The Case for Macrodosing

Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor for Rolling Stone

 

Microdosing, where people take miniscule amounts of substances to change patterns of behavior, has brought psychedelics to the mainstream. But is there more to be gained with a much higher dose?

Read the original article.

Would you care for a drop of LSD in your morning tea? A capsule of psilocybin-mushroom dust with your daily vitamins? Such is the daily regimen for those who’ve taken up microdosing, reporting anecdotally just how much this new psychedelic trend has changed their lives. Over the past decade, researchers have delved into how taking small amounts of psychedelics help people combat depression, trauma, attention deficit disorder, and even physical pain. Indeed, author Ayelet Waldman wrote a New York Times bestselling memoir about it, A Really Good Day, while researchers like James Fadiman are among the most sought after voices, educating the newest generation of “psychonauts” about the wonders of psychedelics — albeit in miniscule, sub-perceptible doses.

But, can you really call yourself a “psychonaut” — a savvy explorer of psychedelic terrain — if you’ve never actually tripped? It’d be like saying you know what weed is like, even if you’ve only ever tried CBD. The data is limited, but, so far, it appears as though microdosing works for as long as a person continues taking microdoses. It can affect their mood and health which, of course, can also affect how they treat themselves and others, but doesn’t typically lead to massive, long-lasting transformations in personality and ideology, the way tripping might.

John Ivison: Mind-blowing Liberal spending spree a massive rip-off of future generations

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivers a fiscal update in the House of Commons on Nov. 30, 2020. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Without a doubt, this debt service is lower than ever. But that does not mean that taxpayers are not required to pay it; they just never stop paying it.

Now it is necessary to point out that the sums we are talking about are so mind-boggling — $ 621 billion in government spending this year — that shocked citizens have ignored them. Perhaps we should call it the banality of spending, a minister who buys a $ 16 orange juice causes thrombosis, but a government that doubles the net federal debt in five years would be re-elected by the majority if elections were held tomorrow. Likewise, it has been argued that liberals could be excused for their mistakes in the early fog of the pandemic. As one veteran policymaker pointed out, Ottawa realized that it could be fast or precise, but not both.

However, given the opportunity to realign benefits closer to loss of income, Liberals doubled, increasing the money available under wage subsidy and spending an additional $ 1,200 in Canadian child benefit to 1.6 million families.

Errors established as virtues?

Conrad Black: The Liberal government's policy of self-impoverishment will hurt us all

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland delivers a fiscal update in the House of Commons on Nov. 30. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Likewise, it goes without saying that with a little original thought and leadership, Canada could quickly become one of the greatest nations in the world, yet that will not be possible if we continue to impoverish ourselves in pursuit of a pipe dream.

Notably, Monday’s economic update from Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, while enriched with the usual lively comments intended to persuade Canadians to lift their hearts to a brighter future after COVID, was indeed an unrepentant confession of utter intellectual bankruptcy as a grave financial embarrassment to this government.

That said, it is appropriate to mention that in one year this government has more than doubled the national debt accumulated in the previous 153 years of the Canadian Confederation. You think you have a legitimate excuse because of the pandemic, but you don’t. The approach to the pandemic was wrong and the main objectives stated by the government in its search and achievement of re-election were also wrong, so we pledged to waste money on a large scale before the arrival of the coronavirus, and our wrong political response The virus has seriously aggravated what was already a serious state of misrule.

Without sense

Everything We’ve Learned About Modern Economic Theory Is Wrong

 

Ole Peters, a theoretical physicist in the U.K., claims to have the solution. All it would do is upend three centuries of economic thought.

The proposition is about as outlandish as it sounds: Everything we know about modern economics is wrong.

And the man who says he can prove it doesn’t have a degree in economics.

But Ole Peters is no ordinary crank. A physicist by training, his theory draws on research done in close collaboration with the late Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann, father of the quark. He’s also won over two noted thinkers in the world of finance — Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Michael Mauboussin — not to mention a groundswell of enthusiastic supporters in the Twittersphere.

China launches ‘gray-zone’ warfare to subdue Taiwan

 

Having crushed the resistance to its rule in Hong Kong, China is moving against Taiwan with irregular tactics meant to exhaust the island’s military — which is in bad shape to confront the threat. It’s unclear how the incoming Biden administration will respond.

TAIPEI — Months after eliminating a popular challenge to its rule in Hong Kong, China is turning to an even higher-stakes target: self-governing Taiwan. The island has been bracing for conflict with China for decades, and in some respects, that battle has now begun.

It’s not the final, titanic clash that Taiwan has long feared, with Chinese troops storming the beaches. Instead, the People’s Liberation Army, China’s two-million-strong military, has launched a form of “gray zone” warfare. In this irregular type of conflict, which stops short of an actual shooting war, the aim is to subdue the foe through exhaustion.

