Thoughts about 'The Flu'

Several months back when I had what is commonly known as 'The Flu' - I was reflecting and learning some things - 

1. The word 'Flu' comes from the Spanish word for influence, originating from when we previously believed that this was caused by alignment of the stars / astrology.   The words we use matter, and I no longer call my symptoms 'The Flu', I am not under the influence of any external negative force or person or virus, my body is just doing what God has designed it to do, and so I only say "My body is getting rid of something that shouldn't be in there" and thank God for that.
   
   
2. As I lay in bed totally congested I was thinking why would God design my good nose to totally block when nose breathing is so good for you, and I was asking God to teach me something through it. Then as I lay there I swallowed and felt the yucky feeling of swallowing with a fully blocked nose and I realised - I felt the congestion move slightly. I kept swallowing, maybe 20, 30 or 40 times until my nose was clear enough to breathe through it again!!!   There is some mechanism by which swallowing causes drainage of the nose / sucks it out through pressure, incredible!   I wanted to know how this works and couldn't find any answers on google. I was looking at the anatomy of the nose to try to understand how this works, and kept looking until I had an idea ! See below video for my guess at how this is working. The eustachian tube is the key :) 
   Note in 10% of people the eustachian tube is apparently either always open or always closed so for those 10% of people I'm guessing this technique to clear the blockage may not work
   
   
   
   
3. Don't blow your nose - I used to aggressively blow my nose and go through a few boxes full of tissues, my thinking on this now is that my body wants to have this material present, so if I forcefully evacuate it all as quickly as I can, it's just going to stimulate it to keep producing even more, which will increase congestion.  So I just dab at my nose to catch the drips and limit nose blowing, using the previously mentioned swallowing technique to clear it enough to breathe.
   
   
4. Don't think woe is me I'm sick, just take it as an opportunity to rest, read, relax and slow down for a couple of days.
   
   
5. "If you don't choose to make time for your rest, you'll be forced to make time for your sickness"

Upside down language

The words that we use matter... and it's common in society to flip the meaning of words upside down. The tongue has the power of life and death, so there are tactics built in by the enemy to society's language to try to shift our words from life to death, good to bad.

This is a list of some upside down meaning words or just things that I think are unhelpful language to use. 

 From listening to some bible teachers and talking to friends and catching some in my own speech here are a few

- wicked = really good or awesome.  I even remember a children's song it's great great brill brill wicked wicked skill skill to have a friend like Jesus.

- sick = really good or awesome

- positive = sick with covid.  Positive is meant to be a good thing.   'He was the most positive person there' and one child replied "has he got Covid?" That has invaded society that positive = sick and negative= healthy

- "It was meant to rain today" - who meant it to rain today?  God meant it to be sunny, that's what's happened and what he has given us!,  the weatherman predicted rain.  

- "killing time" implies wasting, instead say 'using time'

- "Staying apart keeps of together"  this one should have been obvious but it wasn't to me until someone pointed out "no - staying apart keeps us apart!

- Sure - sometimes used to only express doubt 'are you sure?' when actually it's a word of certainty!

- "my bad knee" don't call what God has made good bad.    I choose to call it my good knee! It may be injured or sore yes but it is still good!

- Phones - reinforce that your identity is tied up with your phone.   iPhone I am not my phone.   Realme is a brand I had,  the phone is not the real me!  Xiaomi （小米） means little rice,  but if you take the Chinese meaning of little and the English sound 'me' it can subtly sound like the phone is the little me.   Samsung Galaxy - limitless place to spend all your time exploring the galaxy.  

 "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."

Ephesians 4:29

Benalla

A morning walk through Benalla Botanic Gardens with my new 50mm f1.2 lens

 

Out of Control

 We like to blame something which is out of our control.

Because then - there is no personal responsibility to actually change our ways.

Ever since the beginning - man has tried to blame his problems on others.

"The woman you put here - she gave it to me"... "The serpent deceived me"

By blaming something external it "hides" the guilt, and attempts to hide the truth that we are the ones to blame for the predicament we're in.

