CharonY

As mentioned, side effect is a bit of a misnomer, drugs have effects, some beneficial, some less so. A more appropriate terms would be "desired effect" for a particular treatment. Sometimes, a side effect for one treatment, can be a desired effect for another condition. Not quite, what most medication does is to interact with molecules in your body (including proteins) and change activities. They can inhibit or activate functions and thereby alter biochemical processes in some way. For example, let's say your body doesn't produce enough thyroid hormones, you can supplement your body with medication. However, normally your body modulates the synthesis rate depending on internal signaling so that it remains somewhat in homeostasis (depending on your activity diet and other factors). If you take the drug, the dosage is fixed, i.e. after you take it, the levels are high and then go down over time until you take a new dose. Depending on how well the dosage is dialed in, you may have higher or lower metabolic activities than you would like as a consequence. The results of that (e.g. increased or decreased appetite, weight increase or decrease) could be considered side effects, but are in fact the primary effects of the drug.

In that regard it should be noted that flu seasons are not universal and different patterns can provide overlapping contributions. For example, in tropical regions seasonality of flu is often less pronounced, but might be driven by other areas as Grenady said. Similarly, areas with high levels of travel can have similar flu patterns, even if weather patterns are differently. In either case the main driver is the increase of infected people driving further transmissions. So even if absolute humidity might not be a contributing factor in one area, travel eventually leads to a global spread each year. There are also local influences that have been described in literature. Examples include waning immunity from prior exposure as well mutation rates (and presence or absence of non-human reservoirs), but the associations tend to be weaker, especially on more global scales.

Funny, I was told the same. But the doctor was a geologist!

Generally I would believe it to be true, but I think it is a bit hard to tell as personal cults and a general dismissal of facts seems to have taken hold. I have little doubt that traditional stakeholders will still look at value, but I suspect at least some will also consider fanatical devotion of non-traditional stock buyers. I guess we will see. Some reports suggest that this year price corrections are expected.

This seems to be a moral justification angle, which can in itself be quite complicated. That would be the international law aspect I mentioned above. The reason why I also included national law is that in my mind I use it as a test whether a country is indeed governed by law. They may or may not follow international law, which in itself would be an issue. But if they don't even follow the laws that they themselves created for themselves it (i.e. which should perfectly reflect their values without outside interference), it does suggest that the country does not follow the rule of law at all.

How about limited strategic strikes, like using drones or perhaps special forces to take out a head of state? Edit: wanted to add, that those actions also require Congressional oversight, though they are a bit more obscure and for obvious reasons are not put to House votes, if I understand the process correctly.

I am curious about the reasoning of this distinction. Is it the involvement of local groups? And if so, is the argument one of sovereignty? Say for example, that they decided to kill the leader of a country, would it make a difference if that was coordinated with a local group? And can it be just any group? I am trying to figure out the boundary conditions a bit here. It seems to me (and correct me if you are wrong) that the argument might also be a bit procedural, i.e. how things were done to achieve the goal. I.e. covert vs over operations, for example. My thinking goes into a slightly different direction. I am mainly concerned about violations of international and national laws and what it ultimately means to the justification of actions and the projection of power. Using these as metrics, major differences here are a lack of congressional approval (national law), though their past actions have plenty of examples of at least likely violations of international law. The Iraq war, regardless of some international support, was based on flimsy (and ultimately false) justification and has been legally challenged. The Panama invasion had some on-the-ground justification, yet was conducted without congressional authorization and has been condemned as an act in violation of international law. These are different ways to look at the situation, though none of them make the current actions look good. That being said, I do think that the US had similar issues in the past and there have been voices condemning them then. However, there were also many voices that tried to spin it in a positive light (like the aforementioned coalition of the willing). The fact that this time around there is almost unanimous condemnation could mean that this violation is qualitatively different, but it could also reflect how the Trump administration has managed to piss off their allies.

Except, of course, none of the Canadian provinces will really join the US. They are socialist scum (with healthcare and such) so at best will become territories. You misspelled the Kingdom of His Holiness the God Emperor. BTW, there is a non-zero chance that they want Canada because the heard of the "Great White North" and they thought that they would get an inflow of white folks. Considering how they talk about immigration in Europe they likely would be quite shocked to see Brampton or Richmond (or areas like Iqaluit for that matter).

