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Nicotine by itself is not carcinogenic, and at normal doses is well tolerated. It raises blood pressure and the chance of a heart attack, but it's probably not as bad for your heart as, say, vyvanse or adderall or other ADHD meds. It has positive effects on cognition, and may have other benefits. The fear mongering around vaping is bizarre to me, even vaping by teens. It's far less harmful than, say, drinking alcohol. It's incredible how successful advocates have been at transferring the stigma… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:36 PM on May 15, 2024

Having watched the Maggie Mae Fish video now, I can confidently say it's a bunch of bullshit. Sure the anti-vaping ads may not be effective. But the video continually conflates vaping and smoking as if they're the same thing, uniting them under the rubric of "nicotine use". They're not the same thing. It's absurd to claim they are. Nicotine is not what makes cigarettes bad for you.

Part of the problem with making effective anti-vaping ads is that you can't… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 1:17 PM on May 15, 2024

> That's debatable. The info under health effects here is awful. link

the health effects here are literally entirely “potential”, “under investigation” and “mixed results”. we know that nicotine has cardiovascular effects, although they’re not exactly dramatic. it’s all just fear mongering and frankly it’s done to keep up funding for anti smoking initiatives now that they’ve won and smoking is thoroughly disreputable and has basically no base of political support. who… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:30 AM on May 16, 2024

I think this ad would have played perfectly fine just 2 or 3 years ago. Nobody would have even thought twice about it. The intention is clear: everything someone needs to make art and music fits in this extremely thin device. Indeed, one of my main uses for my iPad lately is to plug my digital piano's midi into it and run state-of-the-art piano modelling software that sounds incredibly realistic (to me) and much more nuanced than the sample library in the digital piano. All that (and some damn… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:57 AM on May 10, 2024

> The image of thoughtlessly destroying one is alienating, almost like body horror.

as an elder millennial raised on grunge, i basically grew up dreaming about playing a killer set and then smashing my guitar to pieces on stage. let’s not be hyperbolic. smashing a guitar is not a sin against the world
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:31 AM on May 11, 2024

My father being one of those boomers who think the Beatles were the last great band, because he was 11 when Help! came out, and him generally being unable to consider anything else good (like you're the same age as david byrne but you couldn't even get into the talking heads?), and just generally having a bad relationship with him means I refuse, obstinately, to get stuck in the middle-high-school music rut. I revisit some of those albums from time to time, and they do have a certain nostalgic… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:28 AM on April 26, 2024

If we're listing newish music that an officially old person is listening to (me, on the knifes edge of 40) then I'm game. If you want to be as cool as I am, you might be listening to:

- Sundial by Noname
- Wet Leg (self-titled), this album fucking rocks
- Stumpworks by Dry Cleaning
- Mood Swings by Marcus King
- Negro Swan by Blood Orange
- Never Enough by Daniel Caesar
- Wide Awake! by Parquet… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 2:49 PM on April 26, 2024

> have you been to a goth club lately?

> Do...do they exist?

Last I heard the Senator and the Shoe Licker are still showing up to the Castle in Tampa, but then again Tampa is, strangely, a kind of Goth capital. You might think the central florida climate would be a goth repellant, but you have to account for the absolutely cursed vibes of growing up in Tampa. The sun might be shining but it only does that because it wants you dead.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:16 AM on May 3, 2024

Seinfeld has been on this bullshit for a while, and the weirdest thing about it to me is that Seinfeld's standup has basically never been "edgy" or "provocative" comedy. His best jokes are about like, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, how women love to use cotton balls but nobody knows what they're for. Nobody is protesting Seinfeld's routine because for violating the rules of political correctness.

My guess is he just has a lot of boomer comic… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 12:45 PM on April 30, 2024

I don't have any objection to coming up with new salad recipes but if it's a Caesar and you don't even use anchovies then I don't know what the world has come to. This is not that! Call it whatever you want. Call it a Pompey, call it a Mark Antony, call it Cleopatra, just don't call it a Caesar.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:57 AM on April 23, 2024

> Who puts anchovies into a salad whose original construction, never to be altered, didn't have anchovies in it.

