Ewejay retweeted
I never count my likes. I write because I feel like I have something to say, and I feel enough at home on this weird mangy little hellsite that I don't feel too pretentious about sharing it
Ewejay retweeted
This account supports:
-18 y/o drinking age
-Permanent Standard Time
-Summer Vacation from Memorial day to Labor Day
-Constitutional Amendment protecting Federal Public Lands from sale and forbidding any user fees.
Ewejay retweeted
Imagine a world where there’s a SIN TAX ON SEED OILS but farmers are allowed to make their own artisanal ciders and liquors.
Seed oils are what turn a drink into liver damage, and the experiment proving it was run in 1989.
Same alcohol, same dose, three groups of rats. The only variable was the cooking fat in the feed.
Tallow: none of the features of alcoholic liver disease. Not one.
Lard: minimal to moderate.
Corn oil: the most severe pathology in the study.
The damage tracked the linoleic acid content of the diet almost exactly. Tallow at 0.7 per cent. Lard at 2.5. Corn oil at 56.6.
Same drink. Three completely different livers.
The same group published a paper that year with the finding in the title. Dietary linoleic acid is required for the development of experimental alcoholic liver injury.
Required. Not associated with. Required.
Alcohol becomes acetaldehyde, which cross-links proteins, binds DNA and sits in Group 1 alongside asbestos. That part is settled and it happens to everybody.
The liver destruction runs through a second reaction, and that one needs a fuel you can buy in a bottle for two pounds.
Feeding saturated fat to rats that already had alcoholic liver disease reversed it. The steatosis, the inflammation, the necrosis and the fibrosis.
In 2001 they did it without stopping the alcohol. Ethanol still going in, fibrosis regressing anyway.
Changing the fat did not alter how the rats metabolised ethanol, and it did not change CYP2E1 induction. The alcohol was processed identically in every group.
What changed was the membrane. Saturated fat made the liver resistant to oxidative stress, and a membrane that cannot be peroxidised cannot sustain the chain reaction.
Same mechanism as sunburn, running in a different organ. The alcohol is the ignition. The linoleic acid is what actually burns.
These are rats, and the work is thirty-seven years old.
Nobody has run it in a human being since, and nobody has proposed to.
There is no shortage of people with alcoholic liver disease. There is a shortage of people willing to fund a trial where the treatment is beef fat.
Ewejay retweeted
Putting word out. Anywhere near Cincinnati Ohio.
I will soon have about 12 foot branch free clear BLACK WALNUT log about 2.5 foot in diameter for a lucky woodworker.
You pick up and load. All offers considered. DM or reply if serious.
Ewejay retweeted
Farmer Greg Gunthorp just declared that Washington needs to break up Big Ag monopolies.
“Rural America was built on independence, innovation, and opportunity, not dependence on government or a handful of powerful corporations.”
And he laid out a plan to deliver a new “revolution” for farmers:
“We need to block concentration and restore fair competition.”
“To do that, we need to focus on four priorities.”
“First, subsidy reform.”
“Today, most public dollars, direct payments, indirect subsidies, and procurement programs, favor the largest operations.”
“Second, antitrust enforcement.”
“Markets only work when concentration is checked.”
“That means serious merger review.”
“Real enforcement against abusive practices.”
“And stopping conflicts of interest.”
“With the exception of a few short years, the FTC, DOJ, and USDA have taken a half-century vacation from enforcement.”
“Third, truth in labeling.”
“Farmers and entrepreneurs who grow and process food in America should not have to compete against fake and foreign products backed by massive corporate marketing machines.”
“Fourth, regulatory reform.”
“Rules should not favor the largest players and burden the smallest.”
“We need sensible exemptions for very small producers.”
“Workable pathways for mid-sized processors.”
“And safeguards that protect consumers without locking in a few favorable actors.”
“These are not partisan ideas.”
“They are plain common sense.”
“The next American Revolution cannot [replace] one elite with another.”
“It must disperse power, economical, political, and market power, so ordinary Americans are free to compete.”
@GGunthorp @openmarkets
Ewejay retweeted
Tax policy isn’t the problem. There are 2 very difficult policy choices that would fix it all. One is so far outside the Overton window it rarely comes up. The other you have heard and dismissed as some crank libertarian pipe dream. Here they are:
1) Sound money (i.e. END THE FED, the libertarian pipe dream)
2) Corporate law: make owners and managers criminally and civilly responsible for the actions of the corporation. (This would require torts to be limited in some way) Basically you limit the size and scope of most companies because the owners and managers would not reasonably take on global, multibillion dollar risk without the shields of corporate liability protections.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Ewejay retweeted
Hello Twitter friends! It's @tornadonate in exile
Today we're going to talk about how @elonmusk bought this app, stripped it down to a husk, and fails all of us with neglect, while he plays with rockets
Peep this thread & share, help me send an F5 Tornado tweet storm to Texas
Ewejay retweeted
Small processors keep rural America running.