In the context of the medical system - we deny our own responsibility for our own health and say "this happened totally at random, nothing you did could have prevented it or changed the outcome", or "this is a virus out of your control"

And this blame of the external means we can't do anything to fix it ourselves - so we inevitably enter a symbiotic relationship with the medical system:

- The pharmaceutical companies gladly take our money
- We gladly receive a pill - an easy 'cure' which makes us feel better for a time

And everyone is happy with this arrangement, each receives what they want, but if we haven't found the root cause - we are often still sick.

Man would sooner die than change his habits.

The Magpies Still Sing

The Magpies still sing

The plants still grow

The sun still rises

And the bees still dance

Why should I mourn?

Why should I weep?

Why despair?

When my heart is free

Kettles and micro plastics

This week I upgraded my kettle to a beautiful yellow stainless steel one from Aldi.

Pros which are reason I bought the new one:

Doesn't spill water on the bench every time you tip it!

- Protection against running with no water inside (maybe this works the same amazing way that a ride cooker works!? 

- Beautiful colour 💛

Extra bonus!

- Stainless steel so reduces micro plastics ingested!  This wasn't the reason to buy it but now I've learned that I'm very glad to have changed !!!

I found a study where they managed to photograph all the micro plastics with a microscope and a high speed camera!  

Between 6,607 and 29,194 particles of plastic in every millilitre of water on the third time boiling a plastic kettle!!! 😮

That's between 6.6 and 30 million particles in just one litre of water 😧

So many things around us which could be harmful or may be having effects we won't fully realise for years to come, but no use stressing about it, just keep making one positive change after another, on the journey to better health 🙂

Study Showing Micro Plastic Released in Kettles

Better Health Advice

For the past 16 months all the health advice has centred around 5 things: 

Social distancing, sanitiser, masks, staying inside and vaccines.

But health is more than just avoiding a disease, and in fact many of these things may be harmful to your health in other ways. If we strengthen our overall health then whatever comes along we will be able to deal with !

Here's 6 positive things to be doing to look after your health.

 

Amazing Trees

 Here's some photos from the Otways over the weekend.

This was my first time visiting the Redwoods, a little forest of Californian Redwood trees which was planted in the 1930s.  These trees are currently over 60m high and have the potential to live 1000 years and reach over 100m.  The world's tallest living tree is one of this type at 115m in California !

From Wikipedia:

"The initial growth of the Redwoods at the Aire Valley was slow and disappointing, with the notable exception of the trees planted on the River Unit in 1936. After two years of growth, the trees were about 0.75 metres in height. In 1950, after nearly 14 years of growth, the local forester reported that the trees were only just beginning to appear above the canopy of scrub. While two years later in 1952 the maximum tree height was 10.5 metres with a diameter of about 25 to 30 cm."

A few amazing things to think about:

1. The ones who planted these trees may have been discouraged seeing the slow growth, but from little things big things grow... We may not see the results of what we do but it can have an impact that lasts generations, don't be worried if you don't see the results of your efforts, someone else may enjoy it years after you're gone.

2. How a tree can lift water so high, here's a video explaining the physics behind how a tree can lift water 100m in the air when our logic would say it's impossible... To pump water up this high to a water tower we use big pumps and electricity, these tree use something much smaller, something so tiny you don't even see it till you look under the microscope.

https://youtu.be/BickMFHAZR0

Next we went to triplet falls.    There was a steep slope down to the river, these tree roots were accomplishing two things.  1. They held the soil in place, protecting it from washing away, 2. They served as a ladder to easily climb the way down to the river (and back up again)

A jump across some rocks and some wet feet later yielded this view:

Some cool mushrooms, note the little baby mushrooms growing alongside them too!

At night we saw the glow worms... The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim his handiwork... And these glow worms really looked like stars glowing on earth, they proclaim the same!   Something so humble and unassuming can make such a beautiful light.  Next time I'll have to try and catch some long exposure photos of them glowing.    Beauty comes from the collective, each one little worm humbly shining their light makes something so beautiful.  Here's a photo of one of the glow worms on my finger, they have transparent skin which lets the light from within be visible.

Amazing lady bugs

Last year I remember I had some fungus issues on my silverbeet.

Today for the first time ever I found a couple of yellow and black lady bugs in my garden, hanging out on the red silverbeet!!!   

Any problem you have, just wait patiently, and the one who has created and upholds all things may provide a solution for you !

Regular red lady bugs can eat 50 aphids a day.

