AnyOldName3

@AnyOldName3@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did something about mass produced ice cream change like 10 years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who’s just spent half an hour reading Wikipedia thanks to this thread, I can now dispense a summary of what I read to make it feel like I didn’t just waste a chunk of time I should have spent in bed by wasting another chunk of time I should be spending in bed.

  Fats are made out of fatty acids, which are carboxylic acids with a longish carbon chain. A saturated fatty acid only has single bonds between carbon atoms, a monounsaturated fatty acid has a single double bond somewhere in the chain (and these are sometimes things that turn into buzzwords, e.g. omega three oils are ones where there’s a single double bond three along from the end of the chain), and a polyunsaturated fatty acid has more than one double bond.

  Single bonds in a carbon chain can only be one way around, so you don’t get isomers of saturated fatty acids, but double bonds in a carbon chain can be in either of two orientations. If the hydrogens are on the same side for both sides of the bond, that’s the cis orientation, and if they’re on opposite sides, that’s the trans orientation. Most natural unsaturated fats are cis, so they generally don’t get explicitly labelled as cis fats, and just the trans ones get the extra label. Notably, though, vaccenic acid, which is about 4% of the fat in butter, is trans by default, so it’s cis-vaccenic acid that gets the extra label.

  Unsaturated fats tend to be more liquid at room temperature, but can be made by growing cheap vegetables. They also go off faster as free radicals can attack the double bonds. Saturated fats tend to be solid at room temperature, but mostly need to come from animals or more expensive plants (palm fat is an exception - it’s cheap and mostly saturated). It’s therefore desirable to use industrial processes to artificially saturate fats, and we can do that by heating them up and exposing them to hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst like Nickel. You don’t necessarily want to fully saturate your fat, though, so might stop part way, and if you do, unless you intentionally tweak the process to avoid it because it’s the 21st century and you’re legally obliged to, you get some of the partially hydrogenated fat switching from cis to trans.

  Over the course of the last century, we realised that (except for a few like vaccenic acid) trans fats are harmful in lots of exciting ways, e.g. messing up cholesterol, blocking your arteries, and building up in your brain. They’ve therefore been banned or restricted to certain percentages in a lot of the world. You can get a similar effect by fully hydrogenating things to get safe (or at least safer) saturated fat and mixing it with the unmodified fat, or by switching everything that used to use hydrogenated vegetable oil to using palm oil, which is one of the driving forces behind turning rainforests into palm plantations.

  Apparently, this was twenty five minutes of writing, so I’m nearly up to an hour of thinking about fats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Row as Starmer suggests landlords and shareholders are not ‘working people’⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A plumber or a sparky doesn’t just maintain one house, and if they’re just doing maintenance, probably work on hundreds of houses a year. Maintaining your own house takes a fraction of the time and effort of working a housing-related trade full time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Honey⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m referring to arguments I’ve had in person against native English speakers. If they were online arguments, the ability to use mobile data to show someone a citation wouldn’t be a new development.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨House Centipedes⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have seen one of these in my life. I found it in my hair. I’m glad if already seen pictures of them on the Internet as the experience was already unpleasant enough when I could recognise what if found and knew it was harmless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Honey⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had an unreasonable number of arguments against people who seemed to think animal was a synonym for mammal. Thankfully, we’re now in an era where you can look it up and show them now mobile data is cheap, so it’s become a winnable argument.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unity cancels the stupid Runtime Fee⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It also doesn’t help that once you’ve paid the large fee for the Pro version, it doesn’t actually guarantee any support if you encounter a bug. You get access to a different issue tracker, and might get a Unity employee to confirm that the bug exists after a couple of months (and maybe close it as a duplicate, then reopen it as not a duplicate when the fix for the other bug doesn’t help, then reclose it as a duplicate when it turns out the fix for the other bug also doesn’t fix the other bug, and at the end of a multi-month process, there still being a bug with no indication an engineer’s looked at it).

  Anyway, I’m glad to no longer be working for a company that uses Unity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesco loses UK legal battle over plans to ‘fire and rehire’ staff on lower pay⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Either:

