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theambivalent · 6 years ago

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Why I went Vegan

For the most part, when people find out I’m vegan, I get one of two reactions:

1: “wow, that’s great! I wish I could do that”

2: “but.... why????”

I’ve struggled with writing this post out because I wasn’t sure if others would read it with an open mind. But I honestly don’t care anymore. I created this blog so that I could be honest... and in order to be honest about why I'm vegan I have to go way back to my childhood.

...Yes, that’s really when the realization resonated with me.

[Note that I'm not telling you how to live your life. You do you, boo! I’m just telling my story.]

Childhood

I grew up in a Los Angeles suburb with my family of 9 total people (7 siblings). Dad’s income was the only money we had to support ALL of us. (Thanks dad!)

So in order to make ends meet, dad raised animals for food at home. Not for EVERY meal, but almost every animal we had was meant to be food ...eventually.

We had a huge walk-in chicken coop and ducks, rabbits, and even a goat at one point. In short, we had lots of animals. In the midst of the clucks and the quacks, there was 5 year old me, playing with all these cute little guys. I would greet them every morning. Gave them names. Say goodnight to each individual one by the end of the day.

I had milk from the goat, eggs from the chickens; I ate rabbit stew; goat meat, and roasted duck; but was too naive to think of where my food was coming from. I would ask dad about our missing duck/chicken/rabbit ...and he’d simply tell me they’d run away. It wasn’t until I caught my dad killing a chicken that I realized these beautiful creatures I'd play with ended up on my plate. I was devastated.

You see, at that time, I was a pretty lonely kid. I had just started elementary school, and wasn’t making many friends; these animals were my only friends...and it just broke my heart to think that they were dying just so that I could have a meal.

That was the first time I decided to go vegetarian. At the time, no one in my family had ever heard of veganism, so that thought never crossed any of our minds.

But mom and dad sort of freaked out. “how could I feed my child vegetarian while making sure she’d get all the nutrients she needs?”

They didn’t know.

What was their answer? To sneak in teeny bits of chicken broth, or super tiny bits of meat into nearly everything they served me.

I had no chance.

There was nothing I could do but go back to eating meat. My parents didn’t have the resources to do the research. We had no internet in the early 90s. At least not in our house. Forget cell phones. There was literally only what we heard on the news about health. And this influenced my parents... and me.

Teen Years

My first job was at a KFC near my house. At the time, it seemed like a great idea because I could easily walk there from home, as it was only a couple of blocks away.

By this time, we had less animals at home. As most of my older siblings had already moved out of the house, so dad was able to stretch his income a bit more. It was the summer before my junior year in high school.

I just had to get a job because my parents were cutting my allowance. KFC was the first interview that I got, so I just had to take it.

There was virtually no training. The manager gave us a menu that had to be memorized overnight, and we watched some safety video. Everyday I'd come home smelling like chicken. There was no actual ‘break room’ for employees. We had to have breaks either outside, or grab a free meal for our lunch and eat with other customers. I was so sick of chicken that I couldn’t eat the food. I would’ve brought my own meals, but there was no fridge, because again... there was no break room. I had no choice but to eat the free meal offered by management. I was stuck with coleslaw and wedges. I hadn’t gone vegetarian yet, but I just got so sick of chicken that I couldn’t eat it anymore. One day, I saw a huge cockroach fall into the fryer where we make the wedges... and no longer craved them either. It was 100% coleslaw for me. I lost a TON of weight. I started getting dizzy spells and even lost my period for a few months. The worst part was that after I quit and went to school the next year, everyone was telling me how great I looked. I wanted to scream at them, ‘i’m sick’, but most of them were genuinely trying to be nice. ...ugh.

Redirecting my attention back to vegetarianism, I had decided to become pescatarian. Why not FULLY vegetarian? Because at that time, I still didn’t have great resources and believed I needed some kind of animal fat in my system in order to function well. And since I was constantly sick, I thought this would help me. I ate crackers and tuna when I felt sick, but had salads often.

To be 100% honest, I don’t believe I had an eating disorder & I was never diagnosed. But I did think that my actions were leading me down that path and going pescatarian actually helped me get better in that instance. Unknowingly, it was still harmful to my body, as I would later learn.

Adult Years

After becoming pescatarian, I decided to go full on vegetarian again, because as an adult in the 21st century, I could easily find so much information than I ever could have as a child!

I found which plant foods had the most protein, iron, and other essential nutrients; while still eating eggs & dairy.

I had always been lactose intolerant, but it never affected me too badly ...until adulthood.

Yes, milk is for baby cows. As children we only need milk from our own mothers, and just for the first few years of our lives... it makes sense!

But at that time, I found myself reaching for medication to take care of my stomach issues because ‘mmm....ice cream!’. Looking back.... I realize I would have saved SO MUCH $$$$ by just buying vegan ice cream instead of that over the counter bean-o... .seriously!

My husband (fiance at the time) and I decided to go to this awesome restaurant for our anniversary dinner. It sat on a hill in Orange County, so we could kinda sorta see the firewords from Disneyland as we ate. I had a super huge salad, and he ordered a burger. As soon as we got home... boom! Food poisoning. He suffered pretty bad that night.

The next day, he looked up any info about eating better for your stomach, and we discovered veganism. We both decided the same day we’d go for it.

This is a short summary (probably too short?) of what our research lead to:

For the Animals

Paying for the foods we eat, literally fund the process by which the food is made. More money going into hamburgers, for example, meant slaughterhouses would breed more cows to kill for the purpose of supplying our demand. By slowly cutting down on meat, the meat industry will breed less and less animals to kill because they wouldn’t want to miss a profit. This is also why, there wouldn’t be an overpopulation of cows if everyone went vegan.

For the environment

Meat/dairy agriculture is the #1 cause of deforestation.

Some people will tell you that buying soy products is the same issue. Problem with that is 80% of the land used to grow these soy products, is owned by the meat/dairy industries to feed their animals. On top of that, raping and force-breeding an excess of cows also causes a build-up of gas emissions, polluting our air. All of the land used by meat & dairy industries could be instead used to grow plant crops that would feed thousands. Also, more plants help to clean the air.

For Health

People say, ‘if it’s in your genes, it doesn’t matter what you eat’. But what you eat can literally activate, or de-activate specific genes in your DNA. You can’t have high cholesterol if you don’t eat cholesterol, which vegans don’t. High Blood Pressure runs in my family and I was feeling its effects, and even had to go to the hospital because of it prior to going vegan. Changing my lifestyle made it completely go away. I’ve never had blood pressure issues after that.

Going plant-based was the best decision we’ve ever made....EVER. We’ve been vegan for about 5 years now and honestly find it mind-boggling that others still eat animals + animal products. It seems so barbaric to us.

I can’t imagine going back to meat/dairy after seeing how great I’ve been feeling mentally and physically compared to how shitty I felt before that.

I love animals, and always will...

Just like I love my body and always will...

And like I love the planet and always will...

#vegan #why #crueltyfree #plantbased #lifestyle #positivity

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dontshootmespence · 6 years ago

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Supernatural AU: Episode 2- Phantom Traveler

Part 3

Bobbie came out of the dressing room of the small store, closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath. “I feel so weird right now.”

Jeans, a t-shirt, crapp knock-off converse or vans and a leather jacket. That’s what she was used to. That was the Bobbie Deanna Winchester uniform. Standing here in a pencil skirt, white blouse (tucked into the skirt of course) and fitted blazer with the most plain, black shoes? Hell, absolute hell. One of the many reasons she never would’ve made it outside of the hunter’s life.

Sam snickered under his breath. “You look like a businesswoman who’s wearing her mother’s clothes because she can’t afford any of her own. Like you’re playing dress up.”

“I hate you.”

The three of them had come to this particular store because it was cheap. The hunter’s life was not lucrative. When her brothers emerged from their dressing rooms clad in black suits with long, skinny ties, she threw her head back and laughed. She always got the last laugh. “You look like the Blues Brothers.”

“Shut up. We look cool.”

“That’s highly debatable.”

Even with shoddy “uniforms” and even worse IDs, all it ever took was a bit of confidence to get where they needed to go. Inside the warehouse, pieces of the plane were scattered about like fallen crumbs. “This is all they were able to find?” Bobbie couldn’t believe it. Every inch of what they’d found was burnt to a crisp. If the plane looked this bad, she hesitated to think what the crash had done to the passengers.

Behind her, Sam and Dean walked in the opposite direction, gliding back and forth between the pieces of the wrecked plane with the EMF meter that Dean had made out of an old Walkman. It looked like hell, but it worked. “What did you expect me to do?” She heard Dean ask their little brother.

“I don’t know…buy one? Anything except walking around with that glorified Walkman.”

“This is a Walkman! We’re hunters, man! What about no money do you not understand?” He shook it proudly in front of Sam’s face. “I made it myself.”

“We made it!” Bobbie screamed.

Bobbie shook her head and smiled. Still bickering like little children after all this time. Meeting up in the middle of the room, all three of them descended upon the emergency exit door. Like everything else it was covered in black ash. The handle though was tinged with something else they couldn’t immediately identify. Dean leaned in to scrape some off into a vial. “I think I know what it is,” he said.

With a little further examination, Sam and Bobbie did too. They’d have to have Jerry test it out to know for sure, but if it was what they were thinking, then the Winchester kids did have a demon on their hands – a demon whose sole purpose was destruction on a massive scale.

A sense of dread hung in the air for a moment when the cracking of an opening door and a herd of incoming footsteps interrupted them. “Move,” Sam whispered harshly. They ran quickly out the door before anyone could catch them but then an alarm went off.

“Shit!” Bobbie picked up her pace and threw her blazer over the fence before jumping up and over. It was probably for the best that she wasn’t wearing her leather jacket because then it would have the tears in it rather than the damned blazer. Dean copied her, throwing his suit jacket over the fence and Sam didn’t even bother. If they got caught impersonating Homeland Security they were royally fucked.

Somehow they managed to get into the Impala and peel off and away without getting caught. They had a habit out of getting out by the skin of their teeth. One day it would backfire on them, but today was not that day.

Just outside was what he feared most. Coincidentally it also ran in his blood. Chuck Lambert had always wanted to be a pilot, but then tragedy struck out of nowhere. He felt like it was his fault. On his watch more than 90 people died. How was he ever supposed to get behind the wheel of a plane again? “Baby steps,” he muttered to himself as his heart raced.

After much coaxing from a friend, he’d agreed to fly a small jumper plane. Actually driving something smaller might make him feel like he had some control again. It had so painfully slipped through his grasp before; he couldn’t let it happen again. He wouldn’t survive it.

As he rubbed at the searing pain in his head, he stilled. Now he felt fine. Like he was a whole new man.

“Ready to go, Chuck?”

The pilot’s friend had been weary about him getting back into a plane so soon, but Chuck was the kind of man that needed to get back on the proverbial saddle. He wasn’t going to be convinced otherwise. “Yea, let’s go.”

When they walked outside into the cloudless day, he asked Chuck one last time how he was feeling.

“I’m great,” he said with an earnest smile. “I actually feel really good.”

