It has become part of modern fitness culture that to be fit, one needs to take 10,000 steps a day. Well that is fine if one has no injuries, and has legs! But, apart from that a study has now challenged the fundamental idea that weight loss will come from the 10,000 steps ideology.
  https://www.studyfinds.org/10000-steps-a-day-may-not-spark-weight-loss-after-all-study-says/

“Those in search of a slimmer waist, or just interested in maintaining their current weight, have long been advised by health experts to log at least 10,000 steps per day. Reaching that magic number daily is thought of as a real accomplishment for many people, and countless walkers utilize fitness trackers and smart watches to ensure they reach their goal day in and day out. Well, a new study is bringing the 10,000 step theory to a grinding halt. Researchers from Brigham Young University have concluded that no number of simple steps alone are going to prevent weight gain or induce weight loss. A total of 120 freshman students at BYU were analyzed for this study. The research was conducted during the students’ first six months on campus, and their steps per day were tracked on a daily basis. Participating students walked either 10,000, 12,500 or 15,000 steps every day for six days a week. During the duration of the experiment (24 weeks) the students’ diets and body weights were also tracked. The research team were especially interested to see if steadily increasing the amount of steps per day each student took would result in increasing weight loss. For instance, if students walking 12,500 steps per day would end up losing more weight than those walking 10,000 per day. Surprisingly, the end results indicated that it didn’t matter whether the students walked 10,000 or even more than 15,000 steps per day. Many students still ended up gaining weight. For what it’s worth, it’s exceedingly common for college freshman to gain some weight during their first few months away from home, the phenomenon even has a nickname (the freshman 15).ie 0%

To The Australian         Chris Kenny rightly warns that Australia needs to adopt a firmly independent approach towards the UN ("Forget the UN, we need to do what's best for ourselves", 7-8/3). Participate in discussions, yes, but not feel bound by past, present or future UN decisions. As he says, we cannot assume that UN demands are "sensible, competent or necessarily issued in the best interests of all nations." There may indeed be "some vested political or commercial interests" behind much UN behaviour. This common sense applies to indigenous affairs as well as climate change and the current health crisis. Much of the foolish agitation for constitutional recognition and the signing of a treaty or treaties takes its strength from well-meaning but unrealistic UN declarations. The government should back away from that campaigning and focus purely on non-controversial action to improve Aboriginal welfare and education.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     Our side of politics claims that there is social media bias against conservatives. Well, the other side have rolled out their social scientists to challenge this:
  https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/researchers-have-already-tested-googles-algorithms-for-political-bias/

“Motivated by the long-running argument in Washington, DC, computer scientists at Northeastern University decided to investigate political bias in YouTube's comment moderation. The team analyzed 84,068 comments on 258 YouTube videos. At first glance, the team found that comments on right-leaning videos seemed more heavily moderated than those on left-leaning ones. But when the researchers also accounted for factors such as the prevalence of hate speech and misinformation, they found no differences between comment moderation on right- and left-leaning videos. "There is no political censorship," said Christo Wilson, one of the co-authors and associate professor at Northeastern University. "In fact, YouTube appears to just be enforcing their policies against hate speech, which is what they say they're doing." Wilson's collaborators on the paper were graduate students Shan Jiang and Ronald Robertson. To check for political bias in the way comments were moderated, the team had to know whether a video was right- or left-leaning, whether it contained misinformation or hate speech, and which of its comments were moderated over time. From fact-checking websites Snopes and PolitiFact, the scientists were able to get a set of YouTube videos that had been labelled true or false. Then, by scanning the comments on those videos twice, six months apart, they could tell which ones had been taken down. They also used natural language processing to identify hate speech in the comments. To assign their YouTube videos left or right scores, the team made use of an unrelated set of voter records. They checked the voters' Twitter profiles to see which videos were shared by Democrats and Republicans and assigned partisanship scores accordingly.

