MU Soapbox

Derp

@derp said in RL Anger:

@reimesu said in RL Anger:

@derp

Thank you for letting us do this. And thank you again for the Pomplamoose. You're almost there!

You guys are just the best! I'm getting all choked up!

If you die do we get a refund, or...?

Paid back double!

Derp

@ganymede said in RL things I love:

We can talk all night about this topic, as it was part of my thesis for my graduate degree and an integral part of my law practice.

I would, no lie, actually be interested in reading that because I'm a great big nerd that loves reading stuff like that.

Derp

@rinel said in RL Anger:

Last night a friend had a psychotic episode out of nowhere. Tonight another friend died of cancer.

I'm so fucking tired.

cat hug

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@betternow said in RL Anger:

@ganymede Or can't get seen at all. Try finding any mental health provider after moving. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is "accepting new patients" regardless of insurance. Add to that I have none, and I've been off my meds for a month now.

If you're in the United States, nobody is accepting new patients because the entire country is currently in a state of clinical anxiety.

But god, that sucks. I hope you find someone who can at least do a med consult.

Derp

@solstice

The actual somewhat-paraphrased quote is in the podcast episode You're Wrong About - The Obesity Epidemic

But Michael Hobbes has written and researched pretty extensively for this particular issue. Here is his original article in the Huffington Post about it, wherein he talks about personal experiences and all of his sources and such.

But if you really want to do a deep dive on it, he has another You're Wrong About style podcast specifically devoted to diets, diet culture, the truth about obesity science, and some of the ridiculously damaging things the media and diet culture have done over the years. That one is called Maintenance Phase, and it is glorious, and kind of liberating, even if it doesn't exactly give a silver-lining propaganda style picture of Beach Body Perfection that culture would have us believe.

(Spoiler: Oprah has done some questionable shit on numerous occasions, so.)

Derp

@ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I refuse to believe this is a damned-if-you-do-or-don't situation

But again, that's the problem. Yes, the article contains a slew of weight loss maintenance strategies. But at best, one out of five people actually manage to maintain weight loss for more than a year, and fewer than that for more than five. Many others never manage the weight loss in the first place.

And that's the received wisdom: That everyone can lose weight if they just work hard and suffer. But it's just not true. And people refuse to believe that, even though that's what the research bears out -- diet and exercise are a largely imperfect system that can be just as dangerous as not doing so, and possibly moreso due to the metabolic damage and insulin resistance caused by yo-yo style weight losses and gains. Everyone wants to believe that if you just work a little harder and eat a little less and move a little more that you'll get to a point where you can do it, completely ignoring what side-effects there might be to it or whether these lifestyles are actually even able to be maintained at all.

I didn't ignore anything past the abstract. You, yourself, quoted the part above where the researchers note that people who do manage to lose weight need further study because we don't know how or why it happens like that.

And we've known that this model was wrong since the sixties. That's the most insidious part. That this myth we've created has been so persistent and pervasive this whole time, that we've built entire industries around a concept that we know is flat-out a lie, but we want so badly to believe in it that we'll ignore all evidence to the contrary.

That refusal to believe it's out of anyone's control despite what the science says is very much a part of the stigma problem. If Susan stays fat it's because she's clearly not eating right, or exercising enough. She doesn't care about her health. She's lazy, and undisciplined. And therefore, she is unreliable, and should make less money, get passed over for promotions or employment in general. It's a moral failing on her part, not something out of her control like sex or skin color or genetic conditions or any of the other protected statuses.

Until we know how it works, expecting people to just suffer through a process that we barely understand and actively causes harm is ridiculous, especially when being overweight doesn't automatically mean that you're unhealthy.

Derp

@ifrit said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

I read a really interesting series of articles recently that posited (with graphs!) that there may be a chemical component to obesity that is down to industrial processing introducing additional chemicals to our foodstuffs (one of the suggestions is lithium from lithium grease for example).

I believe that the current leading theory goes like this:

The 'sedentary lifestyle' theory of obesity has been somewhat discredited just based on observable history: in the 1930's we started transitioning from farm work to office work, and beef, beer, and other high-calorie foods became readily available as industry kept taking off and prices kept falling as production and distribution tech got better and better. And yet, from the actuarial tables that insurance companies kept, there was no obesity epidemic despite rather sedentary lifestyles with lots of fat and alcohol.

But around the 50's and 60's, we start getting into heavily processed foods: starches and carbs that are very easy and quick to digest that our biological processes are just not meant to handle effectively. And so our systems freak the hell out, and by the 70's we're seeing an incredible rise in obesity despite activity and caloric consumption just based on the prevalence of these kinds of cheap, fast, ultra-processed foods.

