"But when the same people reflect on their own success? They credit deep reading of philosophy, the Stoics, history, and the liberal arts. Her concern: a quiet divide is forming "
Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up.
He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour.
Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself.
Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it.
Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows.
Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result.
Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing.
The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.
Part 2. Two weeks before the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, a Stanford psychologist asked 137 students how they thought when they were sad. She had no idea a 6.9 quake was about to hit them. The answers she collected before the disaster predicted who would still be depressed seven weeks after.
Her name was Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. The questionnaire was about a mental habit she called rumination. Some students said they tried to figure out why they felt the way they did. Others said they replayed the bad feeling, looping over what was wrong with them.
The earthquake hit on October 17, 1989. Sixty-three people died. When Nolen-Hoeksema went back to her students, the ones who'd scored high on rumination before the quake were the ones still struggling weeks later. The result held even after she accounted for how depressed they'd been beforehand and how badly the quake had hit them. The strongest predictor of who recovered was the rumination score.
That paper came out in 1991. Dozens of follow-up studies have since confirmed it. Rumination is now considered one of the strongest predictors of depression that psychology has on record.
Rumination is sneaky because it feels productive. You can spend hours running the same loop, asking why did I say that, what's wrong with me, why am I always like this, and convince yourself you're solving something. Real problem-solving moves forward and produces action. Rumination is a hamster wheel that looks like a road.
In 2001, a neurologist at Washington University named Marcus Raichle figured out something odd. A network of brain regions lights up when you do nothing. He called it the default mode network. It runs when your brain is idle, replaying old memories or imagining future scenarios.
Eight years later, his colleague Yvette Sheline scanned depressed patients and healthy controls. The depressed brains had the default mode network running hotter. Even when those patients tried to focus on a task, the network wouldn't quiet down. The looping kept running underneath.
Rumination is a brain network stuck on. The thoughts feel real because the brain is genuinely producing them, the way a tap stuck open keeps producing water no matter how many times you ask it to stop.
The default mode network goes quiet when its rival, the task-positive network, takes over. The task-positive network turns on when the brain is tracking real-time information from outside the body: the angle of a brick, the form of a tennis swing, the color of paint as it leaves the brush.
Churchill didn't know any of this. He had no brain scans or neuroscience to back him up. But he understood the practical truth: when his mind was attacking him, his hands were the way out. The black dog has nothing to bite when the body is busy somewhere else.
As an Albertan voter, I demand that the @Alberta_UCP call an Open Judicial Inquiry now, immediately followed by a notice of an immediate election.
The fact that mine, and 2.9 million Albertans have had their personal information doxxed, is a direct result of /1
this govt’s amendments to legislation (Bills 14 and 54) that protected Albertans. They were warned by @ElectionsAB , but proceeded, putting us all at risk.
They must not be allowed to simply blame @ElectionsAB and step away from accountability. /2
Based on this, as well as a host of actions this government has taken that they have no mandate for, I demand an immediate election.
1. Privatization of Public HC 2. Defunding of Public Education 3. Gerrymandering of our electoral districts 4. Theft of AISH CDB.
/3
¿Sabías que el coche no conquistó las ciudades por ser mejor, sino porque tres gigantes empresariales destruyeron el transporte público en Estados Unidos? Compraron redes enteras de tranvías, las desmantelaron y nos obligaron a usar gasolina. Tira del hilo 🧵👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
Vámonos a la década de 1920 en Estados Unidos. Ciudades como Los Ángeles poseían el sistema de transporte público eléctrico más grande y eficiente del mundo. Los famosos tranvías "Red Cars" tenían más de 1.500 kilómetros de vías perfectamente conectadas y dimensionadas.
Era un sistema absolutamente brillante con el que millones de ciudadanos se movían a diario de forma silenciosa, puntual y sin emitir humo. No necesitabas comprar un vehículo privado para ir al trabajo o a la playa, porque el transporte público era el auténtico rey de la ciudad.
I know a woman who had a huge cancer tumor, and she reduced it to the size of a pinky nail in just 14 weeks with NO chemo (all natural).
I'll share the 3-part protocol I designed for her that made it possible:
Part 1: Iris analysis blueprint
Dr. Morse, whose protocol I follow, practices iridology - reading the iris to identify organ weaknesses, toxic buildup, and genetic predispositions.
Margaret sent close-up photos of both eyes and completed my health questionnaire.
My analysis revealed two critical issues:
- Her kidneys were operating at reduced capacity, struggling to filter waste.
- Her lymphatic system was congested from chemo, unable to move toxins effectively.
The tumor was her body's way of isolating what it couldn't eliminate.
This gave them us the exact roadmap for which organs needed support.
Part 2: Herbal support
Based on the iris reading, I recommended specific herbal formulas targeting:
- GI tract function
- Kidney filtration
- Lymphatic drainage
- Glandular balance
- Immune system support
(All of these can be found on Dr Morse's website, DM me if you want the link, not an affiliate).