     While the Left and globalists rant and rave on about universal human rights and universal morality, which seems to always justify unending immigration of the Third World to the West, the fact of the matter is that most people in the world do not accept the universal morality of the West. Thus, on slavery, to take on high level white guilt issue, this is not even a crime in most of the world:
  https://news.trust.org/item/20200212132545-vdpzu

“Slavery is not a crime in almost half the countries in the world, a study of global laws said on Wednesday, urging nations to close legal loopholes that allow abusers to escape punishment. Many states lack laws which directly criminalise and punish exerting ownership or control over another person, according to the Antislavery in Domestic Legislation database, launched at the United Nations headquarters in New York. "Slavery is far from being illegal everywhere and we hope our research will move the conversation beyond this popular myth," said Katarina Schwarz, a researcher at the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab, which led work on the slavery database. "It will surprise many people to learn that in all of these countries there are no criminal laws in place to prosecute, convict and punish people for subjecting people to the most extreme forms of exploitation." More than 40 million people are held in modern slavery, which includes forced labor and forced marriage, according to estimates by the International Labour Organization and the anti-slavery group the Walk Free Foundation. Ending modern slavery by 2030 was among the global goals adopted unanimously by members of the United Nations in 2015. But although historic laws that once allowed slavery have been scrapped worldwide, researchers for the database found that many of the 193 U.N. member states have not gone on to explicitly criminalise slavery and other exploitation.

     I have often wondered what the cost of the multitude of politically correct institutions and cultural artefacts actually costs in dollar terms. We have nothing for Australia surprise, surprise, but there are now some astonishing US figures, putting it at $ 10 billion a year just for college students:
  https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/12/10/study-college-students-spend-10-billion-a-year-on-mandatory-social-justice-courses/
  https://www.thecollegefix.com/social-justice-general-education-requirements-cost-u-s-students-10-billion-a-year-report/

“The direct financial burden of social justice general education requirements is at least $10 billion a year nationwide — and rising fast — according to a report released Friday by the National Association of Scholars. That’s just one detail among many in the 275-page “Social Justice in Education” study authored by David Randall, director of research for the right-of-center academic association. The report “aims to catalogue the extent of social justice education, and the way it has seized control of the machinery of higher education.” Universities nationwide require students to take a course that falls under the social justice umbrella, such as a diversity, multicultural, sustainability or experiential learning class, Randall said as the association debuted the report at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. To determine the $10 billion figure, Randall said he put the estimated cost of one required course under the social justice umbrella at $2,000 and applied that cost to students nationwide. “That was trying to be unbelievably conservative,” Randall said of the figure. “We make no attempt to talk about how much it costs to pay for each dean of community engagement, each advocate for sustainability. Our next report on administrative growth will cover that. But the true figure must be much, much higher. That was trying to give an absolute bargain basement estimate.” The report focuses on 60 colleges and universities, both small and large, public and private, to hone in on how higher education has been transformed into “training camps for progressive activism.”

     Along with the closely related child grooming situation, there is the equally grim phenomenon of child prostitution in Europe, and it is horrid:
  https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/12/10/underage-prostitute-forced-have-sex-200-times-five-days-paris-suburbs/

“A 16-year-old girl was held captive for five days in an apartment by a group of men who forced her to have sex 200 times for money. Police arrested five men on Saturday in Chaperon-Vert Gentilly, a suburb of Paris, after raiding the apartment which had been used as a makeshift brothel, Le Parisien reports. The suspects are aged between 17 and 22, with two already being known to police for prior drug convictions. According to the victim, she had been a runaway who soon found herself getting into prostitution in the no-go Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, which she claimed was of her own volition at the time. She then stated that she ended up at the apartment in Chaperon-Vert where customers would contact her on a dating website for sex. Soon after, the teen was forced to stay in the apartment and only allowed to sleep between two or three hours per night. The teen eventually managed to discover the address of the apartment and contacted her mother who tipped off the police. In the tenth floor apartment, police are said to have found what Le Parisien described as a nearly-rotten mattress along with a garbage bag full of used condoms. Money and a book of accounting were also found at the scene. Such cases are on the rise across France with the prosecutor’s office of Créteil claiming that last year they saw 20 cases compared to just three cases five years ago. Last month, a report published by the Observatory of Violence Against Women in Seine-Saint-Denis revealed that nearly a third of all underage prostitutes in Paris’s no-go suburbs are under the age of 15, with some as young as just six years old being forced into prostitution. The study also revealed that in half of the cases, the “clients”, or abusers, used social media and the internet to facilitate sexual exploitation with minors.”

