drosophila

the production of highly processed foods

Source?

The US congressional research service thinks EU subsidies are more spread out among all types of crops, including fruits and vegetables, whereas US policy focuses more on grains, sugars, dairy, and oil seeds: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46811

That's not a direct subsidy of food processing of course, but the crops the US chooses to support ends up incentivizing it.

And this paper also makes it sound like subsidized crops in the US end up in processed foods: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2530901

So we were talking about supply, not consumption. But regardless, yes americans choose to eat processed foods more on average. So?

Cultural factors are a thing but I think they're used far too often to explain away trends at the population level and the effects of public policy.

The US has lower rates of food contamination from e.g. Salmonella or E coli, which I think is what that study is measuring. However, I think food in the EU generally has superior, better tasting, ingredients. There are two reasons I believe this to be the case. The first one probably has a smaller impact than the second.

The first reason that in the US an ingredient must be proven to be harmful before the FDA is allowed to ban it. In the EU an ingredient must be proven to be safe before it is allowed in commercial products.

The second reason is that while both the US and EU have farming subsidies, the way these subsidies are structured means that in the US they tend to incentivize the use of high fructose corn syrup and the production of highly processed foods while in the EU highly processed foods tend to be more expensive and "whole foods" tend to be cheaper.

As a result people in the EU tend to eat less processed food as a percentage of their caloric intake:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34647997/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8921104/

Where is the rest of the tree supposed to have gone

Sorry I took so long to reply

Anyway, yeah, like I said earlier I don't really have a problem with small dick jokes or the phrase as such. Like you said it doesn't really affect an underprivileged group, although I think in certain uses it definitely is toxically masculine.

I was replying to you not really because of that, but rather because I've seen the same reasoning, literally almost word for word as what you wrote in a few of your earlier comments, used to justify the use of slurs. Like I said I really wish teenaged me had been exposed to the point of view I've been trying to convey. Because of that it's a mode of thinking I really want to try to ward people away from, even if in this case it was used in regards to something fairly innocuous.

My thinking here doesn't have to do with being polite or individual instances of hurting individual feelings. It's really easy to fall into the trap of thinking on this case-by-case basis, but the world doesn't just consist of you and the one person who has a 0.001% chance of getting their feelings hurt by one interaction.

It has more to do with the fact that when you put toxic shit out into the world you are actively making it worse. For example, every time someone who's "not a racist" makes a biggoted joke actual biggots get a little bit more bold. And every time someone conflates being considerate of the implications of their actions with having a small penis toxic masculinity gets reinforced a little bit more.

It's like littering, no single person does much harm by themselves but the cumulative effect is pretty bad. So, I'm not trying to put you down or verbally joust you. I'm trying to make sure a place that I care about, --this community-- remains a pleasant place for everyone. And since we're both here, and we both dislike misogyny, we probably have pretty similar worldviews and we probably care about this place a similar amount. I hope that means we can work together instead of fighting.

To that end I want to say that I've tried to be polite and diplomatic. If I've come across as smug or something then I'm sorry. And I realize that the person that initially replied to you was a bit of an ass, but that's no reason to take it out on me.

If you just called them "a dick" maybe that would be comparable, as it stands it's more like calling someone "a fatass".

And if my comments are long it's less because I take umbrage with a specific phrase and more because I take umbrage with the idea that you can somehow dictate the implications of your speech based off of your intent. If you want to argue that the phrase "small dick energy" isn't a big deal then be my guest. I honestly don't think I would disagree, at the very least there's far worse things going on right now.

But when someone points out that something you said can have unfavorable interpretations thinking "wow how dare they try to psychoanalyze me over a single internet comment, they should know that's not what I meant" isn't a good attitude to have. Once something leaves your mouth (or the tips of your fingers) it exists independently of you, and it has all sorts of implications and effects whether you want it to or not, especially when you're talking to strangers. This is something I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self.

EDIT: it's true that sometimes people can go too far in grabbing the worst interpretation of something they can, running with it, and deciding the person needs to be punished for that. But this isn't an example of that.

The thing is that whether that guy was trying to "decode" you or not, a person's intentions don't determine the effect that their actions have. Furthermore, just because something is a commonly used phrase doesn't mean it's good.

If you didn't mean to bodyshame people in general, then that's great. You're probably a cool person. But if someone says "hey please stop punching those innocent people" you can't say "oh don't worry, it doesn't count because I was trying to hit someone else, I'm going to keep punching them and it still won't count".

The popups and auto play videos are just embedded directly into the page now.

US auto-domination isn't even the result of market forces though.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of laissez-faire policy or capitalism in general, but government funded highway lanes are no more capitalist than government funded rail tracks. The current situation in the US required enormous government intervention to establish, in the form of the forced seizure of property to make way for highways, hundreds of billions of dollars (inflation adjusted) to build those highways, mandatory parking minimums for new construction (to store all the cars from the highway), government subsidies for suburban style development and later on tax schemes that resulted in poorer inner city areas subsidizing wealthy suburbs, and zoning laws that made it illegal to build a business in a residential area (which worked together with anti-loitering laws to make it so that if you didn't live in a neighborhood you had no "legitimate" reason to be there. It's not a coincidence this happened in the wake of desegregation.)

Similarly fossil fuel production in the US actually receives direct government subsidies at the federal and sometimes state level (some of which have been in effect since 1916).

Now, we can get into the weeds and talk about how government action is actually a necessary part of capitalism and the intertwined nature of power structures and so on and so forth, but it's important to remember that there's nothing inevitable or natural about the mess we're in right now, as some would have you believe. It required conscious planning and choices, as well as tremendous effort and tremendous injustice to get here.

I don't know about the wine or cheese but I have to disagree with you on the bread thing.

There are people that make multigrain, wholegrain, sourdough, etc bread based on medieval recipes and while they're not wonderbread they're also not unrecognizable as bread to a modern person and they're not terrible either. There are even people who buy the grains and stone grind it themselves to make it more authentic.

The SSN system is one of the more moronic things the US does, which is really saying something.

Google image search says the picture came from this site which claims it's Tsimshian.