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Healthy food is absolutely not a luxury item. I’ll accept the argument that the time to prepare healthy food is a luxury, but in almost every corner of the US you will find basic ingredients (eg rice, beans, carrots, celery, corn, potatoes, pasta) are way less expensive than the pre-prepared slop in boxes in the middle aisles of the store. People are addicted to that sugary shit and actively choose it
You just used addicted and choose it in the same sentence.
I don’t think those are mutually exclusive. However, it takes energy and willpower to make a choice that goes against the nature of the addiction.
Addiction means you have a strong impulse for it, but at the end of the day you’re still choosing.
That is not, at all, the meeting of addicted.
Addiction is the inability to stop doing something.
With the acknowledgement that addiction is a disease, what’s happening is a part of the brain cannot stop choosing to do something, for a variety of legitimate chemical and habitual reasons
“Cannot stop choosing”
Come on.
You choose to walk a direction, you choose to look out a window. Choice is a critical component of being human.
Addiction is the chemical overriding of the prioritization of choice.
"compulsively committed or helplessly drawn to a practice or habit or to something psychologically or physically habit-forming "
“People are addicted” and “actively choose it” are contradictory statements. Addiction is a disease, not a personal failing.
I’d only refute the "active"part.
You physically choose to locomote towards the counter to make the purchase, you physically choose to lift the cup to your mouth.
The problem is your own mind is working against you to make that physical choice seem absolutely mandatory, via the importance of chemical signaling
Agree it’s a disease, but it’s also a choice. You choose to buy a big gulp when you crave it.
That’s like saying losing chess against a grandmaster is a choice because you pick where the pieces go.
How is choosing to buy a sugared drink instead of water the same as playing a game of chess against a grandmaster? What exactly about it makes your analogy fit?
Here’s a few ways:
Information: does an individual know chess rules? Openings? En passant? Do they want to spend the time and effort to learn? Are they getting their info from reliable sources or are they learning bongcloud and knooks?
Difference in skill level: the food and diet industries have thousands of specialists on their side with experience in psychology, advertisement, economics, lobbying, etc. Grandmasters can set up traps that new like a good idea to their opponent while thinking 10 steps ahead.
Complexity: chess and diet are not a single choice, but a series of choices, some of which make later moves more difficult.
Effort: it takes a long time to learn enough to even put up a decent resistance to a grandmaster, let alone win. It’s more than I’d care to put in. I don’t want to think about chess all the time. That’s called a chessing disorder.
They still are choosing sugar?
I’m addicted to nicotine and I actively choose to hit my vape, for example.
almost every corner of the US you will find basic ingredients (eg rice, beans, carrots, celery, corn, potatoes, pasta) are way less expensive than the pre-prepared slop in boxes
Someone never heard about food deserts.
People are addicted to that sugary shit and actively choose it
Way to victim-blame both addicts and people with little to no healthy choices available.
However, a number of studies suggest that poor health in “food deserts” is primarily caused by differences in demand for healthy food, rather than differences in availability.
Low healthy food demand == choosing sugar
First of all, that’s one “devils advocate however” in an article full of information to the contrary.
Second of all, I’d be interested in seeing who funded those studies. Lobbying groups for different unhealthy foods as well as grocery stores looking for excuses to not cater to poor people often fund junk studies that say exactly what they want them to. Just like Big Tobacco did and political groups still do.
Third, addiction still ≠ choice and sugar is more addictive than most narcotics.
Just on your last point, sugar is not more addictive than narcotics. That’s complete bunk. Provide a primary source for that claim if you want to refute me, but all those headlines about that topic were sensational and were basically based on sugar lighting up the same part of the brain as narcotics, namely the pleasure areas. So we like them both, but that has no bearing on addictiveness.
I know about the uk but not USA. Food inequality is quite a big problem for low-income households.
(Millions of Britons live without a freezer or oven)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8976549/
(A large number of britons who dont own a car live over a mile from an outlet selling healthy food)
Etc
I was also reading an article about nutritional quality of food itself has been declining over the last 50 years. So to get the same nutritional amount, you need to eat more food period.