A few years ago I had a lot of aphids.  Lately whenever I've noticed a few aphids I soon find a lady bug ready to clean it up for me. No need to spray anything.

Turns out that the yellow lady bug performs a different role - it eats mildew/ fungus.... Keeping my plants nice and clean from that!

God is still at work in his creation, Jesus upholding everything by the word of his power.

God made all these things and he called them 'good'.   The curse of sin is with us, yes - bringing hard work and thorns - but God's goodness and amazing design has not been removed from his creation.

Vaccine adverse events

Adverse events in Australia - I've made these graphs based on Australian adverse events. https://www.ausvaxsafety.org.au/safety-data

Underlying data here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1peTcJAWMZDG1h0WndqG86n5R2TWIHodLkFY97_Gxhu0/edit?usp=sharing

I thought it would be interesting to gather this data together to see how the new vaccines compare with others... And it shows that the covid vaccines are causing significantly more adverse events than other vaccines. (5.9% in the flu shot, just over 60% in Astrazeneca)... Also most common reaction to flu shot is pain in arm and tiredness.  

In Astra it's fatigue and headaches that's more common.

If you take the flu shot you'll probably feel fine. If you take Astrazeneca, based on the experience of over 100,000 Australians it'll probably knock you around for a day or two.

It also shows you're more likely to have an adverse events on the second dose of Pfizer than the first... Still awaiting data on Astrazeneca dose 2. (Although TGA AUSPAR assessment commented that adverse events were less common with the second dose)

My graphs based on data collected from 

https://www.ausvaxsafety.org.au/safety-data

Also worth noting is that these reports are showing a lot more headaches and fatigue than initially reported by Astrazeneca in their submission to the TGA

Australian results from over 100,000 people taking Astrazeneca: (from Ausvaxsafety site)

What was initially told to the TGA by Astrazeneca: (from TGA Auspar document)

Australian data based on over 100,000 people is showing fatigue to be 10X as common and headaches to be 4X as common as the initial trials in 10,000 vaccine recipients.

Be a Thinker and a Doer

Last year I received a parcel in the mail - a round object from the U.S. - Destin from Smarter Every Day sent out a signed baseball to every supporter

Check out Smarter every day and prepare to be amazed at the beauty of creation, as well as learn some physics.

Here's a couple of my favorite videos of his:

First 5 days of life (of a chicken)

https://youtu.be/zKNlPrEQwPY

Butterfly scales:

Part 1:

https://youtu.be/zsjyWg-Lhek

Part 2 with an electron microscope:

https://youtu.be/LE2v3sUzTH4

Poem on Truth

What's true, what's false?

This storm of swirling

conflicting information

Spirals all around

To make sense of it - it hurts

To stress and strain

and think and understand

To sort true, from half-truths

So we look around for someone to trust-

An expert

Someone cleverer than me

To take from me this agony of comprehension

And rest, knowing that someone else understands,

they care and tell me what to do.

But the ones we trusted in 

didn't really care

Our strong towers

Mighty on the shell

Were rotten at the core

Corrupt and greedy for self

Where money is

Greed and lies are not far away

Those who will devour

the poor from off the earth

Can truth really be known?

If you know the one who says

'I am The Truth' and

'Everyone on the side of truth listens to me'

The truth cannot be known

By just looking at the expert

Perhaps it must also be felt

As one string vibrates in sympathetic resonance when the sound is right.

When you know the One who is True

And He is inside of you

The truth will resonate within

It will sing within your soul:

'Yes! I am fearfully and wonderfully made

Your works are wonderful,

I know that full well'

Astrazeneca - Points to Consider

Be a truth seeker - there is such a thing as truth.  Both sides of the debate have come to their conclusions and people on each side are willing to lie (blatantly or out of ignorance).   If I've said anything wrong tell me, together we can both move towards the truth.  Only when conflicting ideas come together can the true reality be found. We are living in a polarised world where everyone has their mind made up and thinks the facts are settled.  Everyone has more to learn and things they don't yet know.

Astrazeneca vaccine contains cells from aborted babies - ... Somehow everyone is fine with this (Pfizer used them in testing but at least the vaccine itself is free of it)

It was not just 2 babies from the 60s - there are thousands killed for the purpose of developing these cell lines.

