OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
Can you guess which words are from Tolkien's legendarium and which are drugs?
Protein Restriction In?
In the 1930s, Walter Kempner treated over 18,000 patients with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and renal failure by changing their diet. At the time, treatments for malignant hypertension were few, and those with the disease had a life expectancy of months. With Kempner's magic diet, many patients saw their conditions improved or reversed.
What was the magic diet?
- White rice
- Fruit
- Fruit juice
- Refined table sugar
- In some cases, vitamin supplements (A, D, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin)
And nothing else. The diet macros come out to about 4% to 5% protein (<20 g per day), 2% to 3% fat, and the rest was carbohydrates.
The diet was hard to follow. The alternative was death, and it was the 1930s, so Kempner famously whipped his patients to keep them on the diet (double blind study pending to see if whipping patients also improves renal function.)
But it worked. It fell out of fashion once people had literally any other option than eating rice and being whipped, but it kept many people alive who otherwise would have been dead. Kempner's studies also contributed to the body of work that Ancel Keys drew from when he declared Saturated Fat the enemy.
Cut to the Year of our Lord 2023.
Brad Marshal (pig farmer, French-trained chef, occasional Molecular Biologist,) has kicked off a craze in alternative nutrition. He has lost 14 lbs in 28 days by lowering his Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) to 8g or less a day. BCAAs are a group of protein that are especially high in muscle meat and low in gelatin.
Big deal, he cuts out a food group, eats less, loses weight, right?
He is eating "2800-3000 calories per day on average, some days more." Given his age, weight, and height, his Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) should be around 2,360. Yet, he claims to be eating more, and therefore his TDEE must be much higher if he is losing weight. If it's all water weight, then how is he depleting glycogen while eating 500g of carbs a day?
Another prominent case study and blogger is ExFatLoss, who has been tracking his weight and food intake for years. He has been running a series of diet experiments and has noticed that the more protein he restricts, the more weight he loses. He has also dived into the literature and discovered that protein restriction seems to improve metabolism in mice and human studies. The specific culprit is Isoleucine, which researchers are able to completely restrict in mice diets (less able to do so with humans without really intrusive studies.) When isoleucine goes down, fat stores go down and calories go up. Some mice are able to eat 80% more than controls and still lose weight.
This is Wellness Wednesday, not culture war, so I think I'll end the comment here.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
Evolutionary biology arguments might be convincing to you, they are not going to convince the majority of people. This might be better as a Wellness Wednesday thing.
I think maybe this article and this video interview from a mother who transitioned her child at a young age and regrets it, would at least help plant the seed of doubt.
Focusing on sex, reproduction, and medicalization for a five year old is probably not going to convince your friend. I don't think you should consider it your job to convince your friend. Offer the alternative view point, share someone else's experience, and then choose to either let it alone or destroy your friendship.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
25d ago
But Paul isn't talking about that. What Paul is referring to is specifically that having one's sins forgiven, covered, not counted against oneself suffices to make one blessed. The focus is not on how that is attained, but upon how the blessing (and, per verse 6 and verse 9, righteousness) consists in the forgiveness of sins.
Catholics believe in the forgiveness of sins. What are you arguing against?
The proposition that there will neither be sin nor attachment to sin in Heaven?
The proposition that at some point, (in this life or in the next) sinful people lose their attachment to sin through the graces of Jesus' death and Resurrection?
That this purification requires some assent of the sinner's will, some kind of cooperation with Jesus?
Can you go to Heaven without loving God and Neighbor?
Can you love God without keeping His commandments and repenting if you fail?
Can you keep God's commandments without doing good works?
Do good works happen automatically, or does the Christian need to accept Jesus's graces? In other words, can a Christian reject Jesus' graces and refuse to do good works?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
Yeah, I don't know why she thought the two month old would be interested in listening to her read... I think she has forgotten most of what it is like to have small kids. That thought gives me weird feelings. On the one hand, I know that one day most of my kids will be able to feed themselves breakfast and lunch, take their own baths, entertain themselves, and my role as a parent will be very different. I look forward to the role changing.
On the other hand, I want to be there for my kids when they have kids. If I forget what it's like, I will not be able to help as much. I'm already disappointed in Future Me's inevitable failure.
This was just the example that was easiest to convey. The most enraging thing was on a zoo trip. The zoo has a ski-lift-like ride where you can get a better view of the animals. My oldest, A, and second oldest, C, were tall enough to ride, but short enough that they needed a riding partner. My husband took C first, they got on the lift without a problem. I stayed with the younger two and the strollers.