There’s also bigger systemic issues about food access that is driving people to “choose” it. Lack of time, cost, availability, transportation all factor in that are beyond a simple idea if a person having a pure choice between two equal (or even somewhat equal) options.
Many people in the US also live in food deserts where easy access to healthy food IS a luxuary due to simply not being able to buy it where they live or work.
“potatoes and rice and corn and pasta” HEALTHY INGREDIENTS
Maybe it’s a bit of both though. People still have free will. You can eat unhealthy shit and not become morbidly obese.
Free will is a lie we tell ourselves.
Is someone force-feeding you?
I was only commenting on the concept of free will. Doesn’t matter where you apply it, we’re all just following our programming.
Obviously, the program is incredibly complex, otherwise the illusion of free will wouldn’t be so easy to believe.
However, there are many examples where the programming becomes apparent.
The best example of this is a radio lab episode about a woman with transient global amnesia. Her memory reset every 90 seconds, and she kept repeating the same conversation over and over for hours. Like a program stuck in a loop.
Radiolab, Transient Global Amnesia - SoundCloud https://m.soundcloud.com/ssealy/radiolab-transient-global-amnesia
She couldn’t choose to say something else. Given the same input, she would repeat the same response every time. She didn’t have the ability to realize she had already said it, so she just kept looping.
Is that really the only scenario you can think of that limits your food choices?
It’s
“Hmmm this food that I have right now has a lot of calories, maybe I should change it or eat less of it”
VS
“ayyy lmao, it’s the big food industry leaving me no choice, imma destroy this fucking burger”
More like:
“I can spend a ton of executive function thinking about and preparing food in a way contrary to what the food industry and their advertisers, food engineers, psychologist, etc., try to get a person to do while having only a slight chance at losing weight if I’ve already gained it. I’ll probably do so by getting involved in the super scammy diet industry.”
Vs
“I don’t want to spend that much of my life thinking about, preparing, tracking food (maybe because I have an eating disorder/medical issue/mental health issues, maybe because it’s just not worth it to me)”
It’s also not just a choice, it’s dozens of choices every day, forever.
You’re way oversimplifying it. We’re not going to magically get better humans, so maybe changing the systems would be a better way to get results than relying on people and industry to change their behavior (which is obviously not working).
Even if you only have access to garbage food you can still limit your caloric intake. I eat fast food every day I work and I’m a healthy weight. It’s not difficult at all.
“It’s easy for me, therefore it’s easy for anybody.”
It’s simple math if you can’t do that idk what to tell you.
You dropped your tinfoil hat
I don’t wear tinfoil hats. What about not believing in free will means I’d wear a tinfoil hat?
Sounds like an excuse to me
Healthy food is very cheap.
Time to prepare and access may contribute, but the food itself is not a luxury item.
This little bit of news has been hitting the media circuit this week: [https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/study-snacks-pack-more-calories-than-meals-for-many-us-adults/ar-AA1lGv3y](Americans are eating a meal’s worth of calories in snack foods every day)
…the average American had between 400 and 500 calories worth of snacks a day, which is typically more than what they ate at breakfast. Even worse, the snacks usually carried little to no nutritional value
All food has gotten expensive due to inflation/greedflation, but (at least in my area) snacks, desserts, and some sugary drinks got hit especially hard. Except maybe for people living in food deserts, snacks are way more of a luxury good than “whole” foods are nowadays.
Why is it either or? I can see a world where computer enthusiasts tend to be a bit more physically inactive than the median
I think you have great points, but I also don’t want to absolve personal responsibility entirely. I think I saw Boogie for on the Financial Audit and spends $900 per month? There’s definitely food deserts and busy people with busy lives and bad education. Absolutely. I also find that healthier living was easier in the UK as grocery stores had ready-made meals easier to access with better options. However, I do think there’s also a component of personal accountability for those that know the right thing to do and choose not to.
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I don’t disagree with you, but one aspect I think people overlook is addiction. Food has become a cheap form of entertainment for people who don’t have time to actually do anything fun, and food has also been formulated to be as addictive as possible through both chemistry and psychological trickery.
No one wants to talk about this because it asks uncomfortable questions about free will.