For nearly 30 years, USDA has used outdated definitions that don’t always reflect how these businesses actually operate. We’re fixing that.
@USDAFoodSafety is asking for direct input to make sure our policies work for small and independent processors, not against them. Farmers first. ➡️ federalregister.gov/document…
Ewejay retweeted
Ask yourself the “five why’s” about glyphosate and the absolute answer is it made farming commodities easier and it reduced labor. That’s it.
But when you realize that “reduced labor” means less farms and less farm workers - reducing jobs and incomes and other small businesses along the way - then you see the cost of that change.
And then you realize that “easier” meant bigger equipment - which means fewer pieces of equipment and more expensive equipmeng - and it also meant the removal of existing tree rows/shelterbelts/windbreaks and almost zero new windbreak installs because of cost and chemical drift and equipment soze - but it also meant fewer equipment dealers, fewer parts guys, fewer mechanic shops, and fewer other support businesse, then you see the cost of “easier”, too.
This argument of yields is bullshit. Just be honest. It’s about ease. It’s about efficiency. And that’s it. It made farming easier and it killed the rural economy. And the USDA supported it then, and they’re doubling down on it now. That want to make it easier and easier to grow commodities for the Chinese, regardless of the cost to rural America.
You either see it or you can’t. It’s that simple.
Enjoy the day! 🇺🇸
Godspeed.
Ewejay retweeted
You’ll never not convince me that this presidency’s whole purpose is to:
1. Get revenge for not getting re-elected the first time.
2. Make himself & his friends more money
3. Cover up the Epstein Files
Ewejay retweeted
It feels like every facet of life seeks to drown out your internal monologue. Gyms have 30 TVs with oversaturated colors but no sound or subtitles. The speakers in the gym play random, unrelated music playlists. You enter a store and it's the same thing, music played through dust-clogged speakers 30' above you. Occasionally a song will be jarringly interrupted by an advertisement. You open your phone to a dozen push notifications from short-form content apps. You turn them off but they keep coming back, somehow. Every service you use is wired to keep you addicted. Working features are intentionally broken to fudge user metrics. The only ones that aren't constantly vying for your attention are the paid subscriptions, because they want to quietly siphon your bank account after you've forgotten. The only escape the average person has from this is a brief few minutes in the shower.
Ewejay retweeted
The failure in the US to use the fiber and leather from the animals we slaughter for food is a moral issue for me. We should ban polyester and other plastics for clothing and use the fiber from sheep and bison, the skins of cows and deer, etc. Cotton, linen, wool, leather. Snout to tail for food. It is the only way to honor the lives of the animals.
Complaining that we can’t have access to cheap Indian and Chinese wool because of @realDonaldTrump tariffs but upset and confused why there are only a handful of US wool mills left - and why they’re more expensive 🤔
This should have never happened but it’s our opportunity to make it right.
Ewejay retweeted
Local reports are that harvest is fantastic, but with the commodity prices in the cellar and with inputs still through the roof, the fat has been cut and now there is no slack left for many operations to withstand the underwater nature of the commodity ag biz.
No doubt we will see another bailout, which will go in one pocket and out the other, as a de facto gift to John Deere and Pioneer seeds. Many farms are being squeezed, but meanwhile many very large farms continue to rake it in at taxpayer's expense. If you don't believe me, try checking out the show cattle market and look at those prices.
SOMEBODY is still doing very well.
Currently farm policy is extremely rigged, squeezing to near death whatever medium sized producers we have left, enriching the giant agribiz companies, and allowing the big farms to continue to cruise by and accumulate more and more land and capital.
And what does the taxpayer have to show for it? Low quality calories that are cheap but not as cheap as they used to be, environmental degradation, further erosion of rural livelihoods, and a disappearing way of life.
Neither the current administration, nor the last, nor the one before, etc, etc understands or cares. The current commodity support regime keeps this outcome locked into place, limping along, mortally wounded but profitable for a few. To change tracks would cause pain and upheaval, but holds the potential to put us on a better course. But the courage to push for such a move is in very short supply.