     I am back by popular demand. Overcoming the summer sloth and apathy to present another mind probing article for your reading pleasure, even though it is now autumn, or is it spring yet? I don’t know, some days it is hot, some days cold, the seasons all blend intro each other in my scrambled egg  mind. And, what better way to kick off the new season, but to celebrate plastic, one of the true joys of creation, and one of my favourites. Here is an article about how plastic bags help the environment:
  https://www.manhattan-institute.org/plastic-bags-help-the-environment

“Banning them provides no benefit other than to let activists lord their preferences over others. Why do politicians want to take away our plastic bags and straws? This moral panic is intensifying even as evidence mounts that banning plastic is both a waste of money and harmful to the environment. If you want to protect dolphins and sea turtles, you should take special care to place your plastic in the trash, not the recycling bin. And if you’re worried about climate change, you’ll cherish those gossamer grocery bags once you learn the facts about plastic. During the 1970s, environmentalists wanted to restrict the use of plastic because it was made from petroleum. When the “energy crisis” abated, they denounced plastic for not being biodegradable in landfills. They blamed it for littering the landscape, clogging sewer drains and global warming. Plastic from our “throwaway society” was killing vast numbers of sea creatures, according to a 2017 BBC documentary series. The series prompted Queen Elizabeth II to ban plastic straws and bottles from the royal estates, and it galvanized so many other leaders that greens celebrate what they call the “Blue Planet Effect,” named for the series. More than 100 countries now restrict single-use plastic bags, and Pope Francis has called for global regulation of plastic. The European Parliament has voted to ban single-use plastic straws, plates and cutlery across the Continent next year. In the U.S., hundreds of municipalities and eight states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Vermont—have outlawed or restricted single-use plastic bags. Greens in California are pushing a referendum to require all plastic packaging and single-use foodware in the state to be recyclable, and the European Union has unveiled a similar plan.”

     Well, well, well, just look at this and weep:
  https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/queensland-government-plan-could-see-lollipop-workers-earn-180k/news-story/743bf6ee6d3df10ef980ce0edd0cbcdd

“A new Queensland Government plan could reportedly see lollipop workers earn close to $180,000 a year. The massive wage would apply to jobs on regional construction projects under minimum conditions being considered by the Labor Government. The Government is trialling minimum requirements for major state-funded projects, similar to a Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union’s industry agreement. It will force builders to ensure subcontractors apply the rates, but builders claim the move will drive up costs by at least 30 per cent. They also say it will put principal contractors at risk of breaching workplace laws on adverse action and coercion in relation to subcontractors. The requirements would apply to projects worth more than $100 million, the first understood to be the $130 million expansion of the Cairns Convention Centre. The project’s 122 pages of minimum conditions, sent out to tenderers in October, include five per cent annual pay increases, requirements to pay weekend hours at overtime rates of 200 per cent and 12 per cent superannuation contributions, according to the Australian Financial Review. Under the plan carpenters would earn $198,000 a year on a 46-hour week and traffic controllers about $178,000, according to calculations from the Master Builders Association.”

     This is one area where the UK clearly beats Australia, having the gayest parliament the world!
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-uk-has-elected-the-gayest-parliament-in-the-world-8-say-theyre-gay-or-bisexual

“After last week’s general election, the United Kingdom now has the “gayest parliament in the world,” according to U.K. media. A high number of the U.K.’s new and returning members of parliament (MPs) – including members of the governing Conservative party – identify as homosexual or bisexual. An article in The Sunday Times last weekend stressed both the “socially liberal” perspective of many of the U.K.’s new political representatives and the high representation of MPs who identify with homosexuality or bisexuality: Looking at this youthful group gives a fascinating insight into the future of the Tory [Conservative] party. There is not an Old Etonian in sight, and 24 are openly gay or bisexual, the most of any party. Labour has at least 18 — boosting the total to more than 50 LGBT MPs. Westminster is now the “gayest parliament in the world”. This means that MPs identifying as homosexual or bisexual make up almost eight percent of the U.K.’s parliament and almost seven percent of the Conservatives’ 365 elected MPs. Earlier this year the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics released a study which suggested that homosexuals or bisexuals made up just two percent of the U.K.’s population in 2017.

