good girl 🩷

yeah, but this is some tasty propaganda

here’s the study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725024346

all the co-authors are Chinese and the main author is associated with:

Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, School of Public Health, Institute of Nutrition, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200030, China

They don’t seem to disclose who funded the study, they claim the funders did not influence the design of the study, but then they also claim they did not have any specific grants from any public, private, non-profit, etc. sources.

The study just analyzes an existing data set, and all it does is show the same J-shaped curve that is commonly found with many things, e.g. the same thing they found in this study with coffee consumption is found with alcohol consumption:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2443580

Setting aside population risk, any clinician who has tried to counsel a patient about alcohol use has encountered the question: “But I thought a couple of drinks a night is good for my health?”

…

Three examples—alcohol consumption, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure—help elucidate the challenges posed by J-shaped curves. With respect to alcohol consumption, a meta-analysis of 34 prospective studies, pooling findings from more than 1 million individuals and almost 100 000 deaths, showed a J-shaped relationship between alcohol intake and total mortality.1 Consumption of up to 2 drinks per day in women and 4 drinks per day in men was associated with lower mortality than zero consumption, with about one-half drink per day associated with the lowest mortality risk.

BMI and blood pressure are more complex risk factors not solely based on consumption, as with alcohol. BMI is a simple, if imperfect, proxy for energy metabolism—and therefore the current standard for representing healthy weight. A prospective study of 1.46 million white adults demonstrated a J-shaped association between BMI and all-cause mortality after adjusting for potential confounders, including smoking and alcohol intake.2 All-cause mortality was generally lowest among those with BMI of 20.0 to 24.9 and higher on either side of that interval.

tl;dr it’s not that it’s healthy to drink a couple drinks a day, or to drink a few cups of coffee a day; it’s more like because the average person consumes that much alcohol or coffee, the data we have is skewed and the outliers who fully abstain or over-indulge also happen to have worse health outcomes

being average is what is being tracked here, not that moderate alcohol consumption actually improves health outcomes

this is like the finding that any running no matter the mileage or time spent running massively improves health outcomes - that’s based on correlation studies that found people who identify as runners tend to be more healthy (because being a runner is associated with people who have higher income, better access to healthcare, etc. - not because running an insignificant amount actually massively improves your health).

This is a science and medicine communication issue. The take-away is absolutely not that drinking 2 - 3 cups of coffee is better for your mental health.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032725024346

looking at the study, basically they just found the same J-shaped correlation as found with other drug use like alcohol consumption

that is, the minority who fully abstain from alcohol have increased mortality risk and the minority who engage in excessive drinking also see increased mortality risk, but the majority who engage in moderate alcohol consumption tend to have the lowest mortality risk

The same is found here with caffeine consumption: in the dataset they looked at, most people drink 2 - 3 cups of coffee per day, and there are minorities on either side who drink much less or abstain from coffee, and a minority on the other side who drink much more than 2 - 3 cups a day.

Because most people don’t suffer from mood disorders, the people who do suffer are over-represented on the margins and diluted by healthy people in the category of average consumption.

It’s unlikely that actually drinking 2 - 3 cups of coffee is responsible for the positive outcomes in mood (just like we could say drinking moderate amounts of alcohol are not likely responsible for improved mortality rates), instead it’s probably fair to say that the average, healthy person tends to be like everyone else and engages in socially acceptable, moderate drug use. Why they are healthy probably has less to do with their drug use and more to do with other factors like diet, exercise, economic status, access to healthcare, environmental factors (like not living in a heavily polluted place, like the way ghettos are built next to a major interstate, or rather how interstates are often built through the poorest neighborhoods), and so on.

I would think lowering stress would be maximized by just not taking stimulants 😅

saved you a click, the image is real:

The cemetery image, it turns out, is authentic. Researchers have cross referenced the photo of the site with satellite images that confirm its location, and it can be cross-referenced again with dozens more images taken of the same site from slightly different angles, and again with video footage – none of which experts say show signs of tampering or digital manipulation. The “factchecks” by Gemini and Grok are just one example of a tidal wave of AI-generated slop – hallucinated facts, nonsense analysis and faked images – that are engulfing coverage of the Iran war. Experts say it is wasting investigative time and risks atrocities being denied – as well as heralding alarming weaknesses as people increasingly rely on AI summaries for news and information.

The story is about how LLMs are unreliable at fact-checking, misleading people into thinking the image was fake.

the real question: where is the liberal equivalent of @Cowbee@lemmy.ml

Most people chose their name, sometimes choosing a name similar to their real name, sometimes choosing completely different names. The only time I saw someone assigned a name was when their name conflicted with another student’s.

I find opiates kinda boring tbh, and while they can be euphoric (sorta mixed for me) they can also make me feel sorta ill, so I don’t really like to take them.