My exhaustive research (one single google) reveals that the original recipe used Worcestershire sauce, which, and I'm requesting a drumroll for this, uses anchovies to achieve a deep umami flavor.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 4:04 PM on April 23, 2024

i had no idea that Dalton Wilcox was a real guy
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:25 PM on April 22, 2024

i am also procrastinating now. you know i thought that was some of the best ventroliquism i've ever seen but then she was singing at the same time as the puppet and so I guess it's just movie magic. charming movie magic
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 1:18 PM on April 12, 2024

it's pretty bonkers how the whole country was basically mesmerized by the trial. My teacher wheeled out a television for us to watch the verdict! In the 6th grade! I think she just didn't want to miss it. the whole thing was confusing, because while he was obviously guilty, i was already on my anti-cop bullshit by then and knew, just knew, that mark furhman was a dirty cop and a racist.

Anyway, I hope the Kardashians pay homage to the man who made them famous.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:25 AM on April 11, 2024

It's amazing we're beanplating the OJ simpson trial after all these years. It's true that one of the detectives (insanely!) took the blood to the scene. Whether or not they planted that evidence in the home, *Ron Goldman's blood was in Simpson's Bronco*, and as far as I know there is no basis to argue that the police planted or had a chance to plant evidence in the car.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 2:22 PM on April 11, 2024

stupid blathering. corporations have always been the primary mode of capitalist organization since the british east india company, and capitalist governments have always been arranged to their benefit. capitalists accumulate capital and corporations are the primary vehicle for this accumulation. if you think there’s some other mode of capitalism you’re dreaming
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:55 AM on April 11, 2024

In short, this corporatism – in all its iterations including the regulatory state and the patent war chest that maintains and enforces monopoly – is the core source of all the current despotism.

It obtained its first full trial run with the lockdowns of 2020, when tech companies and media joined in the ear-splitting propaganda campaigns to shelter in place, cancel holidays, and not visit grandma in the hospital and nursing home. It cheered as millions of small… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:05 AM on April 11, 2024

I'm still using my 2012 Transit of Venus glasses. :)

my eclipse glasses say to not use after 3 years. is that just litigation averse CYA disclaimer language or do they actually expire?
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:18 AM on April 8, 2024

i do think it’s important to learn that rich high status people aren’t actually having more fun than you can have with your no status dumb friends, a rack of old style and a fire pit on a summer night (add a guitar and a rope swing over a watering hole and now you’ve got a party). but you can’t turn the snobs into something they’re not, and there’s no high society without stuck up assholes
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:42 AM on April 5, 2024

conceptually I'm not against the idea. Some of these places even look nice. But it seems like a way to greenwash having a million+ dollar home in a gated community. The "farms" do not appear to be worked by the homeowners, which hey, many of these are 55+ communities, so not expecting our senior citizens to break their backs in the hot sun, but that just means migrant labor is holding up a boutique "farm to table" luxury experience. Like the AI generated images in the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:03 AM on April 2, 2024

I have not seen any "agrihoods" that are just about having community gardens worked by homeowners. They're typically more like this: Olivette, NC. A small scale commercial farm surrounded by expensive houses. As far as I can tell it's essentially a way of marketing real estate in rural areas the way you might invent a new neighborhood in manhattan to sell condos. These are the Hudson Yards of rural america.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:14 AM on April 2, 2024

this would have made a great episode of the larry sanders show (“endo?” artie, played by rip torn, would say, “in my day we smoked the hashish after the show!”)
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:19 AM on April 1, 2024

13,000 meals for 2 million starving people. it's eaten before it hits the ground. it's so puny it's worse than doing nothing
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:46 PM on March 24, 2024

> They've signaled over and over again that they will respect the authority of the UN! Epistemic closure has led a lot of otherwise sensible people to believe that Hamas is of course always lying, i guess?

