Answering the "How can Asia eat so many carbs and not get fat?" question. [Hint: It's all the crappy sugar.] Much more at the link.
"Carbohydrate grams per day
Japan: 298
China: 363 UK:
288 US: 316
As I suspected even before I ran the numbers, Japanese men do not (or did not in the late 1990s) consume more carbohydrates per day than American men. However, Chinese men do. So why weren’t the Chinese afflicted with diabetes in the 1990s? Well, take a look at these figures:
Sugar grams per day
Japan: 90
China: 42
UK: 111
US: 158"
FX's 'Legit', Jim Jefferies Embraced by Disabled Community: "Drugs, prostitution and masturbation are among the topics tackled by FX’s freshman comedy Legit. Despite those edgy plot points, it was the show’s multiple characters with disabilities that had co-creators Jim Jefferies and Peter O’Fallon worried they might offend viewers."
"From series regular Billy (DJ Qualls), a 30-something with muscular dystrophy, to Rodney (Nick Daley), a party hound with an intellectual disability, the world of Legit is full of characters trying to make it no matter their circumstances. “We were kind of nervous,” Jefferies, the show’s star, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We know we’re not being nasty, but maybe people won’t see it the same way we see it.”
But since premiering in January, it’s the characters with disabilities who have won the show some of its fiercest fans. Dr. Drew Pinsky said on his podcast that Legit "elevate[s] the disability conversation to a new plane." Viewers, meanwhile, have hailed the comedy for treating its disabled characters as real people -- not as mere plot points. In the series premiere, Billy fulfills his dream of losing his virginity when his brother Steve (Dan Bakkedahl) and friend Jim (Jefferies) take him to a Las Vegas brothel. That storyline, based on a real-life experience Jefferies had with a friend’s brother, has gained the Australian comic a slew of fans who have the disease. "I’ve now met on my [stand-up] tour probably more people with muscular dystrophy than anyone would meet in their life,” Jefferies says."
Who has the best live-action Wonder Woman outfit? The Wonder Woman porn parody, obviously: "Axel Braun, the auteur behind Asstronomical, Naughty College Schoolgirls 32-38, and most of Vivid's superhero porn parodies has just released the first entirely safe-for-work picture of Kimberly Kane as Wonder Woman from her upcoming porn flick, and holy god that is the best Wonder Woman outfit I've ever seen. I'm not even kidding. It definitely blows that Adrianne Palicki's costume from that horrible David E. Kelley pilot out of the water."
A small victory for the little guys.
"Fascinating opinions handed down in today’s Florida v. Jardines. Justice Scalia’s majority opinion (joined by Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan) and Justice Kagan’s concurring opinion (joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor) should provide a bulwark against wanton Jardines-style privacy invasions of the home and add to the [re-]emerging physical intrusion doctrine of United States v. Jones (2012). Always nice to see approving cites of Boyd v. United States (1886) and Entick v. Carrington (1765). It continues to be disturbing that the Justices seem blindly accepting of unsupported assertions about trained drug-dogs."
Scalia still kind of a douche, though.
Peter Dinklage rocks.
"Don't be a little bitch!" Hilarious. Must watch.
Wolverine. Boom.
And more boom.
"Too many modern athletes live in constant fear of working too hard. They baby their bodies as they’ve been led to believe that anything strenuous must be a sign for overtraining. Such individuals would have never survived in Henry Armstrong’s era. Armstrong was one of the best conditioned fighters of all time. What’s even more incredible is that he did so long before supplements and performance enhancing drugs became commonplace. He also didn’t have scholarly conditioning specialists overseeing each and every move he made. Armstrong’s approach was quite simplistic. He trained hard, focused much of his attention towards the sport itself, and fought regularly. He steered clear of the complexity that is so common in today’s era."
"We of all people know that using pure logic never helps with arguments or discussions, people are appalled at the notion of manipulating but find when using pure logic these just leads to a rise in anger of those involved. Seduction (manipulation) used in persuasion is a great pacifier and yes it is manipulation, it’s why many people shy from it. Half of an argument is the manipulation itself. To reach the conclusion of an argument/discussion you want ‘consensus’, it’s more than an agreement and more than a compromise, it’s a shared faith in a choice, an action or decision that you want, it represents your audience’s commonsense thinking. Religious preachers know faith requires emotion and the persuasion behind it to create faith. People have to desire the act but they won’t want to fight, logic rarely get’s people to do anything. Seduction does not have to be sexual, it can be used everywhere and any time."
Nobody Gives a Fuck About You:
"Paranoia is narcissism. Believing that everyone is out to get you assumes that you’re important enough for anyone to care about. If you’re an introvert with a habit of reading books by dead white men (i.e. if you’re me), it’s easy to slip into this mindset. You imagine you’re in the spotlight at all times, your every screw-up broadcast to a jeering audience that will remember it until they curl up and die. It’s the reason why conspiracy theories tend to be popular amongst nerds and other social outcasts.
The reality is that nobody cares."
"Part of becoming an adult is realizing that most people aren’t that smart or organized. They don’t give any thought to anything beyond their immediate reality. All they care about is getting through their workday, TiVoing the latest episode of House, or whatever monotonous activity they use to fill the void of their lives. Why is this all important? Because it means you have a near-infinite license to remake yourself. Unless you’re a serial killer, you’ve spent most of your life flying under the radar. People don’t think ill of you, they don’t think well of you; they don’t think of you at all. You are not your adolescent awkwardness. Forget the past, forget your mistakes, forget your missed opportunities and start creating the life you want to today. There’s nothing in your way but your own self-doubt."