More detail about aborted cell lines in vaccines:

http://familyintegrity.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/International-Petition-PDF-5.pdf

2/3rds of the 250 people who took the Astrazeneca vaccine at Midfield meats - in Warrnambool were unwell enough to need at least one day off work.  (Thankfully all are apparently okay after 3 or 4 days) - this seems a significant proportion to me... I suspect that the real world data may prove to be more harsh side effects than the studies revealed (remember Astrazeneca have already been fined millions for withholding unfavorable studies for other drugs)

Astrazeneca vaccine is a GMO - modified chimp virus. 

Medical professionals can't disagree with government - they've have been effectively gagged from saying anything negative by AHPRA.  They can't say anything that may hinder the vaccine rollout - so even if they see issues with this they will not be allowed to say so.  For this reason I think you cannot fully trust all the medical experts, 

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Sunk cost fallacy - The government has gone so far along this path, they've invested so much that the sunk cost fallacy could come into play... .We've put all these resources into this one option so now we need to continue down this path, no matter the consequences. 

Update: just after writing the above I found Scott Morrison has today announced on the blood clot risk, and is now advising those under 50 not to receive it.

this gives some hope that perhaps the government is willing to reconsider in light of these emerging dangers, although concerning that they're still rolling it out on the over 50s.

If you're under the age of 50 your risk from this virus is very low, so definitely doesn't make sense to risk the vaccine dangers.

Remember 'safe effective free'  ... No longer are they saying it's completely safe.    This will likely be just as dangerous for elderly people, but with more potential protective benefit if it is effective... This is why they are happy to take more risk of adverse events on the elderly than the young.

It's also harder to hide or explain away any deaths from younger people - if the elderly die it's easier to blame it on pre-existing conditions. 

If you take it there is a risk

Sometimes risks are worth taking, if he reward is greater.

But here the risk in my opinion is potentially high (due to what we know but particularly because of what we still don't know)

And there's a risk that the reward will be shrinking.

If you take the risk of dying from a blood clot now, only to find out it didn't even work to protect from from a new variant then the reward is diminishing... Then they'll probably try and push a different vaccine on you later anyway.  

I'm guessing it may become akin to taking the previous year's flu shot - not so useful if the strains circulating change.

"Two doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine were found to have only a 10.4% efficacy against mild-to-moderate infections caused by the B.1.351 South Africa variant, according to a phase 1b-2 clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine."

Real Rukshan on YouTube has collated clips from the media demonstrating how 100% sure of safety they were not too long ago... These people in their pride and sales pitch speak authoritatively and with certainty beyond what they know.

https://youtu.be/UPzpxsmXc3Y

Fun facts about your mouth

1. Breathing through the mouth is one of the biggest contributors to tooth decay.

2. Saliva is amazing, 99.5% water, but in the other 0.5% it has calcium to remineralise enamel, enzymes, Antimicrobial chemicals, pain relief and more! (See Wikipedia for a huge list of helpful ingredients!)

3. There's a lot we don't know. Just last year a new saliva gland was discovered

4. Tonsil stones have an unknown cause, but after a night of mouth breathing and feeling in the morning like I had tonsil stones forming,  I have a hypothesis. It's all linked.   Maybe the calcium content enters in your saliva somewhere near the tonsils, and when it dries out via mouth breathing the stones form, and they collect there at the back of your throat instead of being used to repair your teeth. Keep getting tonsil stones? Try breathing through the nose more and your whole mouth will thank you for it

5.  You have a nasal cycle, and you probably never knew it. When you breathe through your nose most of the air goes through one side. After 10-15 minutes it'll automatically switch sides!    This gives that side a rest and the slower moving air through the other nostril may help to improve your sense of smell

The intelligence that created you can heal you.

"Man prefers to perish rather than change his habits" - Leo Tolstoy

Instead of going to the dentist to fix the few bad holes I have in my teeth I'm perhaps foolishly doing somewhat of an experiment on myself... Dentistry says a hole too far progressed cannot heal - but how many studies have been done where someone with advanced decay has totally changed their habits for a long duration of time.

For the last 9 months I've made changes:

- change from mouth breathing to nose breathing (you can use micropore surgical tape to train yourself to do this at night)

-change from never flossing to flossing daily

- change from excessive sugar consumption to virtually no added refined sugar.

