Saturday, December 30, 2023

Links - 30th December 2023 (1 [including Snopes, Ultra-Processed Foods])

HuffPost attacks Tucker Carlson for fixating on Karine Jean-Pierre being black and gay by fixating on her being black and gay. - "When Snopes rates an accusation against a political ally as "mixture," you know it's true.  In fact, they have an inventive approach to dealing with these situations. first, they admit it's true... Then they ask you to please ignore that it's true."

Is This 'LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP' Inclusiveness Training Session Flyer Real? - "What's True: A poster advertising an inclusiveness training for LGBT students used the acronym "LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP."
What's False: The acronym was used facetiously as a way to attract participants to the training."
No surprise they're spreading fake news again, pretending that the acronym was used facetiously when it was earnest (just because the organisation doesn't personally use the acronym internally doesn't mean it thinks it's invalid)

The CEO of Fact-Checking Site Snopes Plagiarized Dozens of Articles - "The plagiarized pieces were taken from major news outlets like The Guardian, and published under at least three separate bylines. Mikkelson's own name was tied to some, as was the general "Snopes Staff" byline and a pseudonym Mikkelson set up under the byline Jeff Zarronandia.   Journalists rarely publish under pseudonyms, and the practice is often reserved for journalists operating in a dangerous situation where their identity needs to be protected. In the case of Mikkelson, the pseudonym was used, "to write about topics he knew would get him hate mail under that assumed name," a former managing editor of Snopes, Brooke Binkowski, told BuzzFeed News. "Plus it made it appear he had more staff than he had.""

Did a 'Convicted Terrorist' Sit on the Board of a BLM Funding Body? | Snopes.com - "Claim: Susan Rosenberg is a convicted terrorist who has sat on the board of directors of Thousand Currents, an organization which handles fundraising for the Black Lives Matter Global Network.
Rating: Mixture
What's True: Susan Rosenberg has served as vice chair of the board of directors for Thousand Currents, an organization that provides fundraising and fiscal sponsorship for the Black Lives Matter Global Movement. She was an active member of revolutionary left-wing movements whose illegal activities included bombing U.S. government buildings and committing armed robberies.
What's Undetermined: In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism.""
Typical
Ironically, Snopes talks about "the September 11 terrorist attack". So they need to cancel themselves for spreading fake news

Critics mock liberal fact-checking site for rating reporting on Biden crack pipe funding 'mostly false' - "Snopes, a liberal fact-checking site, was mocked by critics this week for rating reporting on the Biden administration's alleged funding of crack pipe distribution to drug users as "mostly false," while also admitting that "safer smoking kits" were required to be distributed as part of a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) grant.   In a Tuesday piece claiming news reports "grossly misrepresented" details about the substance abuse harm reduction program, Snopes stuck with its "mostly false" rating by arguing it was inaccurate to say that the distribution of the "smoking kits" was intended to "advance racial equity," but admitted that the pipes would be distributed with race as "a secondary consideration."... "In 2022, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services substance abuse harm reduction grant did require recipients to provide safer smoking kits to existing drug users. In distributing grants, priority would be given to applicants serving historically underserved communities," Snopes wrote in its fact-check.  "This was just one of around 20 components of the grant program and far from its most prominent or important one, despite being the primary focus of outraged news reports. The purpose of the program was to reduce harm and the risk of infection among drug users, not to advance racial equity, although that was a secondary consideration," it added, essentially disproving its own fact-check... After being pilloried by critics, Snopes oddly updated its fact-check from "mostly false" to "outdated." It also updated the piece with an explanation to reflect the change."

Michael Knowles on Twitter - "What's True: everything
What's False: nothing
@Snopes Verdict: MOSTLY FALSE"
Billy Gribbin on Twitter - "“This is literally true in every way, but we dislike the emphasis. FALSE.”"
John McCormack on Twitter - "By "Mostly False" @snopes means "True, But We Think the Program Is Good""

Ian Haworth on Twitter - "Claim: "Man went to the moon."
What's True: Man went to the moon.
What's False: Men also went to Starbucks.
@Snopes: "Mostly False.""