Beijing is conducting waves of threatening forays from the air while ratcheting up existing pressure tactics to erode Taiwan’s will to resist, say current and former senior Taiwanese and U.S. military officers. The flights, they say, complement amphibious landing exercises, naval patrols, cyber attacks and diplomatic isolation.

Sweden has exposed the cruel folly of lockdown

 

Sweden’s strategy was subjected to a global smear campaign, but now it’s showing results.

Before the coronavirus, Sweden for most people symbolised moderation and fairness. But since Covid, this Scandinavian social democracy has been maligned like few other countries on earth. The reason is, of course, that Sweden did not follow the rest of the world into lockdown. And because even their proponents recognise that lockdowns come at an extraordinarily high price — eviscerating our freedoms, laying waste to our economies and even damaging our health — the only European country which attempted to tread a more liberal path became the target of an extreme and hysterical smear campaign.

Throughout the spring and early summer, the negative headlines were relentless. The New York Times repeatedly branded Sweden a ‘pariah state’, while its no-lockdown policy apparently made it ‘the world’s cautionary tale’.

Posthaste: Expect your grocery bill to rise by nearly $700 in 2021 - the biggest annual increase in a decade

Food prices will rise 5 per cent next year, and vegetables will be among the most expensive. PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

 Canadians have likely spent more time in grocery stores than any other place this year (apart from their homes) as they collected ingredients to idle away the lockdown hours making an assortment of breads, octopus and yet another roast.

And now they can expect to spend even more money at the supermarket in 2021 adding to the already massive fortunes of the Walton and Weston families.

Canadians’ average grocery bill is forecast to rise as much as 5 per cent in 2021, as COVID-19 takes a toll on supply chains, according to Canada’s Food Price Report, an annual forecast published by Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph. This year, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of British Columbia also participated in the research.

“It’s a mixture of COVID-19-related expenditure, higher futures and climate change,” Sylvain Charlebois, lead author of the report, and director at Faculties of Management and Agriculture at Dalhousie, told the Financial Post.

…Hydrogen, WSJ Spin…

 The Wall Street Journal just published an article on Hydrogen where half the page was taken up with a propaganda-like illustration worthy of Pravda.

It begins with the statement:

“In a world shifting away from fossil fuels, major energy companies are making a grab for the rising hydrogen market.”

Is this true? Or is it an indication that the WSJ believes in catastrophic climate change?

The World Population in 2100, by Country

Read more…

Source: Iman Ghosh | Visual Capitalist

Marni Soupcoff: The future of meat has arrived

Chicken bites made from lab-grown cultured chicken developed by Eat Just. PHOTO BY EAT JUST, INC./HANDOUT VIA REUTERS

 In a world that is constantly evolving it is clear that it is “normal” for absolutely everything that surrounds us to evolve, but now, has the future of meat arrived? That said, it is necessary to indicate a relevant fact of interest to the public and that is that from ethics to environmental responsibility, laboratory-grown meat has more advantages to offer than any other food innovation in recent memory.

Now, in a move that is being hailed as a major turning point for the food industry, Singapore regulators have become the first in the world to approve the sale of lab-grown meat without slaughter. But what if consumers disgust the idea of chicken cells being grown in bioreactors to make development the watershed it should be?

Certainly, cultured meat has the potential to be better than “normal” meat in many ways, and while few people will care about all the benefits, most people will be touched by at least one of them.

A very considerable alternative

The Fraying of the US Global Currency Reserve System

Since autumn of 2019, I’ve been bearish on the dollar, meaning I have a longish-term outlook towards a weaker dollar.

This view began forming when the Federal Reserve cut interest rates in summer 2019, and then the view solidified with a catalyst after an overnight repo rate spike in September 2019 forced the Fed to begin supplying repo liquidity.

In my October 2, 2019 article, “The Most Crowded Trade“, I said to look for a weaker dollar in 2020, and also stated that the Fed would likely start expanding its balance sheet by buying Treasuries in 2020 or perhaps as early as that quarter in 2019 due to oversupply.

Days later, the Fed indeed announced that they will begin buying Treasuries, and as of this writing well over a year later, they haven’t stopped.

John Robson: Fiscal update shows a government totally divorced from reality

 

Notably, the update is no longer based on the treacherous terrain of ignoring or hiding this point. He is in the void of not understanding it. Now, it is clear that it is questioned and questions arise, as well as, what does this update have to do with everything?

That said, it is well known that it offers many things that are not to be liked, not because of the substance but because of the lack of it. Especially the outright and deliberate disregard for the fact that wealth cannot be redistributed, even among the worthiest, if it is not created first.