This should at the very least slow down the decay, whether it will reverse or heal over remains to be seen.   

Garden update

My other plots haven't been doing as well this year, but still it's giving me enough food for me. 
Pumpkins didn't really work this year where I planned to have them -
But God still provides and has given me a massive sprawling patch of butternuts in my front yard where I never planned to have them !

I still find the best results I have are when I didn't do anything - if you're not a good gardener then the plants where God does everything seem to work out the best. :)

Beautiful teddy bear sunflower,
thanks to my friends from church who dropped some seeds in my letterbox !

My zucchinis are all oddly shaped this year. but they still taste like zucchini!

 

Pfizer Vaccine Risks and the TGA

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) recently approved the Pfizer vaccine for use in Australia.

The news headlines will all read 'TGA approved the Pfizer vaccine'. With no more details given... but I have some concerns.

After looking through the 42 page document myself (available here) I've learned from the official TGA report the following.
Just know the risks that you are taking, and you can decide if that's worth it to you. 

1. The vaccine is on the whole safe and effective in healthy people for 2 months following the second dose. 
   
   
2. The most severe short term risk seems to be anaphylactic reaction, but seems that this is generally rare,  treatable and people will recover, and in addition to that a small number of cases of Bells Palsy
   
   
3. We do not know if it is safe for the long term
   
   
4. We do not know if it will be effective to give protection beyond 2 months. There were some signs in experiments in monkeys that immunity may quickly decline after 5 weeks. 
   
   
5. We do not know if it may cause autoimmune diseases, as these will usually take some time to develop, this has not been studied. 
   
   
6. We do not know if it will cause fertility issues, it didn't cause fertility issues in rats, but that is no guarantee it won't cause issues in people. People are not the same as rats and medications will often affect us differently !
   
   
7. We do not know if it will prevent transmission of the virus
   
   
8. We do not know if it safe for pregnant women or immuno-compromised people.

Just know - that if you do choose to take this vaccine - that the TGA has only provisionally approved it given its safe in the short term, and effective in the short term without any knowledge of long term safety and effectiveness, as well as no knowledge of safety in those who are pregnant or immuno-compromised. 

If you take it, know that 2 months down the road you will probably be okay.

BUT you are part of the experiment to find out all those unknowns listed above.
If you're pregnant or immuno-compromised, we don't know if it's safe, so you are part of the experiment to determine that.

We don't know if it's going to give people life-long auto-immune conditions or cause other issues down the track. Hopefully it won't, but that is a big untested unknown, so if you take it  you are part of the experiment to determine that.

You are also part of the experiment to determine if it's even effective beyond 2 months.

Fear of the unknown is always more scary than the thing itself, that's why the movie 'Jaws' was able to be so terrifying by showing only the fin! When there are so many unknowns it allows you to imagine the worst... whether below that fin is a friendly dolphin or a shark we'll have to wait to find out.. but either way I'm not going to be jumping in the ocean with all the other swimmers who thought 'it's just a dolphin'!

The reality is these risks are very real possibilities. I personally choose not to take the unknown risk of developing a life-long auto-immune condition where my body starts attacking itself, some may choose to take that risk.  Others may like to take a middle-of-the-road approach and wait a year and see what other long-term safety data comes out.

I'm interested to research auto-immune conditions and possible causes more.. but surely it's not too implausible that injecting something which will get your cells to artificially create something they wouldn't normally (the 'Spike protein' - could end up leading to the body attacking it's own 'defective' cells which are making this weird object they're not supposed to !).  If anyone can shed more light on how that works happy to hear it.

In addition to all this, Pfizer the company creating this vaccine is not the most trustworthy company. See Violation tracker - they are a company which is not unwilling to lie and bribe to increase profits. 