     It is one thing for women to dominate academia, which doesn’t count for much in the scheme of things:
  https://vdare.com/articles/are-women-destroying-academia-probably

     But another to dominate medicine. What is the long-term consequence of this? Here is an article that dares, Vdares, to ask that question:
  https://vdare.com/articles/women-are-taking-over-medicine-not-necessarily-good-for-them-or-their-patients?scroll_to_paragraph=7

     Carbon-capture-and-storage “(CCS)” tops the list of silly schemes “to reduce man-made global warming”. The idea is to capture carbon dioxide from power stations and cement plants, separate it, compress it, pump it long distances and force it underground, hoping it will never escape. Smart engineers with unlimited money could do all this. But only green zealots would support the sacrifice of billions of dollars and scads of energy to bury this harmless, invisible, life-supporting gas in the hope of appeasing the global warming gods. The quantities of gases that CCS would need to handle are enormous and capital and operating costs will be horrendous. For every tonne of coal burnt in a power station, about 11 tonnes of gases are exhausted – 7.5 tonnes of nitrogen from the air used to burn the coal, plus 2.5 tonnes of CO2 and one tonne of water vapour from the coal combustion process. Normally these beneficial atmospheric gases are released to the atmosphere after filters take out any nasties like soot and noxious fumes. However, CCS also requires energy to produce and fabricate steel and erect gas storages, pumps and pipelines and to drill disposal wells. This will chew up more coal resources and produce yet more carbon dioxide, for zero benefit. But the real problems are at the burial site – how to create secure space for the CO2 gas.

     There is no vacuum occurring naturally anywhere on earth – every bit of space is occupied by solids, liquids or gases. Underground disposal of CO2 requires it to be pumped AGAINST the pressure of whatever fills the pore space of the rock formation now – either natural gases or liquids. These pressures can be substantial, especially after more gas is pumped in. The natural gases in rock formations are commonly air, CO2, CH4 (methane) or rarely, H2S (rotten egg gas). The liquids are commonly salty water, sometimes fresh water or very rarely, liquid hydrocarbons. Pumping out air is costly; pumping natural CO2 out to make room for man-made CO2 is pointless; and releasing rotten egg gas or salty water on the surface would create a real problem, unlike the imaginary threat from CO2. In some cases CCS may require the removal of fresh water to make space for CO2. Producing fresh water on the surface would be seen as a boon by most locals. Naturally, some carbon dioxide buried under pressure will dissolve in groundwater and aerate it, so that the next water driller in the area could get a real bonus – bubbling Perrier Water on tap, worth more than oil.

     Bill Gates has an article in the world’s leading medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine. Amazing for someone with no medical qualification, but fame and money, I guess, but on second thoughts, it is not so amazing, given fame and fortune. Anyway, Gates is worried about the coronavirus, and since our side of politics has him as a key player in the Grand Conspiracy, it is worthwhile reading what he thinks.
  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2003762

“In the past week, Covid-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about. I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise. There are two reasons that Covid-19 is such a threat. First, it can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems. The data so far suggest that the virus has a case fatality risk around 1%; this rate would make it many times more severe than typical seasonal influenza, putting it somewhere between the 1957 influenza pandemic (0.6%) and the 1918 influenza pandemic (2%). Second, Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently. The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others — an exponential rate of increase. There is also strong evidence that it can be transmitted by people who are just mildly ill or even presymptomatic. That means Covid-19 will be much harder to contain than the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which were spread much less efficiently and only by symptomatic people. In fact, Covid-19 has already caused 10 times as many cases as SARS in a quarter of the time.