And then we blame fat, naturally, because fat clearly makes you fat for reasons, it has a lot of calories, whatever. So we strip out fat and start adding processed sugars to absolutely everything, which doesn't actually help and really just makes it worse as the set points (the 'baseline' weight of our bodies, the one that it works to actively maintain) just skyrockets higher and higher and higher because the biological processes that regulate your metabolism in proportion to your caloric intake has no idea how to handle this crap that you're eating.

Here's the hat trick, though -- if you stop eating those kinds of foods, your body goes into an entirely different kind of starvation freakout and starts packing on as much fat as possible because your fucked up internal processes assume that you are dying and in a famine, so the more you try to eat 'regular' foods and move and work out the more your body thinks that you're in a desert death march and works against you.

Interestingly, this is one of the reasons that bariatric surgery has such a high efficacy rate: It does actually reset this system, whereas dietary regulation doesn't. It removes both producers and receptors of a buttload of hormones and biochemical regulators and forces your anatomy to start over from scratch.

Naturally, more research needs to be done to verify these results and whatnot. But from what we understand, right now, of the biochemical processes, it's the food supply itself that is causing it, not consumption or activity, combined with just genetic predisposition toward large or small bodies.

Derp

@tnp

yeah, they've been doing tons of studies on stuff like that since -- at least I was in high school. In 2020, in order to eat what would be generally considered 'healthy' foods, it will cost you literally ten times as much calorie-for-calorie, and that gap just keeps widening.

Derp

@ominous

You could make the argument, but assault almost always relies on the contact being rude, angry, or insolent, and I doubt you'd find a jury that things getting someone's attention via touch on the shoulder qualifies, even if it's repeated and unwanted. You might get harassment, but probably not assault.

Derp

@vixanic

I use Smartsheet in my work.

I love that I can have such granular permissions on it.

Edit my fields? Nope. You can view. You can comment. You can suggest a change. But you can't change anything without me approving it.

Lurve.

Derp

Ya'll: 30-100 bucks on food delivery.

Me: Two egg rolls from that place I like comes out to 3.27, and it's not that far to drive, so I'll pick it up and tip through BeyondMenu...

One of these days!

Derp

@solstice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Fuck scalpers.

I am so sick of seeing every single thing I want to purchase go out of stock instantly from digital storefronts, usually after an hour of the store being unable to handle requests because it's being effectively DDOSed by bots running API calls.

This is so stupid.

capitalism

Derp

@macha

I meannnnnnn if this is the level of competence you can expect going forward...

Derp

@wizz said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I love these new kittens we got to death, don't get me wrong.
But the little sister both wants to be held and also doesn't like being held for long, and somehow, SOMEHOW, every single time she starts flailing to get down, she hooks one of her little claws directly into my nipple. Every. Time.

And for that split second of infinite pain I want to HURL HER INTO THE SUN. And then I set her down and she's like "mew" and I am like, oh my god you are my world please sweet creature I just want to rub your little face.

Thick, baggy t-shirts are Kitten Essentials.

Derp

YAAAAS. This is the thread we need in these dark times.

Derp

@silverfox said in Critters!:

@ganymede

They for sure don't really trust people and aren't ready to be adopted but I am REALLY hoping you are right. They are a little big so things are stacked against them in the adoption corner already. If we can't get them to be sweet babies who like people they might never get a chance.

Untrue! My favoritest cat ever was a gray-and-white feral that my brothers literally caught out in the woods. We named him Storm. He was aptly named. And kind of mean. And I loved him.

People like me exist! Just be up front about it. Don't sell their image as sweet babies. Sell their image as strong-willed hellions that will always surprise you and you will find a good home for them.

Derp

@ganymede @Macha

I would buy some soap!

Masculine scents come in one of three varieties:

Variety 1: "Here is this strange blend of chemicals with no discernable scent which may not be even appropriate for anything ever" ala Axe. Ladies. You all know the joys of Axe. Dudes -- easy on the Axe.

Variety 2: 'wtf dude did you just like go hump an evergreen or something'? Why do people think men need to smell like pine needles and sawdust? Why has this variety of scent not changed since our grandpa's grandpa's grandpa was probably out literally humping a pine tree or whatever?

Variety 3: Musk. Just. Fucking musk. WHO decided that this gland-juice is something we should proudly wear? It's like the dog that goes and rolls around in animal crap like warpaint and then just looks so damn pleased with himself... not... that... my dog does that. NO. You can't prove it. Shut up.

Anyway. Something with a better blend of scents that doesn't cost as much as a mercedes would be great.