I provided daily coaching and accountability. Every week, we had check-in calls to adjust the protocol based on how her body was responding.
Part 3: Two-step detox protocol
We eliminated acid-forming foods that blocked her body's natural healing: meats, processed foods, dairy, and grains.
Then we moved into fruit-based nutrition.
Margaret did short grape fasts - grapes have compounds that support healthy cellular function. She transitioned between healing fruits like watermelon for kidney support and citrus for cleansing.
After the fasting periods, she adopted a complete raw food diet.
Fresh fruits and vegetables became her only food.
14 weeks later...
Her tumor had shrunk dramatically.
This was the first time I was completely blown away by what the body could do when you give it what it needs, when you commit 100%, when you believe God gave us what we need to heal.
The question everyone asks: "But what if it doesn't work?"
My friends...
If I was facing a serious health challenge, I'd tried conventional approaches, but there are natural methods I haven't tried yet...
I would absolutely explore them.
Margaret was logical.
Chemotherapy had already failed her once.
Natural healing gave her body a chance to show what it could do for her.
Ever since I lost my mother-in-law, I've been committed to helping people heal naturally.
So telling this story gets me emotional... it's personal to me.
I know this breakdown was surface level, so if you (or a loved one) are currently going through a cancer journey, or fighting another illness...
I put together a free 5 day guide teaching you how to get started with natural healing. Applies to all diseases.
➡️Another young woman's life destroyed just trying to get home
⚠️A taxi driver who abducted and r-ped a vulnerable young woman after picking her up from a Manchester nightclub has been jailed.
Muhammad Nasir, 40, logged off his taxi system, parked up outside Chinawhite nightclub on Deansgate and targeted his 20YO victim.
Instead of driving her home, the father-of-three drove in the opposite direction and r-ped the terrified young woman.
He lied and said it was consensual but a jury at Manchester Crown court found him guilty.
Today he was sentenced to just 12 years in prison and four years on licence.
It has taken five years for this case to get to court. The brave victim delivered a devastating impact statment.
"I should never have had to go through any of this."
No she shouldn't.
Offenders are rarely prosecuted for their first offence - usually just the first time they’re caught.
What else has this despicable man done I wonder?
Whether it be walking home, buses, trains - or taxis - women and girls aren't safe in the UK.
Kellogg: The [Hormuz] blockade is working, but I think we need to go further.
There are three things we should do: take strategic targets by land, keep hitting the Revolutionary Guards, and stop talking about negotiations. We should keep going until we finish this. 1/
Kellogg: I’m talking about taking Kharg Island and the islands in the Strait of Hormuz. We do not need to go into downtown Tehran.
We take what they cannot get back. We become the arbiter, the global oil power. Don’t just blockade them. Add to the blockade. 2/
Kellogg: The Revolutionary Guards use what they call a mosaic defense, split across 31 districts. That is why you keep attacking them.
They control the regime and keep the population under control. Their command and control is already fractured. Fracture it even more. 3/
When she suddenly starts pulling away replies get slower, messages get shorter, she starts saying “I’m busy” suddenly, don't trip and don’t chase. Most guys handle this part wrong, and it’s exactly why things fall apart. Here’s what’s actually happening:
What feels like a sudden switch usually isn’t sudden at all. Her interest didn’t disappear overnight it just dropped slightly and now you’re noticing the difference. The energy isn’t the same, so everything feels off.
The mistake most men make here is overcorrecting. More texts, more attention, trying to “fix” the vibe. But that pressure doesn’t rebuild attraction it usually pushes it down even more because they see you as a clown that is afraid to lose her.
Long thread alert. இரண்டு நாட்களாக இங்கு பத்திரிகை உலக தோழர்கள் சிலர் தாங்கள் கடந்த ஐந்து ஆண்டுகளாக என்ன என்ன இன்னல்களுக்கு ஆளானோம் என்று விவரிக்க கேட்கிறேன். உள்ளபடியே வருந்துகிறேன். இன்னும் சிலர், ஊடகவியலாளர்கள் எல்லாம் விலை போனார்கள் என்றும் கடுஞ்சொல்லில் ஏசியிருந்தார்கள்.
ஊடகவியலாளர்கள் அனைவரும் விலை போனார்கள், அல்லது அதிகாரத்தின் முன்னால் மண்டியிட்டார்கள் என்று சொல்வதற்கில்லை. சிலர் செய்தார்கள். மறுப்பதிற்கில்லை.
ஆனால் ஒரு கணிசமான பகுதியினர் தங்களை ஒரு philosopher-king ஆக நினைத்து கொண்டார்கள். மக்கள் எதை விரும்புகிறார்கள் என்று சொல்வதை விட, எதற்காக விரும்புகிறார்கள் என்று சொல்வதை விட, அவர்கள் எதை விரும்ப வேண்டும் என்று ஆணையிட தொடங்கினார்கள்.