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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • I guess the difference between the prohibition in the US and this bill, is that the alcohol prohibition banned it to everyone at once. People who were used to drinking or down right alcoholics had a strong incentive to obtain alcohol from somewhere, so there was a market for the underground moonshine producers. This bill isn’t targeting people who are already addicted to nicotine, but rather aims at preventing people developing the addiction in the first place, so I can imagine the market for underground tobacco growers or smugglers will be much smaller and less profitable. I am optimistic that this approach will be more successful than the 20s in America, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.



  • I come from Poland and yes, totally. When I started school, and missed lessons because I was sick or whatever, I could just take the phone book and find the surname of the classmate I wanted to get notes or homework from. If there were a few surnames on the list and I didn’t know their father (it was always the man of the house who was listed) first name, I could just go by who appeared to live closest to the school. Or just start calling all the numbers until I got the right one.








  • Me too, but there is one UK retailer (Co-operative) that makes it hard for you. They will have, say, a punnet of strawberries with 200g strawberries in it for £3.50 and another one with 300g for £4.50. The labels will say “unit price: £3.50/unit” or “£4.50/unit”. (No, really?) So you have to do your own maths. Luckily other markets are sensible enough to actually provide price per weight. And in Tesco, when a given product is cheaper for clubcard holders, it will even give price per weight twice, for both normal price and clubcard price.

    Btw. I don’t work for Tesco. I just needed to vent about Co-op being dicks; Tesco just serves as a good counter example of how this should be done, in case any Co-op executive is reading this.






  • Well, I kinda agree with you, but I also kinda don’t. On one hand, animals are animals, so one should either object to eating all or not object to eating any. And if one is going to make any distinctions, they should be for sentience, the ability to be miserable on a farm, and the ability to feel pain. But that means that even though you found yourself a moral foundation for objecting to dog eating while being ok with fish eating (and possibly bird eating), it’s still hypocritical to object to dog eating, but not cow or pig eating (or kangaroo eating in the Oz).

    On the other hand, there are things that do make dogs special. We started domesticating them about twice as long ago as we did pigs and cows. We were domesticating them for companionship, not meat, so the selection pressure favoured different traits in the domesticated wolves than it did in the domesticated auroch or boar. Which, for example, includes a special muscle that evolved in canis familiaris above its eyes to give it the ability of giving you that look that we humans can’t help but interpret as cute. Also, if I recall correctly, human and their pet dog gazing into each others eyes is the only documented instance of cross-spegific interaction that leads to the secretion of oxytocin in the brains of both gazers involved.

    All of this to say that, actually, I’m leaning towards the notion that there is something special about dogs, that cows and pigs don’t have.


  • I think the article is misleading. The studies don’t seem to show that SLS causes canker sores, but if you do suffer from them, it will exacerbate them or delay their healing. The article says “studies”, while only citing one study, that actually recruited patients who already suffered from the sores. A double blinded cross-over trial concluded that “The number of ulcers and episodes did not differ significantly between SLS-A, SLS-B, and SLS-free. Only duration of ulcers and mean pain score was significantly decreased during the period using SLS-free. Although SLS-free did not reduce the number of ulcers and episodes, it affected the ulcer-healing process and reduces pain in daily lives in patients with [canker sores].” Although I don’t have access to the full version, so I can’t view the details. By the way, SLS-A was an SLS-free toothpaste spiked with 1.5% SLS, and SLS-B was a commercially available toothpaste with 1.5% SLS in it already.

    You can tell that the article is trying to sensationalise something by such phrases as:

    • “But there’s no reason to accept a hazardous chemical in your toothpaste.” You know what else is in your toothpaste? Sodium fluoride. Which is lethal at high enough dose. It’s all about the concentration.

    • “It’s strong stuff — the cleaning solution I use on our garage floor is 50% SLS.” Well, yes, if you use it at concentrations ridiculously above the ones found in a toothpaste, of course it’s going to be “strong stuff”. You know what else is strong stuff? 100% acetic acid. Yet somehow, at 10% we happily consume it as vinegar. By the way, vinegar - great cleaning agent!

    Don’t get me wrong, if you’re sensitive to SLS, by all means avoid it. But I’m not a fan of articles that make blanket statements about a chemical that is mostly harmful in the concentration that it’s used in hygiene products. It’s another one of those “aspartame gives you cancer” (which it doesn’t by the way).