Certainly, public opinion has been noticed and in fact, it has been commented that all this clarifies that the Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland, was a fashionable intellectual because of fashion, not intellectuality and that in fact, she is so clueless like your boss, let alone your dazed colleagues for whom $ 400 billion could be untold trillion and would grin the same smirk.

Justifiable mistrust

When Governments Confiscate Wealth to Fund Government Programs

The entrepreneurs try to undertake only such projects as appear to promise profits. This means that they endeavor to use the scarce means of production in such a way that the most urgent needs will be satisfied first, and that no part of capital and labor will be devoted to the satisfaction of less urgent needs as long as a more urgent need, for whose satisfaction they could be used, goes unsatisfied.

When the government intervenes to make possible a project which promises, not profits, but losses, then there is only talk in public of the need which finds satisfaction through this intervention; we do not hear anything of the needs which fail to be satisfied because the government has diverted to other purposes the means of satisfying them. Only what is gained by the government action is considered, not also what it costs.

Diane Francis: A 'Great Reset' isn't the problem. The 'great rerun of stupid handouts' is

The Liberals may unleash more of the same — crony giveaways dressed up as “solutions” paid for by Canadian taxpayers. PHOTO BY BLAIR GABLE/REUTERS FILES

 

Grants and subsidies do not build economies and wealth. They only create dependency and mirage

Canadian governments have two aptitudes: raising taxes and giving away money.

Added to that problem are concerns that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is going to launch a “Great Reset,” a term coined years ago by the Davos elite, aimed at somehow transforming Canada from Sweden-lite into a green-socialist utopia.

Our only saving grace may be that the Liberals have already spent the country poor: with an unsustainable deficit and some of the highest taxes in the world, the government has limited wiggle room financially.

Feds keep spending taps open, put off big-ticket promises

Justin Trudeau’s government, which has delivered the biggest COVID-19 fiscal response in the industrialized world, announced plans for another dose of stimulus and vowed to continue priming the economy as long as needed.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland unveiled $51.7 billion of new spending over two years in a mini-budget Monday, led by an enhanced wages subsidy for business. Freeland also pledged, without detailing, another $70 billion to $100 billion of additional stimulus over three years to spur the recovery.

That spending isn’t in the fiscal framework, with Freeland promising to deliver it as needed going forward. Her plan signals the Canadian government isn’t straying from its “whatever it takes” mantra on spending.

But the finance minister clearly heeded calls for fiscal prudence. She put off any major structural spending announcements, promised any additional stimulus will be temporary and introduced new taxes on digital giants to help pay for it all.

Rex Murphy: The showdown at the Barbecue Corral

Police officers stand outside Adamson Barbecue restaurant, which had opened despite being ordered closed the day before, in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke on Nov. 25, 2020. PHOTO BY CARLOS OSORIO/REUTERS

 

It seems, according to the authorities, if a company is large enough, COVID-19 never visits. In a place with one owner and two employees, it is a hazard. On the one hand, a man who knows how to move between ribs and hot flames; on the other, Mayor John Tory’s law boys, ready to take down the takeout kingpin. That said, it was a Toronto fable for all time.

Likewise, according to the news reports, I deduce that there were no serious clashes. Mr. Adam Skelly, the owner of Adamson Barbecue, seems, even in the current furor, to be a pretty cool guy. He made a few plays before he was arrested, but it was all mostly smooth. However, it is necessary to indicate that it was the size and strength of the police presence, on horseback and on foot, that attracted the attention of a hundred iPhones. Smaller forces have invaded Belgium. All these men and women in blue in front of a single barbecue restaurant. Certainly, this was one of the key elements to highlight, the size of the deployment and the seriousness with which Toronto’s civic authorities were taking the matter.

Contradictions that bother

Barbara Kay: The problems with Bill C-6 and the gender affirmation model

PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

There are certainly problems with Bill C-6 and the gender affirmation model, in fact, you could say they are really notorious.

In reference to this, it is well known that sexual orientation and gender dysphoria are phenomena that are separate, however, it seems that Bill C-6 does not treat them as such.

Likewise, it is understood that this bill seeks to criminalize “conversion therapy”, a term that previously applied only to the practice of treating all sexual orientations, except heterosexuality, as deviations that need correction. However, it has been argued that, in its misleading combination of bait and sexual orientation change with gender dysphoria, conversion therapy has been extended to include any treatment that slows or discourages a young person from early medical gender transition. And it is that, in reality, sexual orientation and gender dysphoria are separate phenomena. A single therapeutic ban covering both should have raised suspicions from more than the few vigilant members of the House who voted against it.

