My conversion to coconut crazy wasn’t overnight; it happened over a number of years. This morning, I looked around the homestead (which is not in a tropical country, by the way, but in US Climate Zone 4!) and realized I was surrounded…by coconuts.  There are so many benefits to including coconuts in your daily life, and also in your preps. I am going to share my personal favorites with you.  In my youth, we rarely had coconut in the house, unless my mother was baking Nanaimo bars or some other sweet treat. So, I grew up with a sense that it was exotic and, well, not for me.  It wasn’t until I was far from home that I began to appreciate the value of this amazing fruit. From my travels abroad, I have fond memories of going to the “coconut guy” on the street for a thirst-quenching treat. For only a few cents, I could have him hack open a green coconut with his sword, keeping all that delicious water inside, add a straw and voila! A healthy drink with a fully biodegradable container! Coconut for Health Perhaps with the exception of when they DO appear in Nanaimo bars, the coconut is known to be one of the “healthiest fruits on the planet.” Their health benefits come from the “healthy fats they contain (medium chain fatty acids), antioxidants, and important micronutrients.” Who cares about the fats they contain, anyhow? Well, it’s a pretty big deal! Because they are medium-chain, they “are easier to digest (compared to long chain), provide immediate energy and aren’t readily stored as fat” Ooooo! I really like that last bit, because I’m working on my weight loss as a prep. Coconut in My Daily Routine I begin each day with coconut. I use coconut oil for an age-old practice called oil pulling. I do this before I have my first cup of tea and before I eat. Oil pulling originates from Ayurvedic medicine and is at least 5,000 years old. To do it, you put around a tablespoon or so of the oil in the mouth and swish it around for an extended period of time.  Oil pulling is not what we here think of as gargling: a short bubbling of the liquid in our throat area. Oil pulling involves swishing the oil actively around your mouth, teeth, and gums for a more extended time of around 10 to 20 minutes. Once you are done, you do not swallow the oil, but spit it into the garbage. I actually spit mine into a jar which I then throw into the garbage when it is full. This prevents mess. Never spit the oil into your sink or toilet! You might think that’s obvious, but…I have known people who were doing just that. The benefits of this practice are considered to be many:   reduces bacteria in the mouth freshens breath-supports healthy teeth and gums supports healthy sinuses  (*I have always had chronic sinus problems, so I do whatever I can to support them!) [LINK: ]  Another benefit recognized is detoxification. In my own mouth, I have also noticed less sensitivity in my teeth. I no longer need to use toothpaste for sensitive teeth, and make my own tooth powder, which I love. By the way, the evidence to support the chemicals they put in toothpastes for sensitive teeth might not be as convincing as you might think.  How is oil pulling a prep, you might ask? Well, if it really is SHTF and you can’t head to the local drugstore for more toothpaste, keeping this simple practice up could help keep your teeth and gums stay healthy. I just bought my usual huge 5-pound jar of organic virgin cold-pressed coconut oil. The best-before date is almost two years from now!  Given how versatile this oil is, I would be trading for it before I traded for many things. I never have less than 5 pounds in my stockpile. Hmmm. Note to self: Maybe that should be 10??? Coconut for Breakfast, Snacks, Lunches, and Treats Onward with my day. Now, you are also going to be shocked at my next use of coconut oil: I put it in my tea!!! I used to put it in my coffee and found it to be a delicious substitute for cream. With only myself at home, I would not go through the cream quickly enough. As mentioned above, my coconut oil lasts for YEARS.   