Thank you, Heather, for mentioning Detrans Awareness Day.
I am a trans desister, meaning I identified and came out as transgender but stopped my transition process when my spouse who had lived as a transwoman for 8 years expressed severe transition regret. I am grateful that I got out before making irreversible changes to my body and risking the many dangerous side effects of drugs and surgeries that so many other detransitioners suffer from.
With deep inner work it is possible to heal from the pain that is labeled gender dysphoria. It wasn't an easy journey, but I now feel comfortable in my own skin, at home in my female body, accepting of being a woman, and more grounded and content than I have ever been in my life.
I shared my story for the very first time a couple of weeks ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6q48s55Wkc&t=1s) and your writing and podcast has played a big part in me finding the courage to do so. Thank you for doing what you do, Heather, and for bringing attention to detransitioners and desisters.
As a small sheep farmer, that graphic about the hay drives me nuts. It's such a conventional approach. Good fertile soil, when managed well, is it's own fertility. That might mean letting a field go fallow for a year and mow it so the cuttings break down to provide next year's fertility, or doing rotational grazing effectively. But no, lets keep cutting it and dumping petrochemicals on it. The funny thing about animals that eat hay, they LOVE weeds! Take something like Lambs Quarters - a horrible "weed", but actually has more nutrients than most grasses and animals love it. Weeds thrive in bad soils, they are the pioneer species and they drill down for nutrients and bring it up for future "better" plants.
When it comes to farming, just like when it came to renewable energy, we were on the cusp of coming up with a new story: regenerative agriculture, and it was picking up steam. But this war seems to have put that conversation by the wayside. Forget about the fact that we have the solution to fix the problem of petrochemicals, lets just stick with the old system and inform the consumer they are going to be in big trouble. Nah, time for a new story and I'm not following that one.
I agree with your reaction to "conventional" agriculture (a term that--as you can tell by my quotation marks--has also always driven me nuts. Conventional since when? By whose decree?). Bret and I both spent time in the first two years of grad school working with an "eco ag" professor--ecological agriculture--who worked in Central America, mostly Nicaragua. And while neither of us thought that that was where we were ultimately going to focus our research, we learned tremendously from him and the farms and farmers and farming techniques that he exposed us to, mostly in Costa Rica where we and a few other grad students spent a Summer with him.
That said, the FB post about hay makes an important point about the price of commodities over the last few years, regardless of whether you think those commodities are worthwhile, or even perhaps negative.
With regard to "this war putting that conversation by the wayside"--well yes, it has done that, hasn't it. The war has managed to stop all manner of conversations and reckonings that needed to happen, and seemed to be imminent. Convenient, that.
How did we get to this place of lunacy? I can't believe there are still mask mandates? Does no one see the latest posts from WHO and the CDC finally rescinding mask mandates? Fortunately I live in Florida where life has been nearly normal most of the past 2 years although masks were required at my periodontist 2 weeks ago. I asked my periodontist about their office policy, pointed out how useless masks are and how it is COVID theater. I reminded her that masks are not mandatory in Florida. I recommended she make masks optional so those who are still terrified can wear their masks. The stupidity of the masks is obvious because you can't get a dental cleaning when you have one on. The other day I saw 2 women walking wearing masks. No one was within a block of them. They were out in the open air and sunshine. Blatant stupidity.
The current social/cultural insanity defies reason and logic. Where did the trans movement come from? Why is any adult encouraging bodily mutilation in children? Why are schools and healthcare adults keeping this information from the parents? Why is planned parenthood involved in dispensing powerful hormones to children?
Tucker Carlson interviewed Gad Saad. Dr. Saad wrote "The Parasitic Mind." I ordered it so I can read it and see where this horrible ideology came from. Maybe it will tell me how to fight it.
How can people be so stupid as to believe it?
Thank God I am in Florida where Gov. DeSantis and the legislature is trying to protect children from poisonous ideology.
I always had a hard time understanding the Salem witch trials and the community hysteria, started by two teenage girls, that took over. No longer. I have witnessed two years of international hysteria.
You cut the hay story off short of the punch line. Here in my neck of the woods, or maybe deep suburban prairie, over the last several years our hay has gone from $3 & change / square, to $5 & change. Over the years, it is a supply and demand that drives pricing in the short therm. If this year is a good year and the farmers get three cuttings, next year prices won't go up much (I can't remember them ever going down) If rain doesn't fall as it should, prices go up - because there's less hay to go around and no one wants their animals to go without in the early spring.
As prices go up in one area, surplus hay from other areas get shipped in, increasing the cost.
