#everyday i see people my age being philanthropic and i want to be them so bad

[tryin]

i wanna spend my time volunteering and doing social good but one i am very lazy and stupid two i have no job so i need to fucking grind leetcode sigh

[lilaetleloup]

the signs that point to a manipulator VII

28. he sees himself as a predator

And I still consider him otherwise...

But this said, he is not totally wrong. He lurks here, in the bushes, hunting the empath without conscience or remorse for the pain he could cause. He needs to eat energy! And to him it is only nature’s order that the strong are the hunters when the weak are the hunted.

But the laws of the jungle are antithetic to civilization and progress. Political parties founded exclusively by his kind always talk about going backwards, to a time when it felt good living at others’ expenses. With his Neanderthal mind, dooming the weak to an early grave, he is a hindrance to progress. Because the physically weak or the person born on the wrong side of the railroad, can easily be the smarter, the inventor, the creative mind, the genius, the spiritual guide, the wise... the one who will have humanity go forward with him.

If we succeeded in getting out of the Middle-Age it is in spite of the manipulator. Not thanks to him.

And it’s no coincidence, to my mind, if, since he has made a huge comeback these last thirty years, we turn back to the good old days of economic servitude and pandemic. Because too many manipulators in power means a massive return of corruption, incompetence, entitlement, lies and exploitation.

The manipulator sees us as preys and underestimates us. Underestimates the courage and abnegation of those who can fight for a cause bigger than themselves or who fight for those they love.

A difference between the manipulator and the predator, though, is that the manipulator prefers to stay in the shade, when the society isn’t favourable to his kind. Whereas a tiger doesn’t hide his stripes. In North Korea or other China, on the contrary, I imagine it’s party time everyday for a manipulator. And I can’t fathom the hell it must be for the minority of empathetic people there.

But if I’m right about the world’s evolution, this hiding won’t last long. And the sooner the better, because if 100% of manipulators know their “eat and be eaten” game, a very few percentage of good people are aware of the fight and what is at stake. Most of the time, this minority is composed by ex-victims.

Quite easy and no sport, then, to hunt when the antelope doesn’t know her life is on the line.

Once you know where to look, on the contrary, it’s often child play to detect them.

29. he has a paranoid tendency

Well of course, just imagine! We all have this tendency to put our own way of thinking is the other’s mind. And this makes us, empathetic people, more prone to naivete, jumping bambis in the sunset and in the crossfire of automatic guns.

But this makes him paranoid. Others want to rob him, have no conscience, will betray him, will cheat on him...

The world is full of bad guys, he knows it. And the manipulator only sleeps with one eye open. Or can’t sleep at all.

30. he doesn’t like rules

Rules are for the weak, he thinks. If he can despise or rape them, it’s fine. If he can change them in his own interest, it’s better still.

There are too many times when he must pretend to respect the rules. And it’s exhausting.

31. he is greedy and confuses success with financial success

Of course! For him everything turns around looks, power and money. And what is dangerous is when the way he feels become the dominant philosophy. I guess there is only a certain amount of manipulators a society can bear at its head, in companies and politics, before we spiral down in a vicious circle. Because the manipulator will change the mentalities to favour his kind, making it easier for others manipulators to climb, who in turn will aggravate the mentalities...

For ten years, I have this feeling that the world is going faster and faster in manipulation land. Which means darker and darker. And I fear we’ll have to touch the bottom before it gets better.

This overwhelming mentality contributes to the fact that so many good people feel bad, can feel like  they are failing if they concentrate on being a good parent, or a just teacher or a faithful spouse. Hit again and again by these golden and superficial lives on the social media, most good people can get depressed.

The manipulator is also greedy. His overinflated ego is always whispering him he deserves more. And this answers the question I had, as a good naive empathetic person: why would a billionaire choose to paint his tenth swimming pool with god instead of raising wages?

Because he deserves it and the others don’t deserve anything more than the bare minimum to survive and be able to work for him.

So of course, to avoid the possibility that poor people get to the pitchforks and attack his bunker, he’ll give to charities, elegant way of talking with his social peers about the wellness of the peasants around appetizers. And also, to save taxes. And the rich manipulator will always prefer this way of giving money, which allows him to control where it goes, preferably in causes more glamour and selling than repairing roads and will also allow him to build a nice philanthropic image for himself. Also, it will help sustain an economic system that favours him. Because in reality, a good economic system, in a rich democracy, is the one where everybody pays his just amount of taxes and everybody can earn a fair wage, one that you can live on. Where, in fact, nobody should need charity.

Also, the internal vacuum of the manipulator is a bottomless pit that encourages him to get always more. The manipulator isn’t Iron Man, the philanthropist superhero but Pac Man: always hungry, never satisfied.

And he doesn’t care if the planet would die of it. Because as the delectable Duchess of Windsor would have said: “one is never rich enough”.

32. he divides and conquers

He is a master of triangulation, this art which consists in using a third person in the toxic relations he has with you. He will use this other person against you, having told him lies where he is the victim. Or have you understand that this person thinks you are wrong. And have you hate him in the process.

On his chess board, he is the king or the queen and others are pawns.

His hot-air-balloon ego is fragile and he is a coward in confrontation where the adversary isn’t weak and could fight back He will, in this case, send somebody else to do the dirty job.

In some extreme cases, the manipulator can cut you totally from your friends and family. He’ll act like it’s you and him in a fortress, having you believe that everybody else is mean. Enclosed in the tower, the victim is more powerless than ever.

(to be continued...)

[juliesoutsourcingblog]

DIGITAL MARKETING 101; CREATING CONTENT TO ENSNARE THE MILLENNIAL HEART

Content is everything.

Content is king.

As digital marketers, we’ve read this proclamation so many times it’s burned in our brains. It’s been said over and over and over- so much that when I see the word “content”, it’s the first thing that comes to my mind. And it certainly is true.

Content still is, and would almost certainly always be, king.

It’s the heart and soul of every campaign. It’s the building blocks where we build our social media following. It’s the magnet that attracts behind every advertisement. It sends our narrative, our story, our message across to our target audience.

It builds credibility.

It establishes authority.

It attracts- which, I think, is its most basic, yet most important function for those of us who use it primarily for marketing.

Now the question arises.

Who do we want to attract?

Of course it’d be nice to think that we could write a piece that would engage and attract the attention of every group and denomination. But we have to be realistic and set our goals accordingly. Every time we create content, just as we always think about the quality of the article, or the infographic, or the podcast that we are creating, we should also be keeping in mind the people who we want to be on the receiving end of our finished product.

For me, those people more-often-than-not, turn out to be millennials. Which then, brings us to the title of this article:

DIGITAL MARKETING 101; CREATING CONTENT TO ENSNARE THE MILLENNIAL HEART

When we think about millennials, most of us often scrunch up our noses and think, pumpkin spice latte, twitter rage, trophies, student debts, entitlement etc. Which is a bunch of harmful stereotypes that does not exactly promote generational unity, but let’s not talk about that.

Instead, let’s define the term: Millennial.

Contrary to popular belief, millennials are not teenagers. Millennials are young adults, whose age range typically fall between 18-35 years, sometimes older (different groups have different opinions on the exact range). To clear any misconceptions, here is the general agreed upon birth years for different generations:

And according to Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, Millennials are actually the largest generation in the U.S labor force.

Which is good news for me, and other digital marketers and content creators whose target audience are millennials, for the most part. Because it means that the people we are writing for are earning money. It sounds mercenary, but again- let’s be real here. The main reason why we do content marketing is to attract customers. Prospective clients.

Buyers.

Since the mediums wherein most content creators like me disseminate our pieces are found in the internet, it’s also important to know just how much of our intended audience actually have access in it.

Statista, a site that publishes statistical analysis of facts and figures recently released the following:

SHARE OF ADULTS IN THE UNITED STATES WHO USE THE INTERNET IN 2019, BY AGE GROUP

“The statistic shows share of internet users in the United States in 2019, sorted by age group. During the survey period, it was found that 100 percent of 18 to 29-year olds in the United States were internet users. Overall, 90 percent of the adult U.S. population accessed the internet.”

 –STATISTA

The glaring numbers don’t lie. A huge chunk of the majority of the people actually spending time in the internet are- you guessed it- young adults. Again, good news for us, right?

Well, yes.

Also, not entirely.

See, just because they are in the internet, or are in social media, does not mean that they are instantly going to fall heads over heels with our content. Just because I published an article on Tumblr, or posted a link to my blog on Facebook and they happened to see it, does not mean that millennials will automatically start sharing and hitting the like button. There’s always the chance that they might ignore it. Or worse, start hating it so much that I become a victim to the of the prevalent boycott movement, the cancel culture.

Yes, that’s a thing now.

Millennials are like a double-edged sword, so to speak.

There are a lot of pitfalls in making them our target viewers, to be sure. But if there’s one thing that I know from experience, it’s this: the gains and advantages that can be reaped from having millennials as an audience far outweighs the cons.

Having said all that, it’s also very important to remember that this generation is not exactly impossible to please. To capture their attention, there are few things that can be implemented that won’t necessarily cost any money- just a considerable amount of effort from our part.

1. Be conscious of political correctness

Generation Y is a generation of socially conscious individuals. Remember, that these people were raised in a time where equality and awareness are the main advocacies. I am not saying that we need to start turning our backs on our own political beliefs and start catering to theirs- let’s just be mindful enough not trip over sensitive issues in our content unless that is exactly what our purpose is. Let’s try to avoid publishing material that blatantly belittles or discriminates against people because of their race, body type, hair, gender, age, culture, fame (or lack thereof), social status etc. The general rule of the thumb is, to be nice as much as we can, and respect people the way that we want to be respected.