Panama was one of those I had in mind, but I was thinking more broadly in terms of destabilization of countries over a range of different interest. Other examples were coups either directly or US support in Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Guatemala, just to name a few. In terms of economic interest, the textbook example was Guatemala, where the United Fruit Company lobbied the US government (with key administration folks having a clear conflict of interest) for intervention against breaking the UFCOs monopoly by the Guatemalan government. That overthrow, incidentally is also associated with the Monroe doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine), which effectively calls for an American hegemony. The Trump administration has alluded to that by calling their current actions as part of the "Donroe Doctrine".

While I agree, I would add that this is how the US did act like that (directly or indirectly), especially in South America, and they have been criticized for that on grounds of legality, too. Some of the differences are the assumption (whether justified or not) that the US were ultimately the good guys (e.g. under the banner of enforcing human rights). This time around, however, no similar justification were presented and rather than at least pretending to support self-determination, they outright said the quiet part loudly.

I am taking bets that he will claim that he solved the drug crisis.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/03/world/trump-united-states-strikes-venezuela As you probably have heard, the US has conducted strikes in Venezuela and have brought president Maduro and his wife to the US to stand trial. Trump has declared that the US will (somehow) govern Venezuela and suggested US control of Venezuela's oil reserves. There is a lot of speculation of the reasons for those actions as well as concerns regarding its legality and the type of precedence it sets (and might not be limited to China or Russia).

This is more editorial work as peer reviewers wouldn't have had access to that level of information. I would call it one of the self-correction mechanisms of science.

A review paper on glyphosate safety from 2000 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230099913715) has now been retracted. It turned out that the authors overemphasized unpublished Monsanto data, while not including other papers that were published at that time. While it is not unusual that reviews might omit papers (accidental or by choice), recent litigations have shown that parts of the paper were in fact written by Monsanto scientist, which was not disclosed. See the retraction notice here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230025002387

I am not sure if he has changed much- he just got into unfathomable and unchecked amount of power. I think it does show how the stock market can be based on faith more than on facts, depending on the shareholders. It is, after all, just a representation of the collective believes of stock buyers. Some will be rational, others not so much. And some will likely bank on the lack of rationality of some of those buyers. Musk strategies has for some time to bank on the magic of software, specifically machine learning, focusing on data, rather than engineering or programming. The only way it plays off for robotaxis, if the software gets so good that it can rival the technical capabilities of e.g. Waymo. Then, the Teslas already on the street could, in theory be switched to a giant robotaxi fleet. Fundamentally, the clever part of the business model is that Tesla is able to use customers as prototype testers and collect their data for training. It matters little that Teslas currently still cannot really self-drive and that other car companies have made improvements over them. That being said, a lot of folks are banking on Musk's promise, that his machine learning to the max method will find its way everywhere, including the Tesla robot and other products. None of his promises regarding price and timelines are true, of course but there are still enough folks who for some reason, trust that somehow it will all pan out in the end without needing any evidence to support that. In fact, Tesla was always sold as a pie in the sky company, its evaluation makes zero sense, if you think about it as a car company. They represent less 5% of all cars in the market, but its market cap (an insane 1.37 trillion) is more than 8 or so biggest companies such as Toyota, BYD, GM and Mercedes combined). I.e. it is a company that fundamentally sells hype and promises of a magic future, and none of the quantitative indicators (e.g., decline in sales and profits) are really part of the equation. Also, a one final thought- there was some justified outrage of Musk's Nazi sympathy. However, if we really want to dive in the depth of depravity, I would point to the fact that he was instrumental in dismantling USAID. This performative theater with a chain saw resulted in the loss of ca. 500,000 to 1 million lives (as of 2025) with models prediction up to 14 million deaths by 2030. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)01186-9/fulltext

I am not sure whether that has been addressed in the video, but the chocolate in NA, including Canada usually has less cocoa, but way more sugar and other vegetable fats even from the same brands. The sugar is the most noticeable difference, when you are used to (most) European chocolate, which includes those from the UK. Polish chocolate used to be poor quality, but the last time I had some was in the 90s. That being said, sugar content has been increasing also in Europe over time.