And Oh! the health benefits of eating (or drinking!) a tablespoon a day! How about an energy boost, weight loss, immune boost, improved bowel movements, better managed blood sugar levels, improved brain function, a healthier heart, and anti-cancer properties? Whew! Want to learn more? Check out this great article here.  Then, my first snack of the day is usually a few coconut smiles on a plate with some dried fruit and nuts. What are coconut smiles? They are roasted pieces of coconut flesh that, well, are shaped like a smile. When I gave up all sugar in my diet, I was on the search for healthy snacks. These are delicious and affordable. The bag sings their praises: high in fibre, and a source of magnesium and phosphorus. But here’s the kicker: 2/3 of a cup (admittedly a bit more than I usually eat, but bear with me) has 6 grams of fibre and only 2 grams of sugar! Now THAT’S a great snack. Yum yum. I’m eating a few extra ones right now to make my point. These are good at least a year out, so I buy a ton of them when they go on sale. Moving right along to lunch, I eat a bit of shredded coconut in my yoghurt or kefir bowl. I find that I like the texture that it adds, along with all the nuts and seeds I add, such as hemp hearts and chia seeds. Mmmmmmm…. fiber-based goodness! When invited to a recent BBQ at a friend’s place, I wanted to contribute to the potluck. So, I brought some dandelion cookies with me. The children were sceptical at first, but were won over by the taste. The recipe uses coconut oil as the baking oil.  If you are in a big SHTF event, these cookies are made with items you already have in your pantry or, are growing out in the lawn in spring. What a great prep that is! The recipe is even egg-free, and all items are shelf-stable if you use your own canned applesauce or store-bought applesauce.  Coconut for Heavy Labor in the Heat I worked as a manual laborer off my homestead for years to bring in extra money. The summers can be incredibly hot here, and the body heat given off by cows in a milking parlor doesn’t help! It was routinely around 90 degrees in the barn or milking parlor as we shovelled and did heavy labour for hours on end.  What was my saving grace? Coconut water. As a laborer, I couldn’t afford to drink it straight up throughout the shift. I would mix it with water for perfect hydration. Although coconut water does have some sugar in it, I was working so hard on those shifts that it wasn’t a problem.  A number of years ago, I was living in Eastern India and travelled to Bangladesh. If you’ve ever lived in either of those countries, you will appreciate this: If they call coconut water a heatwave hack, then you gotta know it’s good!  How is coconut water a prep? Well, just checking my tetra packs, my coconut water is good for an entire year. Canned soda typically lasts only 6 months to a year. In a SHTF, I would be keeping some canned soda on hand, but only to trade for coconut-related items! Ha ha ha! But there’s more! Those are just my regular uses of the wonderful coconut on my homestead on a regular basis. If you want more tips on why coconut oil is useful, check out this fantastic article by Daisy that offers you 80 MORE reasons to love the coconut and add it to your stockpile.  I’m Cuckoo for Coconuts! Over time, I’ve really grown to love coconuts in all their forms. I believe that coconuts have enhanced my preparedness. Could you see yourself trying any of the uses of coconuts suggested here? Do you have your own favorite use that you can share with us? Please share your thoughts in the comments section. About Rowan Rowan O’Malley is a fourth-generation Irish American who loves all things green: plants (especially shamrocks), trees, herbs, and weeds! She challenges herself daily to live her best life and to be as fit, healthy, and prepared as possible. The post Prepping Gold: Gone Nuts for Coconuts! appeared first on The Organic Prepper.