2. Be aware of trends

I’m not talking about eating Tide Pods or mimicking other challenges that are physically harmful. I’m talking about trends in technology, software and social media updates, fashion, clothing lines, restaurants, travel, philanthropic acts and charitable institutions, art, architecture. Of course, we all have our own niche to pay attention to, but with a little bit of effort, there’s an unending number of trending topics out there that are just waiting to be featured no matter what industry we are currently focusing on.

3. Stop sounding like salesperson

In my opinion, this does not just apply to millennials, but to every audience subtype. Stop being so obvious that you are selling something. Instead, tell a story. Make your viewers empathize. Be a friend- someone who actually cares and someone who they can relate to.

Don’t tell them:

Buy my shoes. They have great price compared to other shoes.

Instead, tell them:

I have worked in a corporate office almost all of my adult life, and have always worn heels. I have shed copious amounts of tears from bleeding blisters, and have since learned to always keep a supply of band-aids in my purse and a small first-aid kit in my desk. But what can I do? There’s an office dress code that I apparently agreed to when I signed my contract. I could quit- but then what’d I do for my bills? Should I tell my mother I am unemployed, because I didn’t like my shoes?

That’s when I started to think- why not make my own? Something that I can actually design, something that is comfortable and does not cost a house mortgage.

See where I’m going with this? With more time effort, it’s not impossible to make the part that advertises a certain product or service even more low-key than this. We have to make our selling points part of the natural flow of the narrative. Remember: subtlety is the key.

4. Use millennial buzzwords

Language is dynamic. It’s constantly changing. Time, geographical location, culture, events- these things and more affect the evolution of language so much and with such consistency that it’s almost impossible to determine its original state. As years pass by, people incorporate more and more slangs and new terminologies in their everyday lives.

I won’t say that it’s absolutely necessary to imbue our every article with terms like bop, lit, or salty- just that there are certain terms or “buzzwords” that we can add in our writing that would make us seem more like a peer than a lecturer. It sounds silly, I know, but the goal is to be relatable. Here are some of the words that millennials have been known to use in the past year that could also be used in creating content, within the right context, of course:

Spill the tea

The struggle is real

Trolls

Goals

On fleek

Clap back

Break the internet

Said no one ever

Slay

Adulting

Here’s another advice- we don’t necessarily have to over-stuff our sentences with these buzzwords. Let it flow naturally. The secret is to sound casual, not to overdo the whole thing and end up sounding silly.

5. Inform and educate

The last, but most certainly not the least. The internet, for most of its users, act heavily as a source of information. When people read articles, guides, tutorials, and other types of content, one of the main reasons that they do so, is to learn. But in the event when people are reading for entertainment purposes, it’s still important to make sure that they get to take something out of it.

And even when we end up writing about, say, the dazzling blue waters of a certain Polynesian island, or the breathtaking view atop the Grand Canyon, let’s make sure to inject bits and pieces of interesting facts and advice that would make the reading experience not just fun, but also enriching in a way that would encourage visitors not just to return, but to also share our material to the rest of the digital world.

From the rise to the number of users for the information crowdsourcing site Quora, to the popularity of online entities Mashable, and the types of articles, infographics, quotations, and other forms of shareable materials that young adults are sharing on social media platforms, it is evident that millennials are leaning more and more towards content that contains fascinating information.

It is important to note that most people are heavily motivated by the desire to share something that they think others would also like. For our part, we have to make sure that our products are sufficiently valuable and are interesting enough to warrant their reposts and willing dissemination.

Final words

Always be reminded that in digital and content marketing, researching about the target audience is as important as ensuring that the technical aspects of content creation are on point, and that learning about the trends in the behaviours and opinions of the people we want to send our message to is absolutely vital, because it helps us tailor our content to their tastes and interests.

[kimberlyoliveir]

follow up to paying off my kiva loan months - super rough draft disprganizrd babble babble that i never finalized to submit to kiva - see date in photo

2nd draft KIVA THANK YOU + theme/thesis

••••••••••••••••••••••

"customer service for and compilation of party discounts and guest lists, including after hours events centralized in Brooklyn, New York prioritizing Connections, Communication, Community [no pretense, keeping it real]"

📲search GOOGLE for KIMMELIST • follow!

• would love your feedback on functionality so I can make it work for YOU

<https://g.co/kgs/P9f8N2>

•main website is https://www.kimmelist.club

•email is me@kimmelist.club

•text[me]@631-879-8903

always try discount code KIMMELIST

#CCC [Connections, Communication, Community]

#kimmelist

#thisiswhykimme

•CCCLTD [Connections, Communication, Community] supporting, aligning, and showcasing the emerging local culture

•PDC [party discount compilation©️™️]

•Transparency [no pretense; keeping it real]

•CC [Critical Consciousness] be present because the present is a present

•BRANDED ECLECTIC©™

(logo©™)

kimme

KIMMELIST

kim[me]list

www.kimmelist.club

••••••••••••••••••••••

Dear All who loaned to me...THANK YOU...

because of your financial support, as well as spiritual, social, and physical support by coming to the events and parties, my business is - dare I say - established. It ended up not being one huge regularly scheduled event, but branched out into DBAs, one primarily promotions, another wine and foodie consulting. Many other projects are following different trajectories, having had various birthpoints, but the baseline remains the music. I’ll add a bunch of links for y’all to check out, but here’s the Google Business page for now.

Just launched my google business pg would love your functionality feedback !

<https://g.co/kgs/P9f8N2>

kim[me]list

kimmelist.club

Brooklyn, NY

(631) 879-8903

https://g.co/kgs/P9f8N2

I had to get all this out before I could be better organized about that which easily succumbs to Murphy’s Law. I didn’t want y’all to wait any longer for me to reach out since this loan was fully repaid, so here we go...

My initial loan request referred to then undefined nonprofits to partner with and raise funds for, which developed into me getting all cerebral about the why this country shames criminals so when ____\ () Since receiving the loan, the development of my philanthropic advocacy focus is on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (https://sdgcompass.org). Coming from where I’ve been, on tops of six figure mountains and underground, the later is real and honest. It is the underground that society fears because the normal people perceive it to be slums, poor, classless, drugs, disease, etc. It is here where the stigmatized-isms are outcasted, where chaos is constant and confrontation is the norm. It is here in perceived primordial sludge that real change is birthed in grassroots. It is here that Credible Messengers, Change Agents and Life Mentors are the medium for awareness, inspiration and education. It is here where Social Media is the medium to sustain global critical consciousness via real time connections and communication of information. It is here that I felt compelled to do social work.

As many are aware, this calling to partner with the formerly incarcerated could not be disregarded. Thus, I have been in an intensive, online Masters of Social Work program at Fordham University, plus 25 hours per week internship at a successful anti-recidivism and alternatives to incarceration organization. It has been verified that this is who I need to work with, but the work I need to do is not the institutionalized type.

Next is Outreach, Advocacy, and Fundraising, supporting awareness in the emerging EDM community. Our activities can get loud about weighty issues that are a constant ringing in the ear drums; we will take the noise of everyday discrimination and make music. Music that protests with honesty and refuses to be ostracized for voicing the challenges of stigmas such as mental health, drugs, sexual harassment and exploitation. Many of the hard knocks we’ve been through internally are based in social determinants, deep conflicts and unanswered questions we may not gave cognizantly asked but that we struggle with everyday. This cloud confuses the path to our true selves, self actualization. People restrict saying what they think or suspect because they fear the receivers reaction, thus avoiding the possibility of being discriminated against. Ultimately, this self-sabotaging handicap, cutting us off from the oneness we seek. Now we must ask, because music is the answer, and fear is not real.

This is what’s in the AV line to be realized in the in the upcoming months, birthing a plethora of projects, webs of partnerships, genuine connections, unabashed communication, and transparent communities.

Ultimately, each of us as artists in life should be exactly where we should be; content in every moment. The dance music community is rampant with great energies. We all need to empower each other individually and whole so we may realize and harness potentials towards actualization.

Future events will provide spaces and resources where we can collectively learn how to address limitations, resistance, and barriers to synthesizing One Love. Plans are to vibrate out negativity, before this digital age has any stagnant opportunity to accumulate and manifest as self-harm. Workstations perform with more engagement than vibrations in isolation.

I have a YouTube playlist called “#thisiswhy” that runs the videos that have most impacted me and justify why I am where I’m at in my quantum compilation. In this YouTube profile, are statements that summarize the original motivators that took me to the place I’m at now. Their phrasing has waved at various frequencies during transmission, but the root axis are the same. You will see these living formulas representing principles and beliefs everywhere I am, from Resident Advisor to Action Network, Facebook to my website, as #taglines and slogans:

CCCLTD [Connections, Communication, Community] supporting, aligning, and showcasing the emerging local culture

PDC [party discount compilation©️™️]

Transparency [no pretense; keeping it real]

CC [Critical Consciousness] be present because the present is a present

BRANDED ECLECTIC©™

I am trying to wrap this up with two more brake homes:

1. the philosophy behind my eever-evolving brand-identity

and

2. the basis for my logo©™



This is the same exact logo that I drew back when I incorporated and got an EIN back in October 2012. The image represents the balances of earth, inherent concentric animalism of humans, and the unfortunate breaks that just exist (Murphy’s Law). Hopefully, how I arranged the circles suggests cyclical movement, symbolic of our constant changing and rearranging, movement to embrace. Music, the constant, is organized disaster and the medium for change. The design intention was to imitate when you are looking down into a glass of wine, reminiscent of simple, normal experiences of a made-made natural product bound with anthropology. Everyday conditions build stories that become cultures; as wine is to cuisine is to music; like notes build stories that become songs. The image might instigate subconscious memories, perhaps a source of pleasure and philosophical discourse, but also to warn that the “hole” is basically and factually that. I am alluding to the dangers of pleasure that can become pain when unmonitored, which correlate and contribute to negative social determinants because the abusers cannot remain in the “maintain” part of the cycle of change. These “holes” are the black holes that tell us to remain self-aware in objective self-preservation. Individual self-determination and critical consciousness must vibrate high because potential for positivity to get sucked into the abusive hole is high. Thus, the logo’s “hole” is a symbol of the potential for self-sabotage that leads to the universe forcing social departure, casing isolation, discrimination, ostracizing, judging, etc. However, where the logo is perceived broken, it is ultimately open. Simply spin the wheel of life, take the risk of being rejected and speak with integrity; ask the question about the elephant in the room, so the circus will get out of town, and the only rings will be that of functioning communities. As writes the author of the article I mentioned above - the full text of which is below - the model of change represented in my logo is the same of Outreach models is the same as the Japanese art “kintsugi, where broken items are repaired and displayed with pride, our connections and reconnections are often strongest where we had to forge them ourselves.” Do not fear outcomes. Live transparently. Words are a symbol to convey that which is unobservable with the human eye. Do not hide under a veil of privacy. If you do, the isolation of your frequency from the framework sends you to where there is no light.