True complexity

GUNTER: Trudeau's blaming Harper on vaccines -- but it goes back to Chretien

Scientists are working on creating a vaccine for coronavirus. PHOTO BY STOCK PHOTO /Getty Images

You could almost watch the little cogs turning inside the federal Liberals’ brains this week.

How were they going to blame their failure to get in line early for COVID vaccines on their favourite bogeyman, Stephen Harper?

There are two big reasons why Canadians may have to wait until March for the first large-scale doses of anti-COVID vaccines. Meanwhile Americans, Brits, Germans and others could begin getting inoculations as early as three weeks from now.

First, the Trudeau government was waaaay late placing orders for effective vaccines.

Beyond the numbers: Who is dying of COVID in Canada, and how?

Doctors are looking for markers to predict the likelihood of “critical events” and death from COVID-19 — signs, like fast breathing, high blood pressure or elevated proteins in the blood, that someone might go from sitting on the edge of his or her hospital bed eating lunch, to sudden intense distress, to being sedated, and being lost. PHOTO BY ERIC GAILLARD/REUTERS

It is possible that now we risk becoming numb to numbers? And indeed, it is considered that doctors still do not fully understand the ‘wacky’ nature of the disease.

As is well known, COVID-19 affects in different ways depending on each person. Most people who are infected have mild or moderate symptoms and recover without the need for hospitalization. Likewise, this disease paralyzed everyone at all levels, despite the time that has passed, the virus is still on the streets and continues to affect citizens.

It is clear that the pandemic has largely become a story of numbers, a daily summary of cases and deaths, of numbers analyzed, and numbers that tested positive. The statistics are dry, anonymous, but some patterns have emerged. Doctors are developing models and looking for markers to predict the likelihood of “critical events” and death, signs, such as rapid breathing, high blood pressure, or elevated proteins in the blood.

Unimaginable rates

Conrad Black: There's much to celebrate in Sir John A. Macdonald's legacy

Sir John A. Macdonald

 

Certainly, there is still much to celebrate in the legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald. That said, it needs to be stressed that the heroes of the month among Canada’s elected officials should be the councilors of Prince Edward County, Ontario, who voted last week to retain the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald on Picton’s Main Street. It is no secret to anyone that there was the usual agitation to remove the statue due to Macdonald’s alleged oppressive behavior towards the natives. Coun. Philip St. Jean led the retention argument, claiming that the statue in such a prominent location fosters education and curiosity about the country’s history.

Now, in reference to this, it is important to mention that one of the participants in the public hearing that determined the issue has two Cree daughters and said that the statue is “a symbol of colonialism, patriarchy and white supremacy. Taking down a statue because we are recognizing the truth of the impact this man and his policies had, and has on Indigenous people, has a feeling of reconciliation to me. But to be clear, it is only a baby step towards true reconciliation; it is a gesture”.

Moral weakness?

Dollar Loses to Euro as Payment Currency for First Time in Years

 The euro was the most used currency for global payments last month, the first time it has outpaced the dollar since February 2013.

Data from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, which handles cross-border payment messages for more than 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries, showed the European Union’s single currency and the greenback were followed by the British pound and the Japanese yen. The Canadian dollar overtook China’s yuan for the fifth spot, Swift said.

28 Emotional Intelligence Quotes That Can Help Make Emotions Work for You, Instead of Against You

Getty Images

 

Emotions have power. These quotes illustrate the beauty of learning to harness that power.

Read original article.

As humans, we’re emotional creatures. Our emotions influence the decisions we make, the career path we take, the films and music we enjoy, the art we’re drawn to. Emotions help us choose our friends, those whom we fall in love and stay with for our entire lives…also those whom we’ll leave behind.

Yes, emotions have power. Emotional intelligence is the ability to harness that power — to understand and manage emotions, so that you can make decisions that are in harmony with your core values and principles.

But what can we learn from what others have taught us about harnessing the power of emotion?

A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19

COURTESY OF GENEVIEVE BRIAND. After retrieving data on the CDC website, Briand compiled a graph representing percentages of total deaths per age category from early February to early September.

 

According to new data, the U.S. currently ranks first in total COVID-19 cases, new cases per day and deaths. Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins, critically analyzed the effect of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in her webinar titled “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data.”

From mid-March to mid-September, U.S. total deaths have reached 1.7 million, of which 200,000, or 12% of total deaths, are COVID-19-related. Instead of looking directly at COVID-19 deaths, Briand focused on total deaths per age group and per cause of death in the U.S. and used this information to shed light on the effects of COVID-19.

She explained that the significance of COVID-19 on U.S. deaths can be fully understood only through comparison to the number of total deaths in the United States.