i’m the gila blood spilla witch killa

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Only the shortcut to the app was preinstalled on the build I put together a couple of months ago. When I tried to open it, it had to download and install first. Also, if you press Win+G to open the Game Bar and click the settings gear, under Notifications you can select “Hide notifications when I’m playing a fullscreen game”. Edit: or just turn off the Xbox app notifications if you don’t use it


  • I’m talking about the WHO’s recommendations in their capacity as an advisory body on public health following their analysis of IARC research, not the research itself. Many of the studies do make substantial corrections for the participant candidates. I don’t think that’s necessarily translated through to the recommendations, which should be given in the context of existing public health outcomes.

    The WHO agrees that two thirds of adults in countries like USA and Aus are overweight. They agree that obesity is an extreme risk factor for cancer. They agree that non-nutritive sweeteners confer at least a short term benefit to weight loss. They agree that the cancer risk associated with those products is comparatively insignificant. So they should be careful not to potentially mislead media and the the public about that specific causal relationship. It has directly resulted in the misleading headline of this post.



  • I didn’t, but I just found a few papers showing a relationship between awareness/use of nutrition claims/labels and obesity.

    https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-019-7622-3

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306919214001328?via%3Dihub

    That second one sums up my logic pretty well:

    The analysis revealed that people with excess weight display a high level of interest in nutrition claims, namely, short and immediately recognised messages. Conversely, obese individuals assign less importance to marketing attributes (price, brand, and flavour) compared with normal weight consumers.

    Generally people that engage with products marketed as “diet” options are more likely to be people that want to improve their diet. In turn those people are more likely to be overweight. And people that are not overweight are more likely to select based on other product attributes.

    Edit: The use of low-calorie sweeteners is associated with self-reported prior intent to lose weight in a representative sample of US adults - https://www.nature.com/articles/nutd20169

    In cross-sectional analyses, the expected relation between higher BMI and LCS [low calorie sweetener] use was observed, after adjusting for smoking and sociodemographic variables. The relation was significant for the entire population and separately for men and women (see Table 1). The relation between obesity (BMI ⩾30 kg m−2) and LCS consumption was significant for LCS beverages, tabletop LCS and LCS foods (see Figure 1a). Individuals consuming two or more types of LCSs were more likely to be obese than individuals consuming none (42.7% vs 28.4%) and were more likely to have class III obesity (7.3% vs 4.2%).


  • My assumption isn’t completely absent of context. From the article: “The FDA reviewed the the same evidence as IARC in 2021 and identified significant flaws in the studies, the spokesperson said.”

    But that’s not really what I meant. The issue I have is about language and presentation of info, not research methodology. Most people aren’t going to read WHO’s ~100 pages of recommendations on aspartame. We get CNBC’s interpretation, and some clickbaity editor has left their stink on it.

    “WHO says soda sweetener aspartame safe, but may cause cancer in extreme doses” is both a more pertinent headline for countries in the west and from what I can tell, closer to being in alignment with what the WHO are actually saying.


  • Of the basis WHO is using here, most if not all longterm studies (the kind you’d want for assessing things like cancer risk) are based on observational evidence. That is, a study where the participants typically aren’t asked to do anything they don’t already normally do. For this topic, that means generally speaking the participants are going to be people that already normally drink low calorie sweetened beverages.

    It doesn’t really seem like they’re accounting for the fact that this means that the participant candidates are going to skew towards people that are overweight, which is like the 2nd highest risk factor for cancer generally.

    I can’t really make sense of their recommendation. The data required to recommend for or against just isn’t there. The totality of short term data is all very showing a very strong association between sweetened drinks and weight loss. Wish they’d just explain this stuff properly so we didn’t have to rely on the dumbass media to interpret advice meant for medical professionals


  • Maybe the situation just doesn’t call for use of a triggering word for the same reasons why swear words are less effective when used casually or arbitrarily in many situations. The meaning attached to the swear word is literally derived from the absence of its use in normal daily situations. In turn the use of the word alone is triggering for most that participate in this established convention - that’s the intended design for their use of the word. There’s plenty of forums where exclusively adults talk to eachother without swearing or where a blunt reference to SA would be weird.

    When conversation about these topics is warranted, the person tabling it might feel compelled not to trigger other participants and self-censor as a measure towards that outcome. This might not actually prevent victims of SA from being inherently triggered by any discussion on the topic, but it at least signals to them that the organisers of the discussion have considered / are sympathetic to their position, which may encourage their participation in a way that enhances the discussion.

    Personally I participate in communities where this topic comes up often and due to the established convention for the mode of discussion in that community, it sounds quite grating to me when someone uses the word rape, because I understand that convention and that it was established for the benefit of others (SA victims), not me.