  • They’re in denial that this happens (arguably, it didn’t happen, as eventually Tesco lost, and they wouldn’t know about it in the three years Tesco was winning because The Telegraph/Mail etc. wouldn’t report on that).
  • They think worse things would always happen under other systems (e.g. everyone would be a slave of the state and go to gulag if they complained about anything).
  • They don’t see it as an inherent problem with capitalism (e.g. simply make doing this illegal, and refuse to let business lobby to reverse the decision, and everything’s fine).
  • They think this is a good thing (e.g. the fired workers will be incentivised to work harder, then earn a payrise, and use the extra 10p an hour to start a competing multibillion pound supermarket chain).
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Blood Meal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A rusty crowbar is also red because of the iron atoms that compose it, but it’s not mansplaining to take issue with someone telling people they’re eating crowbars.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What the hell even is Diet Coke?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally, I can ignore the effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin levels as they, like everything else, have no effect, and my insulin levels are only affected by when I inject it. I’m type 1 diabetic. When people make incorrect claims based on effects that aren’t reproducible or weren’t statistically significant in the first place about the safety of sweeteners, it causes direct problems for me. I’ve had bartenders mess up my blood sugar levels by lying about serving diet drinks because they think they’re dangerous. Plus, if the people who push for artificial sweeteners to be banned had their way, there are plenty of things I couldn’t ever eat or drink again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What the hell even is Diet Coke?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Aspartame is very mildly carcinogenic. An equivalent amount of sugar is much more carcinogenic, and is harmful in other ways, too. If you have to have a can of cola, diet is the healthier choice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do any "thickening" products actually work to prevent hair loss/thinning?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Minoxidil is produced in 5% concentration creams and foams, and that study is comparing rosemary oil to a 2% preparation. It’s impressive that rosemary oil is comparable at all, but obviously if you’re not taking a therapeutic dose of Monoxidil, it’s not going to work properly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do any "thickening" products actually work to prevent hair loss/thinning?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I use topical Minoxidil. It’s clearly made some difference, replacing a bald patch with a thin patch, and making my scalp noticeably warmer to the touch due to the extra bloodflow. It wasn’t the brilliant instantaneous wonderdrug some people told me it would be, nor totally ineffectual like others said, so I guess it’s something whose efficacy varies from person to person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elden Ring Player to Sue FromSoftware Over High Game Difficulty⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can’t really find out of you’ll get good enough to enjoy a soulslike without buying one and playing it for longer than the two hour refund period. For other products, you usually have something you can do about it or some way to try it first. You don’t need to buy a kayak to find out you don’t like kayaking as you can go for a kayaking lesson first and use the venue’s equipment. It’s understandable that people who hit a wall and can never get any enjoyment from a soulslike will be upset that it cost them just as much to find that out as it costs someone who’ll compete the game and have a great time.

  Maybe it’s enough to just do the refund window based on progression rather than time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon finds a plot hole⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Regarding the elf slavery, there’s a guest post on Rowling’s blog (which she must at least have approved even though she didn’t write it) that makes the case that Hermione was wrong to attempt to liberate the elves because the elves enjoyed being slaves, and the point of that subplot was to demonstrate that it’s bad when people attempt to solve other people’s problems without a request for help and bad when people get offended on other people’s behalf. A normal person wouldn’t let something advocating for such a major misunderstanding of their work on their blog, especially if it was claiming they were pro-slavery.

  Most people reading the books would interpret it as implying Hermione was right, but for someone who’s seen that blog post on Rowling’s site and thinks she read it before it was published and could have vetoed it, it’s not a leap to read it again and conclude that it was meant to be pro-slavery and that’s why the other main characters, who you’re usually supposed to identify with, make fun of Hermione.

  On its own, it’s simplest to say it just wasn’t thought through, but when it’s part of a pattern of off-colour opinions, it’s harder to give the benefit of the doubt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon freezes time⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Installing hidden cameras in a public toilet is harmless by that definition as long as they never get discovered, but would still be highly immoral. I don’t think you’ve thought this through. People’s right to decide what happens to their body extends to things like who can see it rather than just who can physically touch it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No problems here⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Your spoiler tag isn’t working.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stay Mad⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A vote for neoliberals is a vote to not have fascism for four more years. America’s voting system doesn’t allow the never-have-fascism votes to be pooled with the delay-fascism votes, so unless there’s a decent chance for a mass swing of voters from delay-fascism to never-have-fascism, trying to encourage a small-scale swing only makes immediate fascism more likely by weakening the only thing with a chance to delay it.

  If the plan is to try and encourage the Democrats to have primaries that actually have the power to move the party left, now is not the time to withhold a vote in protest as there’s a good chance that even if it did convince them, there’d never be another election that wasn’t rigged so they’d lose it no matter how popular they were.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon reflects on e-sports⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Current-generation OLEDs aren’t worse than late-generation CRTs for burn-in, they’re just worse than LCDs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Garry Newman of Facepunch comments on the Nintendo takedown of Garry's Mod content⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can lose trademarks, but this is a copyright issue. You don’t have to defend copyright to keep it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mathematicians⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice to see Crotchless Pants (Mathematics) from a few days ago in the background www.smbc-comics.com/comic/mathematics-2

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And yeah, the PETA kills site clearly has an agenda, but their agenda is to try and save animals from PETA’s “love.”

  Their agenda’s to make PETA look bad so people don’t become vegan or demand higher welfare standards from meat producers, and they can continue selling meat to Americans of such low standards that it would be illegal in the rest of the civilised world.

  You know what no-kill shelters try to do when they don’t have space? Coordinate with local foster programs, coordinate with other shelters to see if they have space. There are other alternatives besides taking in a perfectly healthy animal and dropping it in the euthanasia queue.

