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Cake day: September 2nd, 2023

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  • Chlorine washing doesn’t kill off all pathogens, it only suppresses them so that they no longer show up in standard tests. In other words, chlorine washing conceals the presence of pathogens.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/13/science-on-safety-of-chlorinated-chicken-misunderstood "But the academics point to research published last year which found washing food in bleach does not kill many of the pathogens that cause food poisoning. Instead, it sends them into a “viable but non-culturable state”, which means they are not picked up in standard tests, which take a sample of the food and try to culture any germs on it.

    The presence of the pathogens is thus masked by the bleach, but they are still dangerous to human health.

    Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at Sussex University and co-author of the briefing, told the Guardian lives would be at stake if food based on these lower standards were sold in the UK. “I am satisfied [by the evidence] that US food poisoning cases are significantly higher than in the UK. A minority of people suffer fatal complications,” he said. “There will certainly be fatalities, and they typically affect vulnerable people, such as infants, small children and the elderly.”"




  • That’s scorn + derision.

    The argument was never about the lady, the lady her plight is a story telling device to make this abstract problem more relatable, to make the story more compelling and to get empathy + sympathy from the audience. The same way I tried to use my grandmother’s experience as a story telling device to make you more empathic with people who are differently able than you. These kinds of people exist in every country, you may even know some without knowing it because it’s not exactly written on our faces what our cognitive capabilities are. They deserve our sympathy and help if they want it, but to be scornful towards them is bad imo. I really don’t like victim blaming.

    What I’m trying to say is: Keep an open mind, don’t let your prejudices determine your opinions about people, grow some empathy and try to be sympathetic with people’s situations. Scorn is never the right answer.



  • What this data also tells you is there is not a single country where 100% of people know how to cook, there will be people like that lady in every country. Some countries will have more as a percentage of the population, others less. Even Poland will have some. Those people deserve empathy, not scorn.

    What this data also shows is that going out to eat is unlikely to be the reason for not being able to cook. People in western Europe and especially Spain/Portugal/Italy go out to eat very regularly, often daily, yet these countries rank higher on the cooking map than eastern Europe where people eat out less. That part of your reasoning, is again based on prejudice.

    Prejudice, lack of empathy, scorn, I realize that these are negative terms and that you will find them offensive when applied to you, but … they are the correct terms. Your reasoning is based on prejudice. Your attitude towards that woman was scornful. You show a lack of empathy with people who are not like you.


  • That lady is 1 person, there’s no indication that she’s representative of the USA population as a whole. To see 1 person and then assume that everyone else in her country must be like her, is a very stupid generalization. Your opinion is based on prejudice, not reason. So far you’ve shown a tendency for victim blaming, a lack of empathy towards individuals that are left behind & prejudice towards all US Americans. Should I assume from that that all Poles lack empathy, and are full of prejudices about other people? Of course not, because you’re only 1 person and therefore too small a sample size to make a sweeping generalization like that.




  • NATO is such a big threat to Russia, that as soon as Finland had joined NATO, Russia moved it’s troops away from that area. Russia’s problem with NATO is not that it sees a defensive alliance like NATO as a threat, the problem for them is that they can’t bully and invade NATO countries should they feel like it. Which is also why all the formerly occupied countries that are next to Russia, want to join NATO. Who doesn’t want their country to be safe from invasion by a fascist state? Tankies apparently.







  • Maybe that the government reactions don’t engage with the anger, is what makes those reactions worthy of inclusion? Actually, scratch that, whether or not those reactions do or don’t acknowledge the anger is irrelevant to whether or not they should be included. Those reactions are relevant to the article because they inform us of what the other involved parties are doing.

    In this article those reactions at the end do not fit in with the main story of the angry people, because they don’t acknowledge that anger. I’d call them tone-deaf reactions, but a journalist isn’t allowed to write that (except in opinion pieces), so the journalist can only give those tone-deaf reactions as they were (+ provide some context about them, which I appreciated). That the anger of those people was so far only responded to with tone-deaf reactions, makes those tone-deaf reactions very relevant to the anger of the people.


  • Not unfocused at all imo. The article says that Hong Kong would traditionally hold an open inquiry in cases like this and then goes on to explain why that is probably not going to happen for this disaster (hint: authoritarians don’t like open enquiries). And then at the end of the article there are some reactions from other more remotely involved parties + some context about those remarks. The end of an article is where those reactions are traditionally put and reactions from various parties are always going to be more varied in nature, but that doesn’t make them non topical or “unfocused”.


  • As a child I read Groosham Grange from Anthony Horowitz, and when I first heard a description of Harry Potter, I thought that they were describing that book from Horowitz. I can’t believe no one else noticed. But I also think that most people active in children’s literature will have an attitude of “anything that gets a child reading, is a good thing”, so they’re not that upset about poor quality being popular and they’d rather keep the positive vibe going.