domain:alexberenson.substack.com
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4m ago
I'd argue against bullet point 1, or at least ratchet it back a bit. I read Robert Lustig's book Metabolical and he is clearly wrong about a number of things. Sugar (sucrose, fructose, etc.) is obviously not great to eat constantly and vigilance and curating one's consumption of it can only help, but Lustig calls it a "toxin." It's not a toxin. Or, rather, it's not a toxin in small enough doses. I'd also flag "processed" food as overly vague. There are lots of meanings to the word processed and again just being processed doesn't necessarily make a food harmful to eat. Another point against Lustig (and I realize I'm the one mentioning him, not you, but he has been my most recent exposure to these same claims you're making) is he bangs the drum about "organic" food, a thing which always makes me immediately hold whoever's doing it suspect. Organic farms are arguably less sustainable than non-organic farms, and are not pesticide-free.. (Once again I realize you have not pushed organic food.)
I personally agree with your view on protein, as well as the importance of sleep and hydration.
TIRM
31m ago
very low entropy walls of text
You mean high entropy as in terrible signal to noise ratio?
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
1hr ago
The difference between a wife and a paid cook is that a cook won't tell you "fuck you, I ain't cooking a separate meal for you just because you've read another longevity shitbook"
2rafa
1hr ago
How is it surprising? People in this kind of Eastern European state can look honestly at the situation and compare the extraordinary increase in prosperity that Poland, Hungary and they themselves have seen in the EU orbit with the continuing shitholes for ordinary people that Belarus, pre-war Ukraine and even Russia itself to some extent are. It’s unclear whether Russia is ever going to reach Western European income levels (seems unlikely), while it’s pretty much guaranteed that Poland will very soon. Obviously there are relevant additional factors, but average people don’t consider most of those. I wouldn’t want to join or stay in the Russian orbit.
jeroboam
1hr ago
I'm not blaming you for needing to lose weight. I probably need to lose more weight than you do. But no diet is a silver bullet, especially if you don't intend to follow it forever.
For the record, I don't expect the Shangri-La diet to work. I just hope it does. If it does, I probably will follow it forever.
Exercise is also much less important; you can get anywhere by car, and most modern entertainment is available right from the comfort of your home.
This is a red herring, IMO. Activity is not the problem. In fact, it has been reported that Americans are MORE active than they were in the 1970s when things like yoga and jogging were virtually unheard of.
It's common knowledge that you get fit in the gym but you lose weight in the kitchen. I am above the 90th percentile for activity. I can run circles around most people my age. My resting heart rate is in the 40s. And I lift. But I am still over 20% body fat according to scans. If you're focused on activity, you're barking up the wrong tree.
2rafa
1hr ago
I think Texas has it right with the high property taxes. 2% or whatever it is a year forces average old people who suddenly find themselves with a house worth a few million to sell quickly and downsize, that money typically makes its way in part to children and grandchildren or is just spent, all of which are good.
New Jersey has high property taxes and is still a dump, but that may be just a consequence of proximity to NYC and an uncommonly high (for America) level of corruption rivalled only by Illinois and the Deep South.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I would suggest supplements are largely unproven and bordering on s snake oil, but you seem to know this. Without plunging into impossible goals there are always apps that will not only adjust any workout to your own level with incrementally increasing difficulty, and also make suggestions about what you should be eating. I'd also offer that the mindset of trying to supplement one's way to health and forego the hard work will very likely not produce satisfactory results.
Jiro
1hr ago
If a lot of people complain about Jews who eat Christian babies, it's fair for Jews to feel targeted even though they don't eat babies.
Whether someone is attacking the outgroup doesn't depend on whether they are accurately characterizing the outgroup. It can be simultaneously true that 1) southerners don't have the values that Confederate statues represent and 2) they copnsider attacks on the statues as attacks on themselves. They can figure out what's in the minds of the people attacking the statues, and that's all that's needed.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Your posts are great. They're too advanced for to interact with beyond upvoting or AAQCing, but I love reading them.
Jiro
1hr ago
You can't compare the cost of food in other countries and meaningfully say "the food prices are better there"--you're implicitly comparing them against your US salary. If food costs 1/x, but if you lived there you'd be making 1/x your salary, it's not really cheaper at all.
