The Romans suffered from lead poisoning due to their extensive use of lead in their aqueduct systems.
In âmodernâ countries, people are suffering from the aluminum (from air, water, food and vaccines) and mercury (from dental fillings and vaccines) toxicity and other heavy metals.
It wouldnât have mattered anyway the Visigoths burnt the shit out of them in the end, along with the Huns, the Vanguards and any other tribal warlords looking for the loot.
Roman women became infertile and men were lethargic due to lead. They used lead in serving dishes and wine making as well.
I enjoy his videos on various religions and they are pretty accurate, with the caveat that he gets very technical. LOL
The reason Iâm having my black coffee in the morning has nothing to do with Muslims in any wayâŠlol. It has everything to do with how I was raised⊠and watched my parents drink coffee in the morning. Sometimes, shit gets way out of hand. 
I thought I was allergic to coffee (causing indigestion) and never bothered to drink it.
One fine day, I was offered âorganic coffeeâ and tried to decline, saying I was allergic. But the host was adamant I should try it, so I did.
Lo and behold, my belief in allergy was shattered and I have been a Muslim â umm, coffee drinker ever since. Organic, mind you.
10 paradoxical truths from 10 brilliant men
C.S. Lewis: Originality is best attained via copying.
Nietzsche: Compassion is a psyop designed by the weak to redirect resources from the most deserving to the least.
Chesterton: You need to hate the world enough to change it, but love it enough to consider it worth changing. Action is the offspring of dark pessimism and frenzied optimismâŠworking in tandem.
Napoleon: Logic will lose you wars because sometimes the moment demands imaginative maneuvers that work because they are irrational.
Camille Paglia: Liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands it behave as nurturant mother. Society must be so tyrannical that you should be protected from mean tweets but also so permissive that you should be able to change your gender (and back).
Chateaubriand: Beauty is useless if you care for efficiency, but shockingly useful if you care for lovability. Yes, beauty is a wasteful luxury but ultimately the only thing people will protect, and make pilgrimages to.
John Morley: Great writing dances at the border of mysterious and obvious. Too mysterious and youâre inaccessible, too obvious and youâre boring.
La Rochefoucauld: Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire. Time will kill everything shallow, and deepen everything real.
Julius Evola: Democracy has hurt the demos (people) the most by disempowering their natural superiors. It is not the superior who has need of the inferior, but the inferior who has need of the superior; it is not the master that has need of the minion, it is the minion that has need of a master.
John Fowles: High IQ is a terrifying gift. The ability to predict the consequences of any action means your will gets lost in a labyrinth of hypotheses. Rule 1: Do not lose the will.
Where did coffee originate? Colombian coffee IMO is the best even though every label uses the term âArabic Coffeeâ
I think the original coffee trees grow in the highlands of Ethiopia. From there, southern Arabia is just a stoneâs throw away, and you know the rest of the story.
I heard on DW (which I donât listen to anymore) some years ago that the German government was giving money to preserve the original coffee trees in Ethiopia, given most Germans are coffee drinkers and not tea drinkers (except a province called East Friesland).
Coffee trees require a lot of sunshine, dry air and yet not freezing temperatures. Or something like that. Only a few places in the world meet these requirements: the big island of Hawaii, New Guinea, and of course Columbia and Brazil.
By the way, Arabs donât drink coffee with milk. They boil coffee powder with a lot of sugar and a pinch of cardamom and I love it.
Iâll take my coffee straight up/neat⊠black, thank you. 
Earl Grey for me. Canât drink coffee as much as I like to. Too acidic!
I cannot drink tea, black or green, in the morning.
To each his own, I suppose.
Forgot about HP Lovecraft! Underrated for all times sake
He never gets old for my tastes in reading.