The inputs discussed in your piece have an affect as in, will I plant corn this year or cut and bale that field again.
So anyway, what are people paying for hay out there?
I don't hang out at the refuge much. I'm pretty content right around my home. My neighbor, Donna, was the biologist for the area park district. She took on the task of reintroducing swans to the area. Though, rest her soul, she passed of breast cancer long before she could ever see just how successful her work was.
Her legacy is raw beautify. We have these gleaming white, 747 sized trumpeters all around us.
In Ontario Canada, I concur with your discussion about cuttings, we've had dry years here and only got 2 cuttings per year, so the prices were record highs: about $4 US/small square (I have an excellent supplier, most are paying $6/bale). After seeing the prices go up so much I decided to start planting trees as tree fodder, and trimming my hedgerow trees for barn storage: mulberry, sumac, poplar, manitoba maple (what most consider weed trees, but they grow quick which is perfect) ... anyway, I hope more farmers start thinking about tree fodder, they did it in the old days, and it sure is better for the environment.
Good Morning Heather! I’ve been following you and Bret for a few years now. In the darkness of the pandemic I stumbled on The Dark Horse pod cast and have been listening and learning ever since. Your point of view is very important especially these days as we transition out of the depths of the pandemic into something else....I personally am grappling with a direction as there is no way for me to unsee, feel or think what I’ve discovered these past few years, nor would I want to might I add....I made a brisket (which I have never done) last month because I was seduced by your description of the one you were cooking one afternoon. The aromas momentarily distracting enough to mention it on your podcast. Change in seasons...transitions often inspire me to make soup. There is something comforting and soothing about the process and then there is the joy of eating it and sharing it! As I ponder my future in a world that looks nothing like it did two hears ago I will be making your soup. It looks delicious and easy to follow. Looking forward!
Another great post! With spring coming it makes me yearn for the outdoors especially after the total the goings on of the past few years. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different opinion this past weekend for the mid-Atlantic and instead decided we needed just one more bout with snow here!
I have made remarks in prior comments, but modernity has certainly been damaging to our line of thinking and how we operate in the world. There's this constant belief that new information, for some reason, must always override old ways of thinking. New is best regardless of what this "new" is. These "new" vaccines are good because they are "new" technologies. I've shockingly seen YouTube comments even supporting Remdesivir over other drugs because "it's new and expensive", as if somehow the line of thinking that we tend to attribute to a new iPhone has somehow made its way to how we think about pharmaceutical drugs! I brought up a similar case with Ivermectin and the recent retraction of an abstract that suggested it reduced mortality:
Whether or not Ivermectin is effective, it's strange that the retraction was seen as an indication that Ivermectin just does not work. It's as if the recency effect causes us to not understand the totality of the science and the totality of the evidence, but that whatever information we are presented with is the correct information.
Extend that line of thinking to inflation and gas prices, and it's quite easy to understand how people are easily deceived into believing it is the happenings in Ukraine that are causing rising gas and food prices, and not everything that has occurred these past few years.
So in short, modernity has caused us to rely predominately on heuristics and the most recent information, not to engage in a method that allows us to make sense of the world and add onto prior evidence, essentially taking away our ability to think and rationalize in the world.
Thanks Heather. Will try the soup. Walking and walking many miles in nature but mind keeps spinning about the madness we are in (still, or again not sure which). No such thing as coincidences that suddenly everyone is on same page( but me it seems) and that the people in Russia can't go to the bank or eat a Big Mac in the blink of a corporate eye. Biggest tip off finally today when the "duplicitous Ken doll" introduced the comedian turned politician to parliament as if old buddies. What is going on here?? It's so much bigger and scarier than I feared, all while poor people are losing their livelihoods and their lives (again) over this BS.
Good morning. I only recently became aware of your Dark Horse podcast and these essays, and I just wanted to say thank you for what you are doing. I found you at a point in time when I really needed to see a light of reason in the fog. We have become increasingly disheartened about many things in the country/world since the start of the pandemic, but most alarming for us have been the changes we've seen in our children's elementary school. Even as the pandemic has become less threatening, the school has become more and more authoritarian about vaccines and masking. When I dared to open a respectful discussion with other parents about whether sending our kids to school in cloth masks might have negative pyschosocial effects while providing little to no protection against covid, the response blew my mind. The school immediately publicly shamed me with a school-wide email denouncing me for daring to discuss the topic. Our 7 year old daughter was stigmatized by her teacher when she asked why she needed to wear a mask a few weeks after she had recovered from a covid infection. The director of the school shook with rage as she told me how "inappropriate" it was for me to have a conversation with other parents. All of this at a school where masks are supposedly "optional". School options are limited for us in rural Arizona and we have ultimately decided to pull our kids out and homeschool for a few years. While working our way through this decision, I devoured your book and in many ways it helped me to see clearly once again that I can trust my own ability to see the world, and I can cut out all of the bullshit for my children as they learn how to think through problems creatively and rationally. We're ready to spend our afternoons playing in the creek, planting our garden, and spending time with friends and loved ones who haven't lost their minds. I desperately hope that humanity will soon turn a corner and that we will find our way to a better path for the sake of our children's futures. Thanks to you and Bret for what you are doing.
