.
Bea Johnson's book Zero Waste Home (and talks) is the go to on how to start.
My gf works towards a 'zero-waste' household, but you'd have to cut back on a lot of products. It's not impossible, but it does require sacrifice. However, you will discover new things which will compensate for that.
I can recommend you give it a go though, maybe for just a month. You'll learn a lot, discover interesting new products and your local zero-waste shops and sharpen your overall awareness about everyday use of plastic.
I don't want to downplay such efforts; all good to you being ahead of the curve.
That being said: average people work 8 hours a day, have a family, and other responsibilities. Stuff like this takes a considerable amount of time, money, and effort. Which is why I believe it should be dealt with top-down such as a recent addition of small plastic bottles to the container-deposit legislation.
I have a different minor example on how to add good weight to the problem: go outside with part of your family (or whole) and gather plastic on the streets. Kids like the fresh air, walk, and small tasks they get. It makes your neighborhood look less impoverished/more proper on top of that. Here in my city, they give the sticks to grab the plastic for free. And I wouldn't call it a progressive city (VVD). If you used the stick for one hour they got the investment back (7,50 EUR last time I checked).
> Stuff like this takes a considerable amount of time, money, and effort.
Indeed, and by far most of the world doesn't even have any "local zero-waste shops"... in much of the developing world the amount of plastic waste the average consumer produces is still rising and nowhere near peaking, and the consumers there are still seeing this as a sign of their increasing prosperity rather than a fundamental problem.
When I was a little kid I used to lay on my back in the garden when there was a clear night sky. I would watch numerous shooting stars and slowly moving dots (turned out to be satellites).
One night laying there, out of the blue, I heard something hit the gravel path that was next to where I was laying. I searched the area where I figured the thing had fallen, but of course I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. There was no light, no sound and no trees from which something could have fallen. I was convinced it was a fragment of a meteorite, but seeing this chart I can only flow this childhood conviction out of existence.
Coming to realize, it was most likely just my dad playing tricks on me. Either way, it still makes me feel warm inside thinking about that moment.
I love everything Werner Herzog does, but I wasn't aware of this gem. What a great tip.
The level of artistry of the Chauvet Cave is mind boggling and unlike anything I knew from rock art. There's a bear drawing that could be straight from the hand of Milt Kahl, I can hardly believe it. And the fact that some of these drawings are made from a continuous line.
I'm not too sure about the animation theory though, the proof is in the pudding. It shouldn't be that hard to replicate the animation effect if it were true, yet there's no convincing example. I'm sure they are trying to capture movement, but I'm still not convinced they were able to animate it as described in the article.
Thanks for sending me through the rabbithole of prehistoric art!
I've heard some people (Rhonda Patrick from the top of my mind) say that the omega 3 coming from vegan sources (nuts, seeds, algae...) would not be as efficient as their non-vegan counterpart even if they are already converted to epa/dha. I haven't been able to find any conclusive research on this though. Anyone one with some expertise is the field caring to clarify?
I am not sure what you mean by organic and non-organic.
The chemical synthesis of the omega-3 acids is too expensive, so all commercial products claiming to contain omega-3 acids contain such acids that have been extracted from living beings. Therefore all commercial omega-3 acids are organic.
Because the omega-3 acids are expensive, they frequently are sold diluted in some other kind of oil.
The oil used for dilution should be some good quality vegetable oil. Unfortunately there are cases when some junk oil is used for dilution, possibly including various garbage, e.g. colorants or flavors.
Therefore, when choosing an omega-3 supplement, it is good to check the list of ingredients to see whether the good omega-oil is not mixed with a bunch of undesirable, possibly non-organic, substances.
The main component, i.e. the omega-3 acids, can be found in one of 3 sources:
1. A few vegetable sources with short-chain omega-3 acids, e.g. walnut cores, flax seed or hemp seed
2. Fish oil, e.g. cod liver oil or salmon oil
3. "Algae" omega-3 oil
The first group of omega-3 sources does no harm and people who eat enough animal food might not need anything else.
On the other hand, people who eat little or no animal food must eat some omega-3 supplements belonging either to the second or to the third group.
There is no efficiency difference between fish oil and "algae" oil. The only difference is that the "algae" oil is more expensive, but it is available for those who do not want fish oil.
Like I have said, it is imperious to check the composition of any supplement, to see which is the real content in EPA and DHA and whether they are not mixed with some junk.
Many omega-3 supplements appear to be cheaper, but they are diluted and their real cost per EPA+DHA may be higher than of other non-diluted supplements.