Did Biden Poop His Pants in Rome? | Snopes.com - "False"
Snopes does it again. Normally if there's no evidence they'll call a claim "unproven". Though at least they acknowledge Trump got smeared multiple times about this

Snopes Media Bias - "AllSides moved Snopes' rating to Lean Left following a June 2021 independent review by AllSides editors on the left, center and right. It was previously rated Center.  We reviewed the numerous instances of Snopes' left-wing bias that we found during our June 2020 Editorial Review, such as slant. We also noted a number of times that Snopes had recently interpreted things in favor of the left, including when it "fact checked" a subjective opinion on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), when it defended Gov. Andrew Cuomo by saying an accurate tweet about him was "Mostly False," and when it "fact-checked" satire from humor website The Babylon Bee (an entry Snopes then had to edit following criticism).  AllSides noted that Snopes' story choice is generally favorable to the left, and it lacks fact checks on subjects that speak to a conservative or more right-wing audience. Its collections page also showed left bias, with the first page still predominantly highlighting Trump."

Did Biden Say 120 Million People Had Died from COVID-19? - "Claim: On June 25, 2020, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden incorrectly said 120 million people had died of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease.
Rating: Mostly False
What's True: Biden said "Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID" at the Pennsylvania event in apparent reference to U.S. fatalities."
Snopes is just coasting on its reputation from the 90s.
Motivated reasoning means that even when you point out that Snopes is lying, some people will wave this away (one guy had some very elaborate Jedi mind trick to explain away all of their mendaciousness). Yet when you point out that even Snopes says Trump didn't call Covid a hoax, this is ignored

Did AOC Exaggerate the Danger She Was in During Capitol Riot? | Snopes.com - "Claim: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exaggerated the danger she was in during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, in that she "wasn't even in the Capitol building" when the rioting occurred.
Rating: Mostly False
What's True: Ocasio-Cortez wasn't in the main Capitol building where the House and Senate Chambers are located."
Seth Dillon on Twitter - "They acknowledge the claim is true, then go on to rate it "mostly false," anyway. @snopes is shameless."

Is your new car on a storage compound? Inside Kia's scheme to deliberately withhold deliveries - "New Kia vehicles that have arrived from overseas are sitting on a storage lot in Wolverton, Ont., purposely locked up even though customers have been waiting months and months — some well over a year — to get their vehicles.  The new cars are being withheld from Kia's Ontario dealerships — and reportedly from many more across the country — as part of a controversial plan by Kia Canada to game the number of sales in the last six weeks of the year... The reason for this, he explained in the call, is to avoid appearing too successful in the eyes of headquarters in Korea... "There's a high risk with over performance that Kia headquarters will not provide Kia Canada resources necessary in our budget for 2024 to have a successful year if we over perform for the balance of 2023 at too high a rate."  According to Capicotto, Kia Canada has hit its target of selling 84,000 vehicles for 2023. He said there was concern that if sales continued to go well, headquarters would decide Canada didn't need marketing support in the new year and would cut back on that... "It is normal for automakers to use creative strategies at the very end of the year," said Shari Prymak, senior consultant at Car Help Canada, noting this includes pre-registering vehicles toward the end of the year so they can show higher sales.   "Usually, those strategies are to help increase sales, not reduce them," he said... he's already had customers who've paid a deposit walk away when they learned of the additional delays... He says working at Kia has been almost four years of frustration, since early 2020.   Some 30 rail blockades swept the country in February of 2020, halting freight traffic in many parts of the country.   Then the pandemic hit and supply chain issues — such as a shortage of semiconductor chips — severely affected the availability of inventory for all car manufacturers. Kia has experienced shipping problems, and a two-week port strike in Vancouver this July froze all freight traffic... Brian Olmsted put down a $500 deposit for a Kia EV6 in June 2022.   The Toronto resident says he's contacted his dealership every few months to see how much longer the wait will be, and fully expected to have his car by now... Kia customers already endure some of the longest wait times in the industry, according to car expert Prymak, who called it a major problem."

Simulated Mars Base Got Kinda Rebellious, Worrying Scientists - "One of the things that astronauts need to contend with when we colonize Mars is isolation. After all, they’ll be alone with just their fellow crew members for months or even years at a time. Plus, it could get even get worse if a "The Martian" situation occurs and someone ends up totally alone on the Red Planet.  Unfortunately, a recent long term isolation experiment on a simulated Mars base found that participants often get distant and rebellious as time goes on."