There are only six snake species in Germany, all but one endangered. You can spend your whole life here without stumbling upon a snake. Not far from our place there is a village called "Schlangenbad", which is home to a tiny population (one of two in Germany, I think) of Aesculapian snakes. "Schlange" means snake, and "bad" is bath, indicating that the microclimate is conducive to human health - and that of certain snakes.
Greetings Heather, and a deep thank you for your consistent offerings of balanced approach in this absolutely ‘bonkers’ reality we find ourselves in.
I live in Astoria, OR. I am finding myself amidst another difficult repercussion of the polarizing vaccine chaos.. this being therapy. My (no longer) therapist believes without a doubt that the vaccines are both safe and effective, well because as he said: LOts of doctors and scientists say it is so. Without needing to extrapolate more, I have been through quite a bit of adult style ‘bullying’ for lack of a better word, as I know you yourself can relate to in terms of widespread fallout over vaccine and especially the mandate part, positioning .
My question is this: do you or Brett have any suggestions on a personal psychological therapist, in Portland or the coast area who may be able to understand further how to assist an individual ‘like me’ through a time like this?
Another wonderful post, coupled with a tantalizing recipe? Ugh, 'yer killin' me! Like getting the goosebumps from reading a score, I can already taste the complexity of the soup and how fabulous it will be to bring it to the table, bowl tipped, spoon at the ready. As always, many thanks for so generously sharing your insights, experiences, and zest for life. Food for the mind and body.
Thank you, Heather, for mentioning Detrans Awareness Day.
I am a trans desister, meaning I identified and came out as transgender but stopped my transition process when my spouse who had lived as a transwoman for 8 years expressed severe transition regret. I am grateful that I got out before making irreversible changes to my body and risking the many dangerous side effects of drugs and surgeries that so many other detransitioners suffer from.
With deep inner work it is possible to heal from the pain that is labeled gender dysphoria. It wasn't an easy journey, but I now feel comfortable in my own skin, at home in my female body, accepting of being a woman, and more grounded and content than I have ever been in my life.
I shared my story for the very first time a couple of weeks ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6q48s55Wkc&t=1s) and your writing and podcast has played a big part in me finding the courage to do so. Thank you for doing what you do, Heather, and for bringing attention to detransitioners and desisters.
<3
As a small sheep farmer, that graphic about the hay drives me nuts. It's such a conventional approach. Good fertile soil, when managed well, is it's own fertility. That might mean letting a field go fallow for a year and mow it so the cuttings break down to provide next year's fertility, or doing rotational grazing effectively. But no, lets keep cutting it and dumping petrochemicals on it. The funny thing about animals that eat hay, they LOVE weeds! Take something like Lambs Quarters - a horrible "weed", but actually has more nutrients than most grasses and animals love it. Weeds thrive in bad soils, they are the pioneer species and they drill down for nutrients and bring it up for future "better" plants.
When it comes to farming, just like when it came to renewable energy, we were on the cusp of coming up with a new story: regenerative agriculture, and it was picking up steam. But this war seems to have put that conversation by the wayside. Forget about the fact that we have the solution to fix the problem of petrochemicals, lets just stick with the old system and inform the consumer they are going to be in big trouble. Nah, time for a new story and I'm not following that one.
I agree with your reaction to "conventional" agriculture (a term that--as you can tell by my quotation marks--has also always driven me nuts. Conventional since when? By whose decree?). Bret and I both spent time in the first two years of grad school working with an "eco ag" professor--ecological agriculture--who worked in Central America, mostly Nicaragua. And while neither of us thought that that was where we were ultimately going to focus our research, we learned tremendously from him and the farms and farmers and farming techniques that he exposed us to, mostly in Costa Rica where we and a few other grad students spent a Summer with him.