If by "organic" and "non-organic", you have meant omega-3 acids included in meat or animal organs versus omega-3 in oil extracts, then the answer is that there is no difference.
During digestion, the fatty acids are separated from the food and they are absorbed as such by your intestine.
So unlike for some vitamins or minerals, which might behave differently in the form included in dietary supplements versus the form included in natural food, for fatty acids there are no such concerns.
The only thing is that many omega-3 supplements are sold as ingestible capsules, for the benefit of those who do not like to eat oil.
In my opinion eating capsules is a bad choice. I believe that it is better to buy bottled oil containing omega-3 acids. Both fish oil, e.g. cod liver oil, and "algae" oil are available in bottles.
Then you can mix a little omega-3 oil with olive oil or another kind of oil that you use at cooking (by mixing it to the food after cooking and cooling, otherwise the omega-3 oil would be degraded by heating).
If you do like this, then really there exists no difference between the omega-3 from a supplement and the omega-3 from meat, because they would be digested and absorbed in identical environments.
Otherwise, when the oil is released from capsules, the local concentration might be too high overloading the absorption system in the intestine, so some of the oil could be wasted compared to the case when the oil is mixed with other food.
I realized what I wrote and edited before you could finish your reply. Indeed, they're all organic, I meant to say the difference between vegan and non-vegan.
Either way, wasn't aware about the junk oil they sometimes use. Interesting.
The supplement I'm currently using (Minami veganDHA) only contains only DHA which you said isn't enough and would need to be suplemented with EPA.
The world of supplements is so complicated with a lot of FUD out there. For some reason it's difficult for me to find an authority on supplements that gives a nuanced and explanatory view on things and isn't just pushing affiliate links.
So, thanks for the insightful response, super helpful!
Fish oil may also contain heavy metals due to accumulation of those through food chain. Some companies claim to filter those, but with algae there is no such risk at all.
Even if the algae comes from sea water containing mercury the resulting oil should have a lower concentration of mercury than similar fish oil would have. Heavy metals accumulate up the food chain as larger predators eat smaller ones. Algae is about as low on the food chain as you can get for sealife that humans consume.
That is what we all hope, whenever we buy any kind of food, regardless if it is fish or algae.
But of course it is good to also verify whatever you can, because food standards may be too lax or not enforced well enough.
So I agree with the other poster that mentioned the risk of mercury content for fish products, which however exists for all marine products, including algae products, even if it is lower than for small fish and even lower than for large fish.
Nevertheless, I hope that any fish product or algae product that is sold would be sampled and analyzed from time to time to verify that it does not contain harmful substances.
However, I have encountered a lot of uses of "imperious" instead of "imperative", coming from native speakers, which is why I happened to make this choice of words, which is not the right one.
Gmail has this feature baked in. Append a + sign to the username and then append any string you want, ie. username+ycombinator@gmail.com. It will forward these mails to your regular email address.
I started doing this for the exact same reason as mentioned above, but you can obviously do more than just creating honeypots.
Also you have to ignore the fact that it's Google...
I do this. A small annoyance can crop up when trying to log in to a service with your + modified email address. Hmmm, what did I append after the plus? If you can't remember that, you can't use the "forgot my password" function either :)
If something like this would occur, it would be comparable to the burning of the library of Alexandria. That's why digitizing the collection is such an important feat.
Art isn't only something that can be revered. Works of art are basically historical documents that contain a narrative of that period. It's not all self-portraits of people missing an ear or reclining nudes, even though they too contain a lot of information that is telling of the period they were made in.
Up until some two hundred years ago artists like painters and sculptors, were some of the few that could actually immortalize, or at least significantly prolong the normal lifespan of people, things or events.
I encourage anyone to take some time to go through these online collections. It's amazing what you'll learn about history by being inquisitive about the subject matter. I can also recommend the Arts & Culture project by Google, which already indexed a tremendous amount of the Rijksmuseum's catalogue.
> comparable to the burning of the library of Alexandria
While I will be the first to agree with you that paintings and other visual art is precious and worth keeping, it is not on the same level as books and knowledge. Comparing these is not doing justice to either one.
This isn't about neonics specifically, it's about a range of pesticides that are being used.
Again, it doesn't affect only honey bees. Honey bees exist in an ecosystem of pollinators of which they contrive only a small percentage.
There's also the fact that neonics ao. are persistent for at least a couple of years, affecting the crops after the one for which they were originally intended. That is why along with temporarily allowing certain pesticides, certain crops are being prohibited or enforced as a follow up crop.
It gets complicated pretty quickly. Laissez-faire indeed...