Blockchain Guy Struggles to Explain a Single Practical Use for Web3 - "According to its evangelists, Web3 is supposed to revolutionize by decentralizing it with the help of blockchain technology.  But there's one big problem: nobody seems to know what tangible benefits that would have — especially in concrete terms that apply to the real world as it exists today.  During a recent chat with author, podcast host, and Bloomberg columnist Tyler Cowen, billionaire investor and Web3 advocate Marc Andreessen struggled to explain a practical, real-world use for the technology."

Database Indicates U.S. Food Supply Is 73 Percent Ultra-Processed

The alarming truth about ultra-processed foods – and why you should stop eating them - "In recent BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids? Dr Chris Van Tulleken committed to a month of eating a diet of 80 per cent ultra-processed food, the same proportion of UPFs eaten by one in five Brits. The initial results were predictably depressing: he put on a stone and developed constipation, headaches and heartburn. He found his libido was reduced, he was eating more often, and was less satisfied by the processed food. But more significantly, scans showed that the activity in Van Tulleken’s brain had changed in ways that mirror its response to substances like tobacco and alcohol, suggesting junk food is addictive... According to What Are We Feeding Our Kids?, healthy foods such as vegetables, fruit and fresh fish cost more than double per hundred calories than less healthy convenience foods... So don’t tell me this is about personal responsibility. As Prof Chris Millet points out to Van Tulleken, people “haven’t suddenly lost moral fibre over the last 20 or 30 years” as obesity has rocketed... if one thing delights me about the NOVA system, it is that it rewards real cooking. Sugar and fat are OK, if you are using them to cook something rather than buying a bag of chips or a packet of biscuits. So we can still have treats provided they are homemade – which makes sense as then the majority of us will only get round to putting one on the table once a week, if that. Enough with the salted caramel pretzels, the Great British Pudding is back."
It's popular to claim that eating too many calories is the problem and that it's very simple: people should just eat fewer

How ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket - "he noticed that many of these commonly eaten foods did not even feature in the standard food pyramids of US nutrition guidelines, which show rows of different whole foods according to how much people consume, with rice and wheat at the bottom, then fruits and vegetables, then fish and dairy and so on. These pyramids are based on the assumption that people are still cooking from scratch, as they did in the 50s. “It is time to demolish the pyramid”, wrote Monteiro in 2011... At the end of 2018, Hall and his colleagues became the first scientists to test – in randomised controlled conditions – whether diets high in ultra-processed foods could actually cause overeating and weight gain.  For four weeks, 10 men and 10 women agreed to be confined to a clinic under Hall’s care and agreed to eat only what they were given, wearing loose clothes so that they would not notice so much if their weight changed. This might sound like a small study, but carefully controlled trials like this are considered the gold standard for science, and are especially rare in the field of nutrition because of the difficulty and expense of persuading humans to live and eat in laboratory conditions. Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, has praised Hall’s study – published in Cell Metabolism – for being “as good a clinical trial as you can get”... during the weeks of the ultra-processed diet, the volunteers ate an extra 500 calories a day, equivalent to a whole quarter pounder with cheese. Blood tests showed that the hormones in the body responsible for hunger remained elevated on the ultra-processed diet compared to the unprocessed diet, which confirms the feeling I used to have that however much I ate, these foods didn’t sate my hunger. Hall’s study provided evidence that an ultra-processed diet – with its soft textures and strong flavours – really does cause over-eating and weight gain, regardless of the sugar content. Over just two weeks, the subjects gained an average of 1kg. This is a far more dramatic result than you would expect to see over such a short space of time (especially since the volunteers rated both types of food as equally pleasant)...  the concept of ultra-processed foods is “almost a relief” to people, because it liberates them from the polarities and restriction created by fad diets or “clean eating’”. People are thrilled, Lobo says, when they realise they can have desserts again, as long as they are freshly made. But modern patterns of work do not make it easy to find the time to cook every day. For households who have learned to rely on ultra-processed convenience foods, returning to home cooking can seem daunting – and expensive. Hall’s researchers in Maryland spent 40% more money purchasing the food for the unprocessed diet. (However, I noticed that the menu included large prime cuts of meat or fish every day; it would be interesting to see how the cost would have compared with a larger number of vegetarian meals or cheaper cuts of meat.)  In Brazil, cooking from scratch still tends to be cheaper than eating ultra-processed food, Lobo says. UPFs are a relative novelty in Brazil and memories of a firm tradition of home cooking have not died yet here. “In Brazil, it doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, you grew up eating rice and beans. The problem for you [in the UK],” Lobo remarks, “is that you don’t know what your ‘rice and beans’ is.” In Britain and the US, our relationship with ultra-processed food is so extensive and goes back so many decades that these products have become our soul food, a beloved repertoire of dishes...  In the curious coding of the British class system, a taste for industrial branded foods is a way to reassure others that you are OK. What kind of snob would disparage a Creme Egg or fail to recognise the joy of licking cheesy Wotsit dust from your fingers?... We still don’t really know what it is about ultra-processed food that generates weight gain. The rate of chewing may be a factor. In Hall’s study, during the weeks on the ultra-processed diet people ate their meals faster, maybe because the foods tended to be softer and easier to chew... For as long as we believed that single nutrients were the main cause of poor diets, industrial foods could be endlessly tweaked to fit with the theory of the day. When fat was seen as the devil, the food industry gave us a panoply of low-fat products. The result of the sugar taxes around the world has been a raft of new artificially sweetened drinks. But if you accept the argument that processing is itself part of the problem, all of this tweaking and reformulation becomes so much meaningless window-dressing.  An ultra-processed food can be reformulated in countless ways, but the one thing it can’t be transformed into is an unprocessed food."