That said, the FB post about hay makes an important point about the price of commodities over the last few years, regardless of whether you think those commodities are worthwhile, or even perhaps negative.
With regard to "this war putting that conversation by the wayside"--well yes, it has done that, hasn't it. The war has managed to stop all manner of conversations and reckonings that needed to happen, and seemed to be imminent. Convenient, that.
How did we get to this place of lunacy? I can't believe there are still mask mandates? Does no one see the latest posts from WHO and the CDC finally rescinding mask mandates? Fortunately I live in Florida where life has been nearly normal most of the past 2 years although masks were required at my periodontist 2 weeks ago. I asked my periodontist about their office policy, pointed out how useless masks are and how it is COVID theater. I reminded her that masks are not mandatory in Florida. I recommended she make masks optional so those who are still terrified can wear their masks. The stupidity of the masks is obvious because you can't get a dental cleaning when you have one on. The other day I saw 2 women walking wearing masks. No one was within a block of them. They were out in the open air and sunshine. Blatant stupidity.
The current social/cultural insanity defies reason and logic. Where did the trans movement come from? Why is any adult encouraging bodily mutilation in children? Why are schools and healthcare adults keeping this information from the parents? Why is planned parenthood involved in dispensing powerful hormones to children?
Tucker Carlson interviewed Gad Saad. Dr. Saad wrote "The Parasitic Mind." I ordered it so I can read it and see where this horrible ideology came from. Maybe it will tell me how to fight it.
How can people be so stupid as to believe it?
Thank God I am in Florida where Gov. DeSantis and the legislature is trying to protect children from poisonous ideology.
I always had a hard time understanding the Salem witch trials and the community hysteria, started by two teenage girls, that took over. No longer. I have witnessed two years of international hysteria.
You cut the hay story off short of the punch line. Here in my neck of the woods, or maybe deep suburban prairie, over the last several years our hay has gone from $3 & change / square, to $5 & change. Over the years, it is a supply and demand that drives pricing in the short therm. If this year is a good year and the farmers get three cuttings, next year prices won't go up much (I can't remember them ever going down) If rain doesn't fall as it should, prices go up - because there's less hay to go around and no one wants their animals to go without in the early spring.
As prices go up in one area, surplus hay from other areas get shipped in, increasing the cost.
The inputs discussed in your piece have an affect as in, will I plant corn this year or cut and bale that field again.
So anyway, what are people paying for hay out there?
I don't hang out at the refuge much. I'm pretty content right around my home. My neighbor, Donna, was the biologist for the area park district. She took on the task of reintroducing swans to the area. Though, rest her soul, she passed of breast cancer long before she could ever see just how successful her work was.
Her legacy is raw beautify. We have these gleaming white, 747 sized trumpeters all around us.
In Ontario Canada, I concur with your discussion about cuttings, we've had dry years here and only got 2 cuttings per year, so the prices were record highs: about $4 US/small square (I have an excellent supplier, most are paying $6/bale). After seeing the prices go up so much I decided to start planting trees as tree fodder, and trimming my hedgerow trees for barn storage: mulberry, sumac, poplar, manitoba maple (what most consider weed trees, but they grow quick which is perfect) ... anyway, I hope more farmers start thinking about tree fodder, they did it in the old days, and it sure is better for the environment.
Good Morning Heather! I’ve been following you and Bret for a few years now. In the darkness of the pandemic I stumbled on The Dark Horse pod cast and have been listening and learning ever since. Your point of view is very important especially these days as we transition out of the depths of the pandemic into something else....I personally am grappling with a direction as there is no way for me to unsee, feel or think what I’ve discovered these past few years, nor would I want to might I add....I made a brisket (which I have never done) last month because I was seduced by your description of the one you were cooking one afternoon. The aromas momentarily distracting enough to mention it on your podcast. Change in seasons...transitions often inspire me to make soup. There is something comforting and soothing about the process and then there is the joy of eating it and sharing it! As I ponder my future in a world that looks nothing like it did two hears ago I will be making your soup. It looks delicious and easy to follow. Looking forward!
Another great post! With spring coming it makes me yearn for the outdoors especially after the total the goings on of the past few years. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had a different opinion this past weekend for the mid-Atlantic and instead decided we needed just one more bout with snow here!
