ScoopGalore
what can we do
PROBLEM #1
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Big Companies playing with our food
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While we can all agree that the food we buy at the grocery store is much better than 10 years ago, much still remains to be done. The past decade(s?) have been more about making money than about keeping healthy and fit.
In the past, us westerners went from a diet of local farm produce and imported spices and other foods, to a more processed living style. Eggs and milk were removed from many traditional recipes and replaced by their dried constituents, or by E-numbers that could be made more cost-efficiently. It took us at least a decade to realise what it was doing to our bodies. Remember that time when just about everyone was either constipated or loose? When irritable bowel syndrome and IBD were getting more common amongst the populace?
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Well, I can tell you that organic produce that is made with respect for nature makes you feel very differently. These foods are not engineered to make you feel a certain way, or distribute your energy for you, or slow down or speed up the food in your intestinal tract. You might think that it's insane to think such a thing of common foods produced by well-known companies like Unilever and FrieslandCampina, but research regarding modified starches seems to be booming in this sector. Go check out the new ingredients at your local grocery market.
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My personal experience with a portion of these modified starches is bloating, painful cramps, gas formation, and diarrhoea. I can't tell you which types of modified starch cause these symptoms, but my hypothesis is that the more it resembles a naturally occurring substance in the human food chain, the more easily it can be digested and the less stress it would put on the digestive system. I am here talking about the difference between a simple heated starch that could come from your kitchen versus an engineered molecule with an unpronouncable name that was originally based on a starch. Until now these are both caught under their umbrella term modified starches. Companies often won't tell you which one they used, because it is part of their secret recipe formula.
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Instead of adding extra stress to our bodies by having to break down and deal with these new substances (which can be evolutionarily brand new objects), I'd prefer to eat a diet of simple things that have roots in the ground, and if you need to eat animals every once in a while, make sure that these come from a farmer who takes good care of them until it is time for them to go.
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Keywords: organic, biodynamic, permaculture
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(Will find sources later; oh wait, you can do that too;))
Got Milk?
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Did you know that cow milk contains phosphorous? Several years ago, when I was reading up on these things a lot due to bowel problems, I came across an article that explained the ratios of calcium to phosphorous. Human breast milk has a Ca:P ratio of about 1.7 (Dorea, 1999), while this ratio is much lower in cow milk. This means that cow milk contains a relative abundance of phosphorous. From memory, the phosporous content was about three times higher than in human breast milk.
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Calcium and phosphorous show a homeostatic relationship in the body that regulates the calcium content of bones. This is why it is important to take into account the ratio of calcium to phosphorous in our food, as we don't want to draw calcium from our bones to be able to process the excess phosphorous.
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"In a randomized controlled trial conducted on healthy women, high phosphorous intake adversely influenced bone metabolism by increasing bone resorption and decreasing bone formation" (Kemi et al., 2006)
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See also: Lee et al., 2014
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More info about this:
Calcium Phosphorous Homeostasis
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PROBLEM #2
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I'm scared of cctv cameras
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I don't know about you, but these things always give me the chills. Who thought it was a good idea to arbitrarily remove the privacy of the masses (yes, including you when you walk in the range of one) under the premise of added safety and observation. I mean, most of us don't really know who is watching these, yet some of us appear daily on their cameras. To safeguard individuals and societies against mass observation, privacy infringement, biased jugdement and stigmatization based on observable flagged parameters that simply cannot be good enough to explain what a human being is thinking or feeling. Us humans have a hard time doing that amongst ourselves sometimes. So, would it be too much to ask for a demographically representative panel to monitor what these companies are doing with the data of the people they observe? To give those who involuntarily have to walk in their sights to buy a bread, some peace of mind.
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"When I feel watched by one, I instinctively start acting as if under attack, and trying to remove myself from it's sight. Then I feel like I'm some sort of criminal, until I stop caring that they suspect me of being a criminal. I would act like one for them, they got nothing on me. But it does feel awkward still, their presence. I notice the atmosphere changing to a more individual and introvert world, whenever I notice one hanging. I mean what the hell kind of world do we live in these days? A robot-controlled madness landscape with resource-depleting machines, while us humans are running around from task to task without the time and freedom to properly relax. If you really have a problem, then it's obvious that you would use one, and preferably set up in a way so that you do not bother any innocent bystanders with the mother company's prying eyes (do check their GDPR policy though). But if you can solve it in another way, that would make it so much calmer for everyone who treats their surroundings with respect."
Hydroponic produce
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Hydroponic growing is a technique that allows for plants to be grown in an aquaeous solution containing nutrients, generating larger yields per square meter. This technique, however, adds only the nutrients we know and have scienced out amongst eachother by virtue of its design.
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I would be really interested in studies investigating why produce grown in the earth has a vibrance that is not seen in hydroponically grown vegetables. In countries like the Netherlands where a lot of the (export) produce is grown hydroponically, and countries where parts of the soil is damaged by overusing the land, it makes a lot of sense to think about permaculture fields, organically produced vegetables, and fractal farmlands.