     Crises like the present coronavirus one are really times for outsider types like me to shine. Conventional society presents little for people like me, but somehow the bleakness of the bio-apocalypse does not seem so bad. Could the popularity of this genre of film be due to the prevalence of men like me, who are alienated from the mainstream, men against time? Anyway, here is an article from a mainstream media source giving a shopping list for the pandemic, just in case anyone finds my work way too manic:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8044051/Stark-warning-Australians-stock-food-supplies-coronavirus-pandemic.html?ito=push-notification&ci=8766&si=1326534

“Australians need to start stocking up on food and supplies before the spread of the deadly coronavirus becomes a global pandemic and stocks of required goods start to run low, a survival expert has warned. While the vast majority of the 80,000 infections have been within China, 37 people have died in South Korea, Italy and Iran as the new hot spots emerged in the past week for COVID-19. One of Australia's leading survivalists said the nation's shoppers should start bulking up their weekly shop before the virus' spread leads to food supply shortages. 'We should always be prepared for food shortages - not just from coronavirus but civil incidences, extreme weather and power outages which will cut us off from supply,' Western Australian survival instructor Bob Cooper told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday. Stockpiling by panicked shoppers has already seen shelves emptied in Italian towns at the centre of the country's outbreak in the northern Veneto and Lombardy regions. Mr Cooper said it was too early for such panic here but said Australians should start thinking about whether their food cupboards can sustain them if the supply chain is broken. 'You need to think about things that have a long shelf life: dried fruit, dried foods, cereals, pasta will also last a long time,' he said. 'Packets of flour will also allow to make your own bread.'

     There is a good chance that Joe Biden may get the Democrats presidential nomination, and then through the magic of a corrupt electoral system, that Trump has done absolutely nothing about, Biden becomes el presidente. The elites do not want to make the same mistake with Donald Trump again, so Biden becomes president by default, a man who is incoherent most of the time. But, he would be easy to control since he sometimes mistakes his wife for his sister. Really, he does not know what is going on. Consider:
  https://saraacarter.com/biden-all-men-and-women-created-by-the-thing/?utm_source=izooto&utm_medium=push_notifications&utm_campaign=biden&utm_content=&utm_term=

“Former Vice President Joe Biden told a group of voters Monday that all men and women are created by “the thing.” It’s one of Biden’s many gaffes as he speaks to voters on the campaign trail ahead of super Tuesday. In the video posted to Twitter, Biden says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by the, you know, you know, the thing.”

     We all know how this will end: Assange is going to be killed one way or another, probably to be found dead in his cell. Hell, what about Epstein, with so much evidence pointing to a murder, but today there is not even a mention of his name in the press? The same silent treatment awaits Assange. Why, he cannot even hear his own trial, that is how the system is treating him:
  http://www.newsilkstrategies.com/news--analysis/this-assange-trial-is-a-self-contradictory-kafkaesque-nightmare-caitlin-johnstone

“It’s common in British courtrooms to have something called a “dock”, a place where defendants sit separately from court proceedings. Not all UK courtrooms have docks, and not all docks are the “secure” glass cabinet type which Assange is kept in; they can also be open wooden enclosures. Because Assange is being kept without explanation in a maximum security prison normally reserved the most dangerous violent offenders and terrorism convicts, his trial is taking place in a cage that is very much the “secure” type (so much so that he’s been complaining that he can’t hear the proceedings in his own trial through the bulletproof glass), and there is an expectation that he remain there. The magistrate has ruled that this nonviolent offender shall be kept in his sound-resistant enclosure throughout the duration of his trial, bizarrely asserting that Assange poses a danger to the public. Former UK ambassador and longtime Assange supporter Craig Murray was at court all four days of the trial, and he described the situation as follows (Edward Fitzgerald is Assange’s defense attorney, Vanessa Baraitser is the magistrate) On return, Edward Fitzgerald made a formal application for Julian to be allowed to sit beside his lawyers in the court. Julian was “a gentle, intellectual man” and not a terrorist. Baraitser replied that releasing Assange from the dock into the body of the court would mean he was released from custody. To achieve that would require an application for bail.

