Transumer – rent your possessions

July 2nd, 2009

This is kinda scary. She spends between $500 and $800 a month on rental designer bags, because she doesn’t want to own them. I read a book, by a guy whose name I can’t think of right now, with short stories, some set in a future where you didn’t own anything – you just leased better or worse stuff. It sounded like a top-down enforced society to enslave people to their debt…. but now it seems like we’ll be doing it to ourselves.

C’est la vie!

i twat these on 2009-07-01

July 1st, 2009

i twat these on 2009-06-30

June 30th, 2009

Questions about #Sotomayor?

June 30th, 2009

Discrimination case raises questions for Sotomayor. This is regarding the white firefighter discrimination case. What they’re kinda glossing over is the fact that it was a 5-4 decision. That means 4/5ths of the Supreme Court *did* agree with her, so it’s not really and open and shut case. It’s not like because the Supreme Court reversed her decision that her decision was a bad, fallacious decision. It’s just the white male, scrambling at straws to try to preserve his patriarchal dominance.

Artificial sweeteners? More like artificial sickeners

June 29th, 2009

My mother, as some may know, has eaten her way to Diabetes 2.0 (okay, Type II). She still keeps the candy around (50 years of bad habits pretty hard to break), but has switched to some diabetic candy and healthy doses of the artificial sweeteners to cut her cravings. But will this really help? One of the hallmarks of Type 2 is being overweight.

Well, you say, eating artificial sweeteners won’t make you tip those scales even more! She should be well on her way to recovery.

If only artificial sweeteners weren’t empty nutrition. If only they could reduce your hunger pangs… but they don’t. They give your tongue some sweet, but that’s all their chemical composition does. They are nutritionally devoid. However, they do give your tongue some sweet, sending signals to your body that you’re about to receive the big fat dose of the sugar your dopaminergic system needs to feel happy. Your brain gears up for this. But doesn’t get it.

In fact, some studies show they may do the opposite. The latest research on sugar substitutes has led some researchers to believe that consuming products that contain artificial sweeteners may actually encourage you to eat more servings than you would if the food or drinks were sweetened with real sugar. Animal studies have revealed behaviors that suggest sugar substitutes may interfere with the body’s natural ability to count calories based on a food’s sweetness. When this calorie-counting ability is skewed, you may consume excess calories.

Of course, they have to say “may.” Two reasons: One, everyone is different, some people eat nothing but steak for 3 meals a day and have the vascular system of an Olympian (while most people would die of either a heart attack or colon cancer if they survived long enough to not die of heart attack). Two, our country’s nutritional system is SO fucked up that we can’t make any health claims about things in a concrete manner, or someone will be suing you over defamation or “making people not want to give us more money,” which is the real cause behind most US litigation. Unless, of course, you’ve made processed food and can account for every chemical that went into it. Then you can apply a label making nutritional claims, the likes of which you can’t slap on a tomato or broccoli. To wit:

Commercially available sugar substitutes products have been clinically tested and deemed safe for consumption for most, but not all, people. They may even be helpful for people on special diets. However, a federal stamp of safety does not indicate that something is your healthiest option, especially when it comes to nutrition.

Luckily, that is still first amendment protected speech. No, back onto the topic of artificial sweeteners. I like the taste of artificially sweetened drinks while they’re in my mouth. The aftermath, however, brings immediate regret to my sensorium. It tastes like a freshly chewed ecstasy tablet, or those pills you were afraid to swallow when you were young, so they crushed them up into ice cream to “hide the taste” and now you have a life-long abhorrence of the remembered aftertaste of vanilla pill-ice-cream. Seriously, how badly do you need that soda or tea to taste sweet to want to put up with that industrial waste effluent aftertaste?

I used to joke that it tasted like cancer. Now, to me, it tastes like the sad artifice of what passes for American culture.

And for some reason, I really really want to misspell “sweeteners” as “sweeters.” Don’t ask my why.

Two paragraphs that tell you why my mother will still be sadly heading to an early grave:

Artificial sweeteners may make it easy to overdo it because you might think “no sugar” means “low-calorie.” However, many artificially sweetened foods still contain fat and calories. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t count on simply substituting fake sugar for the real stuff to help you shed pounds. Instead, focus on controlling calorie intake and exercising regularly.

