Popcorn

People think I have got the power 'cause I've got the monkeys. Nope. I've got the power because I'll let the monkeys loose.

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Disabled People Exist

 A confession, I used to listen to Angelo Coppola's Latest In Paleo podcast, which was better than most. At least until recently, I'm done with it, especially after finally viewing his new site and blog. ItsTheWooo doesn't go far enough, it's typical bullshit you expect from Lifestyle Liberals who call themselves progressives, except this time around the Paleo community is full of loudmouth LOLbertarians who whine about Paleo becoming a brand and everyone has the time and money to afford DIY.

 But I'll get in to examining the real problem with Coppola some time later, since I want to make this post a bit shorter and to the point. Angelo Coppola ended one of his recent entries with this:

Finally, a “broken” metabolic or neurological milieu does not make someone a broken human being — that’s a choice we make about how we think and categorize ideas. This conflation is also a frequently-used marketing tactic that I hope you will not fall for.

 Translation: Your only disability is your attitude!

 Fuck you too Coppola. 

 Like me and a lot of other who've found the alt-foodie communities at least somewhat useful it is BECAUSE of our brokenness, and I'm not just speaking of metabolisms. It's not a corporate conspiracy to acknowledge you are in fact sick and/or disabled, and thus broken. I was born disabled, I suffered from more health problems as I've gotten older, my attitude has nothing to do with it. One of my cousins struggled with such horrific addiction problems he's now brain damaged to the point he'll always have the mind of a young teenager. Broken! I have friends suffering from lifelong chronic illness. Don't lecture the disabled it's all about attitude, much less what is and isn't to be broken.

 There are plenty of other problems with Coppola outside this kind of particular arrogant bullshit, but I'll save this for another post about this guy who never struggled with disability and serious health problems in his life, and being mildly overweight does not count.

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There is a lot I want to comment on right now, but I don't have the time

 Except for this one little gem in which Stephan Guyenet gets called on for misrepresenting studies, outright lying, and willful inconsistencies he's certainly guilty of and acts like a teenage drama queen:

Now that this matter is settled, I'm going to open up a bit for my last comment. I realize I said some insulting things about the people who read this blog. To those who didn't deserve it, I apologize. The reason Peter's posts anger me is that ad hominem attacks like the ones in this post literally have the potential to endanger my personal safety and that of my family and friends. I'm not a particularly paranoid person, but there are some extremely intense zealots on the Internet, and some of them frequent Peter's blog. I won't exaggerate my own importance, but my picture is on the Internet and I am somewhat of a public figure, and it's not that hard to figure out where I work and where I live. Folks like Peter and "ItsTheWoo" take particular pleasure in whipping others into a frenzy over my work. As a result you get extremely angry people accusing me of being a "bullshit artist" (above) etc. For example, here's one of the many ad hominem attacks Peter flung at me in the post above: "BTW I notice over on Woo's blog that there has been some discussion as to whether Dr Guyenet is just dumb or being very deliberately misleading, ie conspiring to mislead. I don't do orchestrated conspiracy theories. I don't really do the financial drive thing either, not for some body who is still as wet behind the ears as Dr Guyenet certainly is." Look, disagree with my views if you want, but my ideas get NIH grants, peer-reviewed publications, and presentations at professional conferences. I do make mistakes sometimes, but I am not a bullshit artist, nor am I dumb or attempting to mislead. With 11 years of full-time research experience under my belt, I am certainly less "wet behind the ears" than Peter who (as far as I know) has no research experience at all. People post all sorts of nonsense on the Internet, and it isn't my concern. What is my concern is when people fire up the crazies and point them in my direction. I am literally concerned that someone is going to come to my door one of these days and hurt me or my friends/family because someone like Peter went beyond politely disagreeing and into ad hominem territory for his own personal amusement and/or ego defense. I am literally concerned that someone is going to try to stick a knife in my back at AHS while in a Hyperlipid- or "Woo"-fueled rage. It won't be Peter (might be Woo though), but as I said there are a lot of disturbed people out there. To anticipate my critics, I realize that I went into ad hominem territory in my comments above, but please consider that 1) I do not make ad hominem attacks against Peter in my blog posts, nor do I plan to, and 2) Peter has been provoking me with ad hominem attacks, misleading claims, and fabrications for over a year. As Melissa McEwen said recently, "Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Peter is serious or just trolling". So yes, I was angry, and Peter got what he had coming for a long time. So please, what I am asking this entire community with all candor, is that you feel free to disagree with me (including on my blog if you choose-- I welcome respectful debate), but stop the ad hominem stuff. It is irresponsible because it literally has the potential to put me and my friends and family in danger, and these kinds of attacks are not constructive and not necessary to make your point.  

 Good. God. How old are you Stephan? Aren't you in your 30's? What do you think this is, LiveJournal back in the early 00's? What are you going to say next after this little outburst, accusations of libel and making Internet Kill Myself kinds of threats? Grow the fuck up. If I was working on any project with you at all in the professionally I'd be incredibly embarrassed to be remotely associated with you because of your behavior here. You are being pathetic, manipulative and childish. You've been called out for your bullshit but since you can't admit you're ever wrong you pretend you're being Internet Persecuted instead. 

