π²πππππππ πΌπππ @ ChairmanMeow @programming.dev Posts 2Comments 1,272Joined 2 yr. ago
I think calling it a conspiracy theory is not entirely fair. It's a genuine scientific debate, hindered by the lack of proper evidence and studies that apply to the US.
Read https://www.statnews.com/2025/01/06/fluoride-iq-jama-pediatrics-critiques-meta-analysis/ for example, it highlights a recent meta-study that found a small, but non-negligible effect on neurodevelopment if people were ingesting fluoride. But a lot of studies it relies on have some asterisks attached. Those are properly accounted for in the meta-study, but ultimately the answer is "we don't really know".
Many western countries don't add fluoride to the drinking water; many used to do so in the past but stopped. There were the concerns about neurotoxicity (albeit minor) but also some ethical concerns regarding mass-medicating the population without any realistic opt-out. But the other major reason is that those countries have the population exercise good dental practices like brushing twice a day with fluoridated toothpaste, which is spat out instead of swallowed. This avoids concerns of neurotoxicity but maintains the dental benefits: a best of both worlds basically (also endorsed by most scientists).
The US has systemic poverty issues, and a large part of the population do not observe these good dental practices, not necessarily through ill-will but rather because they lack the money to buy toothpaste. Because of that, removing fluoride will likely increase cavities in the US, unlike in other western countries.
Ideally the US keeps the fluoride around until these systemic poverty issues are largely resolved. But knowing the current shitstains in government...
Thank fuck those brave officers prevented that girl from braiding her hair!
The 5th of November is Guy Fawkes Night in the UK: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night
I mean it's easier to sort like that for humans too.
Why does that kid have a gun on the back of his pyjamas?
Gender dysphoria is a mental problem, in the sense that it causes mental distress to be in the wrong body. The treatment is not therapy, it's surgery to correct the body to fit the mind. A therapist can help identify the cause of the distress, but if the cause is the body then that therapist will recommend surgery.
I recall seeing research suggesting that trans people's brainwaves more closely match that of their "desired" gender than that of their sex. It reinforces the idea that being transgender isn't a mental issue, it's a physical issue that causes mental distress.
A trans man isn't a woman who merely thinks she's a man, it's actually a man inside that skull. Only the body underneath it is wrong. It's as if tomorrow you woke up in the body of the opposite gender. That will (after the novelty wears off) start distressing you. Trans people didn't wake up like that, they were born with that feeling.
Why did the Guardian even bother to write this article? It isn't really newsworthy imo.
I think the point is that even if LLMs suck at task A, they might be really good at task B. Just because code written by LLMs is often riddled with security flaws, doesn't mean LLMs also suck at identifying those flaws.
It doesn't yet, there's another vote.
First off, RFK is a nutcase.
But this isn't such a weird thing to do. The majority of the (western) world does not add fluoride to the drinking water. Many countries used to, but have since stopped. These days it's mostly an anglosphere thing.
The concern that the ingestion of fluoride over long periods of time (a substance that accumulates in the body) can have adverse effects is actually supported by scientific evidence. Adding it to toothpaste is also supported to be just as good at protecting your teeth (if not better). Having it both in toothpaste Γ‘nd in the drinking water is effectively useless.
Because of the involved medical risk, and the lack of medical benefits in light of people brushing with toothpaste with fluoride in it, it's really not a crazy idea to remove it. Added benefit is that it improves the taste of the water too (imo).
Don't get me wrong, my gut reaction was to think this is stupid too. But then I checked if we do it here (Netherlands) and found out we stopped, for the reasons outlined above. And that's the RIVM talking, a very respected, apolitical government institute concerned with public health. The science genuinely supports the removal of fluoride from the water supply.
Btw, the US has a maximum norm of fluoride in the water, but quality control is so poor that in many places those levels are exceeded considerably. That's an issue in and of itself.
Of course, RFK should make sure that all toothpaste has fluoride in it, and that it's cheap enough so that everyone can afford it. He probably won't, so he's still stupid.
But a broken clock...
A lot of those new Unreal Engine "technologies" are quite terrible for the framerate. They try to make unoptimized scenes bearable, but traditional optimization techniques are so much faster, and adding Lumen/Nanite whatever on top just slows things down again.
That's a synogram, depending on who you're asking.
We know they reflect more energy, but the point is that the vast, vast majority of energy is still absorbed. A white shirt doesn't reflect as bright as the sun, it's barely reflective at all really. And because most energy is absorbed anyway, the difference between the colours just becomes negligible.
It's also negligible for tighter clothing. See https://nltimes.nl/2023/07/21/wearing-white-clothing-wont-make-cooler-heat-researchers-confirm
That's actually been debunked. The difference between black and white clothing is so negligible it's entirely unnoticeable. The structure of the clothing is far more important.
So scientific fraud then. Will anyone be punished for it though?
It's insane, the basic fucking concept of why human shields "work" is that it's morally wrong to kill them. Totally bizarre.
He technically is only talking about correlation, not causation. He's also technically not blaming it on their race.
It's often found that black-majority neighbourhoods in the US do worse on IQ tests. But that's due to a lack of investment in education in those areas as a result of systemic racism, not because of a racial "disability". There's a correlation but no causation.
And it's no secret some people do slightly better or worse in some areas. It's obviously not true that any biological differences end at the skin colour. Just look at the overrepresentation of east Africans in endurance running for example. The important part however is that those differences are just that: differences. It doesn't make anyone a better person that anyone else.
Does ctrl-shift-v not work for you? Or do you want to rebind it?
No abnormal finding in them tiddies