When I was depressed, though, that was a dangerous drug because I had so little “happiness” and it felt like a special treat - so I could see it being very dangerous if I didn’t have other sources of happiness / mental well-being.

So glad you got that corner room and you had a good experience, that is such great luck and so heart-warming.

Also probably worth mentioning that recreational drug use of heroin is probably dosing more than the hospital is giving, if I had to guess - so stronger euphoria, but also stronger depressant effects, etc., so I’m not sure how accurate your hospital experience was to what recreational users are experiencing.

I kinda hate how quickly dilaudid fades, tho - but I have never had morphine to compare against, so 🤷‍♀️

but yeah, it’s annoying having to ask the nurse to administer another dose of dilaudid so frequently, I think I had to do it three times when waiting in post-op to be discharged, and even then it was only moderately helpful - maybe my doses were too low (I should go check the paperwork and see if I can figure out how much I took).

EDIT: I was given 0.5 mg each time, and I had to request another dose roughly once an hour (it was administered by IV) - so, I don’t know how that compares to your dose / experience … I think the max amount they would allow was 2 mg.

People tend to survive by working together - those with the capacity to form groups and cooperate will do best.

I forgot there was a movie; it’s such an excellent piece of literature it’s hard for me to imagine wanting to watch a movie adaptation. The book is gripping, really - it’s an easy read in that sense.

Either way, the perspective of the book is of a father and son who are essentially on their own. This is just not a realistic basis of long-term survival, especially not with hostile groups to contend with.

I’m not really sure it’s a matter of good or bad people - to be honest the same calculations about who to trust and when to cooperate or break with cooperation exist now, and forms a lot of the political dynamics you see today.

I also think this literature promotes too much a delusional sense of individualist survivalism - this is why I keep harping on the improbability of surviving a situation like in The Road. Go read about conflict zones in the third world and the way society breaks down. Usually gangs cooperate together and do whatever they want. You as an individual might find safety by joining a gang, but if that’s not an option, then escaping is your best bet. This is why conflicts create mass migrations. This is also why people in safe countries should probably be less cruel and more welcoming to immigrants.

I think the point is that you wouldn’t.

sorry by spa I was implying not a social club but a place like baths or an onsen where women might be naked in baths together; typically these spaces are sex / gender separated

I think the assumption in my question is that in the baths and locker rooms we assume the spaces are open and people do not have total privacy when in states of undress.

I think people often don’t seem to realize that sex-segregated bathrooms were a relatively recent invention, going back only a few hundred years: https://time.com/4337761/history-sex-segregated-bathrooms/

I do think the assumption that women will be attacked or sexually assaulted underlies at least some motivation (the TIME article above claims it is a view of women as weak and the public as dangerous - which generally fits that view). The fact that this reasoning was used to justify segregation in every aspect of public life, to the point of having separate train cars, and yet we saw that segregation go away nearly everywhere but bathrooms, it makes it seem like the claims about safety could have been overblown (or maybe more accurately: that segregation doesn’t necessarily protect as much as it claims). The TIME article argues that the only reason bathrooms are still segregated has more to do with the difficulty with changing codes and standards than anything like actual safety reasons.

OK, here’s another question: in the Middle East / Western Asia misogyny is quite a significant problem (that might be an understatement), and in northern Syria there was a women-only militia formed called the YPJ. The YPJ was formed as a group based on egalitarian, feminist ideology and has been praised for having improved the power and situation of women in that region.

It seems to me that segregation is sometimes used to oppress women, but sometimes segregation is also how women are able to carve out independence and push back against their oppression.

What do you make of this example of women who under extreme oppression were able to form a women-only militia which then increased the power of women in the region?

But my response to their claim is that, I am reasonable and I do have an issue with any group setting up places which discriminate based on gender. These safe places can form as a legitimate rudimentary form of protection, yes, but they maintain and often even promote sexism, and should all be challenged and turned into something better which serves the same purpose.

I’m curious whether you think you think this applies to, for example, a spa or locker room where people are in various states of undress and are separated into exclusive spaces based on gender?

They’re not the only person who thinks a PT Cruiser is poor taste …

oh, I’m dumb then, oops 😝

I think a Hummer would give me the ick faster; I feel like a PT Cruiser is ugly and poor taste, but I would at least find out if like they inherited the car or someone gifted them the car before nopeing out, whereas a Hummer wouldn’t probably get that level of benefit of the doubt, I would be looking for the quickest opportunity to nope.

I think I would also feel that way about Corvettes and certain other luxury cars. BMW is also a red flag. Lexus is borderline.

But yeah, I’m also not a typical person who actually went on dates or participated in much courting. At some point it was my goal to never have a romantic partner, and I see it as a fluke (even a failure) that someone found me anyway.

I’m a dirty liar

I do actually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_LaserJet_1020