A brief guide to the absurd, circular logic of people who don’t want to deal with homelessness.

The Global Drug Survey wants to understand how the world uses drugs, and help them do so in the safest possible way.

Despite fifteen years of scandal and investigations, it’s still not clear that Trump’s CIA Director learned the right lessons.

Need to run some “Beautiful Butts” on your TV in the background? Roku has some screensavers for you.

Streaming games is here and very real, but Google’s Stadia is launching without much to play and without much beyond “Hey, isn’t this neat?

Buying tickets on Ticketmaster continues to be a complete disaster for everyone who doesn’t make a living buying tickets.

A woman who says she was Jeffrey Epstein’s “sex slave” says she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York when she was 17. He tried to clear his name with a BBC interview, and it did not go well.

The deepest roots of Memphis music are in the Black church. The record label Bible & Tire is tapping a new generation of musicians, and an old one, to give the music new life.

Tonika Johnson opens up about her acclaimed Folded Map Project, growing up in Chicago, and her plans for 2020.

Mascots are safe to love in an era when nothing is. Gritty and Phang, Philly’s newest mascots, exemplify why.

I’ve written before how as human beings, if you serve it to us, we will eat it, with examples from medical conferences, medical resident events, and dietetic conferences, and published recently in JAMA Internal Medicine is it’s corollary, if you don’t serve it, we won’t eat it, or at least we’ll eat it less.

The paper, Association of a Workplace Sales Ban on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages With Employee Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Health explores what happened to sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption in the 10 months after the University of California at San Francisco banned their sale from campus and medical centre venues (including in their cafeterias, vending machines and retail outlets). People were of course still free to bring whatever beverages they wanted to work or school. Specifically researchers were interested in the impact the sales ban would have on those with heavy SSB intake (defined as a pre-intervention consumption of more than 12 fl oz daily for the prior 3 months).

For two months prior to the intervention, they canvassed for heavy intake participants, and once the SSB sales ban was enacted, half were randomly assigned to receive a 15 minute motivational intervention targeting SSB reduction, half were not, and 10 months later, all of their intakes were again explored.

The findings weren’t particularly surprising. When SSBs aren’t sold, fewer are consumed.

How much fewer?

Half as much overall, with those receiving the brief motivational intervention seeing their consumption decrease by roughly 75%, and those who didn’t by 25% (though it should be noted, especially among those who received the motivational intervention, social desirability bias may have influenced their self-reported consumption reductions).

Bottom line though, it certainly stands to reason that if you don’t serve or sell it, we won’t eat or drink it, or at the very least, we’ll eat or drink much less of it, and so as far as public health interventions go, likely wiser to reduce access to hyperpalatable and indulgent fare rather than simply encouraging people to just eat less of them.

       

Related Stories

• New Systematic Review Concludes No One Will Ever Successfully Maintain Their Lost Weight. Or Does It?
• “Severe” Energy Restriction Better For Weight Loss Than “Moderate” Energy Restriction?
• The Journal of Nutrition Describes Gut Bacteria Prevotella Abundance As “The Key To Successful Weight Loss” Following Short Study Where Subjects With No Prevotella Lost Comparable Amount Of Weight

 

Read time: 4 mins

Read time: 12 mins

Read time: 7 mins

Read time: 4 mins

Read time: 8 mins

It’s what life’s all about. Seeing old people holding hands is a symbol of a lifelong companionship full of knowing glances, inside smiles, and warm feelings in waiting hearts. As you watch them mosey down the boardwalk during the sunset you can’t help see the connection of two hands that helped shape the world. Those […]

The post #371 Old people holding hands appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Blake Flayton, in The New York Times, on his experiences being a young, gay, left-wing Jew, and how University’s progressive spaces are for non-Jews only.

Jane Coaston, in Vox, on the “Groyper Army” and the war over college campus conservatism

Yair Rosenberg, in Tablet, on whether Bernie Sanders is the man to fix antisemitism and the left?

