Nuclear energy. A growing number of lefties are embracing it, including Jacobin. Meanwhile, the Mark Jacobson team at Stanford maintains that we can get to net-zero emissions with 100% renewables, no nuclear required. Can we? Have nuclear power plants somewhow gotten safer as its advocates claim? Is the nuclear industry funding the Breakthrough Institute and other nuclear proponents? Lots to get to the bottom of here.
I'm pro-nuke, but I agree that Jesse would be a great guy to help us sort out fact from propaganda on this subject. (And if I'm wrong on nuclear, I'd be happy to change my mind.)
Hearty concurrence from another pro-nuclear-power reader. An explainer of the science for lay readers would be great. If Jesse wants to add a culture-wars angle to see what it does for readership numbers, I'd love to read an exploration of why anti-nuclear-power dogma hasn't really budged on the left for half a century.
In the spirit of taking good-faith counter-arguments as seriously as possible -- i.e. "steel-manning" -- the question that most needs answering is something like this:
"Chernobyl. Fukushima. Explain why accidents of this magnitude won't happen in the system you propose."
An exploration of the lingering effects of those accidents and expected duration of those effects might be in order -- what is the half-life if something goes wrong? Also, for giggles: maybe go back to before these disasters and examine the public assurances of safety that preceded them -- how closely do they resemble the current assurances?
Right -- and/or, if we assume there WILL be occasional Fukushimas, is there a compelling argument that a nuclear-heavy system nonetheless causes less death and destruction than other alternatives?
Jacobin is "embracing" nuclear power? I don't see evidence of that:
In a recent Jacobin podcast, Jacobin science writer Leigh Phillips certainly asserted that nuclear should be one leg of a green and labor-friendly transition.
But that topic does not appear in Phillips' other Jacobin writing nor, to my knowledge, is it a theme or position of the magazine vs privileging other types of renewable energy, like in this 2020 piece: "Offshore