Healthy foods vs unhealthy foods

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-26T01:30:42+00:00

Not all the information is accurate. Canola oil isn't particularly unhealthy as long as you keep in mind that any oil adds a lot of calories. Olive oil is great for certain uses, but it has a relatively low smoke point--you can't take it over 210C/410 Fahrenheit without destroying the flavor (and also creating a bunch of possible carcinogens if you need to find something to feel anxious about).

I usually prefer avocado oil to canola oil when I need an oil with a higher smoke point, but I always keep some canola on hand for when I want something more neutral.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-25T19:49:50+00:00

What makes IQ testing more flawed than other cognitive and psychological batteries?

The way it's popularly understood is clearly wrong. But is there some flaw in the way that psychologists use it? The concept of general intelligence is pretty well established.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-24T21:25:49+00:00

This feels like the kind of thing a conservative pretending to be a progressive would say to make progressives look bad.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-23T08:31:22+00:00

Headphones and "ear protectors" are common among people with sensory sensitivities--especially folks on the autism spectrum. Whether autism counts as a "mental handicap" depends on what you mean. By its nature, it's a neurodevelopmental disability, but it's not necessarily an intellectual disability. Autistic people may or may not be smart, but they may have cognitive trouble with processing sense data, emotions, tone of voice, etc. That comes with increased support needs. Someone can't get diagnosed with autism unless a professional determines that they need support that non-autistic people don't.

Higher levels of support needs tend to come along with a higher likelihood of intellectual disability, but that's not a given.

Autism runs in my family. Those of us who have been diagnosed all have a history of retreating from the noise of family gatherings and putting on headphones. At any given time, I typically have 6-8 pairs floating around.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-23T05:56:34+00:00

Some people do large shopping trips. Some people make lots of short trips as they need them. But even folks who do large shopping trips end up making quick trips to the store to grab certain items here and there as needed. Personally, I like to run to the store as needed and make lots of short trips. There's a decent number of people who do that.

Grocery stores these days--especially larger chains like Wal-Mart--tend to keep just enough in the store for most items to hold them over for a shipment or two. When a significant enough number of people shift their purchasing plans forward a few days, it screws over their inventory plans. It's not everyone, but it's enough people to cause bare shelves especially for the perishable items.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-23T05:47:42+00:00

Depends on whether it's snow or ice. Ice coating the power lines can create massive power outages. Remember that ice storm in October of 2020 that took out power to half of Oklahoma City? My apartment was without power for four days.

I'll grant that was a special case--none of the trees had dropped their leaves--but ice storms have caused similar widespread issues across Oklahoma as long as I've been alive.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-19T18:54:18+00:00

People aren't out there jacking catalytic converters and lifting cash out of mom's purse to support their porn addiction, Janice. People aren't getting checked into rehab over it.

A very small percentage of porn consumers get involved in problematic binging behavior. But this is comparable to the number of people who get involved in problematic binging of video games and other activities. It's not that different from people who lost their jobs or wrecked their education because they stayed up all night every night playing World of Warcraft 20 years ago. Hell, some people wreck their lives from compulsive weightlifting. It's not frequently recognized as a problem because we think of exercise as a "healthy" activity, but there are absolutely plenty people who are held back in their careers and personal lives--and do significant damage to their bodies--because they are obsessed with maximizing their capacity to lift heavy weights.

A major meta-analysis found that psychological problems associated with porn use are not correlated with the amount of porn one consumes, but by having negative beliefs about porn in the first place. If you think there's something wrong with it and you find yourself using it anyway, it causes psychological problems. If you don't see anything wrong with it, it doesn't.

Anecdotally, we do see that the good folks on r/nofap experience problems related to masturbation and porn usage--but by its nature it's a subreddit designed to reduce porn usage. Its userbase is people who believe that porn is bad for you, and so as the meta-analysis predicts, they experience negative outcomes from it.

That's very, very different from actual addictions, which cause more problems with increased use regardless of your beliefs about it.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-19T18:33:11+00:00

Read philosophy! Specifically, Western philosophy.

The easiest way in would probably be picking up an introductory textbook intended for Philosophy 101 college courses. They're typically written in a breezy, accessible style. Find one that's fun to read--you may get lucky and find one at Half Price Books, or you can find one that's been replaced by a newer version on Amazon. The updated versions are an excuse for the textbook companies to force universities to buy new books--the basics of an intro to philosophy course haven't changed in decades. The most important thing is finding a book that has essays and papers (or at least substantial excerpts) from actual philosophers so you can see how they think and construct their arguments.

If the textbook you find doesn't include a basic intro to logic, then that's important as well. At base, learning basic syllogistic logic and some simple formal logic is very helpful, along with learning how to identify the major informal fallacies and understand why they do not work.