A new study demonstrates how widespread surveillance through computer vision has become over the last 40 years.

But other kinds of heart disease are presenting a growing problem.

Last week, two independent nonprofits, the Midas Project and the Tech Oversight Project, released after a year’s worth of investigation a massive file that collects and presents evidence for a panoply of deeply suspect actions, mainly on the part of Altman but also attributable to OpenAI as a corporate entity.It’s damning stuff — so much so that, if you’re only acquainted with the hype and rumors surrounding the company or perhaps its ChatGPT product, the time has come for you to take a deeper dive. Sam Altman and/or OpenAI have been the subject of no less than eight serious, high-stakes lawsuits.Most recently, iyO Audio alleged OpenAI made attempts at wholesale design theft and outright trademark infringement. A quick look at other recent headlines suggests an alarming pattern:Altman is said to have claimed no equity in OpenAI despite backdoor investments through Y Combinator, among others;Altman owns 7.5% of Reddit, which, after its still-expanding partnership with OpenAI, shot Altman’s net worth up $50 million;OpenAI is reportedly restructuring its corporate form yet again — with a 7% stake, Altman stands to be $20 billion dollars richer under the new structure;Former OpenAI executives, including Muri Murati, the Amodei siblings, and Ilya Sutskever, all confirm pathological levels of mistreatment and behavioral malfeasance on the part of Altman.The list goes on. Many other serious transgressions are cataloged in the OpenAI Files excoriation. At the time of this writing, Sam Altman and/or OpenAI have been the subject of no less than eight serious, high-stakes lawsuits. Accusations include everything from incestual sexual abuse to racketeering, breach of contract, and copyright infringement. None of these accusations, including heinous crimes of a sexual nature, have done much of anything to dent the OpenAI brand or its ongoing upward valuation.Tech's game of thronesThe company’s trajectory has outlined a Silicon Valley game of thrones unlike any seen elsewhere. Since its 2016 inception — when Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman convened to found OpenAI — the Janus-faced organization has been a tier-one player in the AI sphere. In addition to cutting-edge tech, it’s also generated near-constant turmoil. The company churns out rumors, upsets, expulsions, shady reversals, and controversy at about the same rate as it advances AI research, innovation, and products.RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar midlife crisis Sean M. Haffey/Getty ImagesBack in 2016, Amazon, Peter Thiel, and other investors pledged the company $1 billion up front, but the money was late to arrive. Right away, Altman and Musk clashed over the ultimate direction of the organization. By 2017, Elon was out — an exit which spiked investor uncertainty and required another fast shot of capital. New investors, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn fame among them, stepped up — and OpenAI rode on. Under the full direction of Sam Altman, the company pushed its reinforcement learning products, OpenAI Gym and Universe, to market. To many at the time, including Musk, OpenAI was lagging behind Google in the race to AI dominance — a problem for the likes of Musk, who had originally conceived the organization as a serious counterweight against what many experts and laypeople saw as an extinction-level threat arising out of the centralized, “closed” development and implementation of AI to the point of dominance across all of society. That’s why OpenAI began as a nonprofit, ostensibly human-based, decentralized, and open-source. In Silicon Valley’s heady (if degenerate) years prior to the COVID panic, there was a sense that AI was simply going to happen — it was inevitable, and it would be preferable that decent, smart people, perhaps not so eager to align themselves with the military industrial complex or simply the sheer and absolute logic of capital, be in charge of steering the outcome.But by 2019, OpenAI had altered its corporate structure from nonprofit to something called a “capped-profit model.” Money was tight. Microsoft invested $1 billion, and early versions of the LLM GPT-2 were released to substantial fanfare and fawning appreciation from the experts. Life after ElonIn 2020, the now for-limited-profit company dropped its API, which allowed developers to access GPT-3. Their image generator, DALL-E, was released in 2021, a move that has since seemed to define, to some limited but significant extent, the direction that OpenAI wants to progress. The spirit of cooperation and sharing, if not enshrined at the company, was at least in the air, and by 2022 ChatGPT had garnered millions of users, well on the way to becoming a household name. The company’s valuation rose to the ballpark of $1 billion. After Musk’s dissatisfied departure — he now publicly lambastes "ClosedAI" and "Scam Altman" — its restructuring with ideologically diffuse investors solidified a new model: Build a sort of ecosystem of products which are intended to be dovetailed or interfaced with other companies and software. (Palantir has taken a somewhat similar, though much more focused, approach to the problem of capturing AI.) The thinking here seems to be: Attack the problem from all directions, converge on “intelligence,” and get paid along the way.And so, at present, in addition to the aforementioned products, OpenAI now offers — deep breath — CLIP for image research, Jukebox for music generation, Shap-E for 3D object generation, Sora for generating video content, Operator for automating workflows with AI agents, Canvas for AI-assisted content generation, and a smattering of similar, almost modular, products. It’s striking how many of these are aimed at creative industries — an approach capped off most recently by the sensational hire of Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive, whose IO deal with the company is the target of iyO’s litigation. But we shouldn’t give short shrift to the “o series” (o1 through o4) of products, which are said to be reasoning models. Reasoning, of course, is the crown jewel of AI. These products are curious, because while they don’t make up a hardcore package of premium-grade plug-and-play tools for industrial and military efficiency (the Palantir approach), they suggest a very clever approach into the heart of the technical problems involved in “solving” for “artificial reasoning.” (Assuming the contested point that such a thing can ever really exist.) Is part of the OpenAI ethos, even if only by default, to approach the crown jewel of “reasoning” by way of the creative, intuitive, and generative — as opposed to tracing a line of pure efficiency as others in the field have done?Gut check timeWrapped up in the latest OpenAI controversy is a warning that’s impossible to ignore: Perhaps humans just can’t be trusted to build or wield “real” AI of the sort Altman wants — the kind he can prompt to decide for itself what to do with all his money and all his computers. Ask yourself: Does any of the human behavior evidenced along the way in the OpenAI saga seem, shall we say, stable — much less morally well-informed enough that Americans or any peoples would rest easy about putting the future in the hands of Altman and company? Are these individuals worth the $20 million to $100 million a year they command on the hot AI market?Or are we — as a people, a society, a civilization — in danger of becoming strung out, hitting a wall of self-delusion and frenzied acquisitiveness? What do we have to show so far for the power, money, and special privileges thrown at Altman for promising a world remade? And he’s just getting started. Who among us feels prepared for what’s next?