My mom took A. While waiting for the chair lift to come up behind them, my mom kept trying to get A to look at me, yelling at me to take a photo, trying to get A to smile. The chair came behind them, my Mom sat on it easily, kept looking over my way trying to get me to photograph her. My daughter did not sit on the chair easily and was pushed forward. I kept shouting, "A! A!" helplessly behind three layers of steel gates and a long line. A ride attendant caught up and got my daughter on.
I was furious, muttered, "Stupid fucking woman cares more about photos than the life of her grandkid!" Mothers with young children heard me and glared. I was anxious, worried my daughter would fall off, pacing around until finally they came back around.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
8mo ago
The one thing that I'm fairly certain of is that existence cannot be simply explained by an infinite casual chain. Lets say there was an infinite line of people, each has their hands by their side. They all have the command that when the person to the left of them raises their hands, they will raise their hand. If no one has their hands raised, then no one ever will raise their hands. It doesn't matter if they're standing in a circle. It doesn't matter how many infinities of people there are.
(Edit: This doesn't mean that there can't be a infinite causal chain, just that by itself it doesn't answer the question at hand.)
The question of "why something, instead of nothing?" does not rely on the universe having a beginning. It begins with the attempt to explain the existence of a single thing, here and now, that has the potential to be many other things, and going on from there.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
In A Brave New World there is a comment about encouraging kids to play sexual games with each other as a normal part of schooling. Would you consider this grooming, even though the adults performing the encouragement are not the ones getting sexual pleasure? Would an adult standing over two five year olds, helping them get undressed, telling them where to put their hands on the other, be grooming?
I think most people regard any outside encouragement for kids to have more and riskier sex to be a Bad Thing, and the more severe and direct examples ought to be criminal. Absent any other criminal terminology, people use the word Grooming, regardless of who is getting sexual pleasure.
And yes, technically any adult helping any kid gain access to porn is grooming. Even the cool grandpa and the old fashioned magazines. It is illegal to show porn to minors. Do people forget this?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
If I wanted to bet that some variation of (refrigerated-room) temperature Super Conductors will be available in the next ten years, what would I invest in?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
I actually had 9th grade Geography/Literature and 10th grade Wold History/Literature taught in the same 'block.' We would alternate days between a History focus and a Literature focus, but both subjects were taught in the same timeslot with a concurrent lesson plan. For example, we learned about the beginnings of civilization while reading excerpts of Epic of Gilgamesh, covering Mesopotamia and the Hero's Journey at the same time. Then excerpts from Ramayana and Hindus valley. It was at a pretty broad level, the topics themselves are huge. But the literature helped provide color to the history.
It is true that to include more time for PE or other things, you need to make more time in the day. But this does not necessarily mean to change the requirements.
If your bubble is homeschool-adjacent, you will quickly notice families who claim that their kid is learning math, history, science, literature and language arts, completing the base curriculum of whatever mail-in program they have in 3-4 hours a day. Then they go on to learn new languages, go on field trips, garden, whatever.
I am not referring to homeschool programs that lack crucial skills. I'm talking about programs like Memoria Press, where kids are reading the Iliad and Odyssey by 8th grade, Algebra I by 8th grade (normal for when I was a kid, just showing they're not behind.)
How are parents able to be so efficient? They have a small classroom size of 1-7. They are able to give each kid 1:1 time, slowing down when the kid needs more help, breezing through topics that have already clicked.
If I were to change anything, I would decrease administration staff and increase the number of teachers, until classroom sizes were around 1:10. After kindergarten, students would be arranged in classes based off standardized test scores, where similarly scoring children are sent to the same classrooms.
K-5th graders already have a recess, and I believe that unstructured play is best at that age, so I would not do gym every day (but maybe have a gym instructor supervise recess and encourage kids to do more physical activities if it looks like they are avoiding them.)
PE sucks and I would rather have a requirement that kids join a sports team than go through a general PE class. To make it more feasible, some team's practices could take place during the school day, the normal fees would be waved, it's just part of school not something extra. If someone is unable to join a team there could be a general PE offering. I would prefer it to be more like an introduction to modern gym equipment - some weights, some treadmills, some yoga/aerobics. A class that teaches kids about something that exists in the outside world. Not a class of doge ball and running laps.