     This happened in the US, not in the UK as one would have expected. In a nutshell, a person of a certain type, smashes a woman with a steel pole, but is not prosecuted because he has an IQ of only 49!
  https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/crime/ive-been-failed-by-the-system-teen-walks-away-free-in-st-louis-after-neighbor-says-he-broke-her-nose-left-her-in-bruises/63-ba5fbdd6-e0cb-429c-be84-09f1fc2f8b34?fbclid=IwAR2N-Gvw9fe6BuUXgJpZS2fCAy7QoU8JiA4Fk_jtWx5oXL0137F0JGLTWZs

“A St. Louis woman feels like the judicial system failed her, after she said her teenage neighbor attacked her and walked away free. Alicia Clarke said exactly a week ago she went for a quick run outside her south city home. When she came back, she noticed her shoes had been moved to a different spot and her cell phone was gone. From there, she used Find My iPhone to search for it. The location said it was on her property grid. She used her work phone to call it. "I open my back door to call it and I hear it in my neighbor's backyard behind me," Clarke said. Clarke said she hopped the fence to get it and jumped back over to her yard. Another neighbor yelled out to her and said, "Hey, I told him, 'I know you did this and I’m calling the police!'" Clarke said that's when the 6-foot teen jumped the fence and tackled her. "He knocked me down, pulling my hair, kicking," she recalled. Before he ran off, she said he grabbed her personal cell phone again. She used her work phone to call police. "I am on the phone with St. Louis police dispatch, making my way to my backdoor, when he comes back with a weapon. He is on top of me. There was blood everywhere. I was literally fighting for my life at that point," she told 5 On Your Side. Clarke said as he was on her back, he stabbed her in the head and face with a metal rod. She was able to get the weapon out of his hand and ran inside. He ran away again, taking her second cell phone this time. Police arrested the teen on charges of first-degree robbery, second-degree burglary and third-degree assault. Clarke thought the fight was over. But when she went to juvenile court a few days later, she learned his case was dismissed. "The most hurtful thing of all of this, is the dropped charges. That was much more hurtful than the physical assault," Clarke said. A juvenile court official said a staff attorney dropped the case before even going to the judge. The courts weren't able to comment specifically on this incident, since it involves a juvenile. Clarke said she was told her accused attacker was found incompetent to aid in his own defense because he has an IQ of 49.”

     With Asian Americans supporting the Democrats, along with gun banning, the American Renaissance/vDare groups have some fundamental rethinking on their hands. But, on second thoughts, maybe they are ahead of the curve, catching up to us, since recently they had a good article about the Great Divorce, secession, the breakup of nations:
  https://www.amren.com/news/2020/03/who-are-asian-americans-supporting-in-california/
  https://vdare.com/articles/the-national-question-with-faith-goldy-whites-have-rights-it-s-time-to-get-serious-about-secession?scroll_to_paragraph=6

“What if all the conservatives, white advocates, immigration patriots, and Christian gun owners simply moved out? Imaginably, it’d be a lot easier for Leftists to build their gun-free, refugee-rich Shangri-La. Why aren’t they encouraging our exodus? Likely because the mere idea of any society that openly rejects their values is intolerable to them. Sure, the Pledge of Allegiance still speaks of “one nation under God, indivisible,” but that simply isn’t a reality in America 2020. Maybe the US is too big. With some 330 million people, no one can say there is a “national family.” Increasingly, there just seem to be mortal enemies. The Right and Left—admittedly, more so after the election of Donald Trump—now regard each other, not just as political competitors, but existential threats to American society and to each other. And all this invariably leads to talk of secession. Secession. Disaggregation. Self-Determination. Balkanization. All words describing a peoples’ will to determine their own destiny in the political order. From Spain to Brexit, and Canada to Calexit, the twin rise of globalization and mass migration—which has caused fractures in areas like ethnicity, religion, race, language, and culture within specific geographies-- is breathing new life into the secessionist epidemic sweeping the globe. With over 300 entries on the topic at VDARE.com, our writers have documented some compelling facts and analyses favoring secession, albeit to differing degrees, over the last two decades.”