Jiro
1hr ago
People literally say "I am planting this bomb to fight for the oppressed". They don't say "I am planting this bomb to get cool uniforms". There's a big difference in how direct the connection is, even if both of them can be classified as increases in Bayseian probability.
aardvark2
1hr ago
offtopic: is there some alt history fiction where China or Japan colonize California before Europeans (maybe by sending their convicts there)?
ZRslashRIFLE
Lambency Studies Scholar👨🎓
1hr ago
Same. The number of intelligent and informed people who believe we're going to be dead in 15 years due to AI is very depressing. Not because I believe it but because I think they're completely deluded and I don't think I'm capable of breaking Yud's grip on their brains.
Hyperion
1hr ago
What do these dystopian sci-fi scenarios of yours have to do with modestly easing California's land use regulations? You constantly attack strawmen positions instead of actually arguing against the policies being proposed.
2rafa
1hr ago
Most of the US outside of NYC and some party cities like Miami and New Orleans (whose scenes are both very much an acquired taste) has terrible nightlife.
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
2hr ago
Sure. I stopped reading Zvi because his ratio of important information to naked doomposting has gotten too tiresome to parse but I try to keep up with AI happenings outside my degenerate bubble.
100ProofTollBooth
2hr ago
Whoops.
Link: https://www.natesilver.net/p/how-culture-trumps-economic-class
From the article:
In 2020, something unprecedented happened in recent American politics: Democrats won the wealthiest voters, or at least the wealthiest subgroup that the exit polls tracked that year (people making $100K or more). Among poorer voters, the story is more complicated. Biden did just a hair better with the white working-class than Clinton — not a lot better, but enough to get him over the finish line in the Upper Midwest — but considerably worse than her with Hispanics and slightly worse among Black voters.
Butlerian
Not robot-ist just don't like 'em
2hr ago
If we can not train an LLM to reliably avoid saying bad words, how can we expect it to reliably not vote for bad laws?
Adhering to anti-racist parlance is harder than making good law, because anti-racist parlance is a logically incoherent moving target of whatever Current Thing the progressive stack is mad about today, whereas "Thou Shalt Not Murder" is pretty consistent.
Skibboleth
2hr ago
I don't disagree - as I said in another subthread, the anti-housing consensus is bipartisan. Rationale is sometimes different (although sometimes that just a gloss on the same underlying motivations). At least in California, voting for the GOP isn't going to indicate a significantly different housing policy and the CA GOP has the usual array of conservative beliefs that make it a less than credible option for defection.
Butlerian
Not robot-ist just don't like 'em
2hr ago
Seems strange to me that labeling foreign funding for NGOs would be controversial and bad.
It's likely a "Who? Whom?" thing. If you're a Slovakian leftist and you notice that all the orgs you like and non of the orgs you hate are being shut down under this law, you may (reasonably?) conclude that the law was generated through 'rationalisation gerrymandering' by motivated rightists in order to hurt leftists with plausible deniability.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
Fact check "Young white men vote Trump": Mostly True
"For example, young White men supported President Trump by 6 points (51% vs 45%)"
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/election-week-2020#the-views-of-young-trump-voters
Though you're also correct in that young people vote Democrat and that young white men don't overwhelmingly vote Republican: Young White voters preferred Biden by 6 points (51% vs. 45%).
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
No argument there. But Reconstruction didn't actually work like it was supposed to, resulting in Jim Crow, and that sowed the seeds for lots of problems we're still dealing with. There's an argument that letting things slide helps keep the peace, but if people start noticing that one cohesive group has its wrongdoings ignored, and another group has even non-wrongdoings hammered mercilessly, that builds resentment.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
3hr ago
Isn't it whites that created the desirable accommodation and the jobs? The entire industries in question? The institutions that allow economic prosperity?
You're complaining that the people who developed the world economy, implemented free trade and organized mass migration aren't getting out of the way quickly enough, so you can reap more spoils from a presumably highly paid software job?
I have to admire your straightforwardness and consistency in this position.
Why olive oil? Why not use one of the flavorless oils used for frying?
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