There is also a concern raised by TheNNT.com  that the data as to how many people received Covid tests in each group (vaccine and placebo) has not been revealed... it is possible that the trial has not been run honestly and had excessively more tests given in those who were given the placebo, and pushing up the efficacy rate to 95%. this is another unknown, and the fact that the data was omitted makes it look a bit suspicious

"What we are concerned about: We are very concerned about data mentioned exclusively in an FDA briefing document (p.42) describing 3410 ‘suspected but unconfirmed’ cases of COVID-19, including 1594 vaccine and 1816 placebo subjects. This statistic points to a critical, but missing, datapoint: the number of symptomatic subjects PCR-tested for COVID-19 in each group. As per the study protocol (p89) all subjects should have been tested. However, neither the published manuscript nor the FDA document describes how many in each group were tested or how often." (TheNNT.com)

Some highlights from the TGA document:

New chickens and garlic

 

Garlic

Nice big garlic harvest this year. In 2016 I would've planted my first garlic from a little bag of probably 10 bulbs I was given. After 4 years of saving and planting the biggest bulbs each year (except for the first year when I was foolishly generous and gave away the biggest ones !!) this is what it has grown to ! I think around 2000 bulbs here, but I haven't counted them .

I made a bit of a tower out of a metal rack and some bread crates, as well as hanging some.

Ideally you leave the leaves on while it cures, but supposedly 6-8 inches on the stem is enough, and in the interest of saving space I cut the tops off a lot of them as I wasn't set up to hang it all.

If anyone wants some garlic let me know :) 

Chickens

I have 8 new baby chicks !!  11 fertile eggs - one was rolled out by the mother hen at the halfway point, one more egg didn't hatch (yet!), and one hatched but the chick was left dead outside the first night :(  I guess the mother rejected it for some reason.

Happiness of having 8 cute little chicks outweighs the sadness of one that passed away, but it was sad to see. 

His eye is on the sparrow and not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing.   He knows, yet still he allows for that one chick to fall.  Why ? Why did He let this happen?

"What is the price of two sparrows—one copper coin? But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it." - Matthew 10:29

So why?  If God can stop the suffering, if he can save the chick why doesn't he?
He doesn't always stop the sparrow from falling, but rest in the knowledge that he knows

After thinking about this I had the opportunity to rescue a chick stuck in the egg. 

I made a Youtube video of this.

Why does God allow suffering? I remember hearing in a church "God has no hands but ours".  God can intervene without us, but it is true that God has made a world and put people in charge of it and given us the ability and the responsibility to take care of it, and its creatures... maybe better is "God chooses to use our hands"

Another example - I have a bucket of water for chickens to drink out of. A few times a wild bird has fallen in and drowned.   The simple act of keeping a piece of wood inside the bucket so the birds can climb out again prevents this, and there have been no more drownings since !
As stewards of this Earth we can look and see and act to prevent the unnecessary suffering and deaths.

We could ask why did God let the bird drown, why did he let it fall? In reality he gave me the task to make my yard safe for the birds, it wasn't God's fault, it was mine, and the responsibility lies with me to prevent it happening again.

Much (not all) of the suffering we see is the result of people's poor stewardship, throwing off the 'shackles' of God's design and causing issues - both for themselves and for others
People living for money, exploiting others, even creating something useful that has an unintended consequence, degrading the environment with poisons that make us sick, ingesting processed foods that make us sick, harmful pharmaceutical products pushed out by companies who don't care about your health, just your money.

Much of the suffering (not all) is the result of what people have done. People that could have done something differently but didn't. Many of these are out of our control. 

Maybe our response to "Why suffering" can be... what can we do to lessen some suffering?
With the chickens we could mourn the loss of the one that died, or we could notice the opportunity to save the one chirping stuck in the egg. Perhaps we should do both.

"Look around and find a people that are hurting and get close enough that they can see the colour of your eyes" - Ravi Zacharias

Strawberries

The reason I became interested in gardening - strawberries!  My friends in Mount Gambier were picking I think a kilo of strawberries every couple of days, and I wanted to be able to do likewise.

They gave us some plants to take back

Now 5 years later, I finally am having a decent harvest of strawberries!!!, many of which are probably descended from those first plants I received.

Many damaged berries from birds / bugs - but also many perfectly intact delicious ones.  Once you get to a certain point there's enough to be able to share some with the wildlife. 

Living and Active

The Word of God is living and active... it's powerful to hear the word of God read out

Take a listen below to the entire book of Hebrews read out by members of the Baptist Church!  Full of explanations, encouragements and warnings all pointing to Jesus being better than... better than everything else.

