Wonder Hamster Eye View

apihtawikosisan:

What’s that? No honey, the fact that the okimâwastotin (that headdress worn by clueless hipster girls all the time) is generally reserved for males in Plains cultures is not sexist or patriarchal. You can stop trying to ‘save us from sexism’ thanks.

In fact, we were centuries ahead of you in the gender equality department.  There are of course a great diversity of socio-political traditions in our various nations, but one thing comes through loud and clear…our women held positions of power.  Not merely over hearth and home, but politically as well.  In some nations, women run the roost, and this without denigrating or subjugating men (in case you were worried).

Centuries of racist and sexist interference by European powers has taken its toll.  We do indeed face sexism in our communities, to an extent unthinkable before Contact. It is sadly the case that the oppressed often internalise their oppressor, and the oppressor for us has always been racist, and sexist. 

To combat this, we look to our traditions, which are egalitarian.  Where men and women are respected and venerated.  We do not fumble towards equality as sameness, as so many settler feminists insist we should (in our context only, as they often recognise this is a ridiculous approach otherwise).  We revive equity.  We acknowledge different gender roles, and recognise that the female is not subservient in our cultures. 

When we discuss ‘women’s power’ and ‘women’s roles’, you hear echoes of your history.  But your history is not ours.  Our history speaks proudly of the strength of our women and our men.  Gender roles were not created in our societies to elevate men and turn women into chattel.

You settler women have much to overcome.  Your history is fraught with inequality and abuses.  I am sorry that you come from such twisted traditions.

Do not attempt to transplant your historical circumstances into our Nations.  You have no idea what the headdress means in our cultures.  To claim that the restrictions on who can wear it are ‘sexist’ merely highlights this ignorance…your inability to see outside your own cultural norms, outside your own sad, sexist cultural history. 

Colonisers always believe they have the right to define reality, particularly for those they have colonised.  What kind of feminist are you, when you take part in these inequalities of power, and proclaim for us the meaning of our own symbols and traditions? 

In case you’re not sure, it makes you a racist feminist.

jersey-jezebel:

Calorie theory explains what. It does not explain why.

Calorie-theory quacks (CTQs) say that people get fat because they eat more calories than they burn. That’s great. But WHY are people burning fewer calories than they eat? No one ever explains this. They just keep repeating that nugget of dubious wisdom over and over as if it will tell you everything you need to know. In case you weren’t aware of this, you have to exercise REALLY REALLY HARD to burn a significant number of calories–which is not a natural state for human beings most of the time (no, not even “Paleo” people), so lack of exercise is not the answer. And two people of the same height and gender and age can eat the same number of calories and do the same amount of exercise and yet still not gain or lose the same amount of weight. CTQs don’t explain this either.

Of course, they’re explaining the wrong phenomenon in the first place. Which leads me to my next point.

Food is not just fuel. It is also spare parts. Depending on your situation, you might want to keep more calories than you burn off.

Sorry to burst the bubbles of CTQs everywhere, but you don’t eat food only to burn it for energy. If you live to be eighty years old you will not die with the same set of cells you were born with. Your body is constantly renewing itself, and it needs raw materials to do this. Also, no matter what you eat or why, your body is constantly breaking down muscle and bone and then rebuilding them. If you are growing because you’re still physically immature, your body will need to retain more protein than you burn for energy (yes, you can do this). If you are pregnant and growing new organs and tissues that way, you need to retain more protein. Ditto if you are a bodybuilder. These are ways you can gain weight that do not involve getting fat.

Even if you are keeping your weight stable, you don’t want to burn away everything you eat because some of the protein your body liberates from bone and muscle for other purposes (like making glucose overnight so you don’t die in your sleep) will not be put back into your bones and muscles and therefore must be replaced. If you’re active, this is even more true–exercise causes greater lean tissue breakdown which must be addressed if you don’t want to lose lean tissue and totally fuck your metabolism (and your bones and your physical strength and…). Some of your dietary fat and protein are used to make hormones and neurotransmitters as well, which eventually are broken down and used for other things, like energy, meaning that fat and protein will need to be replaced.

So when we speak of eating more calories than we burn, we are not necessarily talking about becoming overweight. And when we are talking about getting fat, the important thing here is how much fat we store versus how much fat we are burning. After all, putting more of your dietary amino acids into your muscles than you burn for energy will cause weight gain too, but with much healthier results.

Gary Taubes has demonstrated from the existing science, by the way, that EVERYONE stores fat from the food they eat. The difference between fat people and slender people is how much fat is stored versus how much fat is liberated from fat tissue in between meals to be burned for energy. So calorie theory, to be more accurate, might better be summed up this way:

A person gains fat by storing more calories in fat tissue than they burn for energy.

Simple, elegant, and entirely accurate. Still doesn’t answer why, but gets right to the heart of the issue.

Speaking of nutrition, there’s another reason the “cut calories to lose weight” approach is problematic…

The fewer calories you eat, the less likely you are to get an adequate nutritional intake.

With CTQs, who already measure degree of nourishment by caloric intake (and I still can’t get over that), this should have been a no-brainer.

Apparently not.

The simple fact is that if you judge the merits of your nutritional intake by the number of calories you consume, you are going to be missing a lot of important stuff and you will wind up with a raging case of malnutrition. Absent supplements, there is no way around this. Most people don’t know how to supplement intelligently anyway, which only makes the problem worse–and missing certain elements from your diet will virtually guarantee you don’t get everything you need from the supplements in the first place.

