17 Life-Learnings to Celebrate the 17th Birthday of Maria Popova’s “The Marginalian”

This morning I received 17 wonderful gifts. Maria Popova’s website has been one of my places of respite for many years. In her most recent article, she celebrates her 17 years of online writing at “The Marginalian” by crystallizing 17 lessons she has learned along the way. Here is Maria’s introduction to her 17 lessons:

The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals, and beliefs, we ossify and perish.)

What follows are merely the titles to Popova's 17 lessons. She discusses each of these more fully at her website. Everything she writes is, somehow, both analytically precise and poetic. I've printed this list and it has gone up on my wall so that I have daily reminders:

1. Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind.

2. Do nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone

3. Be generous.

4. Build pockets of stillness into your life.

5. You are the only custodian of your own integrity.

6. Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity.

7. “Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.”

8. Seek out what magnifies your spirit.

9. Don’t be afraid to be an idealist.

10. Don’t just resist cynicism — fight it actively.

11. Question your maps and models of the universe, both inner and outer, and continually test them against the raw input of reality.

12 There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.

13. In any bond of depth and significance, forgive, forgive, forgive. And then forgive again.

14. Choose joy.

15. Outgrow yourself.

16. Unself.

17.Everything is eventually recompensed, every effort of the heart eventually requited, though not always in the form you imagined or hoped for.

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The Cost and Harms of Fentanyl

This is shocking: 5 grams of fentanyl is enough to produce 2500 doses and costs less than $1,000. Less than 50 cents per dose. This low production cost partly explains why so many markets are being flooded with fentanyl and so many lives are being ruined. I dug up this information after listening to a podcast by Leighton Woodhouse. In his introduction to the podcast, Woodhouse writes:

The public debate on how to address America’s street addiction crisis has centered on two competing approaches: the “harm reduction” strategy of keeping addicts safe as they continue to use, and the “recovery” model, which advocates mandated treatment to get addicts off of drugs altogether.

But there’s a dark reality that goes unacknowledged in that debate. With massive volumes of fentanyl and meth flooding into the country, neither approach can ever keep up with the pace at which the addiction crisis is growing.

The amount of highly addictive narcotics that are easily available to any American is so immense that supply now drives demand rather than the other way around. Fentanyl is mixed into every illegally distributed drug on the market, from street cannabis to meth to diverted prescription drugs.

Teenagers who think they’re buying Percocet on Snapchat end up dead or addicted to fentanyl. Kids are self-medicating for loneliness and depression with the most potent opioid on earth. As cities struggle to manage their existing populations of homeless drug users, new addicts are created every day.

We can never end the street addiction crisis until we cut off the trafficking of these substances into our country. But is that even possible?

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Planned Parenthood’s Motivated Diagnoses Rapidly Turning Teenagers and Young Adults into the Opposite Sex

Wow. It only took 30 minutes for Planned Parenthood to figure out that the main reason for the psychological distress of a young autistic adult was that he was born in the wrong body. I wonder how many regressive stereotypes they employed to figure this out before issuing a long-term prescription for infertility–inducing cross-sex hormones.

Aaron Sibarium's article is titled "Planned Parenthood is Helping Teenagers Transition After a 30 Minute Consult. Parents and Doctors are Sounding the Alarm." Excerpt:

In late July, while his parents were out of town and after he had come of age, Fred went to Planned Parenthood, which prescribes hormones to any legal adult without a letter from a therapist or a formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The only requirement is a brief consultation, usually with a nurse practitioner, about the drugs’ effects, which range from mood swings and male pattern baldness to permanent infertility.

How brief? Fred arrived at his local clinic, on North Fullerton Ave. in Montclair, New Jersey, at around 11:00 a.m., according to phone tracking data his parents used to monitor his whereabouts. By 11:39, they received a text message from CVS: Fred’s estrogen prescription was on its way. Instead of a months-long evaluation by expert psychiatrists, a nurse practitioner had, in little over 30 minutes, prescribed their special-needs son a powerful drug without their knowledge or consent.

"It’s criminal what Planned Parenthoods all over the country are doing," Fred’s mother, a New Jersey pediatrician, said. "And most people have no idea this is happening."

For corroboration, read this article by Abigail Shrier.

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New York Times Loved this Narrative While it Was Evidence-Free

The pathetic New York Times didn't need any evidence to render its verdict.

Trevor Bauer tells his story after more than two years of silence:

I would propose these rules: Don't believe the man. Don't believe the woman. Always wait for the evidence ad believe the evidence. How did society ever get away from a focus on due process?

After Bauer's video was released, his accuser, Lindsey Hill, doesn't do herself any favors with her "explanatory" commentary.

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Ukraine PsyOp Exposed by Matt Orfalea

This is how these corrupt and manipulative politicians and "news reporters" gaslight you and mislead you, intentionally and repeatedly. THIS is why it is my strong default to disbelieve everything and anything politicians or corporate news outlets tell us. This includes NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN and MSNBC (as well as Fox). They are playing us on Ukraine just like they did with COVID, transgender ideology, "anti-racism," immigration, Russiagate and almost everything else they pretend to cover. Thanks to Matt Orfalea for another great job of documenting this Ukraine PsyOp.

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