We can be nice about helping people who ask honest questions too :)

Many people are unfamiliar with the concept of different communities having different rulesets. Even people who come from reddit land.

Rule 2 of the community guidelines does state that all political pictures (defined as a picture of a politician of any country of any planet) are prohibited and will be removed. So they are not wrong, in spite of the down votes. I do wonder if the community were to have a similar poll today on whether these types of images should be banned how it would turn out, assuming the community has grown significantly since the months that have passed since the prior vote. The second choice was very close in the original poll which would have provided an exception of one political picture allowed per current event.

Edit: here’s the link to the community poll for context if it helps anyone else!

Understood and completely agreed with your sentiment. Obviously any time of sweetened drink is going to be less healthy than water. It is also undeniable that our corporate funded research papers have frequently resulted in and continue to result in biased and often completely non-credible conclusions.

I still assert that “safe” is a relative term, and one issue I have is the lack of nuance associated with certain headlines. For example, the IARC Group B classification that the WHO cites is the same risk for cancer as “engine exhaust or occupational exposure as a hairdresser.” So yes, excessive aspartame consumption is definitely objectively bad for you compared to drinking water, but the cancer risk is not extensive compared to many other things we are exposed to on a regular basis.

“JECFA concluded that the data evaluated indicated no sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame. The committee therefore reaffirmed that it is safe for a person to consume within this limit per day. For example, with a can of diet soft drink containing 200 or 300 mg of aspartame, an adult weighing 70kg would need to consume more than 9–14 cans per day to exceed the acceptable daily intake, assuming no other intake from other food sources.”

Also I very much appreciate the great discussion on this!

Don’t know that I agree with your spin that this news is negative in any regard. Also, aspartame is one of the most studied food additives of all time and has been repeatedly proven safe.

Your claim that it “can have an event worse effect on blood sugar than sugar can” has also been proven false. See “Metabolic effects of aspartame in adulthood: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials” by Santos et al from 2017.

Among other conclusions, the study found that “aspartame consumption was not associated with alterations on blood glucose levels compared to control or to sucrose and on insulin levels compared to control or to sucrose.”

If you’re referring to “Rule of Law,” then yes, it is amazing and worth praising. Unfortunately the US is in an accelerating downhill backslide away from Rule of Law back to Rule of Men. And we will all be worse off for it. There is no copium involved in appreciating adherence to Rule of Law because the alternative is tyranny.

At this point I am having to hold out hope telling myself that we are probably in for a couple decades of horror until the old guard dies off and the pendulum swings back to liberalism and progressivism. I love the idea of America but I don’t love America right now, which is painful to acknowledge.

I sincerely hope this is a poor attempt at a joke because that kind of statement has contributed directly to the current situation. It is not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government, Zionism, or the IDF and its actions. It is antisemitic to say the reason you are criticizing those things is because they are all Jews.

Conflating those two not only makes it impossible to speak out against the atrocities being committed, it makes violence worse against Jews.

That’s actually the alt code for an en dash. Em dash is Alt+0151!

I got mine last year. I was fully recovered in terms of physical activity within probably 4-5 days but I did get two very uncomfortable sperm granulomas that hung around for several days each. My nuts swelled up and turned purple so that was pretty fucking scary but it wasn’t anything dangerous. Just a lot of aching. But within a month I was completely back to normal.

It is almost a certainty that Trump will lose the popular vote. It is highly likely the election will be extremely close still because of the electoral college. In a country of hundreds of millions, it only takes hundreds of thousands of voters in swing states to change the outcome, regardless of the majority.

Colter Wall, Joshua Quimby, and Nick Shoulders too!

It’s not a numbers thing, it’s a facts thing. That’s just how criminal justice works (or is supposed to). So to address your second paragraph―the number of people and whether they are men, women, or otherwise is entirely irrelevant. If someone can be proven to have done wrong, they did wrong, period. I’m not stating I agree or disagree with his acquittal, I was just making sure I hadn’t missed some news that he had, in fact, been found guilty. I’m well aware that wealthy people and, in particular, powerful men get unfair advantages in the criminal justice system.

I’m gonna have to go with Adam Savage. I loved Mythbusters and continue to watch his Tested one day build videos today and view him as something of a role model from a creative standpoint.

Also to chime in about your mentioning of Kevin Spacey, the guy is definitely a weirdo and has done some really tone deaf things (coming out as gay in the midst of being involved in sexual abuse accusations, posting videos of himself as Frank Underwood denying charges levied against him on YouTube, etc.), but wasn’t he acquitted of or found not guilty in literally every sexual abuse charge that was brought against him? And in both the US and the UK?

I just finished up Red Rising and I really enjoyed it but I can’t bring myself to dive headlong into a series right now. My current read is A Separate Peace and next on the docket will be the autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt.

I tend to struggle to finish books that I start but this year I wanted to get better about reading so I set a very modest goal of 14 books. I’m already finished with five books since the start of the year!

Gilmore Girls. I know the show has some problematic humor but it’s one of the best shows I’ve ever watched as far as characterization is concerned. The writing and the characters have a way of sucking you into the story that I haven’t really found in any other show.