The birth of the above principles and beliefs, namely CCC [Connections, Communication, Community] is Chocolate Covered Cheese, LTD, a judgement free business, that can flex services offered to cater to situations. The business name itself demands the question be asked, no silent stigmas. Talking is forced by need to define. As the definition is clarified, the best collaborative work is channeled. To assume and not speak stifles the solution in integrity, condoning ignorance born from false fear, perpetuating isolation and raising disequilibrium and discrimination. (Altruism GAME THEORY. Wavelengths. Music

Music is the answer )

For others needing capital, especially those who are unbanked, off-grid, and hailing from unfavorable social determinants, please follow my link to Kiva fundraising @ <https://www.kiva.org/borrow/6NTM8B4AC59JP59YS9WG9YCF> I vibe with Kiva’s tagline and slogan: “We envision a financially inclusive world where all people hold the power to improve their lives.” Kiva is a San Fran based nonprofit, whose global mission is “to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive.”

In an esoteric goodbye cuz I am not good with simplifying fractions:

Even though the general norm is non-compliance, maintaining status quo is a normative lie. However, popularity doesn’t matter during chaotic conditions. In order to intentionally remove privilege and realign, confrontation is the honest directive action. During distress or duress, the fear is real rather than a perceived or imagined negative reaction. Furthermore, as in the basis of psychotherapy, all talking is a request for something...and that something could just be togetherness.

So speak now or for ever with old your peace.

✌️

[hardblazesong]

The time has come Shipsters to write a lengthy post. So here it is.

I am busting out the Marlboro Southern Cuts for this, so, be prepared for a lengthy ramble through my mind. First, some introductory notes for those of you who have not DM’d me. 

I am a 53 year old Bisexual Female. This is only relevant to comments later in the post or I likely would not be sharing it on this blog. I am also a Disabled Veteran, and while that is not relevant to anything further, I am proud of it, and it does explain the inordinate amount of time I have on my hands to write these kind of things. 

I am retired from a lifetime of work in multiple jobs, including ten years of Consulting on Business and Technology. I have been a student of human nature for most of my life. I am, in Jungian terms, an Introvert/Extrovert. Having been an actor, stage manager, costumer and director, who comes from a family of actors, I feel I can comment on that as well. I also am a writer. I am a bit rusty on this type of writing however, so, forgive me if it creaks along. I do hope you, if you read this whole piece, bless you, understand that it is off the cuff and not really intended for critique as to style or content, It is meant to just put my thoughts out there.

Now, to the reason for the post. I want to address the clusterfuck that this fandom is, the ways I would address some of the issues and my overall feelings about S/C the ship, shipping in general and the nature of actors. So, with those hats listed above on, here we go....

This fandom is toxic. There is no turning back from what has happened. There will never be a happy place for everyone again, if there ever really was. This is the reality of the Social Media age. This is the brutal truth of everything posted lives forever. This is the ugliest fandom I have ever seen. That is remarkable in that I have been around a very long time, fanning many different things and people. I have been active on the internet for twenty years, so that is really a dreadful label to put  on a group of people, but believe me, we have earned it. Congratulations Outlander fans, you lose the fandom award for “best fans ever”.

How did this happen? Well, factions mostly, with supplied fuckery, insecure actors, incompetent handlers, nearly archaic business models, and ridiculous sums of money thrown in, just to rile up the masses. Never for a moment forget about that filthy lucre, because you better believe it IS the be all and end all of Hollywood. Oh, and if you believe that there is an actor on this planet who doesn’t want to be famous or is a true introvert, I weep for you naivete and wish you nothing but the best holding on to it.  

Let’s break down the factions for a bit just to clear that from the table. F1, F2, F3 seems to be the easiest way to do this.

F1-the book readers who fanned and discussed long before anyone else came along. Subsets include: Diana worshippers, Diana tolerators, Diana haters, Diana imitators, Diana should haves, Diana could haves, Diana wills, Diana won’ts and finally my favorites: Actually write better then Dianas.

F2-the show onlies who came along starting with the production/casting news and stayed or left based on the show alone. Subsets include: Love the shows, Hate the shows, Love the show and anything associateds, Hate the show but love the casts, sorta like the shows, sorta like the actors, sorta want to stick arounds even though Starz is ridiculous, hate RDMers, etc...really too many to list. 

F3-the all important bothies group. I could spent countless hours naming the subsets here and putting them up on a white board and drawing connections but here is where the money is folks. These are the people that bought over 25 million books, that spend their money on cable, that support in multiple ways, charities, conventions, memorabilia, various social media streams of income. Here is where the vast majority of Shippers, Antis, and Neutrals live. Here is the group most assuredly taken advantage of in any way possible. This is the group that gets pushed or pulled to suit the needs of Big Business. Most people in this group are normal, everyday type of people who willingly go along with whatever occurs because their needs, while oftentimes delayed, eventually get met in some fashion and so the money keeps rolling in. 

F4-Trolls and the associated disenfranchised or purchased for profit motives or hopelessly ill or hopelessly deluded. Not really a money stream to be depended upon, but definitely a SM presence and a useful tool in a multitude of ways. Flames that burn high enough draw attention. They keep the conversation going when nothing else will. Throw them a bone now and again to get them salivating and watch that fandom jump. Most of the incompetent advisors and handlers really don’t understand this group because insanity is hard to control but they will also throw scraps when necessary.

Is it any wonder that this fandom was fractured from the start? This doesn’t begin to cover what went on, it’s just a base for the pyramid. The next level contains the subsets that formed their own associations. some fluid between Fs. Here we really see the SamOnlies, the CaitOnlies, the Mommies, the Fandom Police, the Deniers, the Enablers, the Accusers, the Peacemakers. The rapidly festering illness that is taking hold floats all around. Sadly the vast majority of these people are women who ought to know better, but for an incalculable amount of reasons don’t. Some of these people are just finding their feet on SM and love the perceived power inherent in that and so are letting the better angels of their natures take a backseat to the demons that niggle away at them, and some of them are just stupid, ignorant, attention seekers.

On to the heart of the matter. Sam and Cait. Actors with philanthropic tendencies. Generally thought of as good people, good actors, and if nothing else, the very best of friends. Oh that it were that simple, that pure or that classy. No it’s not. Nothing ever really is. I admire the kindheartedness of many who believe it to be so, but don’t respect the sellers of the blinders needed to buy what is being sold. 

Actors Act. That is their job, likely their greatest passion and deepest need. Sure they are capable of great loves, great intentions, good deeds and all the other things that make life worth living. They also are liars, by the very nature of what they do. Lying too harsh a word? Sorry, but pretend is too childlike for those with any real talent. Liars are telling you a story, hoping to sell it to you with their actions and their emotions.  Perhaps it’s a little white lie or a whopper, but it is a fabrication, an untruth, a show. Through study, practice, hard work, with luck, perhaps talent, and timing, they are able to make you believe the lie, for generally however long it takes for the show to go on. Actors who live their lives in this culture we have now, generally never completely let their guard down in any public way. They are always “in character” in one way or another. The deep rooted insecurities of the profession, the people involved in extraneous ways and their own substantial egos won’t let them truly present themselves as the human beings they are. Many a fine actor has descended into madness, addiction, death, because they can’t turn it off, never knew how or don’t want to. There are many perks, but just as many pressures and some were just not built for the strain. Now add in that fame factor, the money monster and aging. Time and Fame are fleeting. Recognition for ones work is nice, but the money is the icing on the cake. Hell, it’s probably 2/3rds of the cake too if I am being honest. Yes, they are artists, but honestly do you think any artist sets out to stay poor and struggling? Have you ever been poor? I have. It sucks. 

Along comes Outlander and two “relative unknowns”. That is a bit disingenuous because they were both actively working prior to the show, but it has that lovely “a star is born” quality to it, and most are a sucker for that. So, TPTB were happy to sell that. Sam and Cait were surely on board for that meeting. Hey kids, we are gonna put on a show and oh by the way, you two are so pretty and cute with each other, work that into the “we are so happy and humble and our fans are the greatest act” would you? Then that oft spoke of chemistry became apparent to all and sundry before the show even aired. Oh my, a goldmine in the making. It certainly didn’t hurt anything that the affection between them likely was genuine and they really were flummoxed by the attention they attained so quickly. No one but the two of them really understands what it was like for them to be in that bubble together, at nearly the same age and stage of their careers. If they hadn’t leaned on each other, hadn’t formed a relationship of some kind, hadn’t sold said relationship at every opportunity and manipulated it for whatever reason they do, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. So mostly, kudos to them for a job well done, on multiple fronts, but it has not been perfect by any stretch of the imagination. 