     Here is the latest crazy nutrition idea, if it can be called that, advise from the feminists,exercise no control, eat what you like. It must be because everything is a social construction, or they just want to feel good, regardless of health, which is a social construction too:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8062687/Eat-want-body-love.html

“In an era of superfoods, carb restriction and endless finger-wagging over dairy, sugar and meat, ditching the forbidden list and instead embracing it all — mashed potatoes, biscuits, pasta, bread, whatever you fancy — feels positively sacrilegious. And mildly terrifying. But that’s the basis of Intuitive Eating, the craze hailed for its body-positive message, currently sweeping the smartest kitchens and most fashionable Instagram accounts from California to Chelsea. Described last month by U.S. Vogue as ‘a countermovement to the restrictive diets, fasting trends and other dubious self-improvement strategies so many of us are committed to’, Intuitive Eating has exploded in popularity over the past 12 months. London even has its own Centre for Intuitive Eating to train nutritionists and clients. In an era of superfoods, carb restriction and endless finger-wagging over dairy, sugar and meat, ditching the forbidden list and instead embracing it all — mashed potatoes, biscuits, pasta, bread, whatever you fancy — feels positively sacrilegious. And mildly terrifying. But that’s the basis of Intuitive Eating, the craze hailed for its body-positive message, currently sweeping the smartest kitchens and most fashionable Instagram accounts from California to Chelsea. Described last month by U.S. Vogue as ‘a countermovement to the restrictive diets, fasting trends and other dubious self-improvement strategies so many of us are committed to’, Intuitive Eating has exploded in popularity over the past 12 months. London even has its own Centre for Intuitive Eating to train nutritionists and clients. One of the greatest pleasures in life is to feel satisfied after eating something wonderful. If you’re constantly worried about your health or your body, you just can’t experience that.’ A former teacher, Elyse struggled with endless dieting and binge-eating in her 20s and 30s — ‘it was probably a fully-fledged eating disorder’ — before retraining as a nutritionist and learning to love food.”

     Both myself and our resident survivalist, John Steele have been giving readers gentle warnings about the need to quietly stock up on supplies before they all walk out the door, or rather before fear produces panic buying, over the coronavirus. Note, it does not matter much whether this is a real threat, or merely a product of fear, the results are the same: rapid depletion of resources:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8071865/Stampede-breaks-Sydney-Woolworths-toilet-paper.html?ito=push-notification&ci=9016&si=1326534

“A stampede broke out in a Sydney Woolworths after a flurry of desperate shoppers emptied the shelves of toilet paper in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The store in Revesby, in Sydney's south west, was full of anxious shoppers who were filmed piling packets of toilet paper into their trolleys. Dramatic footage showed customers reaching over each other, carrying two 12-packs at a time before racing back for more. Woolworths was forced to introduce a four-packet limit per customer on Wednesday after customers started stockpiling bulk amounts of toilet paper. One Aldi store even enforced a radical one-packet per person toilet paper limit after shoppers stormed its aisles in a panic. Management from the Aldi store in Epping, in Sydney's north-west, put up a sign reading: 'Only 1 toilet paper per sale.' 'Any customers coming in again that is recognised to have already purchased within 24 hours will be refused as everyone deserves some toilet paper not just a few.' Woolworths said their four-packet limit would apply in-store and online. 'It will help shore up stock levels as suppliers ramp up local production and deliveries in response to higher than usual demand,' the supermarket chain said in a statement. 'Our teams are continuing to work hard on restocking stores with long-life food and groceries from our distribution centres.' Coles are yet to announce any limitations on their toilet paper. On other occasions, people have jokingly been selling toilet paper online for as much as $24,000 - as seen on Facebook Marketplace. Others were selling toilet paper for around $1,000 and $699.”

     The interesting basically Left site, The Conversation, has an article on the toilet paper buy up phenomenon, gripping the world. The nutshell is that toilet paper has disappeared from the supermarket shelves, but not tissues, or paper towels, all good to wipe your butt in a pinch, so to speak. Why? Here are their experts on this:

“Niki Edwards, School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology: Toilet paper symbolises control. We use it to “tidy up” and “clean up”. It deals with a bodily function that is somewhat taboo.
When people hear about the coronavirus, they are afraid of losing control. And toilet paper feels like a way to maintain control over hygiene and cleanliness. People don’t seem interested in substitutes. Supermarket shelves are still full of other paper towels and tissues. The media has a lot to answer for in regards to messages around this virus and messages to the public. While honesty about threats is critical, building hysteria and promoting inappropriate behaviours is far from ideal.