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small 'L' libertarian political activist, who loves Austrian economics and the emerging field of bioinformatics, audiophile, biohacker, non-fiction fanatic

[Criterion @IeriStaff]

@EricDLombardi See Alberta or Portugal's solution

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

If Elon Musk just gave away his trillion, he could end hunger and poverty in Africa, just like Band Aid and Live Aid did.

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@Martyupnorth Over valued but so is the whole stock market

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@ewarren

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@RealJamesWoods Emotional intelligence scores in the lower 10 percentile

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@KingKong9888 Nice recover tail on the weekly chart

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@PardyBruce I shop at Freshco and no frills..I find the prices there are reasonable even compared to independent grocers

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@DowdEdward And she has two homes and Elon lives in a bus

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@ewarren The United States is 22 trillion dollars in debt and maybe you should help shrink the size of government Elizabeth

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@NoLimitGains And he still lives in a bus

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@RealRickRule Elon still lives in a bus...give a man a fish or teach him to fish...pick your camp

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@RonStoeferle @finding_finance They can delay it for so long

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@MacleodFinance Overly negative sentiment is a big buying signal

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@SenWarren And he still lives on a bus he actually does not own a home

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1949.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine has just gone to the man who invented the lobotomy. Your doctor suggests one for your sister, who has not been herself since the baby came. It is the most celebrated advance in psychiatry of the age, and he is simply current. By the time the prize curdles into an embarrassment, close to twenty thousand Americans have had the operation, and proportionally more here in Britain.

The year is 1956.

Lay the baby down on his front, the doctor says. So does the most trusted childcare book ever written, the one on every new mother's shelf. On his back he might choke, the reasoning goes. Millions obey. The advice holds for nearly thirty years, long after the evidence has quietly turned, and a generation of cot deaths is counted before anyone thinks to roll the babies over.

The year is 1966.

A bestselling book informs your wife that menopause is a disease, that she is, in the author's word, a castrate, and that a small daily pill will keep her youthful and tolerable to live with. Her doctor agrees. The drug becomes one of the most prescribed in the country. Nobody mentions that the author sat on the payroll of the company that made it. That detail surfaces decades later, in the same year the landmark trial is halted early for raising rates of breast cancer, stroke and clots.

The year is 1979.

Your ulcer is caused by stress and sharp food, the doctor explains. Calm down, drink milk, take the antacid that happens to be the best-selling medicine on earth. Two Australians are about to prove that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium and cured by a fortnight of antibiotics. The profession laughs. One of them eventually drinks a beaker of the stuff to settle the matter. The establishment takes the better part of twenty years to stop laughing. The Nobel lands in 2005.

The year is 1985.

Butter is dangerous, the doctor says. Switch to margarine, it is modern, it is heart-healthy, the experts are united. The spread he nudges you toward is loaded with trans fats, which the next decade will identify as the genuinely dangerous one, and which will eventually be banned outright. The butter goes quietly back in the fridge. No correction is ever printed at the volume of the original warning.

The year is 1992.

There is a pyramid on the surgery wall, and the very same one in your grandchild's classroom. Bread, cereal, rice and pasta form the broad virtuous base, up to eleven servings a day. Fat is exiled to the tiny tip. The chart was reportedly held back a year while the relevant industries had their say. It is wrong at the bottom and wrong at the top.

Now it is today.

Your doctor has new guidelines, new studies, a fresh consensus, delivered with precisely the steady confidence of every guideline above. He believes it, and he has good reason to. So did every doctor in this thread. None of them were villains. Each was sincere, most were kind, and all were certain, reading from a map that somebody else had drawn and handed them. That is the part worth sitting with.

So when the man in the white coat tells you what to eat, what to fear, and what to swallow every morning for the rest of your life, you are allowed to ask. Who paid for the study. What the evidence says beneath the headline. What he was just as certain about thirty years ago, and where that advice sits now.

Then make up your own mind. Call it scepticism, or call it whatever your grandmother called it when she ignored the advert, kept the butter where it was, and lived to ninety-one.

It has outlasted every consensus on this list. It will outlast this one too.

[Criterion @IeriStaff]

@ChappellMJohn And he still lives in a bus can't say that for Elizabeth

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@SenWarren And he still lives in a bus

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@NoLimitGains its 966 this morning

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@MakisMedicine @CTVLondon The only one in Canada whereas you can go to Buffalo over the border and there's like three

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@bennyjohnson Young men do not learn emotional intelligence from mothers who go off cocked like this they learn it from Men and fathers who live in the home and who are responsible