Tim Spector: Ultra-processed school dinners are 'poisoning' children - "The UK is the worst nation in Europe for eating UPFs, which make up an estimated 57 per cent of the national diet... It comes as a group of leading celebrity chefs and authors last year warned UPFs were 'hijacking children's taste buds' and robbing them of the 'joys of real food'."
Experts warn fears about UPF means people are eating less healthily - "Fears over ultra-processed foods (UPFs) 'could mean people eat even less healthily', researchers have warned... a number of UPFs – such as baked beans, vegetable-based pasta sauces and some soups – are actually very nutritious and can contribute to a healthy diet... In the new article, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, they argued that less well-off people could be most affected by any blanket health warnings about UPFs without more scientific evidence... there is a potential 'social cost for many people with more limited resources' of removing convenient options. Meanwhile there could be negative mental health impacts on 'those who worry about their health or live with eating disorders, particularly if social circumstances make avoiding UPFs difficult'... 'Based on the balance of current evidence, we do not believe it is appropriate to be advising consumers to avoid all UPFs... 'Much of the research available shows associations between UPFs and health outcomes and cannot demonstrate causality. 'This distinction is important, given that many UPFs — for example breakfast cereals and breads — make substantial contributions to nutrient intakes in the UK population.'"
The US health revival- obesity and overdoses down and lifespan up - "new data from the CDC and other leading health agencies shows a number of health markers are beginning to improve - including cancer mortality, drug overdoses, obesity rates and life expectancy... others have posited deaths are declining simply because the fentanyl crisis has been so catastrophic it's run out of people to kill."
'Ultra-processed' products now half of all UK family food purchases - "Half of all the food bought by families in the UK is now “ultra-processed”, made in a factory with industrial ingredients and additives invented by food technologists and bearing little resemblance to the fruit, vegetables, meat or fish used to cook a fresh meal at home. Research by global nutrition experts reveals the scale of our food evolution, from farm-fresh to factory-manufactured. “Real food” has been replaced by salty snacks and sugary cereals, industrially-made bread and desserts, ready-meals and reconstituted meats alongside sweetened soft drinks. The study of 19 European countries is published this month in a special issue of the journal Public Health Nutrition. It shows that UK families buy more ultra-processed food than any others in Europe, amounting to 50.7% of the diet. Germany comes second, on 46.2% and then Ireland on 45.9%. While the figures are not directly comparable, extracted from national surveys carried out differently and from different years, the trend is clear."
The closer to the Mediterranean, the less ultra-processed food
Shock study shows how 42M recipients spend their food stamps - and they're not buying broccoli - "An alarming study has spotlighted how 42 million food stamp recipients spend their welfare handouts on ultra-processed junk food. Coca-Cola, Sprite and other soft drinks are the most commonly-bought items via the $135 billion-a-year Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a new study says. Candy, potato chips, frozen pizza, ice cream, cookies, and other ultra-processed food dominates the top 20 items, says a report from the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC). Report author Matthew Dickerson says recipients spend 'spend significant portions of their allotments on junk food.' These 'non-nutritious foods' include 'sugary beverages and ultra-processed foods, which can lead to poor health,' says the 35-page study. The prevalence of junk food is another reason to trim SNAP, which has ballooned this century and gets recipients hooked on handouts, says Dickerson... Some 42 million Americans currently receive monthly benefits at an average of $212 per person or $401 per household. Hot foods, alcohol, and tobacco are not allowed under the scheme, but, the report says, there are 'few other guidelines about eligible foods.'... Dickerson, a former House Budget Committee advisor, says food stamp enrollment surged from 17.3 million beneficiaries in 2001 to 42.1 million last year. Meanwhile, SNAP costs have exploded from $31 billion to $135 billion, his report says, using inflation-adjusted numbers. That's close to the entire annual turnover of Morocco. As the scheme grows, recipients stay on stamps for longer, says Dickerson. In the mid-1990s, less than a fifth of beneficiaries collected food stamps for 20 months or longer. Nowadays, nearly half of them keep getting benefits for that period. Worse still, says Dickerson, recipients include ever-more people who should be at work. Nearly two thirds of SNAP recipients who could work did not, says the report... SNAP's work requirements are 'limited, weak, and are currently waived completely or in part in 34 states,' he adds. 'The story of the food stamp program is one of expanding enrollment, higher spending, benefit payments growing faster than inflation,' Dickerson says in his report."