Respect human privacy
point your cams solely
at your own property
please
Who's afraid of the GDPR?
principles
your rights
Xtal Rupees: rDjuZu3pq7oBV5zKSFbgFdnwSsreP9ZPUP
RELATED ISSUES
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FACIAL RECOGNITION SYSTEMS AND SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM
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The following is unconfirmed info that is nevertheless valid food for thought. Evolution of facial recognition algorithms, camera technology and their presence in the daily lives of citizens in present times (2018) require a discussion of the use of these techniques and their consequences for human behaviour. Did the presence of these fleets of panoptical devices, sorted by maker and by design, also cause a change in the behaviour that was not foreseen? Namely the change in cultural values, the mental switch needed to make it normal for folks passing by, and the change in emotion when you are naturally sensitive to attention being focused at you, as humans used to have when surviving in ancient times.
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Luckily, these devices have not spread everywhere. Some streets are happily free of these culture-and-happiness-sucking devices, and like to remain that way, while others make it so that you cannot cross the street easily without being seen. We are humans, not minions to be indexed and followed around. Of course, some places benefit from having a camera installed by a decent company, which makes it easier for them to secure their property. But these are usually installed pointing at the property of the buyer of the camera or of the cctv service, and do not infringe on the privacy of folks walking or cycling by on public roads.
These days, I have noticed an emergence of hemispherical cameras on the outside of buildings in my neighbourhood. These are positioned to have a view of public roads that many locals have to pass to get from A to B. In theory, this could pose a major privacy risk for the people who live there or who pass these roads on their commute to work or school. In places where this is a prevalent issue, it might be possible to organize a demographically representative panel per municipality to oversee the use and management of how this privacy-sensitive data is managed and processed (see also: what is a DPO? and more from ), and how we can retain as much of the old ways of keeping the streets safe with social neighbourhoods and communes. In Japan, alcohol can be sold in vending machines on the street. Minors are not allowed to drink it, and this law is upheld mostly by local folks in a form of social control and upbringing. I propose we learn from them why this method preserves culture and local values, so that we can use it to make our neighbourhoods here in the Western world more pleasant to live in. Then we can all feel as relaxed or uptight about our situation as we would like to. We can help each other with our personal strengths, to bond together and solve problems - working from the ground up so that it's stable.
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Doing this will make it unnecessary and often even unwanted to place cctv observation cameras in these places, because the space is already managed by locals who have every reason to make their neighbourhood a pleasant space to live in.
How to feel secure and relaxed in your neighbourhood:
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The first step to feel secure is to find a place where you feel safe enough to let go of your worries. This can be your comfort zone. From here, you can try to think of nothing in particular and just observe the thoughts floating by. Think nothing in particular, just accept that these are thoughts floating by in your mind. If you find yourself catching on to a train of thought, remember that you are chasing a thought. Let go, and if needed the thought will arise again. At some point, you will notice that your mind becomes a lot calmer.
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Now that the surface of your mind has calmed down a bit, you can start to see the deeper layers of your mind that you could not see when you were focused on the sea of waves on the surface. What do you see?
Calmly assess the thoughts, without judgement or fear. If it helps, you can think of the thoughts as someone else's, or belonging to another part of you. Both options could be valid. It is entirely possible that you might want to let go of certain thoughts when you find out that they no longer serve you. On the other hand, you might want to experiment with some thoughts to see if these are real or just random thought memes you've picked up somewhere. Either way, never forget to question (anything posing as) authority until you understand why their actions are good for the rest as well.
Try talking to a psychiatrist about "spirituality"
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In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.
What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.
One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness. When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to “nervous depression,” Dr. Somé went to visit him.
“I was so shocked. That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I’ve seen in my village.” What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop.
This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation. As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself, “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”
Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world. In fact, psychic abilities are denigrated. When energies from the spiritual world emerge in a Western psyche, that individual is completely unequipped to integrate them or even recognize what is happening. The result can be terrifying. Without the proper context for and assistance in dealing with the breakthrough from another level of reality, for all practical purposes, the person is insane. Heavy dosing with anti-psychotic drugs compounds the problem and prevents the integration that could lead to soul development and growth in the individual who has received these energies.
On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process.
“The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave.
In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need. Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer. “The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship,” Dr. Somé explains. “More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world.”
“The Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer,” states Dr. Somé. “Consequently, there will be a tendency from the other world to keep trying as many people as possible in an attempt to get somebody’s attention. They have to try harder.” The spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized. “The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in,” he notes. The beings who were increasing the pain of the inmates on the mental hospital ward were actually attempting to merge with the inmates in order to get messages through to this world. The people they had chosen to merge with were getting no assistance in learning how to be a bridge between the worlds and the beings’ attempts to merge were thwarted. The result was the sustaining of the initial disorder of energy and the aborting of the birth of a healer.
Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity. Indigenous cultures don’t see it that way and, as a result, sensitive people don’t experience themselves as overly sensitive. In the West, “it is the overload of the culture they’re in that is just wrecking them,” observes Dr. Somé. The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.
— from The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia by Stephanie Marohn
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source: https://beyondmeds.com/2012/09/03/what-a-shaman-sees/