obesity: it’s not sloth, it’s the food

What particularly is it about the food? Is it sugar? No. Is it fats? No. It’s the fact we engineer our foods in labs and focus group test them to make sure you eat too much. That’s literally the point of these big industries: to make sure you buy as much as you can. That’s how they make money. Obesity has come up right alongside the availability and engineering of processed foods.*

Hadzas are seven times more active than most of us but burn only a few more calories. They stay slim because they ingest fewer calories than we do, shielded as they are from processed foods that are engineered, focus group–tested, and selected for their power to make us want to consume more.

see article – archived*


20210228T1601−08*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the post archive*

Posted

Cord Jefferson on kindness

I am hopeful that my mother will be around to share many more years with us. But I’m now attempting to find some comfort in the idea that I can keep her close to me for as long as I live by struggling to remain decent, the pursuit that I’ve seen conjure up incredible power during the course of her life. The world takes from us relentlessly. It takes our friends and first loves. It takes our parents. It takes our faith. It takes our dignity. It takes our passion. It takes our health. It takes our honesty, and it takes our credulity. To lose so much and still hold onto yourself is perhaps the most complicated task human beings are asked to perform, which is why seeing it done with aplomb is as thrilling as looking at dinosaur bones or seeing a herd of elephants. It’s an honor to exist on Earth with these things.*
article archived*


20210224T1552−08*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the post archive*
Posted

on hydration/dehydration


There is a dearth of facts when it comes to hydration. Pharmaceutical companies aren’t interested in researching the benefits of a free resource and dehydration isn’t a pressing public health issue requiring government funding. This leaves a profitable grey area for the drinks industry to exploit.*

article archived*


20210224T1553−08*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the post archive*
Posted

Chris Hedges: Cancel culture, where liberalism goes to die

article archived*


20210215T1522−08*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the post archive*
Posted

the end of inequality

the end of inequality: either “a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large” or “the common ruin of the contending classes”*

to say that “if we don’t mine the stuff someone else will” is obscene, but under capitalism today it makes perfect sense: amoral self-interest underpins the entire system*


20210215T0848−08*
*a link; see a note on notes and links; see also a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the post archive*
Posted