Clearly, they need even more food stamps and if you disagree, you are heartless and the cruelty is the point
Matthew Yglesias on X - "I think a lot of white liberals sort of psyoped themselves into misreading the landscape by treating African-American intellectuals as representative of Black opinion in a way that nobody would ever do with white people."
Noah Smith ๐๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ on X - "This sounds right to me. Educated White progressives don't hang out with working-class people, so their perception of what Black and Hispanic people want is heavily influenced by a few intellectuals, activists, and folks they sort of knew at college."
Meme - "Scientists now believe the depletion of the ozone layer is largely due to all the hairspray used in the 80s"
Meme - "Crave. Heavenly Wang"
Meme - "Not everyone in the gaming industry is dead in the head"
PC Gamer @pcgamer: "Baldur's Gate 3 publishing chief calls out Ubisoft's "broken strategy": If gamers need to get used to not owning games, "developers must get used to not having jobs.""
Who Gets the TikTok in the Divorce? The Messy Fight Over Valuable Social Media Accounts - WSJ - "When Kat and Mike Stickler filed for divorce, their lawyers had a math problem. Among the couple’s biggest assets was MikeAndKat, a channel on TikTok and YouTube in which they shared their lives with about four million followers. No one knew how to evenly split MikeAndKat between Mike and Kat... There are 27 million paid content creators in the U.S., and 44% of them say social media is their full-time job, consultant The Keller Advisory Group found. The big bucks don’t come from views or followers. Brands pay influencers to recommend a product or service to their audience. U.S. advertisers paid content creators $26 billion in 2023, according to Statista. Once divorce specialists tally up how much money the accounts are raking in, the couple can divide them, or one partner can take more and buy out the other. But there’s one elusive factor in a digital asset’s value: the account’s potential to keep making money. Both partners have to make a case for their role in that potential. How many pranks did they think of? How many hours did they spend editing videos? “There’s typically one person in the relationship who is passionate about social media, who’s driving the business,” says Cameron Ajdari, who runs a talent management group with his wife representing some of TikTok’s most followed couples. It’s not always clear who that person is by the time divorce rolls around. Social media success often evolves quickly, and couples may not be prepared to track finances and labor."
The social media influencer bubble will burst at some point
Alexander on X - "A cross-national study on the bystander effect, looking at actual behavior recorded on CCTV. Do people intervene to help strangers in public? Yes, almost always (90% of the time) Further, they are even more likely to intervene when the situation is dangerous! (Study 2 below) Bystanders were also more likely to intervene when more, rather than fewer, people were present. This calls 50 years of “bystander effect” research into question, as well as popular narratives that most people won’t step in to help a stranger who is in trouble."
Thread by @tracewoodgrains on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "today's adventures in equity: guest lecturer came in and said Hillsdale's claim that "the first end of education is ... objective truth about the world" is fascism
fuller context: she emphasized that every history curriculum necessarily includes elements of subjectivity in selection, presentation, and so forth. a reasonable note in and of itself, and I don't know that the Hillsdale people would disagree with that
but nope. fascism"
Everything left wingers don't like is "fascism". As with their redefinition of terms like "white supremacy" and "harassment", this is proof that you can't take them seriously as they are the boy who cried wolf
Coddled affluent professional on X - "I feel like a lot of the bomb throwers on twitter are smart white guys who 30 years ago would have been able to find a perch in academia and would be happily and peacefully reading esoteric German philosophy or translating some dead premodern language."