How Do Ultraprocessed Foods Affect Your Health? - "According to some estimates, nearly 60 percent of the daily calories U.S. adults consume are from ultraprocessed foods. It’s worse for kids and teenagers, whose diet is almost 70 percent ultraprocessed.  But a growing number of studies have linked higher consumption of ultraprocessed foods to a long list of health effects, and scientists are only just beginning to understand why... As a rule of thumb, these are any foods that cannot be made in an ordinary kitchen—in other words, they contain an ingredient that is not typically found in homes or one that has undergone an industrial process that a home cook would not be able to replicate. “A whole lot of things that you could never imagine can be done [to food],” says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “You can’t tell simply by the ingredients.” For example, he says, “it’ll be flour, but you really don’t know that wheat flour has been decomposed in such complex ways and then put back together.”...  Julie Hess, a nutritionist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service and former vice president of scientific affairs at the National Dairy Council, contend that NOVA is not the best or most consistent way to identify an ultraprocessed food. She argues that not all ultraprocessed foods are the same, in terms of nutrition. “When we say ultraprocessed food, are we going to include things like canned beans? Are we including canned oranges and dried peaches?” Hess says. “That question of nutrient density isn’t currently reflected in the NOVA categorization system.”  Popkin is proposing another way to identify foods as ultraprocessed in a forthcoming paper. He says that having just one of 12 types of additives—including specific flavors, emulsifiers, foams, thickening agents and glazing agents—as an ingredient is a feature of all ultraprocessed foods. The presence of artificial coloring and flavorings would already be a telltale sign for about 97 percent of these foods, he says... On the minimally processed diet, participants ate less and lost about the same amount of weight as they gained on the processed diet. In both settings, participants were given access to about double the number of calories they needed and were told to eat as much as they wanted. Kevin Hall, the study’s principal investigator and a clinical researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, says he designed the investigation because he thought the NOVA classification system—which doesn’t account for the nutrients contained in different foods—was “nonsense.” He says he matched the foods in both diets to have the same total amount of nutrients, including fat, carbohydrates and fiber, “because I thought the nutrients were going to drive the effects,” Hall says. “And I was wrong.”... Hess’s own lab designed a diet in which 90 percent of the calories were from ultraprocessed foods, and it still met most national guidelines for nutrients... Studies have also suggested a link between higher consumption of ultraprocessed foods and a profound change in the composition of gut microbes. And an altered gut microbiome has been linked to mental health conditions.  The negative effects of these foods might also be a result of what they lack: fiber... “There are probably some subcategories [of ultraprocessed foods] that are perfectly fine—maybe even really good for you—and others that are particularly damaging,” Hall says. “I just don’t think we know which ones [are which].” Part of the problem with ultraprocessed foods is that they’re often packed with calories yet leave us craving more... In a 2021 study Hall attempted to compare a low-carbohydrate diet with a high-carbohydrate one to examine the effect on energy intake. When people were presented with meals that were high in both fat and sugar, fat and salt or carbohydrates and salt, people tended to eat more calories, he says. “These are so-called hyperpalatable foods,” Hall adds. Such foods essentially have artificially enhanced palatability that exceeds the palatability any ingredient could produce on its own—in other words, they have a combination of fat, salt or sugar “that would never exist in nature,” Juul says. Previous research has shown that foods combining fat and carbohydrates were better at activating the brain’s reward system than foods with just one of those ingredients. The ultraprocessed meals in Hall’s study also had more calories per bite than the minimally processed diet. Some researchers hypothesize that certain foods are addictive. People don’t lose control over eating bananas, but with ultraprocessed foods, they show all the hallmarks of addiction... Ultraprocessed foods are a lot cheaper and more convenient than less processed ones, Hall says. In his study, the minimally processed meals cost 40 percent more to buy and took the chefs longer to prepare."

