Timbo

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Watch the pattern. It only ever runs one way.

When butter was demonised, Unilever was ready with margarine.

When lard and tallow were demonised, Procter and Gamble was ready with Crisco.

When eggs were demonised, Kellogg's was ready with a bowl of cereal.

When red meat was demonised, Cargill was ready with soy.

When breastfeeding was demonised as backward, Nestlé was ready with formula.

When leather was demonised, BASF was ready with plastic cut to look like hide.

When wool was demonised, ExxonMobil was ready with the feedstock for polyester.

When animal fat itself was demonised, seed oil climbed from industrial waste to the most used cooking fat on earth.

Every one of them was a food or a fibre humans had thrived on for thousands of years, condemned at the exact moment a cheaper factory copy was sitting ready on the shelf.

The product came first. The science came trotting along behind it, right on cue, the instant there was a substitute to sell.

Follow the money. The advice starts to make a great deal more sense.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

South Africa plays the most violent, collision-hungry rugby on the planet, and it comes from a country that treats meat and fire as a national religion.

The Springboks win the way a wrecking ball wins. Back-to-back world champions, built around a pack of enormous forwards and a bench so loaded with them that they once named a seven-one split, seven forwards and a single back, then dared the opposition to still be standing at the end. Their entire game is the collision. They want to hit you harder, more often, for longer, until you fold. It is the most physical identity in the sport, and it grows in telling soil.

Because South Africa is, by a distance, the most carnivorous rugby nation alive. The braai, the open-fire barbecue, is the centre of social life there, a weekly act of devotion around a grid of sizzling meat. Biltong, air-dried spiced beef and venison, is the national snack, sold at every petrol station and chewed on the touchline. Boerewors, the farmer's sausage, is protected by law and has to be at least ninety percent meat to earn the name. Children grow up on kudu, springbok and ostrich, on a plate that treats animal protein as the obvious foundation of a meal. A Springbok forward is raised, quite literally, on the thing he is named after.

Now the pedant's objection, answered before it arrives. The modern team kitchen runs no headline carnivore protocol. Their dietitians use the same periodised sports-science plans as everyone else, carbs timed around matches, the lot. Nobody is claiming beef is a secret training hack. The point is more interesting than that. The meat is upstream of all of it, in the culture that forms the player long before a nutritionist gets near him, the braai in the back garden, the biltong in the school bag, the unspoken sense that a man eats animals and gets on with it.

Other nations reach a meat-heavy diet through a spreadsheet. South Africa reaches it by being South African. The same culture lights the braai and builds the man who runs straight through you. One appetite, expressed twice.

[ZUBY: @ZubyMusic]

One of my favourite genres is multimillionaires criticising billionaires for having too much money.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Well said

[Timbo @timwightman]

@geordinhl @CityofCT I like how you have a “firm belief” when it comes to spending other people’s money, even when it goes directly against the wishes of those same people. Disgraceful human being. 🤮

[Timbo @timwightman]

@ComradesRace Surely "records" are cheapened if the course is that much shorter?

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The year is 1950. Your doctor lights a cigarette and tells you smoking is fine. He read it in a study. He is telling the truth about having read it. He does not know, or is not saying, that the study was funded by the tobacco industry.

The year is 1958. Your doctor tells you to eat less fat. The evidence is contested. The contestation is not in the public messaging. The food industry has been helpful in clarifying which findings deserve attention. Some researchers who published contradictory data have been quietly defunded. Ancel Keys is on the cover of Time magazine.

The year is 1962. Your doctor prescribes thalidomide to your pregnant wife for morning sickness. It has been approved. The FDA gave it the green light in Europe. Twelve thousand children will be born with severe limb malformations before anyone in an official capacity acknowledges the problem. The families are told the drug was safe. The drug was approved. Both of these things remain true.

The year is 1972. Your doctor prescribes Valium. Britain is in the grip of a benzodiazepine wave that will last two decades. The dependency risk is known internally. It is not shared. Your doctor is not lying to you. He was not told either.

The year is 1999. Your doctor prescribes Vioxx for your arthritis. It is newer than ibuprofen, well-tolerated, and Merck has a study showing it works. Merck also has internal data suggesting it roughly doubles the risk of heart attack. This data will not reach your doctor for four more years. Fifty thousand people are estimated to have died in the interim. Merck eventually settles for 4.85 billion dollars. No criminal charges are brought.

The year is 2002. Your doctor prescribes OxyContin. Purdue Pharma trained its sales representatives to tell doctors the addiction risk was less than one percent. That figure came from a letter, not a study. The letter was about patients with terminal cancer on short-term doses in hospital settings. Your doctor is a GP with a patient who has a bad back. Nobody draws a distinction. Nobody is required to.

The year is 2008. Your doctor checks your cholesterol. Your LDL is elevated. You are prescribed a statin. Nobody mentions that the number needed to treat for primary prevention is approximately 250. Nobody mentions that the muscle deterioration you'll notice over the next two years is listed as a rare side effect rather than a documented pattern affecting a meaningful percentage of patients. The trial that informed the prescription was funded by the manufacturer.

Now it is today.

Your doctor has new guidelines. New studies. New consensus.

He is confident.

He has always been confident.

The confidence has never been the problem.

The confidence is, in fact, precisely the problem.

[Timbo @timwightman]

@geordinhl 11,000 views. 72 likes. Brutal ratio!

[Timbo @timwightman]

@petergostev @alexeheath @sama Energy and power are not the same thing.

[Timbo @timwightman]

@AlexBerenson Why would you even say this? So dumb. No benefit, only downside (for you). And it's not even true.

[Timbo @timwightman]

@geordinhl @WesternCapeGov @CityofCT After months of engagement on the COCT budget, (which is now in court) the vast majority of respondents objected, but you went ahead anyway. So what's the point in discussion?

[Timbo @timwightman]

@redbullracing "Christian Horner departs..." 🤣🤣

[Timbo @timwightman]

@GadSaad @Cornell @ComicDaveSmith Did you learn about the “call to authority” logical fallacy during your PhD?

[Timbo @timwightman]

@MmusiMaimane Define “paid fairly”.

[Timbo @timwightman]

@Our_DA Stopped a 0.5% VAT hike. Then whacked on a 20% rates hike in Cape Town. Not to be trusted.

[Timbo @timwightman]

@geordinhl @CityofCT Why lie about lower bills? Just be honest FFS.

[Timbo @timwightman]

@TransnetNPA 62%, so it's overshot by 12% correct? When is the plan for equality going to be implemented? Or is the final target 100% female?

[Timbo @timwightman]

@geordinhl @CityofCT This isn't the flex you think it is. We pay rates, which pay your salaries, and all the employees of the council whose job it is to keep our drains unblocked. So why spend time telling us that you're doing your job. Rather just do your job.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

South Africa has now passed 142 laws forcing discrimination against anyone who is not black!

Even though I was born in South Africa, the government will not grant @Starlink a license to operate simply because I am not black.

This is a shameful disgrace to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela who sought to have all races treated equally in South Africa.

[Dr. Benway @DearestDr]

A president insulting his own citizens because he's failed to protect them, failed to embrace them, failed to employ them, failed to offer their children a future is a new low, even by Ramaphosa's disgraceful standards. May he meet the end he deserves.

https://t.co/aMLKzeBZHl