Eric Levitz on X - "Some argue that a second Trump election -- while bad for the country in the short-term -- would make the Democratic Party more progressive in the long run. Many problems with that view. But one is that - if Harris loses - the Dems will probably move right"
Andrea E on X - "Progressives are always the last to know. They'll blame the loss on Harris' not being progressive enough. They always overestimate the appeal of their policies."
Jacob Shell on X - "Defines "right" as "backing away from progressive idee-fixes of 2010s" but some of us do remember an earlier type of left which was pro-NASA, skeptical of globalization and "seed oils," favored "The Wire" understanding of the police, enjoyed Beaux Arts and Art Deco aesthetics
"Hey maybe it's bad for sovereignty to be transfered from the state and public sector to a bunch of shady NGOs funded by an nonagenarian billionaire who lives in central Europe"
"Aha! i see you have moved to the right""
Christopher Lasch's Angry Ghost on X - "The counterpart of electoralism—bureaucratism. A naive faith that left interests and ideals will be fulfilled by uncritically ceding authority to power centres, which will roll out the “correct” changes necessary to “save the planet.”"
Meme - Noah Smith @Noahpinion: "A lot of the late 2010s and early 2020s were just this:"
"I want things to be different *proper room*
*destroys everything*
oh no"
John Arnold @JohnArnoldFndtn: "Turns out making med school tuition-free regardless of what/where you choose to practice isn't enough to get NYU-trained doctors to practice rural primary care. How was this even a working hypothesis?"
Left wingers keep mocking conservatives for being scared of change. But change for change's sake is stupid
Meme - "My school blocked a website because it was labeled as educational"
"WebAdmin ACCESS TO THIS WEBSITE IS DENIED HTTPS://WWW.DUOLINGO.COM/
The Site you are trying to access is classified as: Education"
Meme - Peet @PeetingDisorder: "6'3 is the big boobs of men"
Meme - "Muslim Male Feet. 4.7K likes 5.6K followers. A page dedicated to the bare and sandaled feet of Muslim/Arabic/Middle Eastern/South Asian men."
Meme - Back of bus: "Honoring Rosa Parks"
"Still ended up on the back of the bus huh?"
Financial Advice Columnist Admits She Fell For $50,000 Scam - "One would typically not expect a financial advice columnist to fall for a money scam, nor that they would publicly air the misjudgment, but that’s exactly what The Cut’s Charlotte Cowles did on Thursday. “The day I put $50,000 in a shoe box and handed it to a stranger I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam,” Cowles wrote at the top of the column. Cowles detailed the wild scam which ended with her handing a shoebox full of $50,000 (the contents of her savings account) through the open window of a white SUV driving by her home."
Koalas are terrible animals : r/copypasta - "Koalas are fucking horrible animals. They have one of the smallest brain to body ratios of any mammal, additionally - their brains are smooth. A brain is folded to increase the surface area for neurons. If you present a koala with leaves plucked from a branch, laid on a flat surface, the koala will not recognise it as food. They are too thick to adapt their feeding behaviour to cope with change. In a room full of potential food, they can literally starve to death. This is not the token of an animal that is winning at life. Speaking of stupidity and food, one of the likely reasons for their primitive brains is the fact that additionally to being poisonous, eucalyptus leaves (the only thing they eat) have almost no nutritional value. They can't afford the extra energy to think, they sleep more than 80% of their fucking lives. When they are awake all they do is eat, shit and occasionally scream like fucking satan. Because eucalyptus leaves hold such little nutritional value, koalas have to ferment the leaves in their guts for days on end. Unlike their brains, they have the largest hind gut to body ratio of any mammal. Many herbivorous mammals have adaptations to cope with harsh plant life taking its toll on their teeth, rodents for instance have teeth that never stop growing, some animals only have teeth on their lower jaw, grinding plant matter on bony plates in the tops of their mouths, others have enlarged molars that distribute the wear and break down plant matter more efficiently... Koalas are no exception, when their teeth erode down to nothing, they resolve the situation by starving to death, because they're fucking terrible animals. Being mammals, koalas raise their joeys on milk (admittedly, one of the lowest milk yields to body ratio... There's a trend here). When the young joey needs to transition from rich, nourishing substances like milk, to eucalyptus (a plant that seems to be making it abundantly clear that it doesn't want to be eaten), it finds it does not have the necessary gut flora to digest the leaves. To remedy this, the young joey begins nuzzling its mother's anus until she leaks a little diarrhoea (actually fecal pap, slightly less digested), which he then proceeds to slurp on. This partially digested plant matter gives him just what he needs to start developing his digestive system. Of course, he may not even have needed to bother nuzzling his mother. She may have been suffering from incontinence. Why? Because koalas are riddled with chlamydia. In some areas the infection rate is 80% or higher. This statistic isn't helped by the fact that one of the few other activities koalas will spend their precious energy on is rape. Despite being seasonal breeders, males seem to either not know or care, and will simply overpower a female regardless of whether she is ovulating. If she fights back, he may drag them both out of the tree, which brings us full circle back to the brain: Koalas have a higher than average quantity of cerebrospinal fluid in their brains. This is to protect their brains from injury... should they fall from a tree. An animal so thick it has its own little built in special ed helmet. I fucking hate them.