Alternatively, keep recess and make a teenage-sized jungle gym.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
11mo ago
According to your theory, what is the path from tasty calorie-dense food to a decrease in basal energy expenditure (BEE)?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
As a different perspective, avoiding fantasizing about things that would be bad to do in real life sounds like an aspect of virtue ethics. It is neurotic and unhealthy to focus on something that will never happen. Epicureans would focus on obtainable pleasures. Buddists would say that these desires cause suffering. And so forth.
I think @SubstantialFrivolity is arguing that there is a very real moral and psychological injury being done to the people engaged in making and consuming these AI Generated images. I don't know if they would extrapolate to porn in general, but I would.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
buying bed nets to prevent malaria
If you donate a bed net, it doesn't mean that your poor African is using the bed net to prevent malaria. Instead, they are being used to overfish, poisoning the water supply and possibly starving several communities in the long term.
Meanwhile, if I take care of an elderly neighbor I might not be saving lives or grand gestures like that, but I have a better idea of what they need and can avoid unintentionally hurting them and others.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
When a society does not have medically-assisted euthanasia, the implied goals of the society are to improve people's situations so that they don't want to kill themselves. The goal will not succeed for everyone. But there's less of a, "Don't like it? Then quit" attitude.
Countries with ubiquitous medically-assisted euthanasia seem to have determined that in a lot of situations people should just quit instead of receive support or help. For example in Canada people are being euthanized because they are disabled and are not receiving the financial support they need, or they are unable to see loved ones due to Covid precautions. Patients have recorded hospital staff pushing assisted-suicide against their express wishes.
These people might be making the rational best decision for themselves at the individual level, but society might be failing them overall. When society gives itself the out of, "They can always just kill themselves," there is less incentive for it to try to improve the lives of people with fixable, temporary problems.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
14d ago
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Total compensation for the highest paying job at a company cannot be higher than 50x the total compensation for the lowest paying job at a company.
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Mandatory conscription for two years after high school, no exceptions for college. The default is Army Corp of Engineers, who will be tasked with maintaining and expanding infrastructure across the US. The only exception is for married and pregnant women. Unmarried and pregnant women can defer until their youngest child is 2, married women who become pregnant get to skip entirely.
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All new HOAs and ROAs are now required to maintain a clubhouse on HOA property. This clubhouse should be able to safely hold 25% of residents and contain some sort of kids' play equipment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
24d ago
But because I do not think that we will meet the standard of God's law in this life
I think you are correct for many, if not most Christians. But I also genuinely believe that many of the saints were able to completely cease all inclination to sin in this life. And I believe that for the the rest it happens during Purgation after death.
We do not enter heaven by loving God and our neighbor
100% agreed here, we can only enter heaven by Jesus's sacrifice.
When a sin is forgiven it is forgiven because God forgives it. God does not count the sin on you, yes. Jesus has told visionaries that He can't even remember the sins they've confessed. (Obviously a bit of a metaphor, as God knows everything.)
I think the radical thing Catholics believe, that you disagree with, is that the forgiveness of sins is not itself sufficient for Heaven. (The forgiveness of sins means that a Christian is going to Heaven, but it doesn't mean by itself that the Christian is ready for Heaven.) In order for Heaven to not be a tyranny, the people in it need to have willingly let go of attachments to sin as well. We lose this attachment in this life, little by little, by willfully forming the habit of conforming to God's will. And if there is any attachment to sin left over at the moment of death, it needs to be removed by the cooperation of God and the sinner. (Put out of your head any specific idea of a place of Purgatory. I'm referencing just the idea of purgation, whether that's an instantaneous change or a difficult trial.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3mo ago
If this becomes a nationwide thing, for people who want to avoid databases for privacy concerns, it could get a lot harder than just grabbing ProtonVPN and going to town. Maybe it would be adopted internationally and you'd HAVE to sign up for the database. Having such a hurdle to something that is arguably a free speech issue would be frightening.
Porn is not protected under free speech in the United States. Something that "appeals to the prurient interest" is only protected to the extent it has "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." (See Miller and Ashcroft.) "Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated... [and] representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals" are all restrictable without violating the first amendment (according to case law.) Maybe we will see a change to this after these cases are brought up to the Supreme Court. But for now, there is no First Amendment barrier to restricting access to this content.
