41 Comments
Feb 10, 2023·edited Feb 10, 2023Liked by Michael Eades

As always a lesson in wisdom. One moment you lament that the Euros aren't properly supporting US militarism, the way the Brits kept the seas open. OTOH the Germans are like frogs in hot water and nobody's keeping score. I do appreciate your mention of Fritzell, whom I had forgotten about. I'll trade you the Col MacGregor card, whom you shall come to appreciate :-) Zulauf is a paid billionaire's zombie, like Zeihan. Your great gift was the idea and verity of neolithic diets, IMHO, whereas I am a philosopher looking at the species' role (Humanism) - our long views can be useful - to lift up our eyes unto the hills. And get some peace. ;-)

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I thought your video was extremely thought provoking. Enough that I am thinking about how I can use that information in my own journey. One question I had was -- in the intro you talked about the Minnesota Starvation Study and compared it to a keto/low carb study where both studies the people were eating the same calories, but the keto people did well and the starvation study people, well, starved. Thinking only about the weight of nutrients provided as you talked about and the equivalent calories- wouldn't it be expected that the keto people would be the ones losing more weight? I think the difference is that in the starvation study, from my understanding, they actually kept lowering the calories to force the people to continue to losing weight and from your description of the keto study, it was purely the eater's discretion how much they ate-- but would be interested in your thoughts.

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Feb 10, 2023Liked by Michael Eades

Great post. I think Zeihan gets some things right, but I do agree that he has a blind spot for the American establishment who pay most of his salary. I do not listen to MacGregor since he botched the early war analysis by talking about how the Ukrainian Army was being encircled and destroyed in the Donbass in enormous WWII style cauldron battles. Maybe that could still happen, but it certainly did not happen in the opening months of the war.

Your low carb diet information seems spot on to me. I have lost 12 pounds in ten weeks just by moderately cutting back on carbs. The carbs are definitely the key in cutting excess weight and restoring metabolic health. Enjoy your week.

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OMG that Pinker quote.

No wonder I never much cared or paid much attention, in spite of how many times [Not] Reason Magazine touted him. Just like a lot of the leftists who had some "libertarian" political tendencies (like Sam Harris).

But yea, you nailed it. Reasonable critique, but it doesn't apply to him. It's like certain branches of philosophy that begin by dismissing raw sensory data as valid. Of course, if that's held as true (but how could you do that?) then how can you make any argument at all? It's what one critic called a "stolen concept."

To the more general question, I don't see enough discussion of "gut feel," for lack of a more precise definition. It's not particularly analytical. It's tantamount to art & talent.

How can you critically and objectively analyze an individual's natural knack for something like playing an instrument, composing music, painting a portrait or landscape and so on. To just try to do so is to begin to realize how hopelessly complex it is, and that there may very well be millions of both independent and dependent variables to account for.

So, I think it's worth considering that some folks just have a knack, 5th sense, whatever, for predicting or at least accurately providing likely direction as to how outcomes influence follow-on courses.

The problem with that is we presume that it's all Cartesian, and the mistake is that we got the calculations wrong (the recent Scott Adams thingy case in point).

What I say, and particularly in regard to geopolitical analysis which is wholly pragmatic, consequentialist, and utilitarian, is that you can never account for ALL the values in play. You're solving for x+y=2, so it's pretty simple in a small range. But one of the players is thinking 5, and it's comprised of a lot more than just two independent variables.

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Would you have answered the question on fluid intake differently? You answered "Water doesn't have any calories...." but perhaps that's irrelevant because the efficiency of utilizing water's mass within cells and excretion (C02, H20, urine) makes it a zero mass gain scenario?

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Mike - brilliant, as usual - although I do think comparing the picture of you smiling to one captured of you not smiling and probably working really hard at remembering what you want to say is highly unfair. Perhaps a ten year difference in photos of the guy who did that?

only a few typos:

You can click the link above to read about L-shaped isoquants, which I didn’t know what were till I read it.

Perhaps should be "what they were till . . . ."

In the third paragraph after the Fritzell video you have "so-call tip of the iceberg" - perhaps "so-called tip of the iceberg"?

'And it invariable comes from the Epoch Times or some other conservative publication,"

invariably

"soybean oil with a big of egg yolk . . ."

with a bit of egg yolk?

"This nitrogen loss means that essentially the same amount of protein was converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis in both the fasted and Intrlipid subjects. "

intralipid - yes?

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I discovered Peter Zeihan with “The End of the World” also and really enjoyed it – enough to sign up for his newsletter and the videos. I did subscribe to the Stratfor for a while, so I had been exposed to some of his thinking. But I lost confidence in the George Friedman POV and haven’t paid much attention to Stratfor in the last few years.

However, I also read a couple of other interesting futurecasts this year including Ray Dalio’s “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” and “Superabundance” by Tupy and Pooley. They all make convincing arguments and have impressive resumes as “experts in the field”, but they can’t all be right.

Just wondering if you have any musings on how their arguments compare and if/why you think Zeihan’s take on things are more or less correct than the others?

BTW - I enjoy The Arrow, but after a certain point, my eyes just glaze over when I read more covid. I happened to see Pierre Kory’s initial congressional testimony and he impressed me more than anyone else in the fray. So I followed the FLCCC’s prophylactic protocol. My wife was in ill health, so I also got vaccinated thrice, and after all that I still got the crud. It was light though - just like a cold on fast forward. First symptoms on Sunday and gone by Thursday with just a few sniffles. But I’m more sick of reading about it than I was from the affliction itself.

What I really miss are your book reviews and reading lists. You introduced me to some very good reads via the Protein Power blog. If you get a break in your hectic schedule, and update would be great to see.

