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I keep hoping that we reach and pass Peak Woke, but I think we're still not there. Journalism (capital J) has been thoroughly damaged by it, as is evident in so many magazines, newspapers, sites, channels, etc. I'm optimistic that there will be a renaissance of objective Journalism, and eager for it to happen.
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Realistically it's a joint responsibility between the system and the individual. Culture and historical context have a huge role in how people behave, which is why one country can consist of mostly skinny healthy people and another unhealthy overweight people. It's not because the latter country's people are genetically predisposed to be irresponsible adults. You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's b…
So how is advocating for a system that removes all social pressures towards healthy lifestyles a fix or even improvement? You assume people are incapable of nuanced discussion, yet you appeal to a vague "it's complicated" approach that merely avoids the issues.
I'm advocating for BOTH systemic and personal responsibility. Why is that such a crazy stance?
You don't think that corn syrup subsidies and the diabetes industry play a role in US obesity?
Please explain why people from Japan and HK are skinny and healthy and those from Texas are less so, on average.
Some of their pieces on the blog site read completely like satire (unfortunately they are not), it baffles me how a sane person can write something like that https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/fat-is-not... tldr it's because the oppression
I was listening to NPR the other day and they had a piece about how the individual can do their part reducing carbon emissions by not eating so much meat. The interviewee went into the amount of resources that go into supporting a diet with meat vs a less-meaty diet and the point was pretty clear. The interviewer rounded off the piece by asking about racial disparities and how this will disproportionately affect non…
If the diet change includes a reduction of red or processed meats, switching to healthy non-meat foods would also improve the person's health and reduce their healthcare expenses in the long term.
The financial and health benefits of switching to healthy non-meat foods would reduce racial disparities, if people of color tend to eat a greater amount of meat, as the question implies.
Reposting my comment from the E.O. Wilson thread from a couple of weeks ago, "As a reader of the magazine for the past 35 years or so, Scientific American, the print publication, has devolved into what Popular Science was about 20 years ago. Sensationalist headlines, writing geared towards a much lower reading comprehension level and the introduction of politics and opinion in various articles. A sad state of affairs…
I definitely have been reading a lot more from alternative sources such as the ones you mentioned. I also would say that the democratization of journalism is really important today because of the politicization of so many institutions, including virtually all traditional media outlets like Scientific American. The threat to heterodox thinking isn’t especially new either - Quillette recently reposted an interview of E…
Yes and no. Yes, many of these formerly prestigious publications have declined. No, they no longer qualify for the honor of being called journalists.
Words matter. We have to stop rewarding bad behaviour.
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"Focusing on weight—or health behaviors—puts the burden on the individual, deflecting attention from the more pernicious problem: systemic injustice." Sounds like when I was a kid and said "the devil made me do it". Taking responsibility for our (in)actions is a necessary prerequisite for being an adult.
Realistically it's a joint responsibility between the system and the individual. Culture and historical context have a huge role in how people behave, which is why one country can consist of mostly skinny healthy people and another unhealthy overweight people. It's not because the latter country's people are genetically predisposed to be irresponsible adults. You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's b…
Plus "average" rates of health and illness conceal considerable heterogeneity - even among those in the same environment, so it's rarely all that illuminating in practice. External factors are important, but more important still is knowledge that the individual almost always has some power to alter their circumstances, or to leave to find a different and better one. And even if this were mostly false, believing otherwise helps make it true.
Reposting my comment from the E.O. Wilson thread from a couple of weeks ago, "As a reader of the magazine for the past 35 years or so, Scientific American, the print publication, has devolved into what Popular Science was about 20 years ago. Sensationalist headlines, writing geared towards a much lower reading comprehension level and the introduction of politics and opinion in various articles. A sad state of affairs…
Thanks for that list. I really miss the quality content that Scientific American had in their issue from the 70s and 80s.
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Realistically it's a joint responsibility between the system and the individual. Culture and historical context have a huge role in how people behave, which is why one country can consist of mostly skinny healthy people and another unhealthy overweight people. It's not because the latter country's people are genetically predisposed to be irresponsible adults. You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's b…
>You can't fully blame the system or the individual. It's both. Why must everything be a binary war nowadays? in societies with limited 'systems', obesity is a non-issue; so if that's the case then it stands to reason that it's the responsibility of the individual to try to disregard the temptations that the 'system' they're a member of places in front of them, no? This is further reinforced by the fact that heavily-…
Does this really sound even remotely plausible?
That's ignoring the very obvious practical issues that make poorer people more prone to obesity - extreme time poverty, exhaustion and stress, limited affordability of healthy food choices, limited physical access to healthy choices, time and money costs of exercise options, and so on.
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There has to be a downside to wokeness for it to peak and decline. For some employers, this is starting to happen as the downsides become apparent but for most who kneel at the altar of wokeness, it's almost all upside for them. Society as a whole turning against it or widespread violent blowback are probably the only things that could change this anytime soon. Doubt either happens, though sporadic violence already s…
For many employers wokeness is a legal requirement. If they don't make all the right noises suddenly they get sued for "hostile workplace environment" and have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars. This happened to Tesla a few months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t...
This sounds like plain racism, nothing to do with wokeness.