He’d been so nervous just a few minutes earlier. What the hell had gotten into him?

Despite what he’d been through less than a week earlier, all seemed well as they picked up off the ground. “How long have we been up?” Chuck asked.

Honestly, he hadn’t even noticed. Looking down at the watch at his arm, he spoke. “About 40 minutes.”

“Wow, time really does fly,” Chuck said.

In an instant, Chuck tipped the plane toward the ground.

On the way back to the motel, Jerry called to confirm their suspicions. The stuff on the handle was sulfur – indicative of a demon. Dammit. “Why the hell would a demon possess someone to kill an entire plane?” Dean asked. “Don’t demons normally go for the one on one?”

“They do,” Bobbie said as she cleared her throat.

Sam leaned back into the seat of the Impala and raked his hands through his hair. “Do we even know what we’re doing?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

They were used to vampires and werewolves and vengeful spirits. This was all together different and much more difficult. On top of that it was a demon that was causing damage on a larger scale.

“I mean we thought it was a demon before. We don’t know how to handle them, not specifically anyway, and now we have confirmation that it is actually a demon, so what are we going to do?”

Dean straightened in his seat, demeanor changing in the face of Sam’s doubt. “We do know what to do. We just haven’t done it before. We’re going to go back to the room. Delve into all that lore you love so much and figure out how to track it down and the exact exorcism we need to use. Then we’ll do it. We have to stop this Sam. You know we do.”

“I know,” he replied taking a deep breath. “I just wish Dad was here.”

He’d know what to do.

An hour later, Sam’s fingers were still gliding over the pages of all the research they could gather on demons. “So get this,” he said suddenly. “Some cultures believe that certain demons cause particular disasters, both natural and unnatural. So there would be a demon or hurricanes, a demon for earthquakes, a demon for plane crashes…”

Dean blinked in surprise as he tipped the bottleneck of a beer toward his mouth. “So…what? A demon just found a way to ratchet up the body count?”

“It makes sense,” Bobbie interjected. “That’s a demons drive. Death and destruction. It could be a demon that’s been one for so long that killing one by one just doesn’t do it for him anymore.”

“Jesus.”

“Yea. Alright Sam, can you scan Dad’s journal for what exorcism to use?”

“Sure, but we haven’t even found it yet.” Sam replied.

“But if we happen upon it, we need to be prepared.”

“Okay, yea, I’ll do that. What about you?”

“I’m going to get us some beer.”

Dean smirked as he drank the last of the beer he had left. “I knew you were my favorite sister.”

“I’m the best you’ll ever get.”

Sure the store was just down the road, but stealing the keys to the Impala and the running like a bat out of hell from her baby brother was much more fun. Him giving her the finger as she drove away made her feel like she had a normal family for a split second. Dysfunctional sure, but normal.

However, once she was out of his sight the smile drained from her face. They were so in over their heads. It had been that way since they were children. Neither Dean nor Bobbie had been able to get a hold of John, but she pulled out her phone again on autopilot. Even as the oldest of the three of them, she still needed her father and she wasn’t afraid to admit it – to herself at least.

“Hey Dad,” she said softly, her voice shaky as she tried to keep her composure. “Dad, we’re in over our heads. We’ve got a demon on our hands. You’ve handled these before. We haven’t. If you are getting these messages, can you call me? We need you.” Bobbie’s lip quivered as the anger bubbled over. “I can practically hear your response. ‘You don’t need me, Bobbie. You are stronger than I’ve ever been.’ Well, you know what, that may be true, but I’ve had to be your emotional sounding board and their mother since I was five because of your fucking vendetta. I’ve had to be an adult for 21 years and I want my damn father to show up and do his job. You’re not just a hunter and a husband. You’re a father. Act like it.” With shaking hands, she ended the call and threw the phone to the bottom of the car. When she returned from her beer run, she heard it buzzing on the floor.

In a perfect world, it would’ve been John, saying he was sorry and that he’d be there as soon as he could. She wouldn’t have accepted the apology right away, but it would’ve been a step in the right direction. Unfortunately they didn’t live in a perfect world. Instead it was Jerry. “Hey Jerry. What’s up?”

“My pilot friend, Chuck. He’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” she replied. “What ha-“

“His plane went down in a field outside Nazareth.”

Indulging in a couple of beers with family was something that normal people did. Instead, Bobbie rushed back to the motel and informed her brothers of Jerry’s phone call. “Where’d it go down?” Dean asked.

“Right outside Nazareth.”

Sam couldn’t help but see the connection. It was yet another nail in the proverbial coffin that said ‘this is a demon, you should probably back off.’ “That can’t be good.”

It took the three of them about a half hour to get there. It should’ve taken about 45 minutes, but with Dean behind the wheel you could always count on getting to your destination 10 or 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

An enormous plume of black smoke greeted them as they drove down the road toward the crash site. Jerry was already there of course, shake to his core that two planes had gone down in less than a week, one carrying a dear friend. “We have to hurry here. The authorities will be here again soon and I can’t explain the three of you away.”

Sam quickly climbed into the open cockpit being careful to leave little evidence of their search behind. “There’s sulfur.”

“What does that mean?” Jerry asked. A momentary hint of panic flashed behind his gray-green eyes.

Dean pointed him toward his car. “Let’s go back to your office and talk there.”

The second they were back in Jerry’s office he demanded to know what was happening. “You were right,” Dean started. “It wasn’t mechanical failure. It was a demon.”

Jerry’s eyes went wide. “What? Are you serious? Like hell spawn demon?”

“Unfortunately,” Bobbie replied.

Sam went on to explain what demonic possession was actually like. “It’s likely Chuck was possessed before he got on the plane.”

“But how?”

“Demons seek out people who are in a state of weakness. They can take over stronger people, but if someone is sick or ridden with anxiety or even just has a cut it’s easier for them to take over,” Bobbie explained, turning towards Dean and Sam. “Did you notice how the plane went down after 40 minutes?”

Dean nodded.

“2485 went down after 40 minutes too,” Jerry said slowly. “What does that mean?”

Taking a deep breath, Sam told Jerry what they’d only just put together themselves. “Forty is biblical numerology. Like 40 days in the desert. The number stands for death.”

“Remember when the EVP said no survivors,” Dean asked, “but we all knew that made no sense because there were survivors. That’s because the demon is going after everyone that survived 2485.”

@remember-me-forever-silent-angel @gaylemonshark @marveldivergentouatdctvfangirl @lalirang @averagekansan @addsomesalt @stusbunker @sebba-hiddles @fanfictionrecommendations-com @hoppy519 @thatwrestlingfan91 @extremeobsessions101 @spence-imagines @bettercallsabs @whaaatthefuuuuck @letsgetfuckingsuperwholocked @your-imagination-runs-wild @cryinglots @steggy01 @gigilame @sedulous-mind @a-unique-girls-heaven @just-antiyou @rmmalta @original-criminal-fanfics @ties-n-suits @veroinnumera @eurusholmmes @fanficienjoyedreading @astridstark13

#supernatural #supernatural au #supernatural fanfic #supernatural fanfiction series #supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester #sam winchester #bobbie deanna winchester #born to fire #phantom traveler #s1ep2

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gingerxxale · 7 years ago

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Nakama & Shame

I think anime kinda made me disillusioned to friendships. To those who already watch anime often, I think you may already know what I’m alluding to – the unearthly dedication and support to one’s friends (sometimes even enemies) because you believe in the good and growth in them. The incessant self-sacrifice in order to induce safety and/or happiness for a loved one; someone cherished so innocently, so purely, that there is no romantic tie. Just an unpolluted friendship, a bond that is so strong, all the evils of the world – EVEN DEATH – cannot break you apart.

But maybe this perspective isn’t exclusive to anime; maybe it’s even a character trait embedded in Japanese culture.

I walked into a ramen shop in Boston about a month ago and saw this written in huge, white letters upon the burgundy wall over my head:

NAKAMA [n.] A person that shares your destiny for whom you would sacrifice your life; Its meaning is too entangled to be “friend” but it is also too deep to be just “companion.”

If there’s an entire country who really embodies this notion (no matter how small or large), that’s pretty awesome.

Under the font, were drawings of manga-esque characters with their backs turned to the customers but their fists in the air. As usual, upon seeing these kinds of images, I had an immediate feeling of camaraderie and hospitality – inspiration even.

So I was curious.

After researching a bit online (for about five minutes), nakama may actually just be a fictional trope in Japanese television – actually given its deeper meaning from the legendary anime One Piece – but Japan is famously known for its low crime rate, its unarmed officers, its friendly strangers who will fasten a young man’s tie because it’s undone and he’s headed for an interview, and they want him to succeed! So will gladly aid in his looking sharp without needing to be related to this person in any way. Then they’ll wish him the best of luck and pray he gets the job! As if they knew him. As if they were family. So even if nakama is a fictional concept, it seems there is an innate goodness instilled in the Japanese people that obviously gave root to the concept of nakama. An innate, unrelated goodness we haven’t really grasped anywhere else (that I’ve been exposed to at least).

And whether it be instilled in Japanese tradition or simply an injection to their entertainment, I love that I grew up with this idea of nakama. Though this mentality has (I’ll be perfectly honest) made me lose a few friendships here and there, it’s definitely kept the right ones closer and stronger for longer than I expected or felt I deserved. My most valuable friends have respected and even reflected my personalized form of nakama because of the familial relationship it had inevitably created between us.

I was exposed to anime at quite a young age, and I was re-exposed to anime at the crack of dawn of every morning as my brother snuck out of our bedroom to watch reruns of Dragon Ball on the Cartoon Network; the early hours were a safe haven for a relatively violent and bloody show of foreign origins despised by most parents but loved by some teensy children (such as ourselves). He used to take out our most recently purchased bag of pita bread and pack of American cheese from the fridge and would nibble his way through the end of each – until we had nothing left to use for our family breakfasts during the weekends (reflecting on this now, I’m sure this drove both my mom and dad a little crazy).

Now, I often credit my having an older brother for a lot of my toughness and a lot of my disconnect with the common American young lady – my best friends in school were mostly boys. We were always playing Pretend. Dreaming we were magical creatures climbing trees and burning down buildings was a lot more fun than being a part of the local girl-gang in my opinion (which I was also a part of. But I picked my shifts). I owed this early exposure and exercising of a speedily-expanding imagination to my older brother and to the shows he didn’t let me watch.

The shows I only watched while hiding behind the couch and peering over the cushions with my little fingers hinged on the edges of suspense. Clawing through the fabric – just to watch Dragon Ball without him knowing; without him catching me and demanding that I leave (because apparently I was deemed too young for such mature content). Despite him being only two years older than me and like… eight. If he ever did spot me, I’d have to not only be yelled at (mind you, while my parents were sleeping in our tiny apartment in Los Angeles which struck a whole other type of fear through my 3-foot-frame) but I would also have to sink to the floor and stare at the wall for the next two hours – behind the couch, listening to the show instead. Painting the scenes in my head as I had to imagine they were on the TV screen because my evil, older brother claimed I was too immature to see it.