Sam, I have often speculated on his sexuality, without judgement, needed to be presented as a single, heterosexual man. Wasn’t so important that Cait be sold as a single, heterosexual woman. It actually enhances the fanbase if she can be sold as a possible bisexual. It’s not like we are saying that the vast majority of the fanbase are conservative Christians. Sex sells, go with the most profitable options. Let the Sam is gay rumors float around without addressing them. Any attractive male actor is going to get tagged that way, and it will draw a certain segment.  Let the paps and fans throw some girls into the mix. No one threatening to the budding are they or aren’t they crowd though. No Cait clones. Sam you like blondes? OK. No one above D level status either, or it could distract the fans too much. Cait? Do whatever you like but keep it on the very downlow. We already have to sell you in the show as a woman in love with two men. We don’t want you looking desperate in any way. Perhaps a long term low key thing will work to keep the rumor mill in check. Maybe not, but it’s worth a shot. OK kids, let put on a show and the money will eventually flow. Oh, by the way, could the two of you roll out your charity endeavors as well? We know you both support things in real life, so be sure to let that be known. Do try not to be too political, what with the world as it is an all, but don’t be ostriches either. Oh, and sorry but PR says you have to sign these non disclosure contracts as well, and just so you know, there really is a morality clause but we don’t spell it out too clearly because that is what lawyers and loopholes are for. 

Then we got the show, and low and behold, a hit. That goldmine sure is bigger then any of us hoped for here at Starz/Lionsgate/Tallship/ etc...These fans are so nice, they bring things, they say nice things on SM, they send things and most of them love the adaptation and isn’t funny how much they like us together offscreen? Wow, guess we should keep on selling that too. What’s that you say? Some are panicky that we may be too close? Why? Oh, they think if we become a couple that we will eventually break up and ruin the show or something. Can’t have that, then the money will stop. What should be done? Nothing? Carry on as before? Ambiguity is best? Alrighty. Can I throw a bone to the shippers we have acquired along the way?  But what about the ones who don’t like us as a couple? Jeebus it’s getting harder to navigate these waters, why didn’t anyone prepare us for this part of it? What do you mean you just have to live it? Is that part of the contracts? oh.

Time for the intervention of the Troll Brigade, always lurking, but finally ready to find a way to break into the discussion. Mistakes were made here, not of epic proportions but enough that things began to crack around the edges. Threats were made, feelings were hurt, fans ran away, friends side eyed, Most importantly fingers began to be pointed. Advisors began to whisper in ears. Which group could likely take being battered the best to deflect attention from anything not fitting the needs of TPTB? Well, like all shows and fandoms, we have this pretty vocal shipper group. Nothing really wrong with shippers, they certainly like to promote, chatter and fangirl. Mostly harmless, although like any group of a like size, there will be some unstable ones. There is also a group of fairly rabid antis to consider. The neutrals can’t really be bothered to take the heat and would likely just walk away then take abuse. So, shippers it is then. Sorry ladies, but the writing was on the wall from  before last summer that some group would have to be sacrificed for the perceived greater good. 

It all went down hill from there. It hasn’t hit bottom yet. What can be done now to retain them or swap them to the neutral camp? You are seeing it unfold. Does this mean shipping S/C is dead? Of course not. Just backed into a corner, where hopefully, they will still fangirl, discuss, and spend money. Anytime they need more discussion or pap press or SM flare ups you can bet Shippers will be addressed in some manner. Too much money has come from them to let them go entirely no matter how Sam and Cait actually feel about them. They are a natural part of fandom, there will never be a time when they are gone completely. TPTB are counting on that. Only that F4 crowd really want them gone. 

Yes, I still count myself among the shippers. No, I don’t care if they have SOs or if their sexulaties preclude them being an actual couple. Yes, I will watch S3 at least. No, I don’t think it will go beyond S4, the material is not strong enough. Yes, I like passages of books after S3, but not the whole books. I am in F3. I have never harassed anyone about S/C, never commented on MM’s stuff, don’t follow her, am not a fan of hers, and frankly do not care whether or not Sam is dating her. It is not my job to be her fan, promote her or protect her. Nor is it my job to worship Sam and Cait, support them or protect them. I am not here for that. I do believe that there are some very talented, genuinely funny, and awesome women in the Shippers lane. I don’t pay attention to the antis, nor do I comment on their antics to them on Twitter. I do discuss them here, but only in a general way. I find the neutrals to be just that and respect they don’t want to get involved in flame wars. I have actually been saddened by the descent of Shitner, couldn’t care less about Camuso, and they, Purv and BG will face their own Karma. Not my circus, not my monkeys. 

Sam and Cait will fan the flames themselves now, no matter what they do. Until the time comes when they move on from the show, they are in a no win situation as far as some faction of the fandom goes. They likely don’t care. They are getting paid no matter what happens. If one of them cracks, my money is on Sam, he has charm and talent to spare, he will likely recovery in some fashion. He has MPC to pay him if he keeps that going. That’s right, not all the funding goes to charity, remember that. They will both getting acting gigs following Outlander. Life will go on. Much love to you Shipster Sisters, carry on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoXLKgX0MgU

[dulwichdiverter]

Thinking deep

Words Luke G Williams; Photo Lima Charlie

For the past year acclaimed artist and Dulwich resident Naomi Avsec has been working underground. Literally. one hundred feet underground as ‘artist in residence’ at Growing Underground, a micro-greens growing facility that occupies a maze-like and vast World War II bomb shelter lurking – somewhat incongruously – beneath busy and bustling Clapham High Street.

A few days before Naomi’s residency ends and her installation Dust Garden: Little Particles of Happiness is removed, I meet her at the Growing Underground facility.

Despite the sudden onset of freezing weather, the warmth of Naomi’s greeting is unmistakeable, and her passion and enthusiasm for her work infectious.

As I tentatively scale 180 spiral steps down into the gloom and murk of the subterranean world Naomi has been inhabiting (“we’ll take the lift back up!”), she explains how the unique project came about.

“It’s mad. Growing Underground did a call out for a residency. I read it and thought: ‘that sounds weird!’ But I loved the space from when I first saw it. And they’ve got so much space here - there are five tunnels and they’re only using a fraction of them.

“Originally the residency was six months, but then it got extended. Then I begged and pleaded, and by the time I move out it will have been a year. I’m going to be really sad, it’s come to feel like my second home! I call it my ‘she cave’!”

Visitors were able to experience Naomi’s installation by prior booking over the weekend of 8 and 9 September and the response was overwhelming.

“It was amazing!” she recalls. “I had about 170 visitors. I had to do small groups of about 20 people at a time. At times it was like herding cats and we had a few panic attacks, but the feedback was incredible.

“Being down here is not for the faint hearted. When I moved in last November it was freezing. I couldn’t wear enough clothes to keep warm.

“As it got warmer I picked up momentum. And I’ve absolutely loved it. It’s made me interested to produce more site-specific responses to strange abandoned spaces. I loved the sense of being totally disconnected down here, you can’t get Wi-Fi for example. I’ve never felt so truly creative as I have down here as there are no distractions.”

The installation begins in one of the shelter’s long, hemispherical spaces with Naomi’s visual diary of her residency – all 20 metres of it, lying unravelled and unfurled on the concrete floor like some sort of mystical scroll.

“It was a way of getting all my thought processes out, what I was feeling being down here,” Naomi explains. “It became my daily meditation. Lots of doodling using Indian ink. I call it my mind mangle!”

As we approach the tunnel where the ‘Dust Garden’ itself is housed Naomi briefly outlines the approach she took in creating the installation.

“I took the make do and mend ethos that was typical during the war,” she says. “So I took detritus from off the streets and dragged it down here. I was working like some mad woman, rustling through heaps of rubbish, tubes, pipes and strips of newspapers!”

With that Naomi flings open a door and tells me: “I’m going to send you in to the Dust Garden now! I’ll keep the door ajar and leave you there on your own. Come back out whenever you’re done. Be careful where you tread…”

I step - somewhat tentatively - into near darkness.

Strange shapes and forms protrude here and there - from the walls, the ceiling and the floor. In the distance noises rumble and groan – tube trains below or above us? Or something more sinister? – while a distant soundscape and flickering video projection play on loop.

After a few minutes exploring this bizarre array of surreal and alien-like forms and noises, my initial trepidation slowly turns to a sense of peace and comfort. A feeling accentuated by the everyday familiarity of some of the objects Naomi has used, albeit in surreal and unconventional ways – children’s shoes, surgical gloves, plywood, electric cables…

By the time I reach the far end of the installation, and a representation of the sun, I feel cosy, almost womb-like in what had initially seemed an alien and threatening landscape.

Somewhat elated, I stumble back out and try to untangle and unravel my experience in words to Naomi, who laughs: “Yes, it’s a little bit disconcerting, but it’s ultimately meant to soothe you. Even though there are some creepy things, the sense is that these strange inhabitants I’ve created are quite benign.

“I had no idea how it was going to be received, but a lot of people reacted like you. Some people came out quite tearful. People who know me have said it’s literally like walking into my mind!”

As we travel back up to the surface of the earth and ensconce ourselves in a small office, Naomi talks to me about the rest of her remarkably diverse career.

