Not everyone has the ability or spare time to become skilled in every field. Calling them lazy and illiterate for not learning a complicated thing (when they may already be learning some other complex subject) is kinda the definition of elitism.

Don’t be an elitist bung hole, dude.

Yarr, matey.

I’d recommend asking around lemmy.dbzer0.com, in the sailing community.

But it’d be easier to switch to Linux Mint, if you don’t have a critical windows app that doesn’t work in wine.

Also @JamesFire@lemmy.world

For anyone else reading this and thinking about trying linux for the first time, be sure to use Linux Mint. It will give you the smoothest and easiest experience, and you pretty much never need the terminal. It even comes with a really nice software store (but everything is free).

AFAIK, Grayjay is not a closed source app, the source is on github, but he chose a license that restricts monetization and redistribution due to having concerns of people taking FOSS apps and repackaging them on app stores with added monetization or malware.

Not ideal, but not closed either.

Gah! I wish so desperately that wasn’t the case, but I can’t dispute that. It really does feel like without investment in our rail network, there’s no good way of long distance travel, so it’s currently just a shit sandwich all around.

I hope that prompts more funding into Amtrak if people do opt for that!

That’s not great… I can only hope more people opt for trains instead this time.

Silver lining: less flights booked means less emissions for the environment.

They switched it for me, and can confirm, absolutely hate it.

Cheers for that information! I’ve corrected my post to reflect this.

The Vox article comes to the same conclusion.

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The article says that sugar based drinks are far worse for your health than diet versions.

Coke is downstream of Sugar and Artificial sweetener manufacturers. Coke doesn’t care what sweetener you prefer in their products as long as they make a profit.

Aspertame was owned by Nutrasweet, where as big sugar, is, well, sugar cane and sugar beet plantation owners and processors.

Both of them were competing with each other for adoption in products and when sold direct to consumer (I.e, equal). They both had a vested interest in slandering the other.

See this as an example.

The study he references suggests that Coca-cola is essentially lying, because no one other than that study bothered to test if there was Sugar or HFCS in the soda labeled with Cane Sugar.

Considering Coca-Cola is a company known for being willing to murder union organizers, I don’t think it’s a stretch that they’d lie about that for profits.

That was genuinely an excellent video, thanks for sharing. :)

I don’t believe I’m straw manning, and I think your characterization of that is a little unwarranted.

There is no study that conclusively points to it being harmful, that is true. But when there’s a lot of money on the line and conflicts of interest start getting involved, I don’t think it’s entirely out of the question to be at least slightly wary of the ‘official’ recommendation from a verifiably financially biased institution. Regular folk aren’t going to research all 154 studies on a single sweetener, making them inherently reliant on institutions (who can do meta studies) for advice. It’s the quintessential laymen’s quandary.

The EU seems to be, at least nowadays, a more trustworthy source regarding food safety, and are certainly more willing to reverse previously incorrect assumptions, such as when they reversed the ban on Cyclamate sweetener when it was found to be safe (yet it remains banned in the US). They, so far, also deem aspartame safe, and it’s difficult to see how exactly it could be dangerous.

Is it safer than sugar, where there are known dangers? I think so, I’d pick a diet soda over a sugar-based one any day. But I think it’s healthy to at least attempt to ensure the answer recommended to us is as unbiased as possible.

By the way, the article itself doesn’t even suggest that aspertame is that dangerous:

“My big concern is that I don’t want people saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got to stop diet sodas, I’m gonna get sugared sodas,’ and then they start drinking those and gain weight, which we know is one of the major cancer risks,” said Bevers. “And that has solid data.” A better outcome of the recommendation would be if people who drink a ton of diet soda replaced some of it with water.

I think the takeaway from this article should be “Aspartame is probably pretty safe, but holy shit one of the main institutions we have in charge of determining that, along with a bunch of other substances, is basically corporate captured, so get your advice elsewhere.”

EDIT: This is, in fact, false information! Please refer to @FlowVoid@lemmy.world’s comment for the facts.

Mexican coke has been found to have no sugar in it, it also uses High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Any flavor enhancement over regular coke appears to be placebo, possibly an effect of the glass bottle.

I feel like this is a difficult subject, since there’s two sides that are willing to pour money into research that’s biased one way or the other (Big sugar vs the artificial sweeteners).

The article is perhaps advocating for an overly cautious position. Traditionally, I’ve been pro-artificial sweeteners, and considered aspartame quite safe, but specifically, this part in the article:

the IARC is more selective in its use of unpublished, confidential commercial data, and it takes greater care to exclude people with conflicts of interest from contributing to its evaluations.

A few years ago, Millstone and a co-author looked closely at how the European Food Safety Authority had weighed the 154 studies on aspartame safety when it looked to assess the product in 2013. About half of the studies favored aspartame’s safety and about half indicated it might do harm.

The agency had judged all of the harm-suggesting studies — but only a quarter of the safety-affirming studies — to be “unreliable,” wrote the authors. And the agency had applied looser quality standards to the studies suggesting safety than it had to the studies suggesting harm. Agency reviewers pushed back against Millstone’s assessment. And in any case, aspartame has remained on the European market.

Was a little concerning.

The conflict of interest even more so:

The FDA has rules about who can serve on its advisory committees that are aimed at preventing conflicts of interest. However, a recent investigation by ProPublica found that consultants employed by McKinsey worked for the FDA on drug safety monitoring projects while simultaneously working for pharmaceutical companies directly affected by those projects.