* I will have you know, this was the final power trip I allowed him to have over me. The future was bleak for my older brother, but bright for my unrelenting defiance and eventual overthrow of his tyrannous nature. Bullies are not to be tolerated. *

But I was just so damn curious. Like what could be so amazing, so interesting, that it pulled my brother out of his bed at 5 am every morning like clockwork to eat cold bread and cheese and sit two inches away from the TV screen for the next two/three hours??

It had to be thee coolest thing ever.

So I risked it all. I risked the deportation back to my bedroom, the hellish fire that could awaken my sleeping parents, their hellish fire after being woken by their son’s hellish fire which would then be redirected to me as the source of his hellish fire that had woken them up in the first place.

It all didn’t seem worth it. (But it was).

I couldn’t wake up as early as him every day, but I always made it out to see at least the concluding hour of Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z those mornings. I did it so often, that eventually, my brother refrained from fending me off with a foam baseball bat or a stick. Maybe he understood that I was his little sponge whom he could influence and make awesome, rather than the rabid gerbil he made me out to be that ejected out of our mother’s womb for the sole purpose of ruining his life. My seat placement beside him was a promotion. I had graduated to soft-plaything; something that could still be tormented and abused, but should no longer be feared.

I didn’t understand why he liked cold pita bread and American cheese so much, but that seemed to be the Snack of Kings. And I had just been promoted. Beggars can’t be choosey, y’know?

This development in our sibling relationship was also when I discovered my severe case of lactose-intolerance. So in a way, anime’s role in my life was more than just a didactic ruling of friendship and sibling-warfare, but also a court hearing for prospective-allergies.

After discovering my intolerance of yellow-American cheese, my mom introduced my small intestine to goat milk, goat cheese, and an array of goat-rather-than-cow related products; it was a comparatively smelly alternative lifestyle-change that I remember enjoying. I also was not a very picky kid – but again, I saw myself as a trampled vagabond of the streets – so I took what was give to me without question.

But I was a sanctified vagabond. I had made my way from the nosebleeds to the courtside all on my own, a product of my own resilience and ambition. And I thought I was incredible. Like… I wasn’t even old enough for this show. My older brother said I wasn’t allowed to watch these things, and yet here I was… him petting my head and eating cheese while I ogled skyward toward a sizzling, 90s, television filled with awkward screaming, high-voltage blasts and decapitated heads. I was taking it all in and I was loving it.

And one of the reasons I loved it was because Goku (who’s literal growth we have avidly followed from Dragon Ball to DBZ and onward) had a son that he fought alongside. Like how cool would that be?! His son, Gohan, was around my brother’s/my age, depending on the episode, and was being taken out on missions?! Like what?! The amount of TRUST that Goku not only had in his son but in his comrades taking care of his son was powerful. He had enough faith that his son could help him – the greatest Super Saiyan in the world – “fight crime,” defeat enemies, purge the universe of evil!

But also knew when to tell Gohan to like back the f*ck up cause he was 6 and had little to no training. And that was dope.

I was six. I could be great. I could have friends bigger and better than me (which I already did ‘cause I was the shortest kid in my class and still am at the bold age of 22) but friends who still believed in me in spite of that! I could be everyone’s equal. The grown-ups would see my latent potential, the bold energy I harbored, and pay no mind to my age. They would look at me and expect greatness; not because my father was their friend nor because my father was great, but because I was their friend and I was great.

They would do anything for me. Even give up their life for me? Whoa.

The episode that is engrained in my memory most was my brother’s favorite – we re-watched this scene countless times once YouTube became a thing on the internet and a mighty weapon for internet babies like us to digest.

Gohan turning Super Saiyan 2 for the first time.

Mostly I just remember Android 16’s head bouncing around on the dirt, and his dreary eyes looking up as he drawled… “Gooooohaaaaaaan. Let it gooo…” in this deep, robot voice – but let’s remember why 16’s head was rolling around at everyone’s feet. Because he had just pounced on Cell’s back with the belief that he still had a bomb lodged inside his body and was ready to self-destruct – to sacrifice his own life in order to save his comrades. Comrades now, but enemies not so long ago. Hell, Android 18 was going around bustin’ everyone’s asses and suddenly she’s marrying Krillin – goes to show that bad guys have can have a lot of good inside them (and if you’re marrying Krillin… you have a lot of good inside you).

But alas, 16 no longer had a bomb inside his body, and therefore Cell blasted him to bits and kicked his skull aside like it was the neighbor-kid’s deflated soccer ball. This is where 16 recites his epic speech of encouragement:

“It is not a sin to fight for the right cause… It is because you cherish life that you must protect it… I know how you feel, Gohan.” Despite being an android.

And then Cell stepped on his face and his head exploded – but! With all the coils, gadgets, chips, and metal – out came a lot of blood; and that was very humanizing to me. That things that bleed – animals, humans, and apparently androids – we all have a quality that bonds us, a frailty and an appreciation for life that unifies us. We are all unified by the blood in our veins. Despite being just an android! Gohan was right! 16 did love life, and he gave it up because he loved his friends even more and wanted them to enjoy the rest of their existences. It’s an abrasive scene, but thanks to my older brother, Andrew, one I’ve seen a million times nonetheless.

And due to the power of emotions! Gohan crosses the threshold and reaches Super Saiyan 2.

With glistening tears in his eyes.

It reminded me of the samurai – avenging the death of a loved one. Pride. Brotherhood. Bonds. Protection. Justice. Self-sacrifice… Nakama.

And then came Naruto.

This could easily mark the end of my existence. I lost my youth at the mere age of 12. Cause if Naruto doesn’t traumatize you for life, then bless your soul – nothing else can, my child.

Masahi Kishimoto intended the first arc of Naruto Uzumaki’s adventures to be his last as well. That single manga was illustrated for the notoriously heart-wrenching plot movement of Squad 7 facing Zabuza, Demon of the Hidden Mist, and the orphan Haku. (Let’s not get too into this though cause that’ll just tear me up in seconds).

Transformed into an anime, this plot movement was the first for many of us to watch. And very quickly were we faced with the complex of sympathizing for the enemy, maybe a little too much.

Zabuza Momochi, a rogue Shinobi of the Village Hidden in the Mist is known as one of the most dangerous ninjas of the land. Very unexpectedly, we learn he also practically raised an orphan child named Haku on his own, training him as a swordsman to defend himself. Haku has a special ability that people in his village feared; therefore, people like Haku and Haku’s mother were summarily executed. So Haku’s mother taught him to keep his ability a secret – until her own spouse discovered their secret and murdered her. Haku lost control in response to this, kills his own father and the rest of his village and is then found by Zabuza Momochi…

In this first arc, Zabuza is hired as an assassin that inevitably clashes with Squad 7 (our protagonists), and we’re obviously rooting for Squad 7 to survive! We want them to win. The lead character, Naruto is in Squad 7! Clearly we like them the most. Then why is it that every fan of the show immortalizes Zabuza and Haku?

Because we see a bond between Zabuza and Haku. When Haku appears in the mist to sacrifice his safety in order to keep his caretaker safe – that act changes everything.

As of yet – there is no strong bond holding together Squad 7. Yeah, Naruto and his comrades fight their hardest, and one of them almost to the death; they have to utilize the teamwork they’d been avoiding for so long – but that’s not nakama. The bond of love between an assassin and his conditioned apprentice, though? THAT was nakama.

You see that moment, that presentation of empathy, love, and care for something other than themselves made those characters greater – unselfish, forgiving, merciful and kind to someone outside of them – making them stronger than any of the adored members of our beloved Squad 7. Their pasts, their wrongdoings, their sins I won’t say meant nothing… but they suddenly meant much less. Because we just witnessed their humanity, and much more than their humanity – selflessness.

In fiction – we frequently equate the enemy with negative qualities. They are the enemy, therefore they must carry no virtue. They are all evil.

But a person who steals bread, inspired by the love for their starving children… A person is risking their life, reputation, and future with an evil act in order to protect/save others.

Self-sacrifice is the greatest sacrifice is it not? And great self-sacrifice I imagine should be the hardest decision to make. The amount of bravery and inner-peace needed to execute such a choice… is impressive. I am grateful to have never been placed in the predicament where I must choose between my life and another’s. Would I have the strength to give up everything for someone I love? Could I make that decision? I have no idea, but I can tell you that when I see a mother sacrifice herself for her child, or any adult jump in front of a child they are unrelated to who is in harm… there’s something magical behind that choice. There’s a passion, a power of emotion that exceeds the brain and is pure heart – which may be stupid – but it’s selfless. And altruism is admirable if not the most admirable.

Nakama is a purely altruistic act, and though I cannot say I’ve ever felt that I would give my life for my friends in a moment (which seems like nakama-extremism), I know I sacrifice a lot for my loved ones, even when we are not blood related. I donate a lot, I believe in people a lot, I offer plenty of my time which in my opinion… is giving my life.

But a lot of people do not understand this idea of nakama and are very quick to judge it, if not feel unsettled by it; it is not clinginess, it is not desperation; it is just empathy, faith, and affection but it does not take away for someone’s love for themselves – at least it shouldn’t. It is there only to make you stronger.

So maybe that’s why some of our most evil characters in popular culture are incredibly strong. Enemies in fiction aren’t always 100% made out of Satan-Squeeze. We do see some humanity in our antagonists here and there. But there’s a weird, religious, consecration when a bad guy “sees the light” and decides to suddenly “go green and be good.” So it almost seems like… there really is no adversary… cause… in an instant, they’re absolutely cleansed. So… if everyone can be saved, than that means everyone is made of goodness. And then what a relief that is! What a belief that is! Ahhhh what a happy, spiritually satisfying ending ☺.

This brings up the complicated character development between Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha. (We’re diving into murky waters, my friends).

Sasuke Uchiha was my favorite character from the moment I laid eyes on him, but he has probably one of the most tragic pasts I’ve ever had the honor of absorbing. Born of the Uchiha Clan, Sasuke was raised among some of the most intelligent, perceptive, and valuable ninja-warriors of Konoha. Their trademark is the Sharingan – a powerful dōjutsu (an eye technique) that augments a ninja’s insight and hypnotism against their rival… basically. Sasuke lives a pretty normal and happy childhood, constantly idolizing his older brother Itachi and striving to be just as strong and helpful to the community as his brother has been. Then we discover Itachi has had undisclosed motives for a long time. Abruptly, he unleashes… going on a rampage, slaughtering the whole entire Uchiha clan, including his and Sasuke’s parents… but leaves Sasuke alive and alone.

So Sasuke’s mission practically from birth becomes to avenge his clan, locate, and defeat his brother.

But then he meets Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno who seem to veer him from the path of self-destruction and revenge. He finds a family he once lost amongst Squad 7 and its hilarious but unsurpassable sensei, The Copy Ninja, Kakashi Hatake (who, for lengthy reasons, also attains an eye with the clan’s Sharingan). There is a bond growing between all four of these characters, an empathy, a pure caretaking quality that was not there when they were up against Zabuza and Haku.

But inescapably… we lose Sasuke to the dark side (and let’s just leave it at that for now).

