Notes from the edge of civilization: Mar. 24, 2024

Squatters vs. homeowners. Farmers vs. the rest of the world. The American Heart Association vs. intermittent fasting.

Take a look at the two headlines above and try to figure out which one is real, and which is satire. It’s 2024, and we live in Clown World, so we’ll forgive you if it takes you a moment.

While the words “illegal alien influencer” may sound like a joke, that headline is real while the other one is a parody.

Said “influencer” is 25-year-old Leonel Moreno, whose TikTok account had half a million followers until recently (it now seems to have been disabled). Moreno regularly posts about how to make the most of the free handouts available to “newcomers” — and last week he went viral by telling his followers: “If a house is not inhabited, we can seize it”, calling squatting “the American dream.”

While Moreno’s advice caused quite a stir, the sad reality is he’s not really wrong. All states, and some cities, have their own rules and laws for how and when squatters can be removed and some are far more lenient than others. In California, for example, squatters can claim property if they have lived on it continuously for 5 years and paid taxes. In Arizona that drops to 3 years with paid taxes, and in New York City, squatters can claim some rights after just 30 days.

As ABC-7 reports:

In New York, if you call the police on someone who moved into your home without permission, if they claim to be a tenant, they can't be arrested for trespassing. Instead, the owner has to take them to court to evict them… The property owner can't change the locks on them, can't remove their belongings, and can't cut off the utilities. If they do, the owner could be arrested. Instead, property owners must go through the court system to get rid of them.

Dr. Ben Carson, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, says giving rights to squatters is insane: He told Fox News, “Squatter’s rights? You’ve got to be kidding me. Squatters don't have any rights. They have no right to be in your house. What are they going to have next? Trespasser’s rights? That makes no sense whatsoever.”

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If there was any doubt that the vast majority of the world’s governments have all gone completely bonkers, look no further than a recent study released by the University of Michigan. I’m sure you remember the headlines from a few months ago:

Support for this “study” was provided by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, French National Research Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, Polish National Science Centre, and the European Union’s Horizon 202 research and innovation program. No doubt all have been ”penetrated” by World Economic Forum ideologues.

As with so many headlines these days, the words are intended to condition our minds so we tacitly accept (in this case) the Looney Tunes idea that small scale farming is somehow a destructive force on the earth’s climate. Or, put another way, a practice that humans have undertaken for millennia has, in fact, been the very fount of our coming climate apocalypse.

Collapse Life readers are smarter than that. For those fortunate enough to have the land and space, you should be gardening and working towards as much self-sufficiency as possible. But then, you already know this.

For those not quite as fortunate in terms of land, time, space or skill, you should be connecting with, buying from, and investing in local and regional farming operations. That’s why we spoke to Chris Rawley, founder and CEO of Harvest Returns, on the latest episode of our podcast, entitled ‘How (and why) to invest in farms & ranches.’

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While we’re on the subject of headlines, this past week saw an egregious example of ‘science by press release’ that deserves a closer look. On Monday, the American Heart Association put out a press release stating that 8-hour time-restricted eating is linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death. Within hours, most major newspapers had picked up the story, and the headlines looked something like this:

Studies have found that somewhere between 70-80% of people only read headlines without examining the rest of the story. So headlines like this, which make intermittent fasting look like a scary and dangerous practice, can have a major public health impact.

Here are the actual details about the intermittent fasting story that many would have missed:

• This was not a published, peer-reviewed study. It was an observational study presented at a conference. At the time of the press release, the data was not available for review.

• The study relied on self-reported infomration collected via two 24-hour dietary recall questionnaires.

• Self-reported data, especially about what we eat, is generally considered unreliable particularly because we are bad at remembering what we ate, and when we ate it (plus, we’re often not that honest about it).

• There were no controls for confounding factors like whether those who said they were intermittent fasting were more likely to be overweight, diabetic, or at higher risk of heart disease for other reasons.

• Even the study’s lead author stressed that the findings were not definitive. He said the study uncovered a correlation but could not show cause and effect between time-restricted eating and increased mortality.

Long story short, always read past the headline and always be wary of ‘science by press release.’ (If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of intermittent fasting, here’s a balanced, scientifically referenced Substack post.)

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