It's pretty well accepted, if not outright admitted, that both the American and the Israeli position on the UN is that they will only respect the authority of the UN when it makes decisions in their own interests and the UN be damned if it decides against them, so… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 4:26 PM on March 26, 2024

i’m so exhausted from seeing weird smooth and too shiny ai art with fucked up fingers and francis bacon painting faces, just make it stop!!! i hate it!
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:14 PM on March 20, 2024

it’s an interesting list. not the list i would have made (at the very least replace Updike, a terrible hack, with John Cheever’s The Falconer) and there are some novels i’ve never seen on a list like this before that are now want to reads. also nuts to ignore Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America imo
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:00 AM on March 16, 2024

when whole foods sold raw milk i would buy it specifically for making yogurt, although part of the process there is cooking milk to 140F which is basically pasteurization. i did think that yogurt was better than any made from most other milks but that’s probably because the raw milk still has all the cream in it.

in general i wouldn’t be against the sale of raw milk except that the oppositional defiance disorder of conservatives means that because you warn them of the… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:20 AM on March 13, 2024

WaPo's feed is scanning the crowd -- every third person appears to be chewing Nicorette?


probably zyn, which has become a partisan bugaboo
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:24 PM on March 7, 2024

i have to say, everyone in that room is so OLD. they’re all ancient
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:25 PM on March 7, 2024

Holy geez, Mike Johnson gives me the creeps.

he’s doing jim halpern shit back there, i can’t stand him
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:36 PM on March 7, 2024

he’s doing pretty well, verbal tumbles aside, but this border bill is terrible, but not for the reasons that mtg is screaming. what we do to migrants is terrible and this would make that worse.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:09 PM on March 7, 2024

calling people illegal and then trying to get civil rights bona fides is cynical and gross
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:15 PM on March 7, 2024

> Biden farking nailed it. Left his critics, on both the left and right, nothing to work with.

His delivery was good, for an 80 year old. There’s still plenty to complain about from the left, starting with continued support for the ongoing genocide. He’s way off the mark there. The right will always have something to work with because they make their own material out of thin air
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 5:22 AM on March 8, 2024

polling clearly indicates that americans are (stupidly) anxious about immigration from latin america. it's a stupid concern. latin american migrants are a net positive for the country, and not just because i love taco trucks. we need the population growth, the labor inflow, the stimulus. They're on the whole great people we should welcome amongst us, and at a macro level, elder and peak millienials aren't having children (i'm not!), so the tax base is drying up, if we don't grow our population… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:01 PM on March 8, 2024

I think the ruling is pretty absurd, constitutionally.

Article ii, section 1, clause 2 gives the choice of presidental electors to the state entirely. It's up to the individual state entirely how and to who they decide to give their electoral votes. Effectively this means: the State has the power to determine its own manner for electing the president. A state could decide to use one of those ball thingies they use to choose lottery numbers. They could choose to allow… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:39 PM on March 4, 2024

hey could choose to allow only the States' 5 year olds vote.

Well, no. That would violate the 26th Amendment.

In general, a state that tried the other sort of ad absurdum approaches you mentioned would get into conflicts over equal protection, republican government, and other clauses. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment refers to the right to vote for electors for President, for example. "The Constitution" is a mix of precedents,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:24 AM on March 5, 2024

> When you're talking about people of the book, and especially the Fremen, who are explicitly descendants of Arab peoples

I don't know if they were arabs, exactly, but Dune takes places something like 10,000 years in the future, and the Fremen peoples came from the "Zensunni", a kind of syncretism between Sunni Islam and Buddhism
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:57 AM on February 28, 2024

> I don't know if they were arabs, exactly,

> It constantly astounds me when people deny the clear and very much conscious Arab

I just meant in the explicit mythology of the books, not the real world inspiration of the author. Although if he was inspired by the Berbers, Berbers are not Arabs.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 11:27 AM on February 28, 2024

Self-immolation is undoubtedly, at least for a Westerner, an act of despair. But despair can have many causes. We always say that despair is mental illness, but it's possible to be full of despair because the world is wrong, because of real horrors and terrible acts. I am filled with despair by the ongoing genocide, it definitely weighs on me, everyday. If I read about it, it weighs on my mind. If I decide to not stay up to date because it's too horrible and there's nothing I… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:34 AM on February 27, 2024