One of the worst things that can probably happen to you as a human being (aside from an audience member) is seeing your favorite character go bad. Yeah sure it’s kinda cool and they become even edgier than they once were, but there’s nothing cool about seeing someone you believed to be your best friend go rogue and forsake the home you built together because suddenly you and your friendship mean absolutely nothing to them… That always sucks.

But according to nakama, you have an unbreakable bond… yet you see the goodness being sucked out of your nakama’s soul… does that mean that you give up on the friend who has given up on you? Do you turn your back on the criminal your best friend has now become?

One of my dad’s favorite movies is Seabiscuit. He’s definitely a big fan of the comeback-kid and always tended to root for the underdog. His favorite quote in the film became one to live by in our household. It was when Chris Cooper’s character was asked why he kept trying to fix this horse that had injured its ankle. It was a racehorse. With an injured ankle it had become useless. And to that he responded,

“You don’t throw a whole life away just because it’s banged up a little.” Beautiful.

So when your BFF goes all homicidal on the townspeople… what do you do? Well, because of anime, I don’t think I’d ever be able to completely hate them. Even if I had the responsibility of killing them… the nakama between us would still exist despite their death and my being the cause of their death.

I am not quite sure that this is a good thing. You see… sometimes… I do believe we need to lose friends, and we shouldn’t keep raising excuses for why it’s okay that they’ve truly begun to suck as people. It is their fault. You have tried. You’re now beginning to work yourself to the bone defending an ego that apparently doesn’t even want your defending.

The fatal flaw of nakama: difficulty knowing when to let go.

But the problem that I feel most people face, is letting others go too easily. I watch my acquaintances releasing friends like breath out of their lungs sometimes, and the stories I hear of them being suddenly dropped from a friendship are staggering… I think people have forgotten how to be brave, and forgotten how to be there for our buddies when they need us the most and evidentially become the most difficult versions of themselves to deal with. It is hard being a good friend – if anyone tells you otherwise I can confidently state that they are wrong and probably have a lot of interpersonal issues as well. But it is hard being there when someone needs you, especially when they need you more than that one time when they got the news.

I credit this rude awakening to my emotional intelligence, my time spent being introspective and aware of the people and the world around me – to my understanding and my empathy. Because I know I’ve “strayed-from-the-path” before, I know I’ve hit concrete walls and sulked in the pitfalls of depression, and more often than not was abandoned by my friends rather than finding them waiting for me to wake up on the other side as a new person. And I’ll tell you what – I got used to the abandonment, but I never accepted it as a viable approach. So every time a friend of mine hit the concrete walls or were in the jaws of anxiety and stress, I was always sitting cross-legged with my head cocked to the side, my ears wide-awake, and a smile in my pocket for when they were ready. ‘Cause I knew that’s what could’ve helped me. I knew that support meant something to people. I was showing my friends in pain that they had a cheerleader, and I was going to be rooting for them until they’d come back to Earth. And did I learn this from the air? Did I think of this approach by myself? Ruminating on it, anime and manga trained me to be a good friend before I even had a friend to be good to.

But what about when they don’t come back to Earth? And what if it’s because they refuse to? When do you let go, and does letting go mean ‘stop loving?’

That’s when things get complicated.

But nakama still doesn’t lose its value.

My BFF is a homicidal freak now, right? Okay. So it appears that I’m head of the defense force that is meant to take my ex-BFF DOWN TO THE GROUND… those characters that suddenly just flip the switch and delete every memory they have had with that person… that’s great and all, and I’m sure a useful tool when you’re in the business of saving lives (you’ve essentially deleted your bias towards a person who is now your enemy) but that doesn’t feel very human to me. Like we just discussed above, you’ve also given up on someone. And the idea of giving up on someone does not exist in anime. Unless it’s a supporting-role who had a hand in poorly raised one of our vindictive protagonists. But they always feel shame in the end anyway, and the protagonist has the inner peace to forgive them because of their understanding, their love, and at the root of it – nakama.

So how and why did nakama appear in manga and anime? Where did it come from and why is it still so prevalent in Japanese culture? Could it be a reaction to something rather than an intrinsic value?

What if nakama was in some way a response to shame? That if you did not behave this way towards your comrades (for example fellow samurai) you would then be identified as a coward, unwilling to risk your life for your brethren. Therefore you have brought dishonor to you family. Dishonor on your cow! (as per Mushu) and shame upon your head. An ultimate, sin according to the ancient culture, inducing suicides throughout the empire.

So could the innocent idea of nakama have been born from the embarrassment of shame? And is that why western society does not grasp this value… as a value? /how do we experience shame and do we value it?

What is our idea of shame? I’ll tell ya, it usually doesn’t stem from how we treat other people:

Someone cheated on their spouse? Yeah well it happens.

Someone keeps cheated on their math tests? Shame.

A person is corrupt in the workplace? It’s terrible, we hate it but… what’re we gonna do, it happens.

A person comes out as gay. Shame.

A human who likes a unique style of music. Shame.

A human who was raped. Shame.

A teenager who isn’t athletic like their parents. SHAAAME.

You see, we treat shame as a form of social acceptance, and by that I mean, if you do not meet the criteria of the put-together citizen, you should be ashamed of yourself! During the Edo Period of Premodern Japan, if you were a Samurai and could not uphold Bushido; “the way of the warrior,” the moral code of that culture; shame was brought upon you. But their moral code was often in the pursuit of benefitting other people.

The eight rules of bushido code are as follows:

Righteousness Heroic Courage Benevolence/Compassion Respect Integrity Honor Duty and Loyalty Self-Control

These laws outline the responsibilities of samurai; to be deeply honest with yourself and your neighbor, to not only find opportunities to help your neighbor but to create those opportunities when they do not arise. Understanding that true strength does not come in proving your strength. Staying true to your word and being aware that you are the judgment you sleep with at night. Decisions you make and how these decisions are carried out are a reflection of who you truly are.

For, “you cannot hide from yourself.”

But it appears that our in-vogue moral code dictates that you must hide from yourself because if you are different… you are a deviant. Its standing does not rely on our treatment of others but more on our ability to conform to a certain standard of acceptable normalcy. Not too weird but not too common. So our code just seems to be self-imposed and self-inflicted. We don’t seem to really value how we treat one another but how well we mold to one another. I think the last time I was taught that being kind to others was a code to live by was in kindergarten, when I learned, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Pretty much, treat people how you’d wanna be treated. And then of course “keep your hands to yourself.” * thumbs up *

But after that… I dunno… there wasn’t much stress on the ethical upbringing of our population, of our citizens. Do we really not care that much? Yeah sure, I took ethics in college, I took several courses in Sociology and Philosophy and studied the Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking… Literature can often times be a nice bridge into empathy as well… but these were all choices. I was not obligated to take any of these classes… which means… a lot of people don’t. And won’t. And even if they did/do, college may have been a late start to have these discussions.

We are raising a population of Narutos that will not chase after their Sasukes. Generations of children that believe hurting someone is an okay practice if that person hurt them first and feel no shame afterwards. That reflecting fire proves your strength rather than dousing it and turning your cheek and being a bigger person. The way we’re going, everyone is going to want their fire to be larger and brighter than their enemies’ and their friends,’ igniting an egotistical flame that’ll just burn down city hall… thanks guys.

Hot-heads are generally looked down upon in Japanese entertainment. They’re a source of humor and the butt of everybody’s jokes because they’re assumed to be quite immature and stupid. They are nothing like their leaders; they lack self-control and respect, empathy, and awareness. In these shows, characters have certain codes to live by that are very similar to the samurai’s bushido, and if you’re not striving for that admirable way of life… something seems to be wrong with you:

The way of the ninja in Naruto.

Saiyan Culture’s emphasis on pride, honor, strength, and honesty.

And even in shōjo manga like Mermaid Melody and Special A, there is a camaraderie between our main characters that is so strong, any outside force cannot defeat it. You see these stories do not have to revolve around intense, dramatic plots entrenched in suspense and guided by their twists and turns. The characters set in a village ravaged by demons are quite the same as characters trying to survive high school. They are inspired by their peers; peers who neglect them, hate them, terrorize them, love them… they want to grow and become stronger because of their peers.

There is a constant theme in anime about weakness and how weakness is looked down upon, but not in the overtly-masculine way that you may think. It is not that weakness itself is shameful, but that one’s inability to protect their loved ones is shameful. Characters are often tormented by their guilt for feeling like deadweight, like an anchor, being incapable of protecting their best friends and their families. So they are motivated by their pain, their rivals, their nakama all in order to evolve and grow into someone stronger – and a character’s strength is measured by how well they can protect other’s.

What an incredible notion. Measuring strength based on your selflessness and your ability to love.

If I have to lose friends because they do not understand nakama… because they find weakness in it, they’re missing out on a tool that builds up only the toughest and the bravest. It hurts, but it must be endured and it must be accepted by people like myself. Those friends I will lose are luckily few, and are not guided by the same light that guides the characters I’ve admired since my childhood. And people like that cannot inspire themselves, nor will they be able to inspire others.

I am an endless fire lit in perpetuity by the sensation of my nakama, and I will continue to be fueled by this heat, inspired by every day and every night, because I have people I care for and people to live for. My ability to love can break the bank – and I can thank my evil, big brother for that.

- Ashley Beroukhim

11.24.17

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leviathangourmet · 5 years ago

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You’ve probably heard a lot of complaints about dads over the past few years. We fathers are not pulling our weight around the house. Poor Mom is stuck working a “second shift,” doing more than her share of household chores even after a full day at the office. In fact, even “good dads” aren’t so good after all, and don’t deserve all the praise that is apparently heaped on them whenever they are seen in public within 50 feet of their kids.

In honor of Father’s Day, allow me to dig into the data on how parents spend their time, and to bring to light a side of it that few seem willing to discuss. It’s a side that makes dads look . . . good.

My core points are these: Among married couples living together with kids, if anything, it’s dads who do more work in total—adding up paid work, housework, child care, and even shopping. Moms do work more in some specific circumstances, but the data acquit fathers as a group of the slacking charges so frequently leveled against them. Further, the biggest complaint that is actually consistent with the numbers—that moms and dads do different blends of home work and paid work—is not necessarily a problem at all, and to insist otherwise is to devalue parents’ own preferences.

Who Works More?

I’ll start with a fact that has been reported several times, yet mysteriously has never inspired think pieces in mainstream-media outlets. Combining housework, child care, and paid work, dads put in just as much time as moms do—in fact, a little more. The Pew Research Center found this in the 2011 American Time Use Survey (though a gap of just 54 vs. 53 hours per week) and again in the 2016 round (61 vs. 57), and a joint panel of the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute confirmed the results using the 2015 data. Combining the 2013 to 2017 ATUS,1and limiting the data to respondents married and living with their spouses to ensure the moms and dads represent similar households, I find a gap of about 40 minutes per day, or four and a half hours per week: about 59 for men and 55 for women.

But that’s a big overall number that might obscure a lot of variation. Maybe (a) moms are more likely to stay home, in which case they put in fewer hours, but (b) in cases where moms and dads both work for pay, women end up doing far more work.