 

The music in the background is from the instrumental version of Psallos' Hebrews album. I find music really helps me with understanding and Psallos does a great job putting music to the epistles.
Hear their musical journey through Hebrews here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1YbRGxik6Kd3DwJMnxmXTV1bl6e79NE-

Goodbye Social Media

Is it good or is it bad? It's a mix between the two. Such potential good, such beneficial messages can be shared, you can learn and connect like never before.   You can keep up to date with so many friends and family, even those overseas... But there's a dark side.  

After my brother suggested I should watch 'The Social Dilemma' on Netflix - it has many former social media employees and programmers discussing how it works, I've realised I need to say goodbye to social media for the most part. Watch the documentary, weight it up and see what conclusion you come to.

For me, after so many years hooked, now my only conclusion from watching this documentary is I have to do something drastic. It's not enough to just use it a little, or to post some good content while avoiding getting sucked in to the constant scrolling... it's not an innocent tool, it wants to control you and it will always try to suck you back in.  So for me it's better to cut it off.

"And if your hand—even your stronger hand—causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." - Matthew 5:30

There were many reasons and issues presented, but the biggest one for me is that normally people program computers, but now with social media, there's a super computer pointed directly at your brain, learning everything about you, measuring exactly how long you look at each post, remembering everything you ever clicked on, and it is programming you, to get you to spend as much time as possible, selling off little chunks of your valuable time for a few cents, getting you to watch as many ads as possible.

I counted the number of ads I was seeing for every post - Instagram 4 posts, 1 advertisement, 5 posts, 1 advertisement.   18% of the posts I was seeing were ads.   For my housemate it was even more - around 28% of the posts were ads. They will just keep dialling it up, it's only going to get worse - more ads, more content going into your brains without you even realising that you've been sold.

Facebook was even worse - one quarter of posts being ads, and 17% being 'suggested' posts. Only 57% of what I was seeing was content I had actually asked facebook to see. And of that probably 2/3rds I didn't want to see anyway!

In 'The Social Dilemma' they say it's simultaneously utopia and dystopia... it's a dilemma, so many goods, but so many bads. The easy thing to do is to go with the flow and keep going wherever it takes you, but for me, weighing up the goods and the bads and seeing that it's going to keep going further in the direction it is - keep getting better and better at controlling our actions, it's time to wake up, time to unplug, time to take back control !

"we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." - 2 Cor 10:5

How can we have every thought captive when we are giving a portion of it away to this super computer that indiscriminately dishes out content to us, not acting for our good but doing whatever it knows will make the most money?

My Action plan to leave social media

1. Delete Facebook app from my phone, deactivate account while leaving facebook messenger active.
(Ideally everyone would use a different app like Telegram to message each other, but so many communicate on FB messenger that it's hard to leave, and at this stage it's not causing any significant harm) 

2. Recreate facebook with a slightly different name, no profile picture, don't have any friends, for purposes of using Facebook marketplace only. This is a powerful tool for selling and buying second-hand locally that at this stage I don't want to give up.

3. Unfollow nearly everyone on Instagram... except for family, a few close friends, and anyone who consistently posts content I particularly benefit from (these posts will be accessed a different way, without using the instagram app)

4. Delete Instagram app

5. Start a blog to share photos and ideas and garden progress - on blogger / blogspot.com (free and no ads) as opposed to Wordpress which the free version will put ads on your page unless you pay or self host it on your domain).

6. Never make a post to social media again. Even good posts feed the machine that is facebook.

7. Make an account with "Feedly" (free for up to 100 sites) use this to access friends blogs and a few other helpful resources (like Tim Challies blog) . This program can either be used as is on the web or phone app, or connected to another app to bring that and Instagram together in step 8:

8. Use app on phone - "Feedster" to connect to both my Feedly account and Instagram account. Pay $4 once off to purchase premium to eliminate all the ads.
Now everything is in one place, there are no ads, no one manipulating me to keep scrolling forever or measuring how long I look at each post.  There is now not hundreds of posts that I didn't need to see, just a carefully curated list of content. It brings in only what I want while leaving all the ads behind.  

9. Youtube - turn off autoplay, and consciously play videos only from 'subscriptions' not the 'home' tab that will dish out an endless supply of videos. 

This is all a bit involved, but I have regained control !!!  Swimming with the flow of the river is easiest, but I can now see the river wasn't flowing to a good destination.