You may need to work harder to get needed nurtrients
It’s normal to crave sweets. Humans naturally have an appetite for sugary things. However, if the foods you typically reach for are candy and cookies, even if they are sugar-free, you’re getting mostly empty calories and few, if any, beneficial nutrients. By filling your menu with sugar-free versions of muffins, ice cream, or desserts, you may still be getting too many calories and not enough vital nutrients.

Exercising regularly. My mom’s favorite t-shirt says “Eat right. Exercise. Die anyway.” She’s shunned vital nutrients her whole life, and lately for her exercise has been getting out of bed. Neighbors have tried to get her walking with them, but after a day or two she just gives up.

I’ve tried to help her. But she pushes people away, intentionally or sub-consciously. I fear it is too late, 50 years of stubborn taught to her by the king of stubborn, her dad. Who also had Type 2. He, of course, had it for 20 or 30 years before he switched to sugar-free candies and stuff (his heart attack at age 59 was 3-packs a day induced, not diabetic). He didn’t eat too much overtly sugary food while I was growing up (he raised me) but he did loves him some ice cream. He went to an early grave at 86 (well, comparatively – most of his siblings reached 92; the other 89 and smoked 81 of those years. Literally 81 of those years, he started at age 8.) due to various cancers, so when I say my mom is going to an early grave, I’m hoping 70s or early 80s. As whatever as she’s been over the years, I still don’t want to see her suffer and die young, because I wouldn’t have been raised by such great people without her. Those same people gave her some helluva genes – if she didn’t fight so hard against those with her nihilistic urges for self destruction, she could easily hit 100.

She always complained that if you lived long with exercise and health food and all that, you’d wind up old, sad, weak and in adult diapers. Turns out that her way ended her up old, sad, weak and in adult diapers (only bladder incontinence) before age 50.

You can’t change someone else, you can only change yourself.

World news minute

June 29th, 2009

Bernie Madoff sentenced to 150 years in jail for 50 billion in theft. If only the taxpayer money that was stolen under the aegis of ‘bailouts’ could get the theives punished so. Only they were “trying to save the economy” when they defrauded taxpayers so it’s okay.

Honduras experiences a coup d’etat. This time, we didn’t do anything. The term “Banana Republic” was coined from our interference in Honduras’ politics and history.

Republicans continue to harrumph about Sotomayor, while fucking Latin American chicks on the side, as usual. In a blow to Sotomayor, the mostly while male Supreme Court of America overturned her decision and claim that white firefighters were discriminated against because of race… by other white men running the city. And that’s the Supreme Court decision. This cannot be contravened except by a future supreme court. All that discrimination that folk fought against in the early part of the 20th century has been re-institutionalized by white fear of “reverse discrimination.” Probably the best P.R. coup of the 21st century.

Lateral wind

June 28th, 2009

What an amazing sound. It’ll be a while before electronics can emulate that.

Yesterday #Jackson, Today #Husalah

June 27th, 2009

Wow, how quickly the internet forgets. Michael Jackson’s already down to #11 in Google trends, and today some rapper named Husalah who maybe got shanked in prison today is 3 of the top 10. And probably a hoax. Every fauxblog and spamtrap has picked it up and repeated it.

I just wait for the day that hip hop and rap culture catches up enough that it’s stars peacefully overdose instead of end violently at the business end of some high-impact metal. But they’re just trying to cope the only way they know how, the way culture has been lined up, peddled down to the masses, violence glorified and aggression rewarded.

i twat these on 2009-06-27

June 27th, 2009
  • (vietnamese style) coffee taking so long to brew, may have to walk to store and buy Red Bull to tide me over. #
  • @rorynyc lol I'm shocked it wasn't CNN playing the "Lost" footage in reply to rorynyc #
  • @happymrlocust I'm honestly shocked they didn't cryofreeze Jackson the second he stopped breathing. You know, to futurama him at a later day in reply to happymrlocust #
  • @rstevens Pi is a ratio, not a number. ^.^ in reply to rstevens #
  • 60 years ago the first machine heart was placed in a human, this year the first machine with a human heart was born…. http://is.gd/1fDLb #

Lung in a jar? Nope, heart in a box!

June 26th, 2009

A little while back, the technology appeared to keep a lung alive up to 12 hours for transplantation, while allowing for repairative surgery to be performed to restore unsuitable lungs to transplantation-ready status.

Well, now they’ve got a heart beating in a box.

They appear to actually get better on their own while in the machine. They are working on systems for other organs.

This is one very concrete stop on the road towards the merger of man and machine.

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