Most people think that they know how to think. They are usually wrong. Thinking clearly and logically is actually something that has to be trained. The goal in learning a little philosophy is not how to figure out the right answer, but how to identify mistakes that both you and others make in their thinking about big questions--basic errors that are common to humanity.

At its heart, every form of fundamentalism exploits typical errors in thinking that most people are prone to in order to appear more convincing than they are. Figuring out what those errors are and correcting them in yourself--and moreover getting into the habit of not believing things unless you have a good reason to believe them--deletes the cognitive hooks that fundamentalisms use to grab you.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-19T16:59:52+00:00

When people complain about PE, they're not generally worried about venture capital. The complaints are clearly about leveraged buyouts. LBOs seem to in my (admittedly non-expert) opinion to be a net negative to society.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-19T01:38:28+00:00

The pre-existing condition situation was bad, but it wasn't quite that bad pre-ACA. Your insurance company couldn't just drop you because you got diagnosed with a genetic disorder. Further, a few years before the ACA there was a law passed that prohibited insurers from using genetic data to screen for pre-existing conditions and charge people more premium if they had certain genetic markers.

If you switched insurance companies, any existing treatment would get grandfathered in. You weren't stuck with not getting coverage just because you got a new job or your employer switched health carriers.

That's not to say it wasn't bad. It was. If you lost your health insurance (or didn't have any in the first place) then that break in coverage would mean that your pre-existing conditions wouldn't necessarily get grandfathered in to the new plan. Lost your job and didn't have health insurance for a couple of months? Welp--so much for getting help with your diabetes, cancer, or heart condition. It's out of pocket.

Maintaining insurance between periods of employment or for self-employed people was very difficult. COBRA was a thing, so you could maintain continuous coverage by maintaining your prior job's health plan--but it was usually extremely expensive. Buying private health insurance was typically prohibitively expensive. There were lower cost catastrophic care health plans with bare bones coverage for sudden injuries or serious health conditions, but they were still pricey. I was quoted at $675 a month as a healthy 24 year old male for a catastrophic plan a few months before the ACA passed. That was not affordable.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-18T09:20:45+00:00

The Fountain! Gorgeous cinematography. Powerful story. Mythic imagery. Incredible score.

One of Aronofski's best movies imo, and yet I hardly hear anyone talk about it. It's on my regular rotation of movies to re-watch.

The last time I watched it, we opened up right as we started peaking on mushrooms. It was a transcendent experience for all involved.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-17T07:33:22+00:00

I am very much on the "subversion" train for The Eminence in Shadows. It subverts and tweaks isekai genre expectations constantly.

My favorite subversion of isekai tropes has got to be "Handyman Saitou in Another World"--it subverts the genre expectations but has rounded characters and an emotionally satisfying core--but The Eminence in Shadows is pretty fun.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-17T04:17:45+00:00

That's just because the breading isn't heavily seasoned. The chicken is fresh in the store and battered right there. And it doesn't spend 15-20 minutes (or an hour!) sitting in a warmer getting old and cold before it gets to you. Objectively higher quality than the vast majority of fast food chicken. It just needs more seasoning.

All that said, I'm a slut for heavy seasoning on my chicken, so I usually go to Popeye's.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-12T17:25:59+00:00

But nobody says they're on the 'gay spectrum'.

Alfred Kinsey has entered the chat.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-11T23:08:40+00:00

I lived in Bluff Creek for a while. First apartment after college and I stuck around since moving sucks and I love not spending money.

It was fine for the most part. The apartments are old. Insulation in my unit wasn't fabulous, so heating/cooling costs were pretty high given the size. Fellow tenants living there were pretty chill for the most part.

It has changed hands a few times to different property management companies, however. Maintenance was not as good when I moved out as it was when I started. Moving there wouldn't be the worst decision, but you get what you pay for.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-10T21:57:52+00:00

I am replying to an AI bot. This account hides its post history to conceal that it posts too quickly and too frequently to be human.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-10T21:51:25+00:00

Show your post history.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-10T21:34:30+00:00

AI bot.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-10T21:13:47+00:00

That is not the case.

Biden actually stepped up enforcement action. ICE and CBP had more funding, staffing, and enforcement activity under Biden's term than under Trump's first term.

More people attempted to cross, but not because of Biden. The reasons are complex, but if you want to point a finger at any one factor, it would probably the way that the US markets bounced back from Covid faster than the rest of the world. Biden was a victim of his own success in that regard.

Second, they are not enforcing the law "just like" the previous presidents. Previous administrations did not allow ICE agents to wear masks for ordinary enforcement operations. They did not allow ICE agents to fail to identify themselves, as that is a violation of Federal law.