Except that’s not true, either—at least if you take account of the fact that when both parents work for pay, dads tend to work longer hours at their jobs. (This is something noted in Josh Levs’s book All In.) Once again, using my combined ATUS sample, I find remarkably similar time investments by working moms and dads in the same situations:

In cases where the respondent works for pay and so does the respondent’s spouse, dads do 62 hours worth of total work each week to moms’ 59.

In cases where both the respondent and the spouse work for pay full-time, dads work 63 hours in total, to moms’ 62.

It's also possible to look at couples in which one partner doesn't work for pay—though this must be done carefully, because different reasons for not working have different implications for how much work around the house one is able and expected to do. (Just imagine the different expectations you'd have for your spouse if they became temporarily unemployed, became disabled, or decided to leave the workforce for the specific purpose of watching the kids.) To account for these differences as well as possible, I looked at couples where one person works full-time and the other is out of the labor force but not disabled.

In these couples, the working spouses work about the same amount whether they’re moms or dads. But the non-working spouses work a lot less if they’re dads:

Among respondents who work full-time and have a spouse who is out of the labor force and non-disabled, dads work 62 hours to moms’ 61.2

In the flipside scenario, where a non-disabled respondent is out of the workforce and has a full-time-working spouse, dads work just 33 hours to moms’ 46. That’s a gap of about two hours a day! Yikes.

Of course, stay-at-home moms are far more common than stay-at-home dads—and even stay-at-home moms do less total work than do full-time-working dads married to stay-at-home moms (46 vs. 62 hours). So, this exception, while dramatic and worthy of study, is limited in terms of its effect on the overall comparison of moms and dads.

I can also make some other changes to the analysis to see if I can make things look worse for moms. For instance, “household activities” don’t include grocery shopping in the ATUS’ definition, but for our purposes, they probably should. Indeed, while we’re at it, why not include all shopping, along with caring for all types of household members, not just children?

Still, the broad patterns hold. Dads, in general, work a little more, though the 40-minute gap is cut by more than half; both-working and both-full-time households split their total time about evenly; non-working dads with full-time spouses drastically underperform non-working moms in the same situation, though neither work as much as do full-time working parents with non-working spouses.

If the dad you’re married to isn’t pulling his weight, by all means, call him out on it. Judging from the above, this is especially likely if he's out of the labor force; throw his Xbox controller in the trash, wipe the drool from his chin, kick him in the rear, and tell him to wash some dishes! But in general, we’re doing just fine.

***

There are, of course, some blind spots here. For one thing, moms still take the lead in managing family life, a responsibility that is not easily quantified. For another thing, you can always come up with new comparisons to make in search of disadvantaged women — couples where one partner works full-time but the other works part-time, etc. I won’t bore you (or myself) by digging into all that and will instead just stipulate that I’m sure some of these comparisons are unflattering to men, just as others must be unflattering to women.

Some have also taken the approach of quantifying leisure rather than work, finding that dads get more of it—but, as also noted in All In, the additional leisure that dads get is canceled out by women spending more time on sleep and other personal-care activities. I'll further stipulate that when parents break up, moms are more likely to get the kids, which is a difficult situation to evaluate because there’s little data on men with non-resident kids.

But more pressingly, up to this point, I’ve completely ignored the blend of paid work and house work that men and women do. I’ve done this because I see paid work and home work as equally valuable—and the question of which is more pleasant is impossible to answer, given that “paid work” can mean anything from playing rock concerts for adoring fans to falling off a roof you're installing in the Louisiana summer. (Happy Equal Occupational Fatality Day!) But let’s unpack the issue.

Preferences Matter

It is absolutely true that women’s work time tends to be weighted more heavily toward home work. Across all the married moms and dads in my ATUS sample, child care and housework amount to 58% of moms’ work time, versus 27% for dads. Even among couples where both parents work full-time, 37% of moms’ work hours but only 26% of dads’ work hours are spent on child care and household activities.3

To someone committed to “gender equity,” the problem is obvious. But this neglects the desires of the men and women whose behavior creates the inequity. If men and women behave differently because they have different preferences, and if we won’t force them to behave the same way, we cannot expect “equity.” Just look at the gender disparities that remain in Sweden, which does much more through policy to encourage equal work arrangements.

So, let’s look at male and female preferences, and let’s start at the broadest possible level.

As David Barash put it in his book Out of Eden, “there is no society in which men do more fathering than women do mothering.” And as Steve Stewart-Williams noted in The Ape That Understood the Universe, it is far more common not just among humans but in nature writ large for females to be the sex that invests more in children. The reasons for this are obvious and many. The mother is always present at a child’s birth, for instance, making maternal bonding an especially reliable way to ensure a kid is taken care of; moms also can be sure that the children they deliver are their own, and thus don’t risk “wasting” (in evolutionary terms) their parental investments on a child who doesn’t share their genes. At a minimum, we shouldn’t find it surprising or offensive if women indicate a greater desire to spend time with their children, even if it costs them at work. And they do.

One way that women indicate this is through their actual decisions. Years ago, women were all but forced to stay at home while men worked, but this changed dramatically in the middle of the 20th century, and women flooded into the workforce until the turn of the millennium. Social liberalism made additional gains after that point—with increasing secularism and, most on point, declining shares of American adults agreeing that it's “much better for everyone involved” for men to work while women tend house, especially since 2010. But women have joined men in slowly leaving the workforce, at least until a very recent uptick driven by lesser-educated single moms. And the gains to female employment stalled at a level at which men are still more likely to work than women. Among those 25–54, nearly 90% of men but only 75% of women are in the labor force. Maybe we could change this picture by actively subsidizing work among mothers, but either way, it's awfully hard to square two decades of declining female labor-force participation and rising social liberalism with the idea that women’s labor-force participation is to this day primarily a function of their oppression.

There’s additional insight in opinion polls asking women about their “ideal” work situation, which can tell us if the nation’s mothers do somehow have a repressed desire to do much more for GDP than they already do. In general, per a recent IFS/Wheatley Institution survey, just 28% of moms want to work full-time, 40% part-time, and 23% not at all (with the remainder saying they’re not sure). An earlier survey of the general public reached a fairly similar breakdown about the ideal situation for mothers and provided a contrast with fathers: Only 12% of the public thinks full-time work is ideal for moms, while 70% thinks it ideal for dads. A goal of pushing moms to do more at the office and less with the kids goes against the preferences of a lot of those very moms.

What about housework? Yes, women do more—which, as we've already seen, is generally a problem only if you ignore men's greater hours at their jobs as a balancing factor. And on top of that, there's very good evidence, as Jonathan Chait has put it, that men don't want a lot of housework “to be done by anyone.” They're not blowing off necessary cleaning; they just disagree how much cleaning is necessary, as is clear from the fact that single men with no kids do only half as much cooking, cleaning, and laundry as do single women with no kids. In a marriage, both partners should be willing to do their fair share of the work needed to get the house to a socially and hygienically acceptable level, but beyond that, the cleaner partner has no right to insist on a higher standard than his or her spouse wants and force the partner to carry half the burden. Lest this sound like I'm venting a personal grudge, I'll assure you that my wife and I are both pigs, and neither of us does anywhere near half of the cleaning that should be done.

Once again, these are aggregates. Each couple is different. If you don't like the division of labor in your household, talk to your spouse about it. But the division of labor in households in general hardly seems troubling.

***

Men should be free to lean out from work and do more with the kids. Women should be free to work as much as they want. Indeed, on this point I’m backing my words with action: Our third child is due in December, and a few months beforehand, I’m going to become a full-time, stay-at-home dad and a part-time writer on the side, while my wife continues at her full-time job.

But if couples, in general, tend to arrive at the opposite arrangement, we should respect their decisions and celebrate both kinds of contributions to a household’s ability to thrive. And we should stop whining about dads as a group not doing their share of the work their families depend upon—because that’s not true.

#misandry #parenting #fathers #family studies #men's issues #men's rights #feminism #anti-feminism #gender equality #article #archive #research

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12raben · 8 years ago

Text

Medieval Charter Challenge - Rule Tweak Set for Jobs

First things first:

I want to thank vllygrl for the Medieval Charter Challenge! It is a huge inspiration to me and influenced my gameplay immensely!

Ok, now we can go on.

I read some variations of the BACC and thought: “This makes an aweful lot of sense.” In the MCC careers are unlocked as soon as your community reaches a certain level. In the BACC there are some requirements, the sim and/or the community have to achieve before the sim can join a specific career. Not many sims in my game actually follow a career, so a few more rules are okay with me. ;) I use a set huge pile of mods to make my game as “historical” as posible. If you are interested in the way, I want to incorporate some of them into the rules just read under the cut. :)

(A warning: This post got way longer, than I expected XD )

The mods, I use, which are touched by my additional rules:

Almighty Hat’s G-rated Religion

a cheaty-cheat-object to enter careers whenever you like e.g. simblender or the job notice board

Moghughson’s Postal System for the Sims

Chaavik’s Paint Faster

Cyjon’s Job Stopinator and Edukashun Iz Gud

Simlogical’s Prisoner Set

An item to transfer money e.g. Christanlov’s Wallet Token Controller

Bethgael’s and Morganna’s Defaults for the following Careers:

Criminal

Culinary

Slacker

Athletic

Business

Law Enforcement

Medicine

Military

Politics

Science

Architecture

Dance

Entertainment

Intelligence

Oceanography

Education

Gamer

Law

Music

Natural Science

Paranormal

Showbiz

Custom Careers

Domestic Service by Child_of_Air

Medieval Midwife by pykkadilly

Morganna’s Jacoban Career

Since Morganna’s defaults change some of the careers purposes (e.g. Athletic becomes Knighthood) I made some changes to the MCC-requirements.

My sims usually don’t have to look through newspapers to get a job. I use eighter the sim blender or the job notice board.

Oh, and I have all EPs, so there are some specific requirements, which are only possible with the corresponding EPs.

Ok. Let’s start: Careers, which are unlocked in a

Settlement

The Military

This career is a little special. In the MCC the career is only available for gentry and above. At first this is also the case for my sims.

There are some community requirements too. In order to start a military career, your sim needs a weapon. So there has to be a smith in your community. (It doesn’t matter, whether he is a blacksmith or a goldsmith or specializes in another kind of metal manufacture.)

Life in the military is hard and sometimes dangerous. Soldiers live in Barracks. Spouses and children of soldiers have to live in an own seperate household. The soldier has to send money to their family. Only sims at level 6 of the career or higher live in their own home. A sim, who is level 8 and above needs a fort of any kind. (e.g. a castle, a camp or a watch tower) Only sims in gentry can enter the higher levels of the career (Level 6 and up). I use annual ROS. One of them is resembling war. Once this event has been rolled, all sims can join the military.

There also has to be a “theatre of war”. It can be residential or community lot. I use a residential lot, where my soldiers move, whenever I have a war as a ROS. The soldiers on that lot get a prisoner token, so they are unavailable. The graves of the brave soldiers, who died during the war stay on the lot. Their inventory items may be transferred to their family members. Just royal and the High Constable’s body may be returned to the actual community and rest on the graveyard.