“I wanted to be an artist since I was really little,” she reveals. “I didn’t play with dolls – I drew and drew and drew! That’s all I ever wanted to do. In my childhood house in Muswell Hill I drew all over the walls! My mum says when the house was sold the buyers said they were going to keep my drawings on the wall, but I don’t really believe that!

“My grandma gave me my first gallery when I was seven, which was her larder! Next to all her homemade cakes and shortbreads she had a sign on the door saying: ‘Naomi’s Gallery’.”

With BAs in Constructed Textiles and Illustration from Middlesex Polytechnic and Chelsea School of Art, as well as a Masters in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art, Naomi has been based in south London since her Chelsea School of Art days.

“I love Dulwich, I’ve been here ten years,” she says. “I like being around greenery and there’s loads of it here. It’s the most un-urban bit of London really. I’m a massive tree hugger basically.”

The breadth of Naomi’s experience and expertise is staggering, and her body of work defies easy categorisation.

She defines herself as a “multi-disciplinary artist”, and her art spans the disciplines of sculpture, found objects, painting, collage, embroidery, animation, installation … and probably more besides!

“I just love art,” she laughs. “Any genre!”

For the past decade and a half, Naomi’s career has had two main strands, on the one hand encompassing her installation and art work, and on the other her renowned embroidery business.

“I always thought, ‘it’s not right to have two sides to my career,’ but as I’ve got older I’ve realised you need a sustainable practice. My embroidery has always been the commercial side to what I do.”

Having taught herself to embroider at the age of 15, Naomi began embroidering and selling personalised T-shirts at Spitalfields in 2004.

“I’d take my machine to the market. It was a hard but an interesting apprenticeship in ‘how to make money out of your creativity!’ Then I thought, ‘I’m going to aim high with this!’

“That’s when I approached Paul Smith.”

Despite having never met the legendary fashion designer, Naomi grabbed Smith’s attention the only way she knew how: she embroidered him a letter.

“I knew he was open and philanthropic and interested in more than just fashion. So I embroidered a letter, an envelope, a stamp, everything! A gorgeous fabric delight which I hand delivered it to his office.

“A week later I got a phone call from one of his staff and a week after that I went in, met a couple of other people and then Paul Smith came in!”

The ensuing collaboration with Smith proved extremely fruitful, with Naomi embroidering bags, handkerchiefs, ties and shoes among other items, as well as Smith assisting her with mounting a major exhibition of her work in Japan.

More recently, Naomi credits the Fine Art MFA she studied for at Wimbledon College of Art with being a particularly transformative experience.

“It was amazing. The best thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “It gave me a renewed awareness of art and what it can achieve and bring.”

In terms of the common threads that unite the varying disciplines of her work, Naomi says: “The embroidery is very pretty and quite sentimental and romantic. I love trails and wire and wool and tubing – things that are a bigger version of thread! That links my embroidery with my art.

“Even my dark work has an element of humour to it. I believe everyone has a dark and a light side you see and I love embracing both. Although I probably prefer the dark with a dollop of humour!

“I like to examine the ‘other’, the strange, and I’m a big champion of the outsider. That probably links to the fact my father was Yugoslavian. Growing up I often felt like an outsider and my dad must have felt like that too.”

Although she often works in darkness – both literal and metaphorical - the future for Naomi appears bright.

In 2016 she won the Clifford Chance Graduate Sculpture Prize and she was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Elephant x Griffin Art Prize, the winner of which will be announced in December.

“What the hell do I do next?” she ponders. “Not sure. Although I’m starting something called dust projects. Maybe I’ll do some group shows. I like the idea of getting people to respond to hidden corners of London.”

[capjuby]

The revolutionary sex

For one shining moment, being a Russian woman meant sexual freedom and radical equality. Never seen before – or since  by Paula Erizanu, on aeon.com

We don’t have sex in the USSR, and we are categorically against it.’ When a female hotel manager said this on Soviet state television in 1986, the studio audience laughed. The line soon became a catchphrase, exposing the gap between official discourse and a reality that was markedly less pure. But Russia’s conservative self-conception, which continues to this day, conceals a more interesting and neglected period in its history: when, in the first decade after the October Revolution of 1917, high-ranking women in the Communist Party advocated free love as government policy, hoping to achieve the destruction of ‘bourgeois’ institutions such as monogamy and the nuclear family.

But the promise of sexual revolution did not last long. When Joseph Stalin rose to power in the mid-1920s, he promoted the opposite idea – that the nuclear family, and not sexual freedom, was the true basis of socialism. What might account for this political about-face? Does the episode represent a political path-not-taken, or was the government’s initial, emancipatory stance just an interregnum in the broader, more repressive arc of Russian history?

Shifting our historical gaze westward, by the 1920s the suffragettes had secured the franchise for many Western women with property rights (in the UK, women over 21 with no property could vote only from 1928). But in the Soviet Union, women’s rights were much more sweeping. In addition to universal suffrage, they had access to higher education and the right to equal pay. Abortion was legalised, a world-first, and freely available to factory workers. Children, whether born in or out of wedlock, were granted equal status in law. Marriage became secular, divorce was simplified and streamlined, sex outside wedlock was destigmatised, and male homosexuality decriminalised.

Where did the seeds of this radicalism spring from? Towards the end of the 19th century, the noble bourgeois and the socialist women’s rights movements were growing in parallel in Russia. Organisations such as the Russian Women’s Mutual Philanthropic Society, founded in 1895, fought for women’s equality in the workplace and improved conditions in orphanages, as well as establishing day-nurseries and canteens for poor, working mothers. The House of Diligence helped educated women find work as governesses; and the Society to Assist Young Girls sought to ‘protect girls, primarily of the working class, from the morally damaging conditions of their lives’, as the historian Cathy Porter writes in the biography Alexandra Kollontai (2013). At the same time, more and more women entered the workforce. Between 1904 and 1910, the number of industrial workers in Russia increased by 141,000, with more than 80 per cent of those being women.

Socialist ideology is grounded in the promise of radical equality, so it makes sense, at some level, that Soviet society ought to entail equality between genders, too. Karl Marx had argued that working women were doubly oppressed – in factories, and at home and in the family. ‘Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included),’ Karl Marx wrote, in an 1868 letter, not without some irony. Yet among socialist organisations, prior to the October Revolution, concerns about the status of women were usually dismissed as bourgeois diversions. Socialist orthodoxy expressed the belief that the class struggle would automatically liberate working women along the way.

Only after 1912 did the Bolsheviks – one of many socialist factions fighting for political dominance in Russia, who eventually seized power in October 1917 – see women’s questions as a key part of the political agenda. At that point, they started to actively involve working women in demonstrations, dedicated a page to women’s questions in their newspaper Pravda, and launched a women’s newspaper, Rabotnitsa, in 1914.

One of the foremost activists of this generation was the aforementioned Alexandra Kollontai, the first Commissar of Social Welfare and the most prominent woman in the Kremlin government. Kollontai was the key ideologist of sexual freedom. Born in 1872 to an aristocratic family in Saint Petersburg, as a young woman Kollontai spoke seven languages, and was expected to embrace the bourgeois ideal of making a ‘good match’. In defiance of her parents’ refusal to let her to go to university, she took an exam for a teaching certificate. Her aim was to earn enough to supplement the small engineer’s income of her cousin Vladimir – the man whom she married and then separated from years later. ‘I still loved my husband, but the happy life of a housewife and spouse became for me a “cage”,’ she explained in Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman in 1926. ‘More and more, my sympathies, my interests turned to the revolutionary working class of Russia.’

While still married, in 1896 Kollontai started giving lessons to working women, and helped to set up filters to clear the polluted air in factories. But after seeing the squalor in which workers spent their days and nights, she realised that there was only so much she could do with charity. Distancing herself from the more aristocratic strand of feminist activism, Kollontai started to think that economic relations would have to change at a more fundamental level – in other words, that women’s inequality could be addressed only through a socialist revolution.

In search of answers, Kollontai left her husband and her four-year-old child, and went to Zurich to study economics before returning to Russia. She went on to set up the first legal club for working women in Saint Petersburg, organise marches, write numerous articles and books, and give lectures across Europe and the United States on working life, sexuality and motherhood, under titles such as ‘The New Woman’ and ‘The Social Basis of the Women’s Question’.

This was about liberating women from expectations of monogamy and family servitude

In 1908, Kollontai fled Russia to avoid arrest, and became close to Lenin, who was in exile in Switzerland. After the Tsar’s abdication and Kollontai’s return during the revolution, she was elected to the Petrograd soviet (or council of workers), and eventually assumed the office of the People’s Commissar of Social Welfare. In 1919, two years after her appointment, Kollontai helped to set up the Zhenotdel (or what we might call the Femdept), a government department for the advancement and education of women.

For Kollontai, the sexual revolution was mainly about mentally liberating women from the expectations of monogamy and servitude to the family. Being able to decide when to have children, she argued, and secure in the knowledge that the state would provide for them, would allow women to study, work and involve themselves in public affairs. She hoped that these transformations would create ‘a new way of being/everyday life [novy byt]’ and a ‘Woman Human Being’.

Kollontai emphasised how the social dominance of love simply reinforced power imbalances between the sexes. ‘All modern education of a woman is aimed at closing her life in love emotions,’ she wrote in a 1911 article. ‘It’s time to teach the woman to take love not as the basis of life, but only as a step, as a way to reveal her true self.’ The new ‘women types’, Kollontai wrote, would know that ‘the treasures of life are not exhausted by love’.

By the 1920s, such shifts appeared to be underway. Kollontai’s novel Red Love (1923), published in the US in 1927, told the story of a young, unmarried woman, working and living under communism. In the foreword to the English translation, Kollontai noted that Soviet society was ‘beginning to respect woman, not for her “good morals”, but for her efficiency, for her ingenuity with respect to her duties toward her class, her country and humanity as a whole’.