In fact, it is already federally illegal to send a minor pornographic content over the internet. This is very rarely enforced, but it is the reason why there are those 18+ checkboxes on all your favorite websites.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
It's just RSV season, and my kids seem really prone to complications from it for whatever reason.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
The Slime Mold guys are up to it again - this time asking people to drink large amounts of potassium chloride.. My OB thought it sounded harmless so I'm drinking about 1/8 tsp - 1/4 tsp of potassium chloride a day, though I'm not signing up for the trial as I'm pretty sure they don't want pregnant women in there. I do feel a little more energetic, we will see if that lasts or if it's just a placebo. The normal markers to assess health changes are lost to me, but I'm measuring my underbust to see if that changes over time. As a pregnant woman I am in a position where I am getting my blood pressure, heart rate, and blood samples taken regularly, so at least I'll know quickly if something isn't going well.
If potassium supplementation works, I don't know how they are going to work out their confirmation bias that it's obviously lithium causing obesity. My own assumptions regarding the obesity epidemic are that either 1) our soil is deficient in some nutrient and our body keeps telling us to eat food until we get enough or 2) it's seed oils. Potassium supplementation obviously addresses the first, for the second I wonder if potassium has an effect on ROS or oxidative stress.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1yr ago
How is that a pertinent argument?
You are the one who brought up a grandpa showing pornography to minors as if it was something socially accepted and reasonable.
"Harmful to minor" laws prohibit showing obscenity to minors. Because it is considered harmful in and of itself. Showing pornography to minors normalizes sexual behaviors and is often used in the process of grooming.
Child advocacy groups consider showing pornography to minors as sexual abuse itself.
If someone shows a minor porn and is arrested and accused of grooming, how do they prove that they had no intention of sexually abusing the minor (when the action itself is considered sexual abuse)? Outside of education, which the law allows for, showing porn to minors will be considered grooming behavior.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
11d ago
When I was a teenager I found a community of fanfic writers who I adored. They had their own shared canon and one of them was a Powerhouse of writing. Spitting out chapters longer than some books, filled with classical and pop-culture references, philosophical musings, good-vs-evil clashes, tense heroism, etc.
I would check their bio pages every day. Eventually they got a forum and I lurked there too. I watched them talk amongst each other and I wanted so badly to be their friend. A couple of problems:
They were clearly adults, and I very much was not. My parents forbade me from reading fanfiction. Obviously I ignored this directive, but I wasn't able to make an account because my parents also managed my email address.
But it would not be an exaggeration to state that this group of fanfic writers had a strong impact on my outlook today. These fanfics formed me the same way the Aeneid formed generations before me.
And more than that, I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to be their friend so badly. They were the coolest people ever.
By the time I was an adult and could sign up for an account, they had slowed down publishing. I re-read the corpus of work, commented on chapters, joined the forum, but I was an interloper, an outsider. I never could explain to them just how much they meant to me. I tried not to be weird, but I think I was probably very weird from their perspective.
Around the time I created an account, fewer chapters were published. Eventually it was all gone. No more posts on the forum, no more chapters published. They all knew each other outside the forum. Maybe they moved to discord.
Ten years later, I still have dreams where I find them, they welcome my presence, and we become online BFFs.
My husband thinks it's not weird that I had a fandom interest that defined my adolescence, but the damaging part was that I thought I could be one of them. The biggest Star Trek fan never harbored delusions that they would one day be friends with Gene Roddenberry, but through the magic of the Internet and semi-public spaces I had a sense of intimacy with these people who had no idea I existed. To some extent the Internet is mostly lurkers and I am certainly not the only kid who lurked on their forum.
I think people call this a Parasocial relationship, and it is one of the dangers of the Internet that was never explained to me as a kid. I knew not to share my real name or address. I knew not to talk with strangers. I didn't know not to lurk and pine for a friendship I would never form.
I think I came out of it mostly unscathed except for the occasional twinge of sadness or embarrassment.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4mo ago
Eh, Cornell is ok. Do you know what Cornell Engineering students and MIT students have in common?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
Please show me where all the orphanages are hiding in the US. But yes, I would assume that the further you get away from the "Biological mother and father raised me" the further you would get from the ideal childhood. I'm not sure what point you think you are making.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
5mo ago
This highlights the difference between a deontological vs consequential framework. Using an inverse categorical imperative, I have a hard time pin pointing exactly what actions Israel has done that I would forbid everywhere and that would have changed the outcome. I admit that in total the actions of the Israelis has caused grief in the region. I don't see a way out without an atrocity on the part of Israel or Hamas. Several of Israel's individual actions are bad, but the substantive, broad strokes actions that created the bulk of the mess seem ethical to me.