“you say it’s bad to kill children but have you considered that our enemies were once children”, incredible. this is the logic of holocaust, cold indifference and thirst for blood. it’s almost impossible for me to believe someone said that out loud, it’s so heinous
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:16 AM on February 13, 2024

it doesn't matter if khaled mashal says he will accept the existence of israel, and i don't care. there's no set of words or actions that could possibly justify israel's current actions either morally or legally. you're trying to justify genocide by sealioning, and should be ashamed.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:12 AM on February 13, 2024

> Looks like someone self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest (the second person in the US since Oct 7, to my knowledge)

What's going around twitter/bluesky is that it was an active duty member of the US Air Force, saying they refused to be complicit in the genocide of palestinians, which is not yet confirmed (there are some photos of a guy in fatigues but everything is fake these days so impossible to know yet) but it is completely unexpected if true
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 1:17 PM on February 25, 2024

> Is there a reason the vending machines need to know how old you are?

in all sincerity, if the vending machine is displaying ads, it's useful to be able to tell advertisers the demographic that will see the ads and how many people will see them. that's why you'd do it. but of course it sucks to have yet more ads being shown to me in more places, the vending machine itself already serving as an ad for whatever it sells.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 2:17 PM on February 24, 2024

> but the fact that they're there at all, and that they arise just from having watched millions of videos and still pictures, is so interesting that the dangers fade a little into the background.

the dangers are that the creative capacity of real people will atrophy and be supplanted by the generative power of computers which simply regurgitate past creative production in new arrangements, repetitive chimeras, lacking completely in originality or expression. and that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:11 AM on February 16, 2024

AI video is a scam

these claims that it’s “not generating video” seem kind of confused about what’s going on. it’s not using its powers of imagination to interpret a prompt and produce an original artwork based on this interpretation, that’s true. but it’s definitely using its massive corpus of video to create frankenstein’s monster versions by combining bits of other videos. i’m not really sure how the video generation works but if it’s anything… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 6:39 AM on February 17, 2024

the brazenness of this must be some kind of message, since navalny surely posed no threat to putin today if he ever did in the past, but it’s not really clear what the message. nobody serious has any doubt that putin regularly murders people who are in his way, so there’s nothing to prove there. maybe there’s no message to it. maybe he was just preoccupied and hadn’t got around to ordering it done
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:32 PM on February 16, 2024

i don’t think it’s emphasized enough how completely the “economic war” against russia has failed. their gdp is growing, they face no real obstacles to lng and oil exports and they seem to have had no problem sourcing the electronics and other materials needed to keep their war machines going. at the beginning of the war western boosters would not stop predicting the inevitable collapse of the russian military because they would run out of supplies due to sanctions and it’s clear that won’t… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:37 AM on February 11, 2024

> Meduza: Ukraine says large Russian landing ship destroyed in strike

it seems like ships are basically defenseless against drone attacks. slow moving, giant targets, no way to defend against cheap bombs that can fly low and fast (especially if they can send a few at once). they’re sitting ducks, which does not bode well for the american reliance on carrier groups. a few thousand bucks in consumer electronics and explosives and you can destroy billions of dollars in military hardware.
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 8:18 AM on February 14, 2024

we should be very proud of him

Nobody is asking anybody to feel anything? Sometimes news is just the news.

eh it’s definitely being spun as part of a narrative to counter biden’s historically low approval ratings and the worrying prospects he has for beating trump again. people are asking us to feel things
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 7:34 AM on February 4, 2024

i will say it’s nice to see the lincoln project’s little freak dan phillips getting shellacked here. a primary challenge from the right, of all things, is not something the democratic party or the country needs and hope people will start to see the lincoln project for the transparent political consultant grift it is. it’s gratifying to see the “maybe elon musk should have a cabinet position” guy has basically no constituency in the party
posted to MetaFilter by dis_integration at 9:28 AM on February 4, 2024