This are the career steps:

Scout

Sentry

Pike(wo)man

Archer

Engineer

Sergeant-at-Arms

(Wo)Man-at-Arms

Castellan

Lieutenant General

High Constable

For every military brass, there have to be a few lower ones to boss around:

Sergeants: 5 soldiers at level 1-5.

Castellan: 2 Sergants

Lieutenant General: 2 Castellans

High Constable: 3 Lieutenant Generals There can only be one High Constable at the time.

I think, that’s it. There are still some more careers available in a settlement.

Careers for Peasants: Level 1-3 and Yeomen: Level 3-10

Cookery (Culinary)

A sim, who wants to work in this career, has to own a tavern, inn or restaurant. (Basically a lot, where sims can eat.) The lot does not have to reach a particular rank, but has to be played at least once a season.

Domestic Service (Cleaning/Service)

If there is a household, which needs a maid (or anything similar) I use Christianlov’s NPC-Controller. You can select an option to pay the NPC. I use this and the career. Sims can only hire sims, who are two ranks below them, but not more than three.

Assuming we have the social status Royal (highest), Noble, Gentry, Merchant, Yeomen and Peasant (lowest), a noble family can hire a maid from the merchant class, but not from peasantry.

Unless the peasant is friends with the patriarch and/or his spouse.

Artist

The sim, who wants to make art for a living, has to sell 10 masterpieces. (I use a mod, which makes sims paint faster, that’s why there are so many.) Or he has to own a shop, where he sells his paintings. Also the sim has to paint a picture of a high ranking sim (gentry or above) and sell this picture to his new patron (give gift interaction, the artist can be payed, but don’t have to be).

Midwife

There had to be at least 2 babys born ingame. Any sim, who attended a birth (as a witness or gave birth him/herself) and has 5 cleaning points, can enter this career.

Careers for Gentry: Level 1-6 and Nobles: 7-10

Knighthood (once custom knight-career, but now default replacement of the athletic-career)

A knight has many qualities. But every sim, who wants to enter this career path has to have 15 skill points. It doesn’t matter which, but they have to add up to 15. Also, they need a sports-outfit, which resembles an armour.

Hamlet

Church (once Science) Another “special” career. To reach level 2 in the MCC (the hamlet) you have to build a church. It makes sense, there is an open spot for one sim, who cares for that church. This is is for the time beeing, the only open spot in the career. The sim has to be a member of the gentry-class (or higher). Every other sim, who enters this career, has to live in a cloistre/monastery. And those are added at MCC-level 3 (Village). His faith and seal level have to be at level 90 or higher. Once they entered the career, their faith/seal don’t matter anymore. (Though it would make sense to keep it high.) The social status is irrelevant in the church. Everyone can climb to the top of that career. Sims in this career may not marry or have any romantic relationships. (If you’re playing with ACR, don’t forget to change the nun’s/monk’s tokens.) They don’t have any personal belongings and can’t be heirs. (And if there is a war, they don’t have to serve at arms.) But at level 6 or higher, there are some more things needed. Every cellarer needs (obviously) a cellar, meaning if your cloistre dosen’t have one, there can’t be a cellarer. All levels above (7 - 10) have one open position per “church-lot”. In the MCC, there are 4 (church, cloistre, monastry and cathedral) meaning there are 16 open slots at the end of the MCC. And there can be as many Novices, Brothers and Sisters as you like. :)

for Peasants and Yeomen: Level 1-6 and Yeomen: Level 1-10

Criminal I think, a sim, who becomes a criminal, is a bit desperate. If you want your sim to get into this career his funds have to be below 100 simoleans for two days. Also his religion either allows theft or his faith and/or seal drops below 40.

Law Enforcement This career is open, when there have been 3 burglaries (regardless of outcome) and a prison has been built. The first sim, who enters this career, has to run the prison. The family of this sim may live on the same lot. When the sim, who runs the prison dies, eighter his heir continues the “business” or a new prison guard moves in.

Artificer (once Gamer) This default changes the the whole purpose of the career. Instead of a sim, who plays games for money, you get one, who is a skilled craftsman. To enter this career, the sim has to own a shop with rank 5 or higher. He also has to max his tinkering-enthusiasm. In his shop has to be a object, where he can draw plans (e.g. easel or drafting board)

Careers for Gentry: Level 1-6 and Nobles: 7-10

Adventure Most of the adventure career matches a historical game... Well at least the job titles. The space pirate (top of the career) might just be a legendary hero (like Sinbad or Hercules) To make provit of adventures, he has to own a shop, where he can sell his loot. (Can be a home business, but has to be played once a season.) And the sim has to have at least a little experience. He either visited a vacation destination and stayed there at least 4 days or has earned 8 vacation memories. (There are some, which can be earned at objects like the tea table and axe throwing taget.) Also the sim has to make a vacation once a year.

Clandestine (once Intelligence) This career opens, when another sim reaches the top of the criminal, law enforcement or military career. When a king is crowned, the career also opens. The spy has to have 5 logic- and 5 charisma-points too.

Education Another special one. The MCC states:

Peasant and Yeoman children may not attend school. Use Simlogical’s Flexi School or other hack to avoid the Maxis school.

Merchant and Gentry children and teens may attend a convent or monastery school, set this up in your community using Simlogical’s School Hacks or use the Maxis school.

Nobility and Royalty children and teens will be tutored at home and may attend college.

[...]

Only Gentry and Nobility teens may attend Colleges, and their parents must pay $40,000 tuition.

In my game education is expensive. Only sims with a certain amount can attend a school and university. (It also restricts the number of children in one household, because some families will have enough money for their heir, but the 5th son, might leave the house uneducated.) All students have to pay a fee to the owner of the school. The college tuition stays the same.

Merchant: 200 simoleans

Gentry: 300 simoleans

Noblility: 500 simoleans

Parents pay the fees, so their children get the best education possible... or at least worth their money. Diffrent fees mean diffrent schools.

Running three schools would require too many sims in the education career for my taste. That’s why I’m planning “just” two. Of course you could have more or less, if you like. One for the blue-blooded (gentry and noblility) and one for the merchants. I set up schools on community lots. A detailed tutorial on how to do that, you can find here. (Thank you, silivrin!) Who can set up a school? The merchant school can be run by anyone, who is merchant or above. The principal of the school for gentry and/or noblility has to be gentry or above. Other than that anyone with the money, which is needed to own a community lot school can enter the education career. The school doesn’t have to be played regularly, but it is nice to see the little ones struggling with their homework <3 (Visiting the school with sims, who are not students, is of course not allowed. Unless they are their parents or something similar.)

The levels of the career are restricted. Teaching merchant children opens level 1 - 5. If you want to teach gentry and above, your sim will also have to have the skills for level 6 of the career. This sim can climb only 1 level.

Level 8 - 10 are only available, when there is a university in your hood. It is open for all sims of the gentry class and above, who also have a diploma.

There can be only one sim with Level 10 (Rector of the University) per university.

I might add some things to this career, because I don’t have a university yet. I need to do some playtesting...

Village

Journalism or Carrier Just do, as I do, ignore the default job descriptions... In my game this career is for town criers and carriers. One sim in your neighborhood has to own a shop, where you can buy books or magazins or anything decorative like paper, scrolls and feathers... (or Moghughson’s Greetings Cards). The sim, who owns the shop, can also join this career. A sim, who spreads news, needs something to report. If there were 5 fires, 3 burglaries or 7 sim-deaths during 1 season, the career is open for everyone. (But I think, nobles won’t be attracted by it...)

Free Mason (Architecture) Again a default changes the career quite a lot. An art degree to be a Treadmill Walker is a little exaggerated, right? All levels are open for peasantry and yeomanry. But gentry and above wouldn’t work at the lower levels of this career. They can be Master Designer (level 8) and above, if they have the neccessary skills. There can be only one “Surveyor of the King's/Queen's Works” (top of career), if there is a king/queen. There can be only one Surveyor at the time.

Business I restrict this career to merchants. Since they are the the class, who is takin’ care of business, it’s their domain. Once the merchant owns a community lot, he can enter the career, but he has to visit his shop at least once a season. Only sims with a level 10 business can become a Merchant Prince(ss) (Top of the career)

for Peasants and Yeomen: Level 1-6 and Yeomen: Level 1-10

Slacker The sim can become a slacker, when there are 3 community-lots for entertainment. They don’t have to be owned by a sim. Also this work-seeking sim doesn’t really want to work. (He is a Slacker, remember?) So, you either take up the newspaper/switch on the computer take a look in the magical book stand and search for a job vanilla style. If you are lucky there is an open spot. Or you use a dice to randomize the success of their job research. (I use the second method for illiterate sims. D(10) if the dice shows a 1 they get the job.)

Wizardry (Paranormal) This default is just perfect :) I love playing witches and warlocks. This career is exclusive. No “normal” sim can enter this career. Other paranormal sims like werewolves and plantsims need to be witches too. But wait there is more: the witch/warlock has to be friends with one of the head witches and visited them on their lot at least once. (This reminds me, I’ll have to makeover the secret lots. EA, why you make so ugly lots??)

Scientia (Natural Science) The default changes this career in a way, which makes me think of alchemy. So, if the sim wants to enter this career, he has to max cooking-hobby-enthusiasm. He also needs a “lab”. It can be a small room or shed in the sim’s home. Decorate it with furniture and sculptures according to a theme worth 2500 simoleans (or more).

Ministrel (Music) The career is open for any sim, who successfully earned money at a community lot, while playing a music instrument. By “successfully” I mean the “happy animation�� (where the sim shakes the jar and giggles). He has to do that every day for one season.

Medical A sim, who wants to be a physician, needs a “doctor's office”. It has to be a shop, where sims can purchase anything, which is beneficial for their health. (e.g. they sell potions or comfort soup, offer massages or both or anything, you can think of) The shop has to reach level 5 before entering the career and has to be played at least once a season after.

Careers for Gentry: Level 1-6 and Nobles: 7-10

Politics A town hall is needed to open this career. (Can be owned by a sim, but doesn’t have to.) If there are some sims, who want to rule and make their house the greatest of them all, this career opens. Meaning: You have to have three or more families, who are gentry or above.

Law Nepheris described it perfectly:

“Wherever more than two Sims are gathered, there are bound to be conflicts. Your Sim has a special talent for negotiating conflict and finding their way in the complex jungle of legal matter, and has offered their services to help keep the peace in town. Requirements: [...] To enter the career this way, a Sim needs to have studied Couples Counselling. The career is unlocked for everyone with a University degree [...]”

Town

Courtier (Show Business) At first I thought: “Hm, considering the default description, this career should be for nobles only.” But wouldn’t it be interesting to see a peasant infiltrate the court? A sim, who wants to enter this career, has to be friends with eighter the king/queen, or with 3 members of the noble class. Level 7 and above however, are limited to gentry/nobility/royalty. But(!) to reach the top of the career (King's Companion/Queen's Confidante) you have to be BFFs with the ruler of your kingdom. If the friendship ends (e.g. the monarch died) you have to demote the sim to Level 9.