Protein mania: the rich world’s new diet obsession - "In 2005, two biologists called David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson put forward the “protein leverage hypothesis”, in which they argued that protein could be the missing link in the obesity crisis. Since the 1960s, the absolute level of protein consumed by the average westerner has not changed. What has changed is the ratio of protein in our diets"
The writer spends too much time going on about whey protein and other processed protein supplements

Aussie cops caught talking about victim's breasts in voicemail message - "Queensland Police have been forced to apologise for the behaviour of two officers who were caught making lewd comments about a domestic violence victim after one accidentally pocket-dialled the woman from his patrol car.  A recording of the officers in which the two men spoke about the woman saying she had a "great set of tits", took place in May, 2022 but was made public earlier this week. The two were discussing a callout to the woman's home, where she was found naked, after a domestic violence incident. It's understood the offensive conversation was sent to the woman's voicemail, who had earlier called one of the officers for help... It's understood the two continued on to discuss the woman's mental health throughout the call, labelling her "crazy"... The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, later had a second run-in with police, where she allegedly kneed an officer after trying to escape a mental health assessment at a Gold Coast hospital. She was arrested and charged."

Consanguineous marriages and their association with women’s reproductive health and fertility behavior in Pakistan: secondary data analysis from Demographic and Health Surveys, 1990–2018 - "According to a rough estimate, nearly one billion (20%) of the global population live in communities with a preference for consanguineous marriages, predominantly in Muslim countries of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. With 65%, Pakistan has one of the highest rates of cousin marriages globally, followed by India (55%), Saudi Arabia (50%), Afghanistan (40%), Iran (30%), Egypt, and Turkey (20%)"
How Many Americans Are Married To Their Cousins? - "An estimated 0.2 percent of marriages in the United States are between individuals who are second cousins or closer"
Someone tried to mock someone else talking about cousin marriage in Pakistan for allegedly being from the South(ern US), but even if all the cousin marriages in the US were in Alabama, the rate of cousin marriage in Alabama would only be 13.3% (with simplifying assumptions like each state having marriages in proportion to its population)

Meme - Zane Schacht - Voice Goblin: "Every wizard should hit the gym and learn some staff combat. "Nooooo I've mastered the arcane winds" bitch if you're out of mana you need to be ready. You have a 7 foot long piece of wood in your hands. Learn to use it."
gay wizard @seamussy: "What's a wizarding opinion that'll get you locked up like this"

Meme - "My wife took our cat to the vets, & my son told the vet his toy dinosaur was feeling poorly so the vet gave it an xray... *T-rex x-ray*"

Meme - "THE GRANDMA."
"GRANDMA WILL ALWAYS BE WATCHING YOU FROM UP THERE."
"10 YEARS LATER"
*Google*
"MAKE YOUR BETS."
"STOP, I KNOW MY GRANDSON. I'M GOING ALL IN ON FURRY PORN!"
*Search: SEXY CAT GIRL*
"I KNEW IT. COME TO MAMA! *gambling table in heaven*"

Meme - "YES, I GET IT, AND I FiND IT OFFENSIVE." - Hammerhead shark to normal shark with hammer tied to forehead at Halloween party

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