Youâll never look at news the same way againâŠ
Breaking news is brainwashing you. Ellul: âTo the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection.â When everything is urgent, you are forced to âremain on the surface of the event.â
Jacques Ellul predicted echo chambers: âThose who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. We see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself.â
Modern man can ânever stop to reflect.â Heâs not allowed to synthesize his information. Rather, Ellul writes: âOne thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones.â
Clear thought has been replaced by vague feeling: âModern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them.â
Ellul on how the modern man lacks a center of gravity: âLacking landmarks, he follows all currents.â His soul is âdiscontinuous and fragmented.â Life reduced to unconnected momentsâŠ
Everyone can read but not everyone can think. This makes propaganda more, not less, common. Ellul: âThe vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed wordâŠthey are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition.â
Once a person is compromisedâŠonce theyâve acted out a lieâŠthey are yours forever. Ellul: âHe who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is now obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable.â
Propaganda works by channeling the energies of a societyâs âfundamentals myths.â These are the central stories operating inside the collective mind: âThe myth of happiness, the myth of progress, the myth of the nation.â A skilled propagandist will always borrow from, and build on, the âcurrent beliefs and symbolsâ of a society.
Propagandists set up âpsychological levers.â They ensure that âcertain words, signs or symbolsâ start provoking certain reflex actionsâŠand then they wait. The levers can now be turned when and how needed.
Indirect propaganda works best. Aggressive attempts at manipulation will fail as peopleâs defenses will go up. But give a man plausible deniability, feed him convenient information, make him feel that heâs âobeying reasonâ as he follows your command, and you have him where you want him.
Lonely, depressed people are the easiest victims of propaganda. Jacques Ellul: âAn individual can be influenced by forces such as propaganda only when he is cut off from membership in local groups because such groups are organic and have a well-structured material, spiritual and emotional life; they are not easily penetrated by propaganda.â
The conditions of modernity are actually the conditions of unprecedented propaganda: âThe permanent uncertainty, the social mobility, the absence of sociological protection and of traditional frames of reference â all these inevitably provide propaganda with a malleable environment that can be conditioned at will. The individual left to himself is defenselessâŠâ
1930: Worldâs greatest poet
1940: Mussolini Superfan
1945: Declared INSANE, put in an asylumâŠ
1958: Finally released
10 thoughts from a writer who paid a heavy price for being a dissident:
Why Ancient Rome Fell. Rome fell as its language fell. Pound: âRome rose with the idiom of Caesar, Ovid, and Tacitus, she declined in a welter of rhetoric, the diplomatâs language to conceal thoughtâŠRome went because it was no longer the fashion to hit the nail on the head.â
On putting your skin in the game: âIf a man isnât willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or heâs no good.â In the preface to Guide To Kulchur, Pound notes that he will be committing himself to ideas that âvery few men can AFFORD to.â
Pound on words. Every word comes with ârootsâ and âassociationsâ - with a history of where the word is âfamiliarly usedâ and also where it has been used âbrilliantly or memorably.â A great writer uses words with full awareness of this background.
Pound on how to lose an empire: âA people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.â Vague words betray a mind that is afraid of conclusions. You lose power over reality by first losing your conceptual grip.
The greatest of art foists âsudden growthâ upon us. Great art helps us grasp a complicated emotion or idea in a flash via the means of an elegant âimage.â The sensation of âsudden liberationâ that accompanies great art comes from this image.
An apt definition of great literature from Pound: âGreat literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.â Bad writing is when the words are weak, the sentences meandering, and the paragraphs unsure of their own conclusion.
Pound against relativism: âWhen words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.â GK Chesterton agrees: âFires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.â
Pound on how to design your reading list: âProperly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in oneâs hand.â We read for entertainment, distraction, solace - but why not read for power?
Ezra Pound on why he discarded rhyme: âOne discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.â
Pound on why literature is hero-worship: âThe history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity. The omniscient historian would display the masterpieces, their causes and their inter-relation. The study of literature is hero-worship.â
A number of his protégés got the Nobel Prize.
But never Ezra Pound himself.
Goes to show the Nobel Prize organizations were taken over by Joos.
Joos hate Ezra Pound (because he knew the truth) who asked Eustace Mullins to investigate the Federal Reserve. Thanks to Mullins, we all know that the Fed is a private bank.
âVague words betray a mind that is afraid of conclusions.â
Brilliance is found in the most enigmatic uncorrected.