Maritime (Oceanography) Another “complicated” one... In order to complete the MCC, you have to build a Harbor & Docks for Trade Ships. This is needed to unlock this career. All sims, even those poor as dirt, may climb up to level 6 (Navigator). But then, they need more. What is a captain without a ship? Have your sim buy an “imaginary” ship for 8.000 simoleans. (e.g. neighborhood decoration). (Maybe, just maybe, I’m going to have one of my captains actually live on a ship. (He/She won’t have to pay the 8.000.) This would be the sim, who takes my sims to vacation areas. Or this job will do a placeholder-sim, even though I don’t really like to have more, than I really need. I’m going to figure that out...) Level 8 and up are only for gentry and above.

for Peasants and Yeomen: Level 1-6 and Yeomen: Level 1-10

Dance In order to reach the town-level, you have to build a music venue. That will do. But your sim has to build his enthusiasms for dancing until the sim can teach dancing to others. The sim also has to have 5 body skill points.

Careers for Gentry: Level 1-6 and Nobles: 7-10

Jacoban Career In my game the religion of the watcher is the most popular. Morganna’s custom career fits this spot perfectly. Once you built your cathedral, this career is open, but has some of the restrictions of the church career. They have to live in a cloistre/monastery. The faith and seal level have to be at level 90 or higher. And this career is only for gentry and above. True jacobanians (is that the word?) don’t marry or have romantic relationships. (Don’t forget ACR ;) ) They can have personal belongings and can be heirs and also can serve at arms, if it’s needed. e.g. the original heir died (I plan on building a apartment-lot for these sims.) When they become heirs, they have to appoint an heir, since they won’t have children of their own. (I think, I makes sense to choose the sim with the closest social status and highest relationship.) The Proxy is the top of the career. There can be only one.

This took waaaaay longer, than I thought. Please note: It’s a wip. As I’m playing the game, I’m always discover things, I want to do or change or... it is a big bunch of ideas, let’s phrase it like this XD

Thank you for your attention and your patience, while reading this block of text.

:D Happy Simming!

#sims #sims 2 #sims 2 medieval #mcc

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rayhayesca · 6 years ago

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The 7 worst GMO foods

The 7 Worst GMO Foods

Messing Up Your Hormones, Destroying Your Health, and Making You Fatter.

All information contained in this publication may not be copied, published, distributed, broadcast, posted on the internet, or otherwise used without the explicit permission of the publisher. As this book was created to get the word out about natural health, the use of brief quotations for the purpose of educating the public is permitted as long as proper credit is given with a hyperlink back to http://gmosrevealed.com.

DISCLAIMER: This book is offered for informational purposes only and is protected under freedom of speech. Under freedom of speech, it is not medical advice, nor should it be construed as such. Nothing in this book is intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Always work with a qualified medical professional before making changes to your diet, prescription drug use, lifestyle, or exercise activities. This information is provided as-is, and the reader assumes all risk of use, non-use, or misuse. Copyright © 2019 All rights reserved.

The GMOs Scandal Exposed

Never trust the fox to guard the hen house. This is ancient country wisdom—it’s true—yet when it comes to your health, it’s largely ignored. What do I mean? Monsanto is the largest distributor of two things: 1. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Seeds 2. Roundup GMOs are designed to withstand the toxic chemicals in Roundup—which kills every non-GMO plant it touches. And to survive toxic levels of pesticides. And while it survives toxic doses of Roundup and pesticides—it also absorbs Roundup and pesticides… Deep within the plant… where they cannot be washed off.

Poison #1

According to Monsanto—a mega-corporation that makes $2B per year selling Roundup—it is completely safe for humans to eat these plants… And they’ve found a very sly ways of covering up the truth—that Roundup is NOT safe for humans and NOT safe in our foods. Let me show you just one case of what I mean… Glyphosates are the “active ingredient” in Roundup. After losing a $289M lawsuit for giving a farmer cancer, a Monsanto Vice President made the following statement:

“Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews – and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world – support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer.” Scott Partridge, Vice President, Monsanto You don’t get to be a VP at a $2B corporation without knowing how to parrot the company talking points. But it is a very clever play on words… See, there are a couple of problems with those “800 scientific studies and reviews”… First—who ran those experiments? You guessed it! In most cases Monsanto ran the studies… Monsanto paid the scientists… And Monsanto made a killing off the results. That’s the fox guarding the hen house. The other problem? They only tested PART of the Roundup formula! Glyphosates. Meaning: They left out all of the other ingredients in Roundup. That’s why VP Scott didn’t say “Roundup does not cause cancer” instead he says, “glyphosates do not cause cancer.” And while many researchers (who were NOT paid by Monsanto) reached the conclusion that glyphosates are very dangerous…

We’ll have to leave that alone for now because the point of the story is to show how deceptive these people are when they speak. Glyphosates are NOT the only ingredient in Roundup. Glyphosates are not sprayed on our food—Roundup is sprayed on our food… And you can’t separate the glyphosates from the other chemicals once they’re in our food… Saying “glyphosates” are safe is a lot like saying fast food burgers are good for you because protein is good for you… But protein ain’t the only ingredient in a fast food burger! (forgive the bad grammar please!) And again, glyphosates aren’t the only ingredient in Roundup. To understand the danger, we need to look back at the roots of where Roundup came from—all the way back to the Vietnam War. And Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a toxic chemical “defoliant” in the Vietnam war… It’s best known today for giving Vietnamese families and our brave service men and women cancer. Monsanto provided it—the same Monsanto that provides us with GMO seeds today… and the wildly popular “weed killer” Roundup. Both of which are in well over 75% of our food. What they don’t tell you is that the exact same chemical that was in Agent Orange—a toxic chemical called 2,4-D… Is STILL being used today…

In fact, it’s one of the primary “weed killing agents” in Roundup—and we spray 300 MILLION pounds of it on our food every year.

Agent Orange contained two active ingredients—one of which was 2,4-D… They somehow still manage to get away with claiming it’s “safe” because they removed the OTHER ingredient… Apparently by itself—they say—2,4-D is safe and it’s only when you combine it with another active ingredient that it becomes dangerous. Yet all of their Roundup testing is done by isolating the active ingredient— glyphosates—from 2,4-D and claiming it is “safe.” But when they spray it on our food supply—they don’t spray glyphosates— they spray a blend of glyphosates and 2,4-D along with a lot of other undisclosed ingredients. Do you see what they’re doing? They’re using double-speak to trick the public into feeling safe… And if you look around, it’s working. The best estimates reveal that over 75% of our food is full of this toxic chemical cocktail. And the EPA allows this to happen… claiming it’s safe right along with their good buddies at Monsanto. In fact, the EPA and Monsanto get along with each other so well that the same people who work for Monsanto move on to high-ranking jobs in the EPA. And if they get tired of “public service” they go right back to work for Monsanto. Nothing to see here… Let’s just move on. A group of independent scientists reached a very different conclusion from the one Monsanto and the EPA reached through their collusion.

Their results were published in a report with a title that says it all:

“Glyphosate-Based Herbicides are Toxic and Endocrine

Disruptor in Human Cell Lines”

Their experiments proved that levels the EPA says are safe… Are NOT safe. And they pointed out one of the clever ways that Monsanto and the EPA have gotten away with their lies: By testing the ingredients individually—instead of testing them the way they are applied to our food supply. These scientists exposed human liver cells to the exact same chemical cocktails that are sprayed on our foods… This is the scientifically accepted “gold standard” for quickly discovering the effects of a chemical on the human body… Their experiment proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the chemical herbicides sprayed on our foods do three things: 1. Destroy & Mutate Human DNA & RNA 2. Drive estrogen levels out of natural balance 3. Push male androgen levels out of balance Is it any wonder then that as Roundup use ramped up, we’ve seen cancer, chronic disease and hormone imbalances rise at the same rate? These independent researchers concluded that we MUST re-evaluate the conclusions reached through the collusion between Big Food and Big Government.

Poison #2+

GMOs are also engineered to survive toxic levels of pesticides.

According to the NIH, the potential health effects of pesticides on humans include cancer and damage to the nervous, endocrine, and reproductive systems. In other words—they do more of the same things Roundup and other herbicides do… And the damaging effects of both are amplified by their combined use on our food. Plus, it doesn’t really take a scientist to understand that poison designed to kill one type of living creature will probably kill other types of living creatures as well. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t want pesticides and herbicides in my lunch—and I don’t want them in my kids’ lunches. But whether we want them or not—they’re there. Sadly, we the people have allowed this practice to go on for decades without realizing it… All because we trusted mega-corporations working with un-elected government officials to protect our children… BUT: We can no longer afford to let this go unchallenged. Someone has to stand up for the next generation and say: “Enough is enough.” We cannot allow levels of known poisons to rise higher and higher in our children’s food… We have to fight this—all of us… together… including you. That’s why we push so hard to get the truth about GMOs to as many people as possible through the GMOs Revealed docu-series… And why we’re re-opening the series to the public for free (registration opens up tonight).

This is not a small thing—this is a fight for the lives of the most innocent… the children we are called to protect. But what can YOU do? Simple. Please, if you are at all willing to help—share the GMOs Revealed series with someone today by sending them to GMOsRevealed.com. Now let’s dive into the 7 worst GMO foods that are messing up your hormones, destroying your health—and making you fat.

The 7 Worst GMO Foods Messing Up Your Hormones, Destroying Your Health and Making You Fatter

GMO #1: Corn

As much as 90% of the corn in the US is GMO corn. One type in particular is “bt corn” which is mutated to act as a pesticide so that when insects eat it, “bt corn” explodes in their stomach and kills them. Remember it’s not just corn you need to watch out for—you also need to watch out for corn products like high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, corn starch, dextrose, fructose, citric acid, lactic acid, and corn oil. Also beware of animals fed genetically modified corn because the end products—burgers, bacon, eggs, cheese, milk and other animal products— will contain GMO toxins.

GMO #2: Soy

Like corn, almost all of the soy grown in the US is GMO soy (90%+). Over 96.7 million pounds of glyphosates are sprayed on soybeans each year. And because soy is almost as common in our diet as corn—you’ll find it lurking everywhere.

Watch out for tofu, veggie burgers, soy flour, textured vegetable protein, lecithin, soy sauce, soy protein isolate, mono and di-glycerides, teriyaki, MSG, and soybean oil. Soy can also frequently be found hiding in guar gum, vegetable starch, thickener, mixed tocopherols, and natural flavoring. One study of GMO soy reported recorded what happened to hamsters fed GMO soy for three generations over a two-year period… The study reported: Those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups. And if this isn’t shocking enough, some in the third generation even had hair growing inside their mouths… Animals also eat soy in their feed along with GMO corn—so beware of animal products as well!

GMO #3: Canola Oil

GMO Rapeseed is the source of canola oil—and it has been falsely labelled as a healthy oil by many. But there is little about canola oil that is good for you. The toxic rapeseed plant was changed through a mutagenic process using radiation. To pull it out of the plant it must be chemically removed from the seeds, then deodorized and altered, in order to be utilized in foods. It is among the most chemically altered foods in our diets. And when you ingest the oil, you’re eating a highly concentrated form of this GMO plant.