As well as freeing women to self-define beyond romance, Kollontai wanted to rehabilitate friendship as a model for more equitable relationships. ‘Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth’ (1923) was a kind of political history of affection. In prehistoric times, she said, humanity imagined love as a form of kindred affection, as between siblings and cousins. The feudal world elevated the knight’s ‘spiritual’ love to the ideal, and separated love from marriage. But eventually, with the growth of the middle class, the paradigm of love in bourgeois morality became the love of a married couple, ‘working together to increase the wealth of a family cell separated from society’. Instead, proletarian ideology should strive to instil a ‘love-fellowship’ between the sexes in the spirit of comradely solidarity – an ideal that seemed close to a Greco-Roman model.

Women in those early years after the revolution still had plenty of problems, of course. Female unemployment remained high, sexual violence was still prevalent, and some observers decried how the new sexual policies appeared to allow intimate partners to be exploited and then cast aside. ‘Men took to changing wives with the same zest which they displayed in the consumption of the recently restored 40-per-cent vodka,’ said one critic in The Atlantic in 1926.

But many women’s lives altered dramatically, and for the better. In his travel diary Russia: A Chronicle of Three Journeys in the Aftermath of the Revolution (1928), the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis observed how the women he met in Moscow told him they were more concerned with building socialism than with getting married. Bella Grigorievna Orkin, aged 22, told Kazantzakis: ‘My great joy is not getting a man but to work and feel that I’m not a parasite. To love too, of course, I’m not ascetic. But simply, without love talk and wasting time.’ These ideas reached beyond the borders of the USSR as well. In Romania, Kollontai’s support for sex outside of marriage was a point for anti-communist propagandists, deployed as an argument against embracing communism in the interwar period. (In this, one sees echoes of how homosexuality is mobilised within Russia today as a symbol to oppose everything Western – for instance, the common description of Europe as ‘Gayropa’ rather than ‘Evropa’).

Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, shared Kollontai’s condemnation of ‘bourgeois’ conceptions of love. He thought that forsaking all-consuming ideas about marriage would strengthen class solidarity and push workers to commit to implementing a socialist society. Yet like some other senior members of the Party, he had his reservations. In January 1915, he wrote a letter to the revolutionary leader Inessa Armand, in which he said that love should be free from material and financial worries and calculations – but that unbinding love from raising children, and tacitly encouraging adultery, was ‘a bourgeois, not a proletarian demand’.

As it happened, Armand was also Lenin’s lover. A French-born socialist, she moved to Russia to live with her grandmother and aunt when she was five. She married the wealthy owner of a textile factory, Alexander Armand, at 19; nine years later, she ended her marriage to pursue a long relationship with his brother Vladimir, a student and revolutionary 11 years her junior.

After the revolution, Armand moved into the Kremlin with Lenin and his wife

For Armand, freedom of sexual expression was the feminist core of the socialist revolution. Like Kollontai, she began her activism by doing charity work. During her first marriage, she set up a school for peasant children, co-founded and chaired the Moscow Society for Improving the Lot of Women, which trained poor and working women, and helped to rehabilitate former prostitutes. A subsequent attempt to open a women’s newspaper and a women’s Sunday school was blocked by the Tsarist government.

This seems to be the point at which Armand became convinced that genuine social change demanded revolution. Immediately after leaving her first husband, by 1903 she had joined the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. Armand then went to study economics in Brussels, and travelled between Russia and France to do undercover work for the socialist movement. In 1911, she met Lenin in Paris, and after the revolution, moved into the Kremlin with him and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. Lenin and Armand had a child together, and it appears Krupskaya knew about the affair.

Armand collaborated with Kollontai to set up and run the Zhenotdel, the board for the promotion of women’s interests. Worrying that she had overworked herself, in 1920, Lenin asked Armand to take a break in the Caucasus. Shortly after she arrived there, Armand caught cholera and died in less than one month. Distraught over her death, Lenin ordered for her to be buried in the Kremlin, next to the other martyred revolutionaries.

While Armand and Kollontai understood sexual liberation mainly as freedom from marriage and housework, the writer, socialite and film director Lilya Brik embraced a more intense and systematic version of free love – polyamory. At the time, Brik was best-known as the lover and ‘muse’ of the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, and as the face of the state-commissioned posters encouraging reading, created by the Russian artist Alexander Rodchenko.

Mayakovsky and Brik met at the literary salon she hosted in July 1915. Osip Brik, Lilya’s husband at the time, was so impressed by Mayakovsky’s poem ‘Cloud in Trousers’ that he instantly offered to publish it. A love affair then began between Lilya Brik and Mayakovsky. Three years later, Mayakovsky moved in with the Briks in their flat, and then all three went to live in a country house.

One rule of this unconventional household was that each member must grant freedom to the others. By 1925, however, Lilya Brik wrote a letter to Mayakovsky, who was travelling, in which she said: ‘It seems to me that you already love me much less and will not suffer much’ from the imminent separation. Although all three travelled considerably during the next few years, they all stayed in touch until Mayakovsky’s suicide in 1930, following a fight with his new lover, the actress Veronika Polonskaya. In his suicide note, Mayakovsky wrote: ‘Comrade Government, my family consists of Lily Brik, mamma, my sisters, and Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya.’ He left half of the copyright to his poetry to Lilya Brik, and half to his mother and sisters.

Brik refashioned her life; she became friends with and inspired Yves Saint Laurent, Pablo Neruda, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Maya Plisetskaya, and led the only literary salon not deemed ‘bourgeois’, and so allowed to continue in Moscow.

Stalin portrayed the education of children as ‘the honourable social duty of mothers’

After Armand died in 1920, Kollontai took sole leadership of the Zhenotdel. Despite her influence, Kollontai was more radical, and controversial, than her peers in the government – although it wasn’t her ideas about women and sexuality that ultimately led to her being sidelined. In 1921, she had organised the Workers’ Opposition to protest against the dictatorship and lack of representation of workers within the Party, but failed to gather support. She began to be threatened with expulsion for lack of Party discipline. After working on trade deals in Oslo, in 1924 Kollontai was sent out of the country on an appointment as ambassador to Finland. (This made her the second female ambassador of the 20th century, after Armenia’s ambassador to Japan, Diana Abgar.)

The Zhenotdel continued to operate, in some form, for the next decade, until Stalin finally dismantled it in 1934. He embraced women’s participation in the workforce, but did not believe this required domestic or sexual equality. Indeed, such concerns were deemed bourgeois. Stalin also made abortion illegal, reinstated firm strictures on divorce, declared homosexuality a mental illness, and reinforced a ‘natalist’ state ideology. In his address on International Women’s Day in 1949 at the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the USSR, Stalin portrayed the education of children as ‘the honourable social duty of mothers’. Although the state offered free childcare and education, men weren’t expected to match their wives’ duties at home. Women’s rights over their bodies, in Stalin’s view, were not something with which he needed to concern himself.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, the pendulum swung back towards partial sexual liberalisation. The new Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev undertook a programme of de-Stalinisation, which included the repeal of the ban on abortion – a vindication that Kollontai didn’t live to see, because she died one year before Stalin. But Russia never quite recaptured the potential of these early feminist radicals. Women’s participation in the Second World War as tank drivers, snipers, pilots and nurses has been neglected in official commemorations; in the postwar period, women were excluded from the centres of political action, and motherhood was cast as their main calling. Sexual abuse was largely ignored and, privately, women were expected to do most childcare and housework. Even today, the sexual freedom that Kollontai and Armand fought for remains a mostly forgotten episode in Soviet history.

Recently, debates in the Russian parliament have proposed preventing women who have not had children from going to university, to encourage them to give birth rather than invest in their careers. A law making spousal abuse a ‘private’ rather than a legal matter was passed in January 2017. It seems likely it will take some time before the progressive ideas of the early 1920s enter the mainstream of Russian political discourse again – if they ever do.

SYNDICATE THIS ESSAY

Gender & Sexuality

Political Philosophy

[captainlenfan]

New Post has been published on http://websiteshop.network/episode-430-qa-with-robb-and-nicki-23/

Episode 430 – Q&A with Robb and Nicki #23

http://robbwolf.com/2019/05/31/episode-430-qa-with-robb-and-nicki-23/

We’re here with Episode 430, Q&A #23, packed full of more of your best questions!

Submit your own questions for the podcast at: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

If you want to see the video for this podcast, be sure to check out our YouTube channel.

Show Notes:

1. Thoughts On Oxalates? [3:02]

Alex says:

What is your perspective on oxalates? Is there any merit to what people like Dr William Shaw, Sally Norton, and Elliot Overton say about the evils of oxalates? or can we all keep eating spinach and almonds?  Could this be the explanation as to why some people who go full carnivore benefit from eliminating all greens?

  2. Living WELL to 100 and Beyond [10:05]

Paul says:

Robb and Nicki, I am definitely one of the original 6 listeners and credit you many times for changing my life and educating me to the point that I helped other people change their lives. Ok I am 62 in very good shape and have a smoking hot younger wife that I would live to make it to our 50th wedding anniversary, which will make me 107. So the question is what test do I do now to make sure I have the best chance to achieve this goal and hopefully correct if something is wrong now?

