agree - i confess to writing the headline whilst fresh off listening to the podcast and wanting to direct attention to it - the conversations being hosted by Joe are a general threat to the narrative, but I do think that the Epstein episode is particularly dangerous as it is transforming the general "Big tech is a problem" theme into some specifics that might allow people to start actually addressing the issue...
I think with all these issues we start with a foggy awareness that something is wrong, then a specific concern about where the problem is, then a painful - and sometimes overwhelming "discovery" of the actualdetails of the problem, and then we start figuring out how to get round or rid of it.
I could have almost written your post myself as it's something that's been hugely on my mind. I'm a new christian - I'd been going to church about 2 years when everything shut down. No-one in my nuclear family goes to church or ever has. For 6 months I was carried forward by a strong faith, some good local fellowship and online church. And then I started to feel like my cup was running dry. Just as this happened, the church opened up again - they wanted to wait until we were allowed to sing and meet without masks. I started to get some church discipline back in my life - I really recognise that I need the support of fellow believers - i need regular fellowship with people who love God and want to talk about him and help each other deepen in relationship with him. Without it, I get too distracted by the world.
Anyway, we're in the UK and they brought back in mask mandates just before our church (which runs in a school) closed down for holidays, and then I got covid so haven't been able to go for a few weeks. Now i find myself really struggling - I really want to be part of a community that is seeking to centre their lives around God, but I don't want to lie or pretend and to me wearing a mask is doing both of those things. I'm happy to risk people's anger by not wearing a mask in shops etc, but it seems really disrespectful to a community that is gathering togehther out of choice to not wear it when they have explicitly asked us to follow the government guidelines - (I know whilst there are many who don't buy it, there are also many in the community who feel safer wearing masks. )
It's left me feeling like I don't know where I belong. I'm a young christian and I know I need the fellowship of more experienced believers to help me keep my focus where I want it to be, but I feel stuck. I don't not care about what they think of me, the way i do strangers in restaurants, shops etc, but I'm not close enough to anyone there to expect them to accomodate me refusing to follow the rules...
The result is I haven't been in church properly for nearly 2 years ago and I feel my focus on Jesus weakening. I also don't feel confident to walk into a completely new church with the intention of ignoring rules that the congregation is following...
And I agree with other posts - i think this is a deliberate attempt to weaken the church and I don't want to play a part in that but I honestly don't know what to do either...
A bit meh, but generally ok - sore throat for 1 day, headache for second, bit nauseous on third. I was taking a lot of honey and nigella sativa in the run up to catching it as we can't get ivermectin, as well as plenty of D3, C, Zinc, plus sporadic quercitin and nac, so wonder if that is why it's so mild. Or could just be that I had it before so immune system kicked in rapidly...
Interesting that i tested negative multiple times, even though i'm literally surrounded by people with same symptoms who have positive tests. Wonder if doing a mouthwash mutliple times a day could have impacted test results...
Just goes to show how useful the tests really are...
Had to go onto computer and log on just so I could upvote this.
What an amazing piece of writing - it captures the essence of my faith so beautifully. The dwelling on Christ is the most precious gift I've ever recieved - a port in any storm, a learning for every situation, a hope when hope is lost, encouragement when courage falters.
To those of you of long-standing faith - never lose sight of the precious gift that you have in knowing Christ, and never cease in your longing and praying to share that with those around you who are in ignorance. There is no greater gift you will ever be involved in giving a person than helping them to accept Christ into their heart - I speak from personal experience as someone who was 40 years in the wilderness before a brave and gracious friend held the space in which I began to learn who God reveals himself to be.
There is no greater treasure that I have or could imagine than the love for Jesus that is now in my heart and the gratitude that I have for those who helped me to that realisation knows no bounds - it's literally priceless.
well alright, I'll agree that the out of africa thing might distract, but it sounds like you've got a much stronger stance than I do against it, and I'll confess to being curious about what you know that I don't.... :)
I don't think that's how it would work - if it does work - and this is pure speculation - I imagine that there is simply someone who knows the direction in which they need people to go, and they would raise the profile of any genuinely anon created post that might further that goal.
it's just a hypothesis, but seems like a fairly simple way of helping people's thinking along without actually directing it.
Whilst I would never advocate against going outside, it's actually impossible to get sufficient vitamin D for many people purely by this mechanism alone - hence the point above about an Australian life-guard :) As the various videos make clear, even in a country such as Israel, with a fit doctor who swam outside for a long period every day, he was still Vitamin D deficient - not to the point of rickets, but to the point of sub-optimal immune function. The point I suppose I am trying to draw attention to is that your assumption (which was also my own until very recently) has been shown to be inconsistent with research.
This is actually why I was drawing attention to it, because from what I have been able to understand, it really could make a significant difference to how disease affects our societies - particularly those in northern latitudes - to shift our understanding of the extent to which our bodies rely on Vitamin D for proper function.
We need to have very high vitamin D (compared to common baseline levels) circulating in our blood all year round for proper function - in particular of the immune system, but many many cells have Vitamin D receptors.
I think this could be as significant a shift as the leap forward that came with improved sanitation.
The elderly have trouble absorbing Vitamin D, and so need higher supplementation levels to get the same effect as younger people. Vitamin K2 is also important when using high does vitamin D.
Hey, I'm making no claims, but it's definitely relevant to the post that dark and light skin process vitamin D differently, there definitely IS a theory postulating that humans migrated out of Africa (don't know if it's true or not and I was careful not to claim that it was) and I for one don't dismiss anything just because it causes me some discomfort. You don't find the truth if you've already made up your mind that certain things can't be true - hence the scientific world unnecessarily hobbling itself with the pre-supposition that miracles can't happen and Jesus isn't real...
That's an interesting experience to integerate into the mix. I wonder if you were taking just vitamin D3 or if you also took K2, and which brand you were using? What did you doctor say about your side-effects? Vitamin D is supposed to be extremely well tolerated? Also curious as to what your reasons were for supplementing with D3 (assuming it was D3 and not D2? ) and what you did instead?
More info on this available here:
No worries fren. Totally with you on the need to be as rigorous as we can be - we're just as vulnerable to bias as any other group but because we're dissenters we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard with information we present.
If you want to know more about blood clots, this video goes over recent papers that are beginning to uncover the mechanism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANmkIIxCQCw&t=345s