Streisand effect time. I would never known about the book if not for this bit of news, but now I see that my library has it in their catalog though it’s not yet available. Hold placed.

I agree, but cross-posting doesn’t seem to be allowed to actually_infuriating@lemmy.world .

Gerry who? Never heard of 'em.

I haven’t eaten “fast” “food” in basically forever. It’s been decades. Unless 2010-ish Subway counts, and that was only consumed b/c I was driving cross-country and one whole sub was a day’s eats that I could stash as-needed.

These prices blow my mind. I can’t believe that people are paying so much for so little, and for crappy fried heart-attack and diabetes fare too. I can eat for a day for the price of one of these “burgers” (or “meals” - just because there’s more than one item in the bag doesn’t make it a “meal” no matter how much the marketers use the term). For the price of a “quarter pounder” here, I can get at least three big cans of “chunky”-style soup, each of which is a meal in itself - all you need is a bowl and a microwave and a spoon and a few minutes to heat. For the price of that burger I can (and do) get 3-4 boxes of cereal at Walmart, each of which will, along with a little milk in a bowl, provide a week’s-worth of breakfasts.

Frozen veggies, basics from the Winco bulk aisles, a bit of dairy maybe, a little spice, and maybe a worn, curled recipe book you got from the used bookstore (or not, if you already have the intuition for cooking) and you can eat incredibly cheaply (and well, if you’re careful) in the US. No need to fill your body with expensive McShit just because the ads tell you to and justify your doing it. Everything changes if you’re already homeless of course, that’s gonna cost you, but just be aware that McEating is going to get you to that state of being all the sooner.

I think that people eating all this McShit and justifying it as some kind of necessity (“too busy shop and cook!”) are just addicted to sugar/fat/salt/industrial-chemicals and who demand “treats” of such things each and every goddamn day (vs maybe once every few weeks 40 yrs ago) because that’s what they “deserve”. I understand, a treat is all you can aspire to, you’re never going to buy a house or have a decent job, but blowing what little $ you have on ruining your health and mobility and sanity doesn’t seem to me like it’s going to help get more out of life. No more than a daily 12-pack of McBeer would, and for that you wouldn’t have to wait in line.

selection bias

He’s not doing a formal study that requires random sampling. This is his blog - opinions & thoughts.

He makes the claim that nothing is done about right-wing protesters

I’ve read the article and I don’t see him making this claim anywhere. The closest I can see to it is one of his opening sentences where he writes “actual terrorists (especially on the far right, and especially in the US) often remain unmolested by the law”.

One of his topics here is the disproportionate punishments handed out to left-wing protesters (esp. peaceful ones). He talks about what he calls “extrajudicial punishments” that don’t even require convictions to cause massive harm to the protester. The UK gov’t seems to be pioneering these techniques to dissuade and crush public left-wing protest, but if the techniques are successful it’s just a matter of time before they’re employed here in the US too.

Ragebait? I guess, but given that the topics are legitimately rage-inducing, that’s to be expected. While right-wing domestic terrorists in the US continue to ramp-up their threats, and acts, of violence against those they dislike (including insufficiently MAGA-loving elected officials and judges ), with very few of them being caught and punished (never mind having their terrorist networks broken-up), following the UK recipe, we have (source):

Protests against the proposed training center — dubbed “Cop City” by opponents — have been going on for more than two years. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr obtained a sweeping indictment in August, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to target the protesters and characterizing them as ”militant anarchists.”

Demonstrators and civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have condemned the indictment and accused Carr, a Republican, of levying heavy-handed charges to try to silence a movement that has galvanized environmentalists and anti-police protesters across the country.

You’re in the running for a BoneAppleTea Prize, so that’s something. There’s also the Nobel Prize but that’s overrated IMO. The real glory is with the Ig Nobel, you should consider submitting your work there.

Rouge: noun, A red or pink cosmetic for coloring the cheeks or lips.

You want that stuff all over the net? And just who is going to clean it all up when you’re done? The bot surely won’t - it’ll just claim that it hasn’t been trained on cleaning.

I think the controversial bit was that when queried about various aspects of admittance to “heaven”, the Google AI assumed that the question had to do with, specifically, the Christian idea of “heaven”, going so far as to make reference to some “Jesus” entity. Christianity doesn’t own the concept of heaven or an afterlife, but, apparently, the AI has been trained such that it responds to such questions from a seemingly Christian perspective. That was my take on it - the discussion is in the article, best have a look at it yourself.