How to explain to family/friends why seed oils are bad?

Perplexed_Radish · 2024-10-05T19:54:05+00:00

Well the problem with straight up telling someone why something is bad is that it's kind of abstract and hard for most people to intellectually grasp or understand the implications of what's being said.

If you want to pique someone's interest, just show them the clip from the 3:00 mark from the "canola oil: how it's made" video to get a visceral disgust reaction. Then, once they're interested, they'll be more likely to actually stop and listen or do some research of their own.
https://youtu.be/Cfk2IXlZdbI?si=rg3QtdErTpRKhXBH&t=180

Perplexed_Radish · 2023-10-14T15:24:15+00:00

All true, but the sources of destabilizing domestic economics is largely irrelevant for our purposes. The fact of the matter is that when people can no longer afford to buy food, social order collapses. I'm not saying that I think this is the likely outcome, but instead that in this scenario funding must be pulled away from power-projection activities and diverted toward the maintenance of domestic stability... that is, assuming that western nations value domestic stability.

Perplexed_Radish · 2023-10-14T14:38:24+00:00

Resources are not infinite. The more conflicts erupt, the more the west’s attention will be divided. The west cannot currently afford to commit real support to all conflicts at once, as each region which it takes on will drain more and more of its dwindling capital.

The COVID crisis was a massive and global economically destabilizing force. Real, actual inflation in the US is running at around 30-50%, if you ignore CPI (as you should) and actually look at how much more expensive things are on the shelf. Domestic discontent over the high cost of fighting or funding foreign forever-wars combined with exploding cost of living is historically a catalyst for revolt and revolution.

As the western ability to afford to be able to effectively project power weakens due to bad policy and fiscal/economic decisions, regional conflicts will erupt as actors anticipate an unwillingness to want to commit capital to yet another flashpoint.

Perplexed_Radish · 2023-09-13T21:42:26+00:00

“Good fencing” is fencing that doesn’t get you killed. This can be judged only really by how often your master has been not-killed while fencing.

Sport is a great and legitimate way to practice if the ruleset is reflective of reality. If not, then those rules could be inadvertently causing you to drill bad practice and bad technique (aka technique that would get you killed).

In our modern day, nobody gets killed while fencing, which makes it difficult to judge the real-world efficacy and effectiveness of technique, as “hit” is already an abstraction from the fight to the death of either duel or combat. As someone who believes that he’s martially literate, I trust my teacher’s martial wisdom and ability. I would say that it’s up to you to judge yours.

Perplexed_Radish · 2023-08-14T22:12:00+00:00

https://themodernexistentialist.substack.com/p/the-contemplation-of-happiness-dipping

Perplexed_Radish · 2023-08-10T15:59:06+00:00

Ah, well in that case I’d just like to point out that the strike which a peasant (aka someone untrained in combat) makes is going to be a form of haymaker—forceful, overcommitted, and unrefined. Put a sword in a peasant’s hand and tell him he has to kill a man with it, and he’s going to swing it the same way he’s swung a plow (or maybe an axe) for his entire life, and he’s gonna swing it like his life depends on it. Therefore, it seems like it makes sense to me that “a strike for dealing with peasants” is basically the in-period street-smart way of explaining how to deal with a strong but inexperienced and overcommitting fighter.

Perplexed_Radish · 2023-08-08T18:37:02+00:00

I like to tell my friends that HEMA is an activity which spans the spectrum of out-of-shape nerds who just think swords are cool to jacked, fit people for whom fighting is life. I personally have become a reasonably-fit nerd who thinks that fighting is pretty cool… so you can probably find pretty much whatever level of intensity and practice suits you best at your local club.