  3. Eating For Olympic Weightlifting [13:15]

Jake says:

Robb,

Thank you for the podcast its great. I know your very busy but I was wondering how you would suggest approaching a healthy diet for olympic weightlifting? I’m 35, 5ft9in 185lbs and around 18% body fat( this is a rough estimate using ketogains website). I want to compete but not looking to sacrifice my health, and would like to lift into my old age. You mentioned that you competed in powerlifting when you were younger and I thought maybe you would have some insight into the subject. I currently intermittent fast roughly 14hrs everyday. My diet is protein from variety of meats,carbs from lots of fresh veggies, fats from nuts, coconut and olive oil. No sugars unless family holiday. My goal is to lose some body fat but maintain my strength. I tried to go full keto, no carbs, and my strength plummets. Thanks again, sorry for such a long question.

  4. Low Carb & Sleep [16:18]

Angel says:

Hi Robb,

Thanks for answering our questions! When I eat low carb, I tend to wake up at 3am and have a hard time falling back asleep. However, if I have some carbs (i.e. a small bowl of rice or a sweet potato) during dinner, I generally sleep through the night and wake up naturally a little after 6am. I usually go to bed around 10pm, and eat dinner around 6pm.

The problem is, when I eat carbs during dinner, I gain weight overtime. Eating low carb helps me lose weight. Is there a reason for the interrupted sleep eating low carb? I searched online and some people say it’s due to noradrenaline. I don’t know what that is and I am wondering how i can improve my sleep while eating low carb? Thank you very much for your knowledge!

Angel

  5. Any Updates To The Paleo Solution? [18:36]

Mike says:

Going back to your first book – what are the main things you would revise or add – if you ever did a revision?

  Where you can find us:

    Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

  Transcript:

Download a copy of the transcript here (PDF)

Nicki: Hey Hubs.

Robb: And the answer is no. Nicki asked me if I had anything funny to say before we rolled, but I don’t.

Nicki: No, just want to pluck random hairs that are falling out of-

Robb: You’re shedding.

Nicki: Am I?

Robb: Yeah, you’re heading all Sinéad O’Connor over here.

Nicki: Don’t think I’m going to go with that direction.

Robb: Well babe, nothing compares to you.

Nicki: All right. Let’s see, let’s jump in with our first question from, actually Wade’s Army, do you want to tell folks about Wade’s Army?

Robb: Oh man, our dear friends John and Kate Welbourn, they had twin girls, seven years ago.

Nicki: Yup.

Robb: And the girls were friends with another-

Nicki: One of Kate’s really good friends from college.

Robb: Yeah, well you know this story better than I do.

Nicki: Yeah, one of Kate’s really good friends from college had a set of boy/girl twins. And the boy, Wade, ended up with neuroblastoma. So they started Wade’s Army to fundraise and get awareness around neuroblastoma, and it’s a wonderful wonderful non-profit, and every fall they do a big fundraiser and workout.

Robb: And the neuroblastoma people are pretty cool. When I was first approached to help with this I wrote a bit of a critical email saying that not enough effort is put into prevention and investigation of alternative therapies like hyperbaric oxygen, ketogenic diets and whatnot. And I got an email back from these folks and they said they were wide open as far as diversifying what they looked at, all that they were interested in was moving the ball forward on this stuff. So they appear to be really wonderful people, even at that neuroblastoma research side of the story.

Robb: And then John and Kate are super passionate about it. It’s one of the only philanthropic things that I feel comfortable contributing to it at this point, everything else seems like kind of a-

Nicki: You never know-

Robb: Smoke and mirrors deal, so yeah.

Nicki: Also your money doesn’t go exactly where you think it’s going to go, but it definitely does with these guys. So anyway, just thought I’d explain the shirt.

Robb: So check out Wade’s Army if you feel inclined to donate to them, please do.

Nicki: Yup. Okay, we’ll jump into our first question from Alex on oxalates. “Rob, what is your perspective on oxalates, is there any merit to what people like Dr. Williams Shaw, Sally Norton and Elliot Overton say about the evils of oxalates, or can we all keep eating spinach and almonds? Could this be the explanation as to why some people who go full carnivore benefit from eliminating all greens?”

Robb: So maybe the easiest thing to answer there is the last point, yeah this is almost certainly one of the reasons why folks that go full carnivore finally address that niggling underlying issue that keto and paleo, although benefiting sometimes to some degree, doesn’t fully resolve. And it’s interesting, you could make the case that we should be able to handle oxalates just fine, and when you look at some of the gut microbiota of the [hudsa 00:03:07], for example, they have oxalate metabolizing bacteria. And then there’s also issues around adequate calcium intake and can mitigate some of the deleterious effects of oxalate, basically keeping it sequestered in the feces and it moves out instead of getting moved in.

Robb: But the results are the reality that we should have bacteria that can help us deal with oxalates. Generally in westernized populations we don’t. And this is some of the conundrum that I think we face at large is, whatever reason, the way that our westernized diet is altering the gut microbiota, we are losing the ability to deal with more and more foods. And to some degree like keto, low carb, zero carb, carnivore, it’s kind of like the last spot that people end up that they can still deal with things. And it seems like fruits to some degree is less of a problem. Some things like white rice or different starchy components may be for different people are less problematic. Mushrooms may be less problematic.

Robb: But a lot of these things that are historically thought of as being health foods and super foods like spinach and kale and all that stuff, they really cause a lot of problems for some people. And it’s interesting again when we think about this from the evidence-based nutrition folks and it fits your macros folks, or what have you. We really should be able to deal with this stuff better than what we do. Nobody, as far as I can tell right now, is entirely clear about how we can restore the gut microbiota.

Robb: I was at the evolutionary medicine conference that [inaudible 00:04:57] puts on each year, and Erika Sonenberg from the Sonenberg Lab at Stanford was there and we were talking about this stuff. And there’s kind of a reality that when you look at the gut microbiota over generations, and they’ve done this in mice and we’ve also seen this in humans. It’s getting more and more narrow as time goes on, which is not good. It’s a multi generational problem. This is the point that I wanted to make about the, it fits your macros folks and some of the evidence-based nutrition folks, is that it appears that any inclusion of westernized foods begins and accelerates the loss of gut microbiotic diversity.

Robb: So this whole notion that you can have a little bit here and there, maybe a fucking lie, or it may be completely misinformed, ill informed if we’re thinking about the gut microbiota as like this extra genomic information processing center where we’ve got more genetic diversity in our gut than we have in the totality of humanity. And that stuff is being lost over time, and there’s a case to be made that no amount of westernized foods are really safe in this regard. I’m not stating this as fact, I’m stating this as a little bit of a hypothesis. But if the hypothesis is true, that the inclusion of virtually any amount of westernized foods starts moving us in a direction of a more curtailed gut microbiota, then what the fuck are we going to do about that?

Robb: And how are people going to modify their recommendations according to that information? And again, the information that comes out of the Sonenberg Lab is very interesting in this regard, and there’s definitely a lot of people that, myself included, like somebody held my feet to the fire about all the almonds I was eating. And fucking lo and behold man, I think some of the final kind of gut related stuff that I had was from eating these nuts. And I’ve tinkered with soaking and sprouting and getting the ghost of [inaudible 00:07:10] priced to lay hands on my sprouted fucking stuff. And it’s better, but it’s not great. Like I do better without them.

Robb: And so I’m kind of in this mode of carnivore plus coffee and fermented food. It’s kind of where I’m at and doing really well with that. Like I feel really good, my digestion is good. But it’s interesting, I’ve shifted to a more curtailed, less diverse food intake, but I feel better. But then there’s an argument to be made that I’m probably tuning my gut microbiota to a more narrow frequency band, but I’m just stuck at this point. I don’t know what else to do, I’ve done like every probiotic prebiotic. I won’t name any of them because I don’t want to throw them under the bus, because it didn’t work for me doesn’t mean they won’t work for someone else.

Robb: But it’s a really interesting complex topic. And I know I’m getting totally out in the weeds here, but on the one hand I think that we have people maybe in the ancestral health scene, some people that sell a degree of knowledge on this topic that is bullshit. Like they can claim this kind of magic divination that oh if you have this profile then you need to do X, Y, Z. And I think that that’s horse shit. But then on the flip side I think that the evidence-based nutrition folks are dismissive of this topic to the point of eventual legal ramifications or something. Just moral ramifications if nothing else. Like they too approach this story with this remarkable degree of certitude when it’s a brand new topic, there’s so much more that we don’t know than what we do know.

Robb: And I think at the end of the day the most important thing that folks can do is have kind of a rubric for if you are sick, what is a way that we can get you healthy? And then we start trying to iterate and move from there. That was a short question with a very very very very very long answer.

Nicki: All right. Our next question is from Paul on living well to 100 and beyond. “Robb and Nicki, I’m definitely one of the original six listeners and credit you many times for changing my life and educating me to the point that I helped other people change their lives. Okay, I’m 62, in very good shape, and have a smoking hot younger wife that I would love to make it to our 50th wedding anniversary, which would make me 107. So the question is, what test do I do now to make sure I have the best chance to achieve this goal and hopefully correct it if something is wrong?”

Robb: Man. What do you think? What would your-

Nicki: Tests?

Robb: Yeah. Singular test. So I could make a case for the whole LPRI score, to look at where one’s insulin resistance versus sensitivity metabolic health, metabolic flexibility. It also gives you insight into systemic inflammation, mainly from GlycA and a couple of other elements in there. So this is something we use in the advanced testing within the clinic here in Reno. It’s incredibly valuable for being able to assign kind of a metabolic risk number on folks. And if we get an improvement … Let’s say the higher the number the kind of worse things are.

Robb: If somebody does the LPRI score and they get a number of 85, and we move them to a 45, almost from like a life insurance actuarial table perspective, we can assign a risk mitigation based off that change, which is basically the underpinning of most of the work that we’ve done. So as an external test that LPRI score I think could be really really valuable for establishing a baseline and trying to track that over time.