Photo By Lorie Shaull – https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/30924024642/, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

       

Related Stories

• Saturday Stories: Mary Cain, Fatal Powerpoint, And Echo Chambers
• Saturday Stories: Bad Nutrition Advice, Nell Scovell, And The Memo Method Of Fitness
• Saturday Stories: Meat, Diets, and German Antisemitism

 

Beluga Whale playing some rugby pic.twitter.com/OhRINNfYoq

— Animal Life (@animalIife) November 9, 2019

Read time: 9 mins

Read time: 5 mins

Umbrella karma is when you lose your umbrella somewhere but then randomly find another one somewhere else. Whoops, left your rainshade in the restaurant? No worries, there’s an extra one in your front closet from last week’s party. Shoot, did you leave yours at the back of the bus? Well don’t worry because there’s six […]

The post #372 Umbrella Karma appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Read time: 7 mins

In August, a team of cavers set up camp on this karst plateau in West Kootenay, B.C. to investigate a series of cave entrances, the largest of which they called Jawdrop, pictured. (Photo: Douglas Noblet)

It all started with a simple question: is t…

Also known as the M&M Encore. AWESOME! Photo from: here — Subscribe to my newsletter to receive articles on intentional living —

The post #373 When you think you’re all out of candy but find one more left in the pack appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Read time: 5 mins

Those of you calling for Stephen Miller to be fired by the White House because he has been revealed (again) to be a white supremacist do not understand that’s the reason why he was hired.

— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) November 12, 2019

Employers favor men not because they are prejudiced against women, but because they have the perception that men perform better on average at certain tasks. https://t.co/RRcBSRCQfA

— Quartz (@qz) November 12, 2019

There’s something bizarre about the way some people define “racism” (and sexism, and homophobia, etc, but I’ll just use “racism” as a shorthand to mean all of these things.)

We’re all going down. People, it’s sad but it’s true: nothing’s gonna stop your big final drop. So live it up now, live it up large, because at the end of the day you aren’t really in charge. Look, we’re not spinning, gninnips, spinning on this wet rock for long, so let’s all enjoy singing […]

The post #374 Laughter at a funeral appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Read time: 4 mins

From the Journal I Can’t Believe This Ever Got Published (ok, in this case from Obesity Reviews) comes The challenge of keeping it off, a descriptive systematic review of high-quality, follow-up studies of obesity treatments.

The paper apparently is meant to be a counterpoint to other systematic reviews of long term weight loss where,

“conclusions are generally positive and give the impression that weight loss interventions work and that weight loss can be maintained“

Well we can’t have that now can we?

It appears these authors sure couldn’t because here are the criteria they used in selecting papers for their systematic review that concluded long term weight loss is impossible:

1. Studies must have follow up periods of at least 3 years
2. Patients must not have had any continued interventions during the follow up period
3. Medications approved for weight management aren’t allowed

So what they ended up with were 8 studies of varied protocols being administered temporarily for a chronic medical condition. But guess what, chronic medical conditions require ongoing treatment, and what happens when you actually provide it? Well you get studies that would spoil the impossible narrative as noted by the authors of this paper,

“several of the non-included studies report a majority of participants achieving satisfactory weight loss and little regain, especially among studies with continued interventions during the follow-up period.”

Imagine that! Appropriately treating a chronic medical condition with continued interventions works!

And this notwithstanding the fact that many (most? all?) of those studies that provided ongoing interventions likely did not include the appropriate prescription of medications to either help with losses or to prevent regain (just as we would with any other chronic condition) because weight loss medications are almost always excluded from use in weight loss diet studies. Which is odd by the way. Consider hypertension for instance. Sure some people might be able to resolve theirs by way of such things as lower sodium diets, increased exercise, and weight loss, but there’s zero doubt that patients with hypertension will receive regular ongoing follow up visits with their physicians, and where appropriate, will be prescribed medications to help. Why? Because that’s how chronic condition are managed! Which is why we’ll never see a systematic review of hypertension treatments demonstrating that brief lifestyle counselling and the explicit exclusion of medications didn’t lead to lower blood pressure 3 years later.

Leaving me to wonder, why publish a paper with the literal conclusion,

“that the majority of high-quality follow-up treatment studies of individuals with obesity are not successful in maintaining weight loss over time“

when really all your systematic review (of just 8 papers all with different dietary/lifestyle interventions) has proven is that delimited, lifestyle counselling doesn’t miraculously cure a chronic medical problem, and where you admit in your paper that the appropriate provision of ongoing care might well in fact lead to sustained treatment benefits?