Some images linger like bad philosophy. One such image: a masked individual standing triumphantly on a vandalized car, waving a giant Mexican flag, at a protest against mass deportations. It’s not a political cartoon. It’s the radical left’s icon. And it perfectly captures the confused moral universe behind the Los Angeles riots and the so-called “indigenous land” movement. — (@) As a professor at a secular university, I can assure you this isn’t fringe lunacy. It’s the tip of the philosophical iceberg. Beneath that smoldering car is a massive ideological structure that has been meticulously constructed over decades — paid for, ironically, by federal and state tax dollars.These rioters don’t actually want to return the land. They want the luxury of moral superiority minus the inconvenience of coherent thought. If it were possible, I’d love to survey the people flipping cars and heaving concrete blocks at police cruisers. I strongly suspect many of the ringleaders hold degrees in the liberal arts — more specifically, degrees in identity activism. You know the type: gender studies, black studies, Latinx studies, queer theory, or some intersectional combination thereof.Don’t worry — they went to collegeIf you visit the department websites of these programs at any given university, you’ll often find “activist” listed as the No. 1 career path. No need to wonder what you can do with a $120,000 degree — you can become the ideological arsonist who trains the next generation to believe the United States is irredeemably Christian, unjust, and colonial — and maybe even get in some looting of the capitalist luxury stores.So when you see a rioter in Los Angeles shouting on CNN about how the land was “stolen from Mexico,” just know: That’s the university curriculum talking. In one now-viral clip, a young woman (yes, I just assumed her gender) yells at a police officer, “As long as you feel OK with capitalism, racist, imperialist state.” Asked if she even knows what she’s saying, her reply is priceless: “Yes, b***h, I'm in college.”Exactly.These students have never been taught about the establishment of land ownership in world history or even the basic historical facts of the American Southwest. They don’t know that Mexico owned it for only 27 years, yet they think it is their ancestral homeland. If anything, Spain should be in the mix, asking for it back from Mexico.And remember: We’re all paying for that education through state funding — drawn from taxes paid by ... wait for it ... capitalists. No gratitude. No irony. Just tuition-funded tantrums.RELATED: The lie that launched a thousand riots Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesA modest glance at history will remind you that the United States conquered large parts of Mexico in 1848. But here’s the twist: The U.S. didn’t just grab the land and walk away whistling. No, it gave back a substantial portion, paid Mexico $15 million (a princely sum at the time) for the remaining territory — including what is now California — and forgave the Mexican government’s outstanding debts.But the student activists aren’t interested in political history. And they don’t really want to live in Mexico. Even if they did, Mexico's immigration laws are strict, its economy is difficult, and it most certainly doesn’t tolerate foreigners burning down public property in the name of “revolution against the government.”Marxism underwritten by capitalistsThese rioters don't actually want to return the land. They want the luxury of moral superiority minus the inconvenience of coherent thought. They want their air conditioning, DoorDash, TikTok, and virtue signaling ... on stolen land. Any one of them could sell the assets they acquired within the capitalist system and donate the proceeds to an indigenous cause. But they want to make other people do this with their money.At their campus protests and university-sponsored events, they perform ritualized “land acknowledgments,” reciting that their college stands on “unceded indigenous territory,” as if confessing to a metaphysical sin. But the penance never includes selling their house and giving it to a tribe. And why?Because the first tribes are lost to history — conquered by later tribes, who were themselves conquered, until eventually the Spanish brought law and order to warring tribes. The cycle of conquest is not new; it is one of the oldest stories in human civilization. What’s different now is the selective outrage.Here lies the real problem: Modern activist ideology seeks to appeal to justice but lacks a standard by which to define it. This is why all of this activist nonsense we are paying gender studies professors to teach is so empty. It appeals to justice without any standard by which to adjudicate the question. If the land was stolen, then: Who stole it? From whom? And what court now has jurisdiction?Even if you could answer the first two — and in most cases, you can’t — the third is impossible under their belief system. If you begin playing “we were here firsties,” you have to go all the way back.Theirs is a godless appeal to justice, and godless justice is just another word for mob rule. It is ultimately just mob rule stirred up by malcontents to motivate masses of discontents — which is why they are simply called Marxists. Not because they’ve read “Das Kapital” but because they’re looking for a framework that legitimizes their rage and offers power without accountability. And in Marx, they find a convenient excuse to tear down everything that came before — especially anything remotely Christian. All of their disappointment in life is aimed at the outward object called “the United States.” No reflection on their own condition — just rage against the machine.God has the last wordBut for those who believe that God is the final judge, the phrase "Let God judge between us” is not a cliché. It’s a fearful thing. It means a moral order lies beyond human manipulation. It means that even if we don’t see civil justice now, true justice is ontological, everlasting, and inescapable.Marxist rioters cannot make this appeal. They live in a world of only immanent causes and material grievances. No final judge and no moral standard above power awaits to hold their actions accountable — therefore, no peace. They rage because they must. Their rage is at existence itself. And when they finish one protest, they must invent another. Their revolution has no eschaton — only exhaustion.So they flip over cars and set fires. Some loot — not just because they're angry at injustice or need a new pair of shoes, but because they have no vision of the good, only a fixation on the bad. And in seeking a purely material form of justice, they have lost their souls.They complained about the one who supposedly stole land while forgetting about the one who can cast their soul into hell. The prospect of God’s justice should make all of us repent.It is time to stop funding this madness. It is time to restore an education grounded in truth — not truth as a tool of power but truth that judges us all.Until then, don’t be surprised when your car is flipped by someone with a $100,000 degree in “decolonial eco-poetics.” And don’t be shocked when they scream “justice!” without the ability to define what it is.After all, they went to college.