Let’s say that if you eat three ounces of beef, you get 100 percent of your daily requirement for vitamin B12*. But you heard beef was fatty and that red meat will give you a heart attack, so you cut back your beef intake to one ounce a day. You just cut down your B12 intake to 33.4 percent of your daily requirement.

In case you were wondering, that’s not a good thing. You might get away with it for a little while because you probably had some B12 reserves to start (your body stores B12, it needs it so much), and because a low-calorie diet with lots of vegetables will contain a fair amount of folate, which can run interference with the methyl groups for a little while. But eventually you’ll start seeing nerve damage.

Here’s another example. Typically when someone is cutting calories, they try to be efficient about it by cutting out those elements of their diet which are the most calorically dense. This means cutting out fat intake and, frequently, animal protein as well. The drastically lowered caloric intake will leave them hungry, which they try to get around by eating more low-calorie vegetables, since they have been told that the fiber in those veggies will make them feel full**.

We know from the existing science that dietary fat and fat-soluble vitamins help with the absorption of minerals from food. But when you cut fat and animal foods from your diet, all you’re left with are the plant precursors to the fat-soluble vitamins–which may or may not be usable in your body, especially if you’re already suffering from chronic disease. (For instance, if you have hypothyroidism, you cannot convert beta carotene and must get preformed vitamin A.) Scientists have also found that, at least in the case of calcium, eating more fiber relative to your fat intake decreases mineral absorption. And this is exactly how low-calorie dieters are eating–lots of fiber, very little fat. They are sitting ducks for osteoporosis and all sorts of other problems. This is why you hear about long-time vegans losing bone mass.

So if nothing else I’ve said has gotten through to you, at least pay attention to this:

A sensible calorie-cutting program would involve cutting the extraneous shit out of your diet and eating only the most nutritious foods.

You can’t judge the nutrition of a food by how many calories it contains. You have to look at what else is in it and how those nutritional elements work together. You need to learn to choose foods that add to your nutritional status rather than take it away.

A food with lots of fiber in it is going to be worthless to you, no matter what else is in it or how low the calories. Eating lots of fiber means less mineral absorption, so you will need to eat more minerals to make up for the loss. Insoluble fiber*** also moves food more quickly through your system, so you are likely not going to get the full benefit of any of the food’s nutrients, not just the minerals. A food with lots of sugar or starch in it, even if the sugar is natural, is equally problematic: you “burn” B vitamins processing sugar and starch, so you will need to eat more B vitamins to make up for the loss.

You should be reading this blog if you’re interested in simple explanations of the science behind true nutrition.

ignatius-m:

Which meant that I could buy 5 gallons of gas for an hour’s work, ignoring tax taken out of my paycheck, etc.

I could buy a cheap fast food meal for about 3.16USD, a bit more than a half hour’s work.

Not going to say how much I get paid now, but let’s call it 12USD/hr for the sake of mathematical simplicity.

Gas is something like 3.50USD a gallon, so it takes 17.5USD to buy five gallons of gas. “Cheap” fast food meals run about 5.65USD now (smallest size available of whatever the cheapest thing is).

I get paid more than twice what I used to when I first started working about 14 years ago, but it takes me more hours at work to earn five gallons of gas than it did when I started working. The price for a cheap-o fast food meal has gone down for me slightly even though it is still pretty damned pricey.

Very little has actually gone down except our real buying power.

For a fast food employee to be making the equivalent entry level pay that I was making 14 years ago on the basis of gas prices, the minimum wage would have to be 17.50USD/hr.

Most client-facing IT workers I know are making less than that.

Always nice to hear it;s not all in the head, you know?

engenderandendear:

Onion-Vision
- Shira Erlichman


I.

A man who forgets himself is poor at making bread.
That is a cookie fortune I never got.

Three virgins in the sack are like three happy vowels: aoe!
That is also a cookie fortune I never got.

The mountains have really big hands.
Once more folks, a cookie fortune I never got.

Don’t turn around - there are babies being made.
That is, again, a cookie fortune I never got.

II.

The bubble bath was filled with lemons when I kissed her.
A secret, just nobody’s secret.

The extra pillow is to hump.
Somebody’s secret, someone close by, maybe right here.

I lick every scented marker in the set.
Gregory “Long-legs”s not-so-secret in fourth grade.

Every bad thing that ever happens to you
is either a thermometer or barometer.
A secret I wish someone had told me sooner.

I am not brave.
The heart’s secret.

I am too brave.
The heart’s secret.

III.

A dishwasher that plays the dishes as notes.
Uninvented Invention #23

A holidiary where everyone shares entries
in a highly ritualized public format.
Uninvented Invention #68

“Burn the water” - a blues song revealing
the impossibility of abandoning those that abandon us.
Uninvented Invention #104

A miniature movie-theater suspended above the forehead
during sleep to, of course, project movies to a loved one.
Uninvented Invention #19

Walking campfire: built small and safe enough to store
in the breast pocket and familiar to all, so all may sing along.
Uninvented Invention #859

Onion-vision, so we may see sadness as it is, artichokes
as they are, sound, muscle, the truth as it is.
Uninvented Invention #44

Word-kites: you tie them to what you say
and they go wherever they want to go,
like, a tree-tangle or your mouth, some hot moon like that.
Uninvented Invention #960