But I don’t really need to wonder. Because the only reason that this paper was conceived and published is because of weight bias, whereby obesity has different rules applied to it, in this case, the notion that unlike so many other chronic medical conditions that are impacted strongly by lifestyle changes (eg. hypertension, type 2 diabetes, GERD, heart disease, COPD, gout, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, kidney stones, and many more) people believe that for obesity some brief counselling should be enough to do the job, because that in turn plays into the trope of obesity being a disease of willpower and a deficiency of personal responsibility.

(Thanks to Dr. Andrew Dickson for sending my way)

Thanks to your generosity I’m over 2/3s of the way to my $3,000 Movember fundraising goal. While I’ll never monetize this blog, this is my annual fundraiser and if you find value here, consider a donation! Remember, every dollar counts, it’s tax deductible, and you can give anonymously! To donate, simply click here

       

Related Stories

• “Severe” Energy Restriction Better For Weight Loss Than “Moderate” Energy Restriction?
• The Journal of Nutrition Describes Gut Bacteria Prevotella Abundance As “The Key To Successful Weight Loss” Following Short Study Where Subjects With No Prevotella Lost Comparable Amount Of Weight
• Real World Self-Selected Intermittent Fasting (IF) Vs. Continuous Energy Restriction (CER) Study Sees 73% of IF and 61% of CER Participants Not Lasting Even 6 Months

 

“missed me, you big stripy fuck”

📹: https://t.co/Rq7dW7lgS9 pic.twitter.com/wHvXQwmTiR

— Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) November 10, 2019

Finding out someone shares a birthday with you feels like stars aligning, hearts criss-crossing, and lives twisting and tangling together. If they share your actual year it’s even more special because you grew up sharing moments and memories and histories and horoscopes, too. Libra to Libra, Pisces to Pisces, you break it down around town […]

The post #375 Realizing someone has the exact same birthday as you appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

A map of spots around the world making positive change to reduce plastic waste. (Map: Chris Brackley/Can Geo)

In conjuction with Canadian Geographic’s 10,000 Changes program, this map was created to showcase developments and policy changes related to plastic reduction and waste happening around the world. We’ve highlighted locations engaged in initiatives that are reducing or eliminating single-use plastics, developing plastic alternatives and reducing plastic use in the long-term. Click on a location to learn more.

Know a spot we should add to this map? Tell us here.

Your brain is a machine. Yes, that soft and squishy lump is bursting with colors and pictures and people and places and smells and sights and sounds. Your brain knows things it hasn’t even told you yet. Sometimes it surprises you with forgotten flickers, crystal-clear connections, or moments of sparkling intensity. Lightning bolts zap, connections […]

The post #376 Realizing you still remember all the words to that song you haven’t heard in years appeared first on 1000 Awesome Things.

Chief Petty Officer Margaret Louise Byam — my mother.  I have often wondered now why she did it, but she died before I thought to ask her.  A small-town Prairie girl, the youngest of four daughters, she joined the Wrens during World War…

Read time: 6 mins

Mary Cain, in the New York Times, tells her story of the intersection of abuse and elite sport.

Jamie, in McDreeamie Musings, on the Powerpoint slide that killed 7 people.

C Thi Nguyen, in Aeon, on the dangers of echo chambers

And if you haven’t had a chance to donate yet to my lipterpillar, and you find some value or enjoyment from this blog, please consider and remember, every dollar counts. So far this year the generosity of friends and family have helped to raise $1,640. Movember is a tax deductible charity and you can give anonymously if you’d prefer. And of course, as I’ve mentioned, Movember funds multiple men’s health initiatives including mental health, suicide, body image, eating disorders, substance use disorders, & testicular cancer. To donate, simply click here

       

Related Stories

• Saturday Stories: Bad Nutrition Advice, Nell Scovell, And The Memo Method Of Fitness
• Saturday Stories: Meat, Diets, and German Antisemitism
• Saturday Stories: Altmetrics, Abuse, And Alan (Dershowitz) #TIMESUPHC

 

Read time: 12 mins

Read time: 6 mins