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I didn't know what a pussy hat is; now, having searched (sans google), I know. More's the pity. I knew what a MAGA hat is, thanks to unrelenting media "reporting", and now I wonder if a MAGA Pussy Hat would be a big seller for the broad middle roaders of the bell curve? Or, is the societal beliefs bell curve now more of a narrow-based isosceles triangle? Inquiring minds surely would want to know, for confirmation bias purposes.

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In thinking about "This nitrogen loss means that essentially the same amount of protein was converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis in both the fasted and Intrlipid subjects. In gluconeogenesis, the liver strips the nitrogen from the amino acid backbone. The nitrogen is released in the urine while the AA backbone is converted to glucose.", I wondered about this: 1) if I am not interested in promoting ketone bodies, and 2) I want to preserve existing muscle (important at 82yo), and 3) would like to encourage hypertrophy as much as possible, would eating a bit of dextrose (glucose) before resistance exercise while in a 17-hr fasted state prevent gluconeogenesis and preserve lean muscle tissue? Maybe it would be beneficial to take some glucose earlier to prevent it?

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Yikes! You're killing me here. I just finished watching Pony Tail Guy's talk to the Iowa crowd, which tested my patience in the extreme. And then you post another of his videos that repeats the same nonsense almost word for word. I have reserved his book at my library in the hope that my aversion to his presentation is based in part to his facile, glib and annoying personal style. But I am not hopeful. Reading what is available on his Amazon preview makes me think he is wrong on more things than just global geopolitics. (Cities existed before the advent of agriculture, something that has been understood for many decades I thought.) I don't want to beat a dead horse (or ponytail) or become the guy in the Duty Calls cartoon, but...

Yes the US was the dominant world power after WW2 in large part because the War was not fought on American soil. We became the "world's policeman". But PTG is mistaken in thinking that we no longer have an interest in that role. We can no longer afford that role. It was cheap and easy to protect a neighborhood where there was no one strong enough to oppose us, but it has become prohibitively expensive when there are many opponents, most who are annoyed by our demanding behavior and some of whom have the ability to seriously hurt us. We have come to rely on financial sanctions to enforce our will on other nations in part because sanctions are cheaper and don't result in bodybags at Dover. But sanctions can be partly circumvented, and the real risk for us is that other nations opt out of our financial system and create one in which no nation can sanction another. The Chinese are trying to figure out how to do this, and I think many non-European nations would be interested. As for PTG's shorter (Thank God) video that you posted. I will just tell what I think he got wrong. Ukraine cannot win this war. Russia will win this war without resorting to nuclear weapons. The real threat is from the US using nuclear weapons when it is clear to everyone that the Russians are winning. Russia is not militarily incompetent at fighting a conventional war. If Russia went against NATO forces the loss ratio would not be 1000 to one (or even 2 to one). This will not take years to resolve. Russia will not cease to exist in a decade or three. Russia is facing a demographic decline, not a collapse, but so is every country in the world. (The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is falling, and is below replacement levels in most of the developed world.) This war was not inevitable but the result of US and NATO expansion to the very borders of Russia.

I am touched by your naiveté about consultants. Paul Ehrlich still gets airtime. Climate apocalypticals can predict doom in 7 years or 12 years or 20 years and are stilled treated as oracles after their predictions fail to materialize. And of course there is Covid with its vast array of experts. Consultants are generally hired to justify corporate decisions (I must be right since the consultants I hired agree with me). Even Kissinger had to change his tune on Ukraine when it proved to be unpopular with his consulting firm's clients. It is a different form of confirmation bias. Clever consultants have learned to predict events 10 years or more in the future when no one likely remembers what was predicted (unless you were on the cover of Time magazine).

But reality is the final arbiter. I think we will see in the next six months which commentator is closer to the truth.

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It seems that in your video you are saying that weight loss in the keto diet comes in two ways. Less consumption for the same amount of Calories due to the caloric density of fat, as well as breathing/urinating out weight in the form of ketones?

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Your mass balance model is agnostic between carbs and protein, for weight loss. It is only committed to high fat. Do you agree?

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I hope you are still soliciting questions for PP2. Mine concerns fiber in the diet. I find it difficult to put together a high fiber, low carb diet. William Davis (Super Gut page 154) says " ... It's a reflection on the fundamental human need for plant matter. Despite dietary fads that reduce or eliminate vegetables, fruits, and legumes from the diet, the fact remains that your bacteria cannot thrive on a diet of only animal matter." Do you think this is really true? I don't find a that fat and protein diet is constipating, but am I starving my Gut biome?

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I’m not sure how I ended up watching a Peter Zeihan talk but he was explaining what was happening now geopolitically around energy and the Ukraine 🇺🇦 then I looked at the date and it was from 2014 or 2015. I wish I remembered the specific talk. He does a lot of lectures/speeches after watching his past talks and seeing that what he said would happen is now happening he becomes a lot more credible.

https://youtu.be/rkuhWA9GdCo

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Feb 11, 2023Liked by Michael Eades

Pics? Forget it. There is a very wise man in there.

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Dr. Eades,

Your weight loss explanations while on keto jibe with some experimenting I’d done in 2019 when I was dropping weight regularly. I would weigh myself before bedtime and upon waking. The average loss during sleep (over and over again) was 0.3 lbs/hr. Once I determined that my urine loss didn’t equal that rate I came to the conclusion I was breathing it out…there was no other conclusion that made sense.

The conversion of the energy balance equation into mass terms is brilliant. It seems so obvious now!

Nobel Prize for you sir… now do Autophagy:-)

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