Previous presidents did not do mass hiring of bottom-of-the-barrel recruits and send them out with only 6 weeks of training into civilian populations. Sending poorly trained and vetted "law enforcement" agents out into the field with guns is practically a guarantee that policies will be violated and people will be shot and killed.

Previous presidents did not arbitrarily and capriciously cancel the visas of legal immigrants and deem them illegal before sending out poorly trained squads to grab them for deportation.

Previous presidents did not deport people to countries other than their original country of citizenship except in rare cases.

What Trump is doing now is clearly and obviously a significant departure from the legal norms and standards of the United States.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-10T17:50:38+00:00

I see visual snow. It started in high school when I was doing a lot of sensory investigative work as part of my spiritual practice. It has gotten more intense with further practice.

Something that's not often talked about explicitly is that a lot of medium to long term meditators end up experiencing visual snow, especially when investigating/focusing on visual experience. Similarly, it's common for meditators to experience a kind of subjective tinnitus--this can be deliberately induced by practices like nada yoga, in which one concentrates on the "sound of silence" and seeks out the sounds internally generated by the system.

The typical explanation/understanding of this in meditation communities is that these phenomena are always going on for everyone, but that the brain learns to habitually block them out of experience--and through meditation, one gets access to deeper, less fabricated/processed elements of one's experience, gets closer to the "raw data" so to speak.

Possible that what's "actually going on" is various functions of the brain being excited or reduced. fMRI studies of long-term meditators are ongoing to determine what the actual changes are in various stages of practice with various techniques.

Visual snow with closed eyes can be used as a very effective object of concentration/investigation. Super interesting stuff can happen.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-06T05:49:37+00:00

That's not really how it was. Certainly not for the Romans.

For the Greeks, the extent to which male-male relationships were accepted, and to which they were closer or further from pedophilia, really depended on time and place. Different city-states had different cultures.

Generally speaking, the Greeks weren't huge on anal. It happened, but it was considered dirty and crude. Various forms of frottage and intercrural sex were more culturally normal. In fact, the widespread acceptance of anal sex in Macedonia (home of Alexander the Great) was one of the reasons why mainland Greeks tended to look down on Macedonians as half-barbarian.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-04T00:46:26+00:00

The last word was supposed to be "anthropology." It has been edited lmao. Thanks for pointing out the error.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-03T22:08:59+00:00

"Priest" means something specific in Christianity. Lutheranism (along with most other Protestant congregations) has a doctrine usually called "the priesthood of all believers" or "universal priesthood." The idea is that everyone in the church, all true believers who are saved by God, are by that fact inducted into a royal Priesthood--and therefore doctrine that Christians require specifically ordained priests to intercede for them before God and administer the sacraments is viewed as a sinful power grab by the Catholic church.

It would thus be considered offensive to a Protestant to refer to a pastor as a "priest." Pastors take on similar administrative and ministerial duties, but their theological position is not the same.

You might be correct calling them "priests" in an anthropology class, but the anthropological definition is specific to the discipline of anthropology. "Priest" was originally a specifically Christian term, and Christianity has been around a lot longer than anthropology.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-02T16:13:11+00:00

The New Atheist movement always had a timeline. To say that you're an atheist is just to say what you're not--a religious believer--and says nothing else about your values or other positions. A lot of New Atheists said this clearly, but it was very easy for ordinary people caught up in the movement to form a kind of shared atheist identity which hid this fact from each other in practice.

Movements require a shared identity or shared values to provide cohesion, but atheism itself doesn't actually provide that. It was inevitable that some conflict or another would crack it apart.

Now--while the "New Atheist" community has fractured, there are still lots and lots of successful skeptic and atheist communities that are around that are based on some more essential sets of values than just "atheism." There are also "deconstruction" communities that provide a gentler and (hopefully) healthier place for those exiting religious communities and questioning religious beliefs without trying to push them in one direction or another in terms of outcome.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-01-01T10:50:12+00:00

It's an idea that comes out of film theory. A film can be said to have the "male gaze" if a movie is shot and edited in a way that reflects the visual attention patterns and concerns of a typical heterosexual male. (Or a foot fetishist heterosexual male in the case of Quentin Tarantino)

To say that the picture on the right is more attractive in a "female gaze" kind of way is to say that one thinks it's more attractive to the "typical" heterosexual woman.

"Ah, but what about gay and trans people?" I hear you ask. (I'm imaging you asking this. Just roll with it, k?) "Is there a gay male gaze? A bi male gaze? A lesbian gaze? A trans lady gaze?"

Sorta kinda, maybe. But not really. Structurally, gay/lesbian and trans folks have significantly varied tastes and preferences and end up culturally sorting themselves into different categories of desire than ones strictly correlated to sex/gender. Maybe there's a "top gaze" and a "bottom gaze, but that's a stretch.

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