Tldr; Koalas are stupid, leaky, STI riddled sex offenders. But, hey. They look cute. If you ignore the terrifying snake eyes and terrifying feet."
Meme - Ink Blot @inkblotistan: "horrifying *Koala*"
the koalas are up to something *Puffed up Koala*"
FATAH: A Star columnist's slurring of India's 'fascist regime' didn't go over too well - "One could blame Modi for many things, but to suggest he was a “fascist” was beyond the pale and exhibited contempt towards India. Anyone who has been to India will testify that rather than being run by a “fascist regime” it is a vibrant democracy brimming with passionate debate over the programs of hundreds of political parties ranging from the BJP on the right and Communists on the left with the Congress in between. India is a land where public protests are the norm with coalitions at the centre and across the 29 states. The slur on the Indian prime minister did not sit well with many Indo-Canadians and Indians I spoke to."
From 2021
Meme - Big Runners @Pointer_Chaser: "The only reason for censorship, in the end, is to enable governments to spread disinformation."
Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger: "Exactly. And both censorship and disinformation/propaganda are means to an end, which is the control of thought and behavior."
Meme - "When you agreed to let her tie you up but now she's pulling a strap-on out of her bedside drawer *Han Solo tied up by Ewoks*"
Meme - "Just do nothing. It is impossible / Just do it. Nothing is impossible"
Meme - Charles Murray: "Hmmm."
"IN PURSUIT: OF HAPPINESS AND GOOD GOVERNMENT
As recently as 1955, for example, a survey of workers found that 52 percent enjoyed their work so much that they "had a hard time putting it aside." By 1980, the proportion who so enjoyed their work had dropped to only a third of the respondents (33.5 percent). The drop was about the same for everyone, from professional persons to farmers, but it was the largest of all for manual workers. In 1955, 50 percent of manual workers had enjoyed their work so much that they had a hard time putting it aside; by 1980, that figure had dropped by almost half, to 27 percent."
@novicus @novicus: "Until sometime in the mid 20th century, virtually no one 'loved' their job. They love their families. The job was largely an expression of love. It kept the family alive and safe."
Meme - "If sexual arousal suppresses the disgust response, will wearing a vibrator let me clean up moldy food without gagging?"
"You're going to Pavlov yourself into being horny for moldy food"
Meme - "We Know Exactly What You ve Been Searching For. GOOgle *OO as breasts*"
Meme - Uncle Ben: "I know I'm not your father"
Peter Parker: "Then pretending to be!"
Uncle Ben: "But I love you your father did. I believe in you like your father did. I had sex with your mother just like your father did!"