Regardless of what Jews called their organization (at a time when "Colonialism" was an acceptable activity, and therefore calling it that might have been propaganda to make their actions appealing to Euopeans), the majority of Jews came as refugees. They had a real, genuine, rational fear for their lives in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. They don't have anywhere they could conceivably go back to. Jews have always lived on "other people's land."
Let's play alternative Earth. Groups of Indigenous people in South America are under severe persecution by their governments. Simultaneously, the Native American lobby in the USA is able to convince the Federal Government to fast track immigration for these persecuted refugees. Both refugees and locals buy large swaths of Wyoming over several dozen years through legal and fair transactions. Several thousand white Americans lost their homes and were evicted as their landlords sold their houses out from under them, but they were able to move to other parts of Wyoming or the US. These people were upset and anti-Native American sentiment increased.
Gradually the number of South American refugees outnumber the local Wyoming Native American population 10:1, and achieve parity with the white Wyoming population. The local Wyoming Native American population mostly does not mind, and is happy to bond with the newcomers over shared history and goals.
Fifty years later, the US Federal Government decides Manifest Destiny was a bad thing with terrible consequences. Therefore, they are reducing their territory to just the original 13 States. Every other state is going to need to self-govern. They want to do this with the least amount of bloodshed, and the case of Wyoming poses a problem. The Federal Government is aware that the white population of Wyoming hates the natives, and left to their own devices without US Marshals keeping the peace, a massacre will likely happen. Therefore, the Federal Government performs one last act, splitting up Wyoming into two seperate States. The Native Americans agree to the deal, the Whites attack the Native Americans once the Federal Government exits. Astoundingly, Native Americans win, and even take over more territory than was allocated to them by the Federal Government.
Which parts of this process would you object to? Which specific action would you universally outlaw?
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
11mo ago
A definitive list of Catholic Dogmas and their teaching weight has been made, yes. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott is the best at explaining the degrees of authority each teaching possesses. St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Moral Theology is likely the most thorough explication of Catholic Moral Theology. As Rev. Thomas Slater, S.J. put it, "Moral theology is still what St. Alphonsus left it."
Ott lists 6 grades of Theological Certainty, ranging from "immediately revealed truths... defined by a solemn judgement of faith (definition) of the Pope or a General Council" to "Tolerated Opinions." A solemn judgement of faith cannot be just what the Pope said last Tuesday, or even something put in an instructional document like the Catechism. (The current Catechism of the Catholic Church has many topics with various degrees of authoritativeness, and explicitly states that the degree of authority pertains to the documents outside of the Catechism in which they are defined. Addition to the Catechism does not increase magisterial authority.)
The Church has not U turned on capital punishment, which is infallibly considered not intrinsically immoral. The current Pope skirting heresy does not change the fact that capital punishment is good in a lot of situations. The Pope could even be a full blown heretic and that would still not pose a problem for the Church. What he cannot do is declare he's changing prior dogmatic teaching using his authority as the Pope.
In the case of capital punishment, Pope Francis is clearly making a prudential judgement, which is still binding on Catholics as my first comment shows. Prudentially, in most countries today, is is possible to protect society without killing murders. Much of the benefits to the murderer from killing them are gone as well - in a non-Catholic society it is unlikely that a murderer will repent, go to confession, face the hangman, and go on his way to Heaven. Instead, keeping the murderer alive for longer gives him the best chance at repentance. Prudentially, there is a good argument to not practice Capital Punishment. And as I said above, the Pope doesn't even need a good argument to make Catholics do something under obedience. He could outlaw the color pink arbitrarily.
"Do not murder" in the Bible has always been consistent with God commanding the Israelites to practice capital punishment one book over. There is no ambiguity or conflict there. If you are interested in a more thorough explication of Catholic teaching on Capital Punishment, I recommend, "By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment." (You should be able to pirate it, there's nothing about copyright in Alphonsus' Moral Theology, so it's totally morally fine.) (Also copyright would probably be considered unnatural, like usury, and therefore prohibitions on it are unjust.)
Honestly that reminds me. I owe a debt to Pope Francis for his ambiguous statements on Capital Punishment. It is much, much easier to talk about how Church teaching hasn't changed in regards to Capital Punishment than it is to talk about how Church Teaching hasn't changed in regards to Usury, which used to be the go-to zinger.
What do you propose happens to the 61% Israelis who are Jews ethnically cleansed from other Middle Eastern nations in the past 100 years? Where do they go back to?
French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.
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