April of the North

"Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." Edward Snowden

There is compelling experimental evidence that gradually increasing light during the final 30–90 minutes before awakening can improve morning alertness, reduce sleep inertia, enhance certain aspects of cognitive performance, and potentially improve physical performance. There are those that simply get what they seem to want (evening sunlight) and then ask why there is so much chronic disease. If people would do a little research they would find out that sunlight BEFORE you wake up (so that your room is illuminated) actually causes you to have better cognition, less sleepiness upon waking. Is it too much to ask to become educated before making these claims? ☀️ Physical performance: A randomized crossover study found a 4.7% faster cycling time trial after dawn simulation (although not statistically significant), along with 5.8% faster reaction times and improved arithmetic performance. (Eur J Appl Physiol, 2014) 🧠 Cognition: In sleep-restricted individuals, simulated dawn improved several measures of attention, working memory, reaction time, and motor performance. (Behav Brain Res, 2015) 😴 Sleep inertia: Multiple controlled studies found that artificial dawn reduced morning grogginess and improved subjective alertness—even without measurable shifts in circadian timing. ❤️ Cardiovascular physiology: A small study found that simulated dawn produced a more gradual autonomic transition from sleep to wakefulness. Whether this translates into fewer cardiovascular events remains unknown. 🌅 Mental health: A randomized trial involving 95 patients with seasonal affective disorder found that 90-minute dawn simulation improved depression outcomes compared with placebo and, in that trial, conventional bright-light therapy. What's fascinating is that these effects occur when light begins increasing BEFORE the alarm goes off. Perhaps a healthier morning begins before we even open our eyes. Selected studies: Physical/cognitive performance: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2450… Cognition under sleep restriction: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2554… Sleep inertia: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2065… Seasonal depression: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1151…

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Testosterone is made from cholesterol. Oestrogen is made from cholesterol. Progesterone, the hormone that holds a pregnancy, is made from cholesterol. Cortisol, the hormone that gets you through a crisis, is made from cholesterol. Vitamin D is made from cholesterol, by sunlight, in your skin. The bile that digests your fat is made from cholesterol. Every cell in your body is wrapped in a membrane stiffened with cholesterol. Every nerve is insulated with myelin packed with cholesterol. Your brain is 2% of your body weight and holds about a quarter of your cholesterol. Breast milk is loaded with it, because a baby's brain can't be built without it. Most infant formula has almost none. Pregnancy raises it by up to half, because building a human takes a lot of it. Eat less of it and your liver simply makes more, because the body refuses to run without it. Then, in the late 1970s, we declared war on it. Around 8 million people in England now take a pill to lower it. That pill raises the risk of diabetes by about a tenth. Sperm counts have more than halved. Men's testosterone has been sliding about 1% a year, age for age. Antidepressant prescriptions in England have more than doubled since 2008. And in people over 70, the lowest cholesterol tracks with dying soonest. Reports from the front say the war is going well.

1774: they blew tobacco smoke up drowning victims' backsides to revive them, and the kits hung along the Thames like lifebuoys. 1863: they sold cocaine wine as a daily tonic, and a pope pinned a gold medal on it. 1898: they sold heroin as a cough medicine, and spooned it into coughing children. 1918: they sold radium water as a health drink, and the millionaire who drank 1,400 bottles was buried in a lead-lined coffin with most of his jaw gone. 1921: they put lead in petrol, and Britain kept it in the pumps until 2000. 1930s: they X-rayed children's feet in shoe shops, and kids queued to watch their toes wiggle on the screen. 1940s: they rubbed mercury teething powder into babies' gums, and about 1 in 500 of those babies was poisoned. 1946: they sold cigarettes on the line that more doctors smoked their brand, and put a man in a white coat on the advert. 1949: they gave the lobotomy a Nobel Prize, and doctors went in through the eye socket with an ice pick. 1952: they sold a cigarette filter made of asbestos as the greatest health protection in smoking history, and smokers drew it into their lungs with every puff. 1957: they sold thalidomide to pregnant women for morning sickness, and around 10,000 babies were born with missing or shortened limbs. 1960s: they sold margarine as the heart-healthy fat, and spread trans fat on a generation's toast. 1996: they sold OxyContin as barely addictive, and started an overdose epidemic. 1999: they sold Vioxx for sore joints, and pulled it five years later after tens of thousands of heart attacks. 2026: they're selling seed oil as the heart-healthy fat, and it's in almost every packet in your kitchen. Every one of these came with an expert's blessing and the same total certainty. The people telling you which fat to fear today sit in the same chairs as the ones who put radium in the water and a doctor on the cigarette packet, and they're every bit as sure. "The experts recommend it" has the longest body count in medicine.

I distinctly remember multiple cities getting burned down all summer and having Black Lives Matter force fed into every sporting event for two years straight. Not one of them has said a word about Brian Cole Jr. No Al Sharpton. No protests. No media coverage. No press conferences. Nada. An autistic black guy got framed for terrorism and has sat in a jail cell for over a year. Video evidence appears to exonerate him completely. None of them care even slightly. Worse, Trump has let one of his supporters rot so that the CIA can get away with a false flag on American soil meant to criminalize the entire MAGA movement. It's one of the biggest scandals in American history and it barely makes a sound.

You were always worth loving. You just didn’t know it yet. You had to learn to love yourself first. 💙