That is a good question, and might depend on jurisdiction. In Europe Monsanto's GM maize was first approved but was then banned in Germany later on, in part (IIRC) because of the possibility that it could spread. In believe in the EU or maybe UK there were lawsuits back in the 2000s, regarding unauthorized release of GM crops (but I think it involved Bayer). The high level lawsuits that I remember that Monsanto won was (again, IIRC) based on the fact that the farmer deliberately harvested and replanted seeds, after discovering resistant plants on his field, which was then deemed patent infringement. But perhaps a more important reason could be that Monsanto is not a grower and it is more likely that the invading crops would originate from another farm. So if there was a lawsuit, it would more likely against that farm rather than Monsanto. Another issue is that unless there is something that visually makes the GM crop stand out, many farmers simply wouldn't know as they generally do not test them.

I think it is now more important than ever to wait for official verification. Even without AI, internet rumors had a way to spread misinformation and it is only getting worse.

Moderator NoteThere is so much misinformation including claims of violating basic thermodynamics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell). Fundamentally, this post appears an attempt to spread disinformation, especially with regard to vaccinations, thus endangering public health. Don't bring this up again.

And even that is problematic and at best inconsistent. For example, Type I is characterized by accessibility, i.e. starch to which enzymes cannot get to. Type II otoh is based on origin (e.g. raw starch from plant species), forming resistant granules. Type III are generally spontaneously generated precipitated starches with some some-crystalline structres and then IV are or modified starches. This classification might make sense in food sciences, but in a microbial context it is pretty much meaningless. Within each of these groups you have different chemical compositions, which will be utilized and processed differently by bacteria, for example.

I don't think you are wrong (especially regarding Monsanto, the legal trap is pretty famous and has made its way into textbooks), but links to cancer are notoriously difficult to establish. Fundamentally, pretty much all herbicides are toxic, but those with acute toxicity are just easier to spot. For residential use there is a discussion to be had what would be wise to use close to where you live. However, a bigger issue is the often massive exposure in agricultural use. The controversy here (and my reading might be a bit outdated) is mostly whether Roundup has a higher risk than other herbicides, and there the evidence is somewhat sketchy. There is also a (IMO) much bigger issue is that as a whole there are massive testing gaps in toxicity testing. For example, often only the active ingredient are tested and regulated, yet the overall health impact can vary massively depending on what else is in the formulation.

I think that this is a good point and also a reminder that most food studies are association studies with very limited understanding of underlying mechanisms. There are also trials, which are better controlled but are generally also only limited to measurement of clinical endpoints, without mechanistic insights. This issue also extends to our understanding of the role of the gut microbiota in human health. As such, these types of studies are frequently are associated with limited reproducibility, which, I assume, will amplify if we look at more diverse populations. Moreover, extrapolation of such data will more likely than not result in predictions that do not turn out to be true.

I am not sure whether that alone would be infringement. It could frame ordinary requests as infringement of freedom. OTOH, I can see how folks might think about such requests in terms of infringement (in either direction) and could be insufferably self-righteous about it. I think infringement really starts once there are (by)laws that would penalize certain actions or lack thereof. I.e. closer to what is described in the first couple of posts in this thread. I think in terms of liability there it is a reasonable assumption that if something is indeed harmful, its use would be restricted for private to some degree (there is also a whole issue regarding the evidence for glyphosates). .

Also, there are different compositions of RS. The lit seems a bit of a mess to me and less resolved compared to even the complex situation you find in environmental communities.

So, fundamentally yes, but things are (as usual) quite a bit more complicated. There are different types of resistant starches that are associated with different shifts in the microbiota, as well as SCFA being produced. I will also note that while there are plenty of associations between SCFA and gut health, they are predominantly derived from animal models and the mechanistic understanding is still lacking. I.e. there is good reason to believe that this might yield health benefits, we have only limited human data and we don't really understand how it might happen.