I have made remarks in prior comments, but modernity has certainly been damaging to our line of thinking and how we operate in the world. There's this constant belief that new information, for some reason, must always override old ways of thinking. New is best regardless of what this "new" is. These "new" vaccines are good because they are "new" technologies. I've shockingly seen YouTube comments even supporting Remdesivir over other drugs because "it's new and expensive", as if somehow the line of thinking that we tend to attribute to a new iPhone has somehow made its way to how we think about pharmaceutical drugs! I brought up a similar case with Ivermectin and the recent retraction of an abstract that suggested it reduced mortality:
https://moderndiscontent.substack.com/p/recent-ivermectin-study-retracted?s=w
Whether or not Ivermectin is effective, it's strange that the retraction was seen as an indication that Ivermectin just does not work. It's as if the recency effect causes us to not understand the totality of the science and the totality of the evidence, but that whatever information we are presented with is the correct information.
Extend that line of thinking to inflation and gas prices, and it's quite easy to understand how people are easily deceived into believing it is the happenings in Ukraine that are causing rising gas and food prices, and not everything that has occurred these past few years.
So in short, modernity has caused us to rely predominately on heuristics and the most recent information, not to engage in a method that allows us to make sense of the world and add onto prior evidence, essentially taking away our ability to think and rationalize in the world.
Thanks Heather. Will try the soup. Walking and walking many miles in nature but mind keeps spinning about the madness we are in (still, or again not sure which). No such thing as coincidences that suddenly everyone is on same page( but me it seems) and that the people in Russia can't go to the bank or eat a Big Mac in the blink of a corporate eye. Biggest tip off finally today when the "duplicitous Ken doll" introduced the comedian turned politician to parliament as if old buddies. What is going on here?? It's so much bigger and scarier than I feared, all while poor people are losing their livelihoods and their lives (again) over this BS.
Good morning. I only recently became aware of your Dark Horse podcast and these essays, and I just wanted to say thank you for what you are doing. I found you at a point in time when I really needed to see a light of reason in the fog. We have become increasingly disheartened about many things in the country/world since the start of the pandemic, but most alarming for us have been the changes we've seen in our children's elementary school. Even as the pandemic has become less threatening, the school has become more and more authoritarian about vaccines and masking. When I dared to open a respectful discussion with other parents about whether sending our kids to school in cloth masks might have negative pyschosocial effects while providing little to no protection against covid, the response blew my mind. The school immediately publicly shamed me with a school-wide email denouncing me for daring to discuss the topic. Our 7 year old daughter was stigmatized by her teacher when she asked why she needed to wear a mask a few weeks after she had recovered from a covid infection. The director of the school shook with rage as she told me how "inappropriate" it was for me to have a conversation with other parents. All of this at a school where masks are supposedly "optional". School options are limited for us in rural Arizona and we have ultimately decided to pull our kids out and homeschool for a few years. While working our way through this decision, I devoured your book and in many ways it helped me to see clearly once again that I can trust my own ability to see the world, and I can cut out all of the bullshit for my children as they learn how to think through problems creatively and rationally. We're ready to spend our afternoons playing in the creek, planting our garden, and spending time with friends and loved ones who haven't lost their minds. I desperately hope that humanity will soon turn a corner and that we will find our way to a better path for the sake of our children's futures. Thanks to you and Bret for what you are doing.
There are only six snake species in Germany, all but one endangered. You can spend your whole life here without stumbling upon a snake. Not far from our place there is a village called "Schlangenbad", which is home to a tiny population (one of two in Germany, I think) of Aesculapian snakes. "Schlange" means snake, and "bad" is bath, indicating that the microclimate is conducive to human health - and that of certain snakes.
Greetings Heather, and a deep thank you for your consistent offerings of balanced approach in this absolutely ‘bonkers’ reality we find ourselves in.
I live in Astoria, OR. I am finding myself amidst another difficult repercussion of the polarizing vaccine chaos.. this being therapy. My (no longer) therapist believes without a doubt that the vaccines are both safe and effective, well because as he said: LOts of doctors and scientists say it is so. Without needing to extrapolate more, I have been through quite a bit of adult style ‘bullying’ for lack of a better word, as I know you yourself can relate to in terms of widespread fallout over vaccine and especially the mandate part, positioning .
My question is this: do you or Brett have any suggestions on a personal psychological therapist, in Portland or the coast area who may be able to understand further how to assist an individual ‘like me’ through a time like this?
Thanks much for any advice,
Seemingly alone in Astoria..
-Kristen aka, blis
Another wonderful post, coupled with a tantalizing recipe? Ugh, 'yer killin' me! Like getting the goosebumps from reading a score, I can already taste the complexity of the soup and how fabulous it will be to bring it to the table, bowl tipped, spoon at the ready. As always, many thanks for so generously sharing your insights, experiences, and zest for life. Food for the mind and body.