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soldehierro

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Believe me, the organic transition had nothing to do with agricultural practices and all to do with economics, with the logic being that fertilizer was an expensive import, and by banning fertilizer they could hemorrhage foreign exchange reserves a little less. Of course, they also earned a lot less because the bone-headed transition lead to a marked reduction in yield, only worsening the forex problem the ban of agricultural chemicals was meant to solve.

I really appreciate HN for providing a refreshingly healthy, intellectually stimulating forum for discussion. In fact, as someone who is decidedly outside the tech-space, I mainly come here for the articles and discussions that have nothing to do with technology. At the same time, I think HN prides itself on being different from the myopic hivemind typical of other social media outlets - anecdotally, this something that I haven't found to be entirely accurate. (See anything about STEM vs. non-STEM education, medicine or biotechnology for an example of what I'm talking about).

This is unfortunately the status quo of nutrition research; A long-term RCT is the "gold standard", but it is exceedingly difficult to recruit subjects and ensure their compliance over meaningful periods of time. Which is part of why constant flip-flopping about whether something is healthy or not is almost a trope in journalism. Nonetheless, a few principles have been well established: vegetables are good, fruit is (mostly) good, refined grains and free sugars are bad.

The issue with personal experiments is often that they are just as biased and cannot be conducted over meaningful time-scales. As an anecdote to illustrate this, I am significantly more productive and energetic when consuming a single sugary, chocolately coffee, but it would be foolish to conclude over such a short period of time that my personally ideal diet should include sugary coffee. I'm not deluded that this is a healthy practice, however; free sugars, fructose in particular, are demonstrably a major factor in the pathogenesis of lifestyle-related diseases.

I understand your gripe about inconsistent spelling, but what do you have against diacritics? Diacritics typically serve to make orthography more consistent in some matter, typically more phonetically consistent.

I've got to say, I'm shocked to see this piece chock-full of fallacious logic in the Guardian.

Is mother nature a psychopath? Why would she design foods to shorten the lifespan of the human race?

Mother nature isn't an anthropomorphic being and "she" doesn't design anything. There are plenty of poisons found in plants and animals.

“Base your meals around starchy carbohydrate foods” – another nugget of government “healthy eating” advice that is contradicted by robust science and well overdue for a rethink. In February the Pure study, which followed 148,858 participants in 21 countries over nine years was published. It concluded that: “High intake of refined grains was associated with higher risk of mortality and major cardiovascular disease events.”

Government authorities typically recommend against the consumption of refined grains. So, the author is actually citing evidence against this argument.

Fruit contains lots of sugar. A small banana has the equivalent of 5.7 teaspoons of sugar, whereas an egg contains none.

A cup of canola oil doesn't contain sugar either. This makes the mistake of conflating all simple mono and disaccharides as "sugars" without consideration of the context. A cola and a piece of fruit both contain sugar, true, but the fiber in fruit slows absorption and moderates spikes in blood sugar (this is why fruit juices are almost as bad as sodas). Dairy also contains sugar, which makes it even more strange that the author would target demonize the sugar in fruit but ignore it when praising dairy.

I could go on.

I'm not going to make the claim that this article is sponsored by some lobby, but it certainly reads that way.

Alternative Milks 5 years ago

There are plenty of vegans who don't regularly use meat substitutes. Imo, it seems like most of them are more directed to curious meat-eaters rather than vegans.

Not OP, but I don't think this is such an irrational point of view. We're already seeing the effects of climate change; it's no longer the looming danger in "the future", it's something we deal with today. It's not so much that we can't do anything to try, technically speaking, it's that we most likely won't, for two reasons in particular. Firstly, we're trading a short term loss for a long term benefit. At a societal level, organized around quarters, financial years and terms of office, this is a hard sell. It's quite literally evolution. Some people alive today will never see the benefit of combatting climate change, so why should they, in their rational self-interest, support any action against climate change? Secondly, climate change is a global problem that needs a global solution. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything unless everyone everywhere does something, but it is essentially the diplomatic equivalent to the prisoner's dilemma. No nation wants to make the hard sacrifices necessary alone, which would only put them at a severe disadvantage, possibly for no benefit at all. It's also something that can be infinitely postponed into the future until one day it's too late.

In summary, climate change is a human problem, not a technological one. Technology has changed a lot and continues to do so, but the fundamentals of human psychology haven't really changed. We know of the problem, we have the technology to solve it, to the extent that it can be solved, but not the will and coordination to do so. Yet what reason do we have to believe that this will change in the future?

Viruses aren't alive, and they certainly can't reproduce without host cells, so saying that they survive on their own doesn't seem like a terribly accurate statement. Trying to extend the metaphors of life "alive or dead, surviving" to viruses only generates misconceptions, instead "viable or inactivated" is a better way of looking at it.

You're seriously overthinking this. Descriptivism isn't some plot to twist our cherished language, it just describes the language as it is currently used by speakers.

If you're going to use Spanish keywords, atleast spell them correctly. Is it that hard to use "función" instead of "funcion".

Great Vowel Shift 5 years ago

In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spanish alternative is in WIDE use (but never prohibited, as can be evidenced by the sheer quantity of anglicisms in the Spanish language.)

Spanish is very willing to accept new words, and as diverse as English in terms of decentralization. Grammar doesn't make or break a lingua franca, number of speakers does, which is where English really shines.

So what does the RAE do you ask? They write grammars and compile dictionaries, describe phonology and answer people's questions on Twitter. Just like what Merriam Webster or Oxford would do, but the RAE has official backing and creates consensus among the hispanophone countries. English is a regulated language, just not officially regulated.