The cheaply used oil is found in so many foods it’s hard to avoid… but you should read labels and avoid anything with canola oil!

GMO #4: Sugar Beets

Sugar is bad for you already—genetically modifying it and spraying it with toxins doesn’t make it healthier. Most white sugar comes from sugar beets, and 95% of them are GMO. This genetically modified sugar hit the market in the U.S. in 2009. If you’re buying packaged foods and trying to avoid sugar, good luck. It’s in everything from pasta sauce to chips and fruit juices.

GMO #5: Aspartame

Aspartame is made with genetically modified bacteria. It is in more than 6,000 products including gum, baked goods, dessert mixes, yogurts, and sweeteners, and it’s also found in some pharmaceutical drugs and vitamins! Aspartame accounts for as much as 75 percent of adverse reactions to food additives according to some reports. Even seizures and deaths have been blamed on aspartame. Don’t eat it.

GMO #6: Zucchini & Yellow Squash

Two recent victims of GMO madness are zucchini and yellow squash. At least they aren’t commonly hidden in the ingredient list of other food products. If you like squash check out a farmer’s market that doesn’t sell GMO squash or grow your own using non-modified seed.

GMO #7: Papaya

This last one may come as a surprise… But GMO papayas have been grown in Hawaii since 1999. In fact, most of the Hawaiian grown papayas are GMO. Even if you rarely buy fresh papaya, keep an out for papaya enzymes in your cosmetics… Papaya extract is a popular ingredient in lotions, creams, shampoo, conditioner, and other beauty products. And anything you put on your skin immediately enters your blood stream. The links between GMOs and chronic disease, hormone imbalances and obesity are becoming more and more clear by the day. I hope you enjoyed this free report! To learn the truth about GMOs, how to avoid them and rid your body of the toxic effects they cause—directly from the brave scientists fighting Big Food for the safety of humanity… Be sure to catch every episode of the free, 9-part docu-series at:

http://gmosrevealed.com Sincerely, The GMOs Revealed Team continue reading

The post The 7 worst GMO foods appeared first on True Health Canada.

source https://truehealthcanada.ca/the-7-worst-gmo-foods/ source https://truehealthcanada.tumblr.com/post/183762931428

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truehealthcanada · 6 years ago

Text

The 7 worst GMO foods

The 7 Worst GMO Foods

Messing Up Your Hormones, Destroying Your Health, and Making You Fatter.

The GMOs Scandal Exposed

Never trust the fox to guard the hen house. This is ancient country wisdom—it’s true—yet when it comes to your health, it’s largely ignored. What do I mean? Monsanto is the largest distributor of two things: 1. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) Seeds 2. Roundup GMOs are designed to withstand the toxic chemicals in Roundup—which kills every non-GMO plant it touches. And to survive toxic levels of pesticides. And while it survives toxic doses of Roundup and pesticides—it also absorbs Roundup and pesticides... Deep within the plant... where they cannot be washed off.

Poison #1

According to Monsanto—a mega-corporation that makes $2B per year selling Roundup—it is completely safe for humans to eat these plants... And they’ve found a very sly ways of covering up the truth—that Roundup is NOT safe for humans and NOT safe in our foods. Let me show you just one case of what I mean... Glyphosates are the “active ingredient” in Roundup. After losing a $289M lawsuit for giving a farmer cancer, a Monsanto Vice President made the following statement:

“Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews -- and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world -- support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer.” Scott Partridge, Vice President, Monsanto You don’t get to be a VP at a $2B corporation without knowing how to parrot the company talking points. But it is a very clever play on words... See, there are a couple of problems with those “800 scientific studies and reviews”... First—who ran those experiments? You guessed it! In most cases Monsanto ran the studies... Monsanto paid the scientists... And Monsanto made a killing off the results. That’s the fox guarding the hen house. The other problem? They only tested PART of the Roundup formula! Glyphosates. Meaning: They left out all of the other ingredients in Roundup. That’s why VP Scott didn’t say “Roundup does not cause cancer” instead he says, “glyphosates do not cause cancer.” And while many researchers (who were NOT paid by Monsanto) reached the conclusion that glyphosates are very dangerous...

We’ll have to leave that alone for now because the point of the story is to show how deceptive these people are when they speak. Glyphosates are NOT the only ingredient in Roundup. Glyphosates are not sprayed on our food—Roundup is sprayed on our food... And you can’t separate the glyphosates from the other chemicals once they’re in our food... Saying “glyphosates” are safe is a lot like saying fast food burgers are good for you because protein is good for you... But protein ain’t the only ingredient in a fast food burger! (forgive the bad grammar please!) And again, glyphosates aren’t the only ingredient in Roundup. To understand the danger, we need to look back at the roots of where Roundup came from—all the way back to the Vietnam War. And Agent Orange. Agent Orange was a toxic chemical “defoliant” in the Vietnam war... It’s best known today for giving Vietnamese families and our brave service men and women cancer. Monsanto provided it—the same Monsanto that provides us with GMO seeds today... and the wildly popular “weed killer” Roundup. Both of which are in well over 75% of our food. What they don’t tell you is that the exact same chemical that was in Agent Orange—a toxic chemical called 2,4-D... Is STILL being used today...

In fact, it’s one of the primary “weed killing agents” in Roundup—and we spray 300 MILLION pounds of it on our food every year.

Agent Orange contained two active ingredients—one of which was 2,4-D... They somehow still manage to get away with claiming it’s “safe” because they removed the OTHER ingredient... Apparently by itself—they say—2,4-D is safe and it’s only when you combine it with another active ingredient that it becomes dangerous. Yet all of their Roundup testing is done by isolating the active ingredient— glyphosates—from 2,4-D and claiming it is “safe.” But when they spray it on our food supply—they don’t spray glyphosates— they spray a blend of glyphosates and 2,4-D along with a lot of other undisclosed ingredients. Do you see what they’re doing? They’re using double-speak to trick the public into feeling safe... And if you look around, it’s working. The best estimates reveal that over 75% of our food is full of this toxic chemical cocktail. And the EPA allows this to happen... claiming it’s safe right along with their good buddies at Monsanto. In fact, the EPA and Monsanto get along with each other so well that the same people who work for Monsanto move on to high-ranking jobs in the EPA. And if they get tired of “public service” they go right back to work for Monsanto. Nothing to see here... Let’s just move on. A group of independent scientists reached a very different conclusion from the one Monsanto and the EPA reached through their collusion.

Their results were published in a report with a title that says it all:

“Glyphosate-Based Herbicides are Toxic and Endocrine

Disruptor in Human Cell Lines”

Their experiments proved that levels the EPA says are safe... Are NOT safe. And they pointed out one of the clever ways that Monsanto and the EPA have gotten away with their lies: By testing the ingredients individually—instead of testing them the way they are applied to our food supply. These scientists exposed human liver cells to the exact same chemical cocktails that are sprayed on our foods... This is the scientifically accepted “gold standard” for quickly discovering the effects of a chemical on the human body... Their experiment proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the chemical herbicides sprayed on our foods do three things: 1. Destroy & Mutate Human DNA & RNA 2. Drive estrogen levels out of natural balance 3. Push male androgen levels out of balance Is it any wonder then that as Roundup use ramped up, we’ve seen cancer, chronic disease and hormone imbalances rise at the same rate? These independent researchers concluded that we MUST re-evaluate the conclusions reached through the collusion between Big Food and Big Government.

Poison #2+

GMOs are also engineered to survive toxic levels of pesticides.

According to the NIH, the potential health effects of pesticides on humans include cancer and damage to the nervous, endocrine, and reproductive systems. In other words—they do more of the same things Roundup and other herbicides do... And the damaging effects of both are amplified by their combined use on our food. Plus, it doesn’t really take a scientist to understand that poison designed to kill one type of living creature will probably kill other types of living creatures as well. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t want pesticides and herbicides in my lunch—and I don’t want them in my kids’ lunches. But whether we want them or not—they’re there. Sadly, we the people have allowed this practice to go on for decades without realizing it... All because we trusted mega-corporations working with un-elected government officials to protect our children... BUT: We can no longer afford to let this go unchallenged. Someone has to stand up for the next generation and say: “Enough is enough.” We cannot allow levels of known poisons to rise higher and higher in our children’s food... We have to fight this—all of us... together... including you. That’s why we push so hard to get the truth about GMOs to as many people as possible through the GMOs Revealed docu-series... And why we’re re-opening the series to the public for free (registration opens up tonight).

This is not a small thing—this is a fight for the lives of the most innocent... the children we are called to protect. But what can YOU do? Simple. Please, if you are at all willing to help—share the GMOs Revealed series with someone today by sending them to GMOsRevealed.com. Now let’s dive into the 7 worst GMO foods that are messing up your hormones, destroying your health—and making you fat.

The 7 Worst GMO Foods Messing Up Your Hormones, Destroying Your Health and Making You Fatter

GMO #1: Corn

GMO #2: Soy

Watch out for tofu, veggie burgers, soy flour, textured vegetable protein, lecithin, soy sauce, soy protein isolate, mono and di-glycerides, teriyaki, MSG, and soybean oil. Soy can also frequently be found hiding in guar gum, vegetable starch, thickener, mixed tocopherols, and natural flavoring. One study of GMO soy reported recorded what happened to hamsters fed GMO soy for three generations over a two-year period... The study reported: Those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups. And if this isn’t shocking enough, some in the third generation even had hair growing inside their mouths... Animals also eat soy in their feed along with GMO corn—so beware of animal products as well!

GMO #3: Canola Oil

The cheaply used oil is found in so many foods it’s hard to avoid... but you should read labels and avoid anything with canola oil!

GMO #4: Sugar Beets

GMO #5: Aspartame

Aspartame is made with genetically modified bacteria. It is in more than 6,000 products including gum, baked goods, dessert mixes, yogurts, and sweeteners, and it's also found in some pharmaceutical drugs and vitamins! Aspartame accounts for as much as 75 percent of adverse reactions to food additives according to some reports. Even seizures and deaths have been blamed on aspartame. Don’t eat it.

GMO #6: Zucchini & Yellow Squash

GMO #7: Papaya

This last one may come as a surprise... But GMO papayas have been grown in Hawaii since 1999. In fact, most of the Hawaiian grown papayas are GMO. Even if you rarely buy fresh papaya, keep an out for papaya enzymes in your cosmetics... Papaya extract is a popular ingredient in lotions, creams, shampoo, conditioner, and other beauty products. And anything you put on your skin immediately enters your blood stream. The links between GMOs and chronic disease, hormone imbalances and obesity are becoming more and more clear by the day. I hope you enjoyed this free report! To learn the truth about GMOs, how to avoid them and rid your body of the toxic effects they cause—directly from the brave scientists fighting Big Food for the safety of humanity... Be sure to catch every episode of the free, 9-part docu-series at:

http://gmosrevealed.com Sincerely, The GMOs Revealed Team continue reading

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