Meta reportedly fires staffer on $400K a year for spending $25 meal credits on toothpaste and tea - "Meta has reportedly fired a handful of staffers who have been abusing the company’s $25 meal stipend, spending the money on nonfood items or having meals delivered to their homes. According to posts on the tech-professional social media site Blind, the firings took place last week, with staff being discharged from their posts in the Los Angeles office... employees are given a $25 Grubhub credit if they work past 6 p.m. in offices that don’t have cafeterias on site. A post seen by Fortune on the Blind platform alleges the disgraced staffers were ordering meals when they weren’t even in the office; were giving their credits to other members of staff; or were using the credits to buy groceries and other household essentials. Between 20 and 30 staff members have reportedly been laid off... A further post on Blind, reported by the Financial Times, was written by an employee who claims to have been paid $400,000 a year by the company. The individual said they worked “nights and weekends” for the Big Tech giant, and had spent their $25 credit on items like toothpaste and tea from pharmacy Rite Aid."
Meme - Kotaku @kotaku: "'Six Years Ago, The Most Stylish RPG Ever Revived A Dying Genre"
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "JRPGs have never been a dying genre. In fact, Pokemon is considered a JRPG and is still a success in matter of sales. From the critical point of view, Nier Automata and Dragon Quest XI also were released that year."
Meme - "INDIA SIMULATOR *man with VR goggles shitting by roadside*"
Meme - "He looks just Like his Mother. *Baby with closed eyes with milk on lips*"
Meme - Cezary Jan Strusiewicz @ostrichson.bsky.social: "Art Nouveau is when stuff looks like it was made by Elves. Art Deco is when stuff looks like it was made by Dwarves."
Meme - "Not a care in the world, just two people trusting science in 1967 *Lobotomy*"
Keywords: trust the science
Meme - "When your wife hates her birthday surprise even after you saved up all month for it *facial*"
Meme - Brian Essbe @SortaBad: "To impress a woman in the workplace, ignore her body and compliment her IDEAS. Example: Sharon it was a great idea to wear that tight skirt"
Meme - *Fish in shallow water with frog clinging on to its back*
Meme - "Teenage girl kicks her leg into the air and is swarmed by dogs"
China is freaking out over an 'open secret' that its cooking oil was ferried for years in chemical tanks that weren't cleaned - "The furor follows a bombshell investigation published on July 2 by the state media outlet Beijing News, which found multiple cases of tank trucks transporting edible cooking oil immediately after delivering chemicals used for coal-to-liquid processing. The report's author, Han Futao, found that none of the tank interiors were cleaned between loads... Several truck drivers told Beijing News the practice was a widespread cost-saving measure used by firms with thousands of trucks — an "open secret" in the industry, Han wrote. In some seasons, the truckers said, drivers would transport industrial wastewater before delivering edible oils... The backlash ballooned even further when people began reposting regulatory warnings from 2013 about the practice in Hunan province, indicating its use for more than a decade... Food safety in China has already been a sensitive topic for years in the wake of multiple scandals involving gutter oil and deadly chemicals in baby milk powder. The repeated controversies have contributed to growing distrust in cities toward commercially sold foods in supermarkets and grocery stores, sparking a campaign by the central government to promote food safety in the country."
15-Year-Old Girl In S'pore Gives Birth While On Video Call With Boyfriend, Buries Stillborn In Garden - "a 15-year-old girl found that she had become pregnant after having sex with her 14-year-old boyfriend. The couple tried to abort the baby in several ways, including having the boyfriend knee her in the stomach. In June of that year, the girl gave birth alone in her bedroom while on video call with her boyfriend. She buried the stillborn in her garden. The boy pleaded guilty today (13 Dec) to sexual penetration of a minor and abetting the concealment of a child’s birth... As he had difficulty buying condoms due to being a minor, they proceeded with unprotected sexual intercourse... The couple broke up in Mar 2022. Upon noticing her daughter’s unhappy mood, the girl’s mother asked her if anything was wrong. The teen then confessed about the pregnancy and childbirth to her mother, who contacted the police. They also recovered the buried stillborn from the garden."
Teen who punched 15-year-old’s stomach to end pregnancy gets probation - "the girl has been given a conditional warning for her role in the case."
When an older girl has sex with a younger boy, the boy is the criminal. Of course, AWARE doesn't care