Robb: Now beyond that, from my perspective, I-

Nicki: Muscle mass, like how much muscle mass are you carrying?

Robb: Muscle mass. Yeah. And some of these benchmarks of a double body weight deadlift. A body weight and a half back squat, body weight and some change bench. Maybe a body weight standing press. Your weight plus 50 to 72% of your weight in a weighted chin or pull-up. Maintaining muscle mass and then maintaining some degree of metabolic engine both in the aerobic and the anaerobic areas, I think is about as good a bet is what you’re going to get with that as far as some reasonably objective measures that would correlate with effective aging.

Robb: It’s a great question, and people can complicate this stuff. Like I used to be a little bit of a fan of looking at telomeres length and then some recent research that I read really poured some cold water down my back on that one. And so that’s interesting, so the whole telomeres length story is not nearly as compelling as what I once thought it was.

Nicki: Okay. Paul, you’ll have to check-in in 10 years increments and let us know how you’re doing.

Robb: Yeah, keep us posted man. Yeah.

Nicki: Our next question is from Jake on Olympic weightlifting. “Robb, thank you for the podcast it’s great. I know you’re very busy, but I was wondering how you would suggest approaching a healthy diet for Olympic weightlifting? I’m 35, 5’9″, 185 pounds, and around 18% body fat. This is a rough estimate using the keto gains website. I want to compete but not looking to sacrifice my health and would like to lift into my old age. You mentioned that you competed in power lifting when you were younger, and I thought maybe you would have some insight into the subject. I currently intermittent fast roughly 14 hours every day, my diet is protein from a variety of meats, carbs from lots of fresh veggies, fats from nuts, coconut and olive oil. No sugars unless family holiday. My goal is to lose some body fat but maintain my strength. I tried to go full keto, no carbs, and my strength plummets. Thanks again, sorry for such a long question.”

Robb: Man, so what are the main questions with this? Like he wants to compete, he wants to lean out.

Nicki: How would you structure a diet for weightlifting such that he’s obviously strong and able to perform.

Robb: Right.

Nicki: And can lose some body fat.

Robb: Yeah, so on the keto topic, I would venture that Jake probably didn’t get enough sodium and electrolytes in general. There is a reality that the first-

Nicki: Well and he said, no carbs too, so there’s also he could potentially have some carbs post training.

Robb: Yeah. I think there’s different ways of skinning that for sure. One thing is if you do go keto, you got to be very aggressive in supplementing electrolytes in particular, sodium. Beyond that, but keto is by no means the only route to losing body fat. And so you could still use the keto gains macro nutrient calculator to help you establish a baseline of caloric intake, and then you just tweak it a little bit. Like if you make sure that you do the keto gains recommended protein intake which is about a gram, gram and a half of protein per pound lean body mass. And then it’s going to make a recommendation around your carbs and fat. The carbs are going to be set automatically at about 25 grams per day. If you want to add … Let’s say you want to run 100 grams of carbs a day, so you’re going to add 75 grams of carbs, you’re going to delete approximately about 30 grams of fat.

Robb: Like you could do the numbers on that, but that’s kind of the approximate ballpark on that. In that way you’ve got to really slick way of quickly figuring out what a recommended caloric intake is, make sure you’re benchmarked on your protein, and then just adjust the carbs and fat appropriate to what you’re doing. And you would still probably benefit from an eye towards proper electrolyte supplementation.

Nicki: Okay. Thanks Jake, our next question is on low carb and sleep from Angel. “Hi Robb, thanks for answering our questions. When I eat low carb I tend to wake up at 3 am and have a hard time falling back asleep. However, if I have some carbs, like a small bowel of rice or a sweet potato during dinner I generally sleep through the night and wake up naturally a little after 6 am. I usually go to bed around 10 pm and eat dinner around 6 pm. The problem is, when I eat carbs during dinner I gain weight over time.”

Nicki: Overtime, or over time? I don’t know. “Eating low carb helps me lose weight. Is there a reason for the interrupted sleep while eating low carb? I searched online and some people say it’s due to noradrenaline, I don’t know what that is and I’m wondering how I can improve my sleep while eating low carb. Thank you very much for your knowledge.”

Robb: Do you want to tackle this one?

Nicki: I mean the sodium one is the one that’s popping out for me.

Robb: Yeah, for sure. When folks shift lower carb even from basic paleo type carb levels they definitely notice an increase in adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, these hormones are being released kind of in a compensatory effort to retain more sodium. It’s kind of an indirect work around, but it’s registering as a stress. The low sodium environment, there’s a downward spiral where you shed sodium, then you shed potassium, and then all hell kind of breaks loose. And so this is another scenario where really being on point with electrolytes is critical and you have to hit that at least five grams of sodium plus the potassium and magnesium each day.

Robb: What we find though is that if folks are generally eating a whole food based diet, then you pretty well on magnesium and potassium. They might need a little bit of supplemental help there. But they’re really deficient in the sodium. And so this is one of these things that just, it’s like magic. If you are staying on point with the electrolyte supplementation, you either do bouillon, you do a home brew, or you get something like Element and it fixes this problem remarkably quickly.

Nicki: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. So electrolytes, Angel, and then report back, let us know how you do.

Robb: Yeah, that’d be great.

Nicki: Okay, final question for this week is from Mike on the paleo diet. Mike says, “Going back to your first book, what are the main things you would revise or add if you ever did a revision?”

Robb: Well the funny thing is we did do a revision. There is a volume two-

Nicki: The paperback.

Robb: -it’s a paperback version.

Nicki: Just updated slightly.

Robb: I mean there wasn’t a massive amount that we tweaked. So I had some pretty aggressive fish oil recommendations in the first book, which I modified over time. Thank you for the people that burned me at the stake about getting that one wrong, I was largely following people like Barry Sears and other folks, that information seemed credible at the time. On that fatty acid…

Nicki: The omega three profile in grass fed beef?

Robb: Yeah. So to that fatty acid topic, Diana Rogers and I had been working on this sustainability book and movie called Sacred Cow. And it’s interesting because we’ve had pretty massive pushback from the vegan community. The vegans. Which is not surprising at all, but I tell you one of the more surprising places that we get a shocking degree of pushback, and very vigorous and very ill informed unfortunately, is the really go getter paleo ancestral health crowd that insist that grass fed meat is the only grass fed, grass finish is the only way to go.

Robb: And Diana and I tackle this in the book and we’re also going to be doing a series of blog posts and other support material where I really dig into the literature on this. But the reality is that, so as a baseline, the bulk of ruminant animals, whether it’s cows, sheep, goats, camel, whatever. They’re grass fed for the most part, there is some grain finishing. Now, the thing is, is that I probably am suffer … What do they say, like when you raise kids like you get back what you were…

Nicki: You get back what you put out as a kid.

Robb: -as a kid. And so I’m sure I sowed a lot of the seeds of my frustration on this now. Because early in the story there was a sense that the fanning acid profiles of grass fed meat were remarkably better with regards to the omega three, omega six balance than grain finished meat. Around 2009, 2010 though, Mat LaLonde really did the deep dive into this stuff, and he was like, no man that’s not the case at all. There’s very little difference when you get right down to it.

Robb: And I got into a pissing match on the interwebs, on social media, shocker, with a woman who is a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and she insisted that there was a difference in the protein.

Nicki: Grass fed vs grain fed.

Robb: Of grass fed versus grain finished meat. And I said, show me one paper. And she went through all of this magic and mysticism and flailing and all kinds of appeal to odd authorities, but could not produce one thing that suggested that the protein content, nor really the fatty acid content was significantly different between grass finished and grain finished meat.

Robb: Now from a sustainability perspective, there’s a great argument for doing as much grass finishing as possible, but even in that story, there’s a reality that to the degree that we do continue to grow wheat or corn or rice or whatever, the leftovers in that scenario is not technically grass, but it is something that animals can be finished on. And it is used that way, and it’s a very smart utilization of resources because otherwise that is cellulosic material just builds up and it degrades very slowly. It maybe oxidizes instead of composts and all that type of stuff.

Robb: So there’s really compelling reasons to have a middle ground in this story, and not be complete zealots about it. There is no compelling case from a health perspective that the fatty acid profiles are different. And so that’s a big one from the book that I probably sowed a lot of erroneous information really advocating for grass fed meant, but the reason why I’ve been advocating for grass fed meat, even with the knowledge about there’s not that big of a difference from the health perspective. There is a significant story there from a resource management sustainability perspective.

Robb: So that’s going to be a fun one to unpack over the next 10 years.

Nicki: So the fish oil, the fatty acid profile in grass finish versus grain finished beef. Anything else?

Robb: No, otherwise, paleo solution was pretty on point. You know, making recommendations around sleep, getting out in the sun, lifting some weights, doing some sprinting, not letting your internal dialogue eat you up, that whole the stress chapter. Like the finance piece and everything. So that stuff’s kind of stood the test of time, and honestly got recycled and updated significantly in Wired to Eat. Like it’s still those things are kind of … I would argue kind of universalities in this story, yeah.

Nicki: Okay.

Robb: Is that it?

Nicki: I think that’s our last question for this week, yeah. Thank you guys again for your questions, you can submit them at Robbwolf.com on the contact page.

Robb: @dasrobbwolf for Instagram, which is about the only place I’m hanging out these days.

Nicki: We drip these questions out there. Also on YouTube, this is episode is sponsored by Drink Element, the electrolyte drink mix that has the sodium that you need if you’re on a low carb or ketogenic diet.

Robb: It has what plants crave.

Nicki: Brawndo.

Robb: Brawndo.

Nicki: Thanks guys.

Keto Masterclass

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

Learn More

  Don’t forget, Wired to Eat is now available!

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, iBooks