"“But I’m a Sex Addict”
“I Was Drunk. No Foul.”
“My Husband Was a Dick. I Needed Him Killed Dead”
“We’re Already Married, So It’s OK”
“I Alone Recognize His Talent”
“I’m Insane?”
Proud to say I knew of, and loved all these bits already. Worth re-listening to...
In defense of heroin users and sex workers: an interview with author of You Will Die - Boing Boing: "Addiction is often driven by people seeking an escape from problems -- not by drugs themselves. Addicts need mental-health treatment, not a permanent criminal record. Outside of marijuana, Hollywood and journalistic portrayals of drugs are still just as misleading as the Reefer Madness films of old were. Often, the only media image of drug users is an out-of-control addict, despite statistics showing that they constitute a small minority of users even with "hard" drugs. When it comes out that Barack Obama used cocaine, people are surprised he was successful, but non-addicts like him are the norm. If Obama was branded with a criminal record as a young man for drug possession the government would have been responsible for destroying his future, not cocaine. Suffering people will always find something in which to lose themselves, but Mexico's annual carnage on the scale of 9/11 and the mass incarceration of America's black men -- that requires prohibitionists."
"Clearly, the world is missing the point entirely. If anything, the show the Biggest Loser exists because it makes less fat people feel better about themselves, and most of America is fat as shit. It's a visual Xanax for fatties thinking of (rightly) blowing their brains out because they've failed to keep the machine that is their body in top working order. You don't see gearheads whining that the automotive makeovers common on stations that typically feature hunting and fishing are "unrealistic" because the people on those shows have unlimited time and resources to repair and refit hunks of junk.
...Quite frankly, I have no idea how I have come across these things, but one blog has stood out as a bulwark of nonsense amidst all of the moaning about the fatties on the Biggest Loser- the ridiculously titled "Dances With Fat". This blog is the produce of a morbidly obese broad who champions the cause of "size acceptance" and rails against "fat discrimination", two concepts that are as stupid as they are pointless. Fat acceptance, for instance, violates a deeply ingrained cultural response to the obese that all of the whining in the world isn't going to resolve- the Western World's distaste for obesity. There are three categories for social stigma, according to anthropologists and psychologists- tribal stigma, abominations of the body, and blemishes of physical character.
..Over the last half a century researchers have determined that obese people fall into the latter two categories, as they are considered "undesirable and physically unattractive", and because their obesity is indicative of sloth and other moral failings in those around them (Carr). There is little evidence, however, to suggest that these stigmas manifest in actual discriminatory action- people are too scared of being perceived as discriminatory to act on their distaste for land whales (Carr). Instead, Carr argues, it is the Jabbas' own self-loathing projected onto other people that leads them to believe that they are the victims of discrimination. They literally hate themselves so much that they (rightly) think everyone else should as well...
"Size acceptance" is an equally pointless enterprise, as whining about how equal you are when all empirical evidence shows otherwise, and because heath care costs are rising due to the fact that the self-destructive lifestyles of homo sapiens hippopomus. It's one thing to have to dodge their ridiculous mechanical conveyances in Walmart because they've given up on walking and suffer behind them as they slowly trudge down an isle that they block completely with their bulk- it's yet another to have to subsidize those things because they're covered by Social Security and Medicare. No one will accept a person's willful attempts to inconvenience those around them because they lack the self control in the baked goods isle necessary to keep themselves to a svelte 299 lbs.
...he argues that the Biggest Loser is a terrible role model for the poor fat people of the world because it suggests that they should work really hard to achieve their goal, with the single-minded focus of a young Jeffrey Dahmer torturing his neighbor's cat. Heaven's no! Not hard work! Anything but hard work! What Talens fails to take into account when making his positive feedback loop is that the rewards must outweigh the costs for the fat slobs he champions, and that's often not going to happen. Giving up Oreos to some people is tantamount to the French Foreign Legion throwing down their weapons the second they entered the city limits of Camerone. We're talking about people whose entire existence is based upon the instant gratification they get from shitty foods and sloth- they're not going to be satisfied with the incremental progression they might get if they can avoid too many dietary indiscretions while doing something they hate (i.e. exercising).
...This, my friends, is because fatness is not caused by genetics, or environment, or bad parenting (unless the kid is really young). It's from failure. A fat adult is a person whose life history is written on their body- they've failed. They've failed themselves, they've failed their sexual partners, they've failed their children... fuck, they even fail their pets, because those fat motherfuckers aren't taking their pooches on a needed 2 mile walk. These are people who think "KFC Bowl" is a legitimate answer to the question "what's for dinner?" They're the people who think a 40 inch waisted pair of jeans isn't a horrifying prospect and who haven't seen their genitalia without the aid of a mirror in years. These, my friends, are unmitigated failures, and no amount of positive feedback loops are going to reverse the damage their failure has wrought- they will push those failures uphill for eternity, giant sloppy, Sisyphean sacks of cellulite rather than boulders, up a hill paved with Oreos and dried tears."