  As I said, they can’t do that once the foster programs and other shelters are full, too, and then overflow into PETA-run shelters because they’re the ones that still have a capability to receive more animals after they’re full. There aren’t enough shelters to keep every animal in good conditions until it’s either adopted or dies of natural causes, and no amount of coordination can magically create extra capacity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It doesn’t strengthen your point to link Fox News and the literal website for the smear campaign I mentioned: www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=PETA_Kills_An…

  As for PETA putting down lots of animals, that’s no secret. It’s really easy to get people to donate to a no-kill animal shelter, so there are lots of them. However, when you’re a no-kill animal shelter, and you’re full of animals you can’t kill, or are asked to take an animal that can’t be ethically be treated with anything other than euthanasia, you have to turn the animal down, and it ends up wherever will take it. Usually, that ends up being a PETA-run shelter. When a PETA-run shelter is being given all the rejects from everywhere else, it’s obviously going to end up putting lots of animals down. It’d be better for PR if they didn’t, but less ethical, and they prioritise the ethics above the PR.

  If you look at one of your more reliable sources, the Snopes article, it backs up what I’m saying, and not what you’re saying. It corroborates the story from my original post, lists another incident where PETA staff were accused but not convicted, and then discusses that they put down a lot of animals in their shelters, and how it includes healthy animals. The only controversy there is the definition of adoptable - a healthy stray kitten is theoretically adoptable, but if you get ten times as many kittens in a week as you do people wanting to adopt a kitten, 90% of them won’t get adopted, and your shelter will get quickly overcrowded if you insist on ignoring that fact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The UK has a high rate of veganism, and part of that is attributed to the fact that the major vegetarian and vegan organisations in the UK generally recommend persuading people by offering them delicious food that is also vegetarian/vegan and saying it’s more ethical. On the other hand, the equivalent organisations in the US tend to lean more towards recommending telling people that eating animal products is unethical, and it’s difficult to accuse someone of unethical behaviour without being insulting. It also doesn’t help that multibillion-dollar organisations have run successful smear campaigns against groups like PETA - everyone’s heard of the time they took someone’s pet dog and killed it, but most aren’t aware that it happened once and gets reported on as if it’s news every few months, or that it was an accident as the dog’s collar had come off and it was with a group of strays, and got muddled with another dog, so was put down weeks earlier than it was supposed to be, bypassing the waiting period they had specifically to avoid this kind of mistake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Breaking the news⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They might be. They’re clearly a major shareholder in Boeing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨doggos⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can put magnets near dogs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has google stopped working for finding anything?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That kind of thing used to reliably work for me, so it’s not ludicrous that they’d expect it to stop work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do new sites embed tweets?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair use only covers critique, parody and education, and only with a whole bunch of extra nuance (e.g. you can’t just put a clip of yourself saying you didn’t like a movie at the end of the movie and get away with hosting it on your site by claiming it was critique, and you can’t download a PDF of a textbook and get away with it by claiming it was for education). Fair use lets you do a lot less than people think.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats the difference between cheap and expensive modern TVs?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Quantum dot LED TVs don’t actually use quantum dot LEDs (yay, marketing). They’re built like any other LCD, but instead of having a white backlight (typically a blue LED with a phosphor to fluoresce the blue to green and red, too, making white) and then a colour filter behind each pixel subelement to only let the right colour through, they have a blue LED backlight, and then a quantum dot film that fluoresces the blue to the right colour.

  The advantage of this is that you’re not making light in colours you can’t use just to get absorbed by the filter and turned into heat, so can make the backlight brighter, which, when combined with other techniques to make good LCDs, is enough to make them comparable to OLEDs in quality and price.

  Actual quantum dot LEDs let you make light at practically any frequency you want, like OLEDs (traditional LEDs only make light at bandgap frequencies for atoms of elements, and there’s not a huge choice of suitable elements, hence blue LEDs taking decades to materialise after other colours were cheap). In theory, quantum dot LEDs won’t have burn-in problems, but they’re currently not practical to make a TV out of, giving marketing people plenty of time to weasel out of their fuckup with naming existing QLED TVs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here's what a random person on the internet thought of The Outer Worlds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I found the game’s political message a bit ham-fisted, with the core problem being that the setting was effectively a company town (or several) and the criticism being of under-regulated capitalism as a whole. That lead to there being some contrived or unexplained ways real-world problems had managed to come up which could have just been an inevitable consequence of a slightly tweaked setting.

  I think if someone played the game who didn’t already agree with its politics, they’d have a very easy time dismissing all its arguments as strawmen, and feel more confident voting against regulation or shared ownership.

  I did like the discourse around cystipigs, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Squadron 42: Hold The Line⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Between the two of you, you’ve complained they’re selling both too many and too few paid ships.

  The claim they make is that they sell better ships because they want there to be late-game ships in the universe on launch day, and that they want the number limited so the game is properly balanced. If they weren’t trying to grab cash at least a little bit, they could have raffled them off or given them for free to the people with the most playtime in alpha, so there wasn’t a need to involve money, but their claim isn’t wildly inconsistent with their actions.

  I think part of the reason there’s no set release date is that without shareholders breathing down their necks to release early to recoup their investment, they don’t see any advantage to releasing sooner rather than later. Maybe that means they’ll polish the game to a degree we’ve never seen before, but that could either mean a good game with no bugs on launch day, or a game that no one ever gets to play because some perfectionists working on it will never be satisfied.