The Gears of War Reloaded system requirements confusingly list nine total GPUs across the minimum and recommended tiers. While there could be an excellent explanation for this, the developer has yet to provide one, instead leaving us with a set of system requirements that are difficult to understand. One thing we do know from the given specs is that you won't need the best graphics card to get the best out of Gears of War Reloaded. There is a chance that these specs will change as we move through the beta phases and into the GoW Reloaded release date, but for now, older PC gaming hardware is very much in play. Continue reading Gears of War Reloaded system requirements list nine GPUs for just two tiers MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best graphics card, Best gaming PC, Best SSD for gaming

Finding an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 in stock can be a hellish task in and of itself thanks to low stock levels and inflated prices, but you can get one for free with Doom The Dark Ages branding if you enter this GPU competition. You can even win a Doom Slayer helmet and skateboard if you get your entries in fast before it closes. Without a doubt, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is one of the best graphics cards on the market, demonstrating superb results in our benchmark tests, and establishing itself as the most powerful GPU money can buy. With supreme power, however, comes a supreme price tag, with the RTX 5090 retailing with an MSRP of $1,999. Unfortunately, you’ll almost never see it available at that price, as stock shortages and price gouging means prices are often a lot higher, especially in the US. Continue reading Win a Doom The Dark Ages Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 review, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 review, Best graphics cards

After several years of contradictory rumors about Apple’s interest in foldable devices, there’s now broad agreement among leakers and analysts. A Fold-type iPhone foldable phone is in development, with Apple expected to unveil it in September 2026 alongside the iPhone 18 series. We’ve seen all sorts of leaks about the type of foldable phone experience Apple is aiming for, and they’re all pointing in the same direction. The iPhone Fold won’t be identical to most foldables currently on the market. It won’t be as tall as Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 (or its predecessors), but it’ll be noticeably wider. When unfolded, the iPhone Fold will resemble an iPad mini more than the unfolded Z Fold. A reliable leaker from China recently shared the latest specs Apple is testing on current iPhone Fold prototypes, along with a schematic of the phone’s design. Continue reading... The post Leak tells us how Apple’s foldable iPhone will be different from rivals appeared first on BGR.

European Union leaders are to tell the European Commission on Thursday whether they want to reach a quick trade agreement with the United States on terms that favor Washington or keep fighting for a better deal. A quick deal seems to be the preferred option for most,...

U.S. stock index futures rose Thursday, signaling indexes were nearing their record peaks, as robust earnings from memory-chip maker Micron fueled optimism around artificial intelligence while investors awaited economic data.