Oh my god, Linux makes you fat.
Maybe they got super jacked?
Or getting old makes you fat
They did a bad job of getting more young people interested in Linux? Because you’re implying it’s the same people who attended both symposiums.
Linux is growing
This is good for Linux.
Is Linux growing up or out?
Earths Linux biomass is reaching sustainable levels, good.
The reality is probably that kernel developers don’t get any younger nowadays. And believe me, when you get older, have children and less free time, your waistline suffers a bit. Or even a bit more than a bit.
kernel developers
Fancy word for a tree
Man I used to think there was no relation between what I ate and my wardrobe size, but eventually it really does catch up with you, especially if your day job is sedentary.
It’s all the bloat in those distros that is transferred to the waistline, back in the day we used WindowMaker. Not all that fancy Gnome and KDE stuff.
This says nothing about how tall they are. I wear XL, for being 190cm and 95kg
I am definitely not qualified as being “fat”
Yes, statistics generally teaches to not worry excessively about outliers.
The larger shirts never give as much length as width so I always look for the tall ones.
So your suggestion is that there has been a marked and measurable increase in the average height of Linux users? That’s what you’re going with?
yes.
Bear in mind, in the us and UK, I’m a medium. In France I’m XL
according to BMI bodybuilders are morbidly obese lol
You have to be ~a top 1% individual for BMI to not work for you and that’s literally just what an outlier is lmaooo.
But maybe linux conference is being attended by bodybuilders? I want to believe 👽
I’m 6’4" 210. Considered overweight per BMI chart. I do not have dad bod.
Fit people with the obese designation as you say being a fluke is true. Because you have to be massive to hit that. I’d need to put on another 35 lbs to reach it. Which I’m not interested in. I just want to be healthy. Not swole.
So I agree with your point on obese range. The common criticism comes from there being many more people like me who hit the overweight range. But I don’t know anyone in my fitness pals group who cares after laughing it off the first time.
Fun fact: "6′4″ is well above average for a man, in the 98.9th percentile. ie only 1.1% of men are 6′4″ or taller in the US. " from a quick google search :p
But yeah I totally get your point. I’m a fitness guy myself but I just feel like people are too quick to dismiss BMI when for a dead easy and simple method it’s generally useful. I’d also hope that anybody who would be making decisions about BMI (went through med/PA or at least nursing school) would be able to think critically about the individual they’re evaluating too but that might be wishful thinking lol
A better estimation is waist to height ratio. If your waist is more than 50% of your height, you have an issue. It tracks a lot better with cardiovascular disease and diabetes risks than BMI.
Tall people are often calculated as being obese as well. BMI has me at 30.8 because I am 6’2" and weight 240lbs. I have a 34" waist however and constantly moving.
not me! woohoo. same XL then as now.
of course, back then when i was younger i favored oversized shirts. now they just fit.
Yea, you could only really buy band tshirts in XL back then as big and baggy was the style. Now it’s my actual size.
I’ve technically gone down from XL. Seems L often fit me better now. But I’ve not changed.
Seems like sizes have shifted higher. Only evidence I have for this are souvenir t-shirts from 20 years ago that say XL. Which are roughly same size as L shirts I’ve bought recently.
I’m xxl but I’m also built like a forklift. When I was younger I could throw rolls of vinyl flooring over my shoulder. I wish I took better care of my knees though.
I read “foreskin” first pass.
“Dude was built like a foreskin. Loose, and wrinkly.”
By now, Arch and Rust fans have probably corrected this 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
Linux Symposium Statistics - Sock Length
from twinks to hell yeah
“Mr. Chambers! Don’t get on that ship! That OS, it’s…it’s a COOKBOOK!”
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To be fair, I’m still a large in my old shirts but an xlt in new shirts. Not always us getting bigger, but the cuts getting smaller
They’re too busy ricing their WMs to get exercise
And as we all know, rice is all carbs!
I could imagine this to be mich similar to the 1999 one in 2023 again
The shirt supplier may also be a factor. An American/EU size M is like an Asian L or XL. So if they changed the supplier then that’s a possibility for the change.