casualrandomcom (u/casualrandomcom)

casualrandomcom commented on Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016) ucsf.edu/news/2016/09/404... · Posted by u/aldarion

nearbuy · 2 months ago

The department of nutrition at Harvard was founded in 1942.

casualrandomcom · 2 months ago

To be true to Taubes, my memory was too approximate. The actual claim was that in 1976 Fred Stare, the director and founder (in 1942) of the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard School of Public Health was exposed by Michael Jacobson having received around 200.000 dollars in the course of the preceding 3 years from Kellogg's, Nabisco e and their foundations, after he had testified before the Congress about the virtues of cereal as a breakfast food. Apparently this discredited Stare as a scientist.

Wikipedia also states that "Kellogg's funded $2 million to set up the Nutrition Foundation at Harvard. The foundation was independent of the university and published a journal Nutrition Reviews that Stare edited for 25 years." But I cannot find this is Taubes's book.

casualrandomcom commented on Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016) ucsf.edu/news/2016/09/404... · Posted by u/aldarion

rendaw · 2 months ago

When this news first came out it was mind blowing, but at the same time I don't entirely get it.

So the money quote seems to be:

> The literature review heavily criticized studies linking sucrose to heart disease, while ignoring limitations of studies investigating dietary fats.

They paid a total of 2 people $50,000 (edit: in 2016 dollars).

That doesn't seem like enough to entirely shape worldwide discourse around nutrition and sugar. And the research was out there! Does everybody only read this single Harvard literature review? Does nobody read journals, or other meta studies, or anything? Did the researchers from other institutions whose research was criticized not make any fuss?

I guess the thing that I most don't get is it's now been 10 years since then, and I haven't seen any news about the link between sugar and CVD.

> There is now a considerable body of evidence linking added sugars to hypertension and cardiovascular disease

Okay, where is it? What are the conclusions? Is sugar actually contributing more than fat for CVD in most patients? Edit: Or, is the truth that fat really is the most significant, and sugar plays some role but it's strictly less?

casualrandomcom · 2 months ago

I don't know why this was re-posted today (kind of suspicious that this floats again after 10 year just by chance) anyway, there is a full citation-heavy book by Gary Taubes about this, and one of his points was that the sugar industry paid 2 million in 1970's dollars to create the nutrition department of Harvard, which was the first nutrition department in the world. (This was to say that nutrition science itself has been corrupt since its birth).

casualrandomcom commented on Yes, Cash Transfers Work theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/casualrandomcom

casualrandomcom · 6 months ago

Money alleviates poverty. It’s not complicated. By Annie Lowrey

casualrandomcom commented on What to do with C++ modules? nibblestew.blogspot.com/2... · Posted by u/ingve

casualrandomcom · 6 months ago

"You might want to grab a cup of $beverage before continuing, this is going to take a while."

Instead, I launched a compilation.

casualrandomcom commented on AI Horseless Carriages koomen.dev/essays/horsele... · Posted by u/petekoomen

casualrandomcom · a year ago

This blog post is unfair to horseless carriages.

"lack of suspension"

The author did not see the large, outsized, springs that keep the cabin insulated from both the road _and_ the engine.

What was wrong in this design was just that the technology to keep the heavy, vibrating, motor sufficiently insulted from both road and passengers was not available (mainly inflatable tires). Otherwise it was perfectly reasonable, even commendale, because it tried to make-do with what was available.

Maybe the designer can be critizised for not seeing that a wooden frame was not strong enough to hold a steam engine, and maybe that there was no point in making the frame as light as possible when you have a steam engine to push it, but, you know, you learn this by doing.

casualrandomcom commented on What if we made advertising illegal? simone.org/advertising/... · Posted by u/smnrg

Ferret7446 · a year ago

> imagine a world without advertising

I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.

It's impossible. How do you even define advertising? If you define it conservatively, then advertising will skirt through the loopholes. If you define it liberally, then you have an unfair, authoritarian system that will definitely be selectively enforced against political enemies.

And in all cases, you are self-imposing a restriction that will give other nations an economic advantage and jeopardizing long-term sovereignty.

casualrandomcom · a year ago

>> imagine a world without advertising

> I can't because a world with magic and world peace is more realistic and believable.

I don't know, in my country advertising tobacco products is forbidden since at least 20 years, how did they pull this magic trick?? go figure

casualrandomcom commented on Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update quantamagazine.org/three-... · Posted by u/rbanffy

mrkeen · a year ago

I'm not following your objection. To my eye those approximation graphs are indeed 2nd order functions in the 2d plane. But they are perhaps not parabolic for lack of symmetry?

casualrandomcom · a year ago

They look symmetric to me, but that's not point anyway, I guess they are parables, only they are rotated, their axis is not parallel to the y axis.

If those are 2nd order functions in the 2d plane, then we don't agree on terminology.

The reason why I feel an expert is that it is clear at first sight to me that if you really implement the Newton method in that situation, the approximating functions that you will get are totally different from those that were drawn in the illustration.

The third parable from the left on the lower left figure, is definitely not a second order approximation to the target function: the convexity is reversed!

casualrandomcom commented on Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update quantamagazine.org/three-... · Posted by u/rbanffy

seanhunter · a year ago

When you say they are not even functions, are you saying because they are not everywhere bijective? Because they look like rotated parabolas to me which means they will have continuous first and second derivatives which is (I think) all you need for Newton’s method isn’t it?

casualrandomcom · a year ago

You are thinking of those parables as parametric curves, I guess, but Newton's method is about approximating an arbitrary function by its Taylor expansion truncated to the second degree, which is a polynomial function of second degree. The graphs of these functions can be thought as parametric curves, but (my point is also) these are not those that were drawn in the illustration.

casualrandomcom commented on Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update quantamagazine.org/three-... · Posted by u/rbanffy

magicalhippo · a year ago

Perhaps the graphics designer didn't get the memo. You can see in the panels that it's the same parabola, they've just rotated it in the first panels so it seems to fit the shape of the local curve "better".

casualrandomcom · a year ago

Yes, that's what I guess has happened.