 If one actually bothers to read Wooo's blog (or Hyperlipid's, for that matter) it's very easy to notice that it's clearly free of threats, with mostly dead on criticisms. If anything CarbInSane is the one who really engaged in obsessive stalker-like nutjob behavior, I'll never forget the email exchange incident between her and Taubes she made public once and I feel bad for anyone who has the misfortune of living around her should they ever get on her bad side. Even worse,  Guyenet associates himself with CarbSane, which makes him a complete hypocrite.

 For anyone who actually bothers reading this blog, please read the rest of the thread for context, as dumb and long as Guyenet and his allies and enablers helped make it to be. 

ETA: Some edits and stuff I should have added earlier, and don't count on me for anything right now due to my current pre-occupation with shallow pursuits.

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Melissa McEwen is an amateur

 I've been watching the drama play out on the ItsTheWooo, GoKaleo, and PaleoDrama blogs the past few days, and I am really not impressed. Where to begin? Has it really come to this, that this diehard committed Stephan Guyenet advocate is grasping at these kinds of straws out of desperation? Is this really the best she can do? Give the one of the best legit critics of Guyenet who has picked apart the guy's thesis and truth claims so well and so many times you have spent so much time advocating even given her a mention in any one of the blog of her's? Why give ITW more attention, don't you want your followers avoiding her, much less getting anywhere close to thinking his critics might, just might be right? Direct engagement now? McEwen is in no position to be a public minion for this guy-then again, Guyenet was never the sharpest knife in the drawer.

 Anyone who knows anything about Physical Fitness, especially Physical Feminism-that a woman like GoKaleo are in no way a good example for physical health. I have a disagreement with ItsTheWooo about this-among many other things-GoKaleo's body doesn't look like a man, but a teenage boy. That being said, you can't just take just any random blogger who has an axe to grind about t3h ev1l low-carbers and fat people who really believes that lack of exercise causes metabolic problems whose before and after series of photos look like a poster child for eating disorders and not expect there to be a backlash. Stupid move. This is an example of real physical women's fitness and feminism, no emaciated women here. GoKaleo has clearly transformed her body in to something that isn't healthy and she needs serious professional help, she doesn't look like someone who will live to see her 50's or 60's.

 McEwen follows this with another stupid move, she then has the nerve to quote without irony crap from GoKaleo about being judged for her body since the beginning of time wrapped in the rhetoric of empowerment because how dare anyone point out the obvious now. Fucking spare me, it's like a parody of the state of the Social Justice blogsphere, pointing out the signs of one's self-destructive behavior now equals oppression. This is so typical of the nature of Tumblr these days. This is what Healthy At Any Size has come to. Pathetic.

 Smart advocates of bullshit never engage with critics who are more intelligent, knowledgable and experienced than them, ever. At most they only vaguely refer to them, and links to links do not count. If they want someone to argue with them they then are manipulative enough to get trolls or the brainwashed to do it for free. Never be stupid enough to engage in debates with them, that is negative publicity. Yet McEwen just did here, acting all innocent in the latest ItsTheWooo post. She must have more weaknesses than I originally imagined.

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Chris Kresser

 What to make of Chris Kresser? Members of the current Paleo clique such as Kurt Harris, Emily Deans and Stephan Guyenet seem to like him, supposedly those people care about science and medicine, they have their degrees. But after looking at Kresser's website it is very clear Kresser knows little of what he talks for someone has a consultation section on his blog. Perhaps this does make sense, since despite his Ph. D from the UW Guyenet was not able to put two and two together about the concept of having to get past an Institutional Review Board for his attempted Food Reward Trial. If you can't even do that you might as well team up with someone like him due to personal lack of professional standards.

 In Kresser's About section, he has no medical qualifications in which to speak of, only acupuncture and 'integrative medicine', ie, Kresser is not a real nurse or doctor. Despite this, he uses his website for consultations.

 More disturbing are his claims about gestation and pregnancy, which are simply not true.

  Buckley embraces an evolutionary perspective on pregnancy and childbirth. Such a perspective affirms the natural process of gestation and birth and recognizes a woman’s genetically inherited capacity to give birthwithout medical intervention.

In the same way that we evolved to eat a species-appropriate diet (i.e. paleo), we evolved to give birth in an undisturbed environment.

 This is preposterous, no one's body is designed to give birth perfectly. I will also add that it is also not uncommon for animals giving birth or laying eggs in the wild to die while in pain or eaten by predators. 

 Why anyone with medical or scientific degrees would choose to associate themselves with Kresser, I do not know, though I do believe if you are going to claim to stand for professionalism and science then people like Kresser are perhaps not the best ones to support.

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Donations accepted

 Melissa McEwen asks:

   Quality domain name and hosting services are always free! You can get ANY template you want without ever having to pay for it! Your time and dedication put in to a website and podcasts means nothing! Any person running their site must be really selfish for dare asking for donations! Funny how McEwen doesn't question her friend Stephan Guyenet for asking for donations without stating what they'll pay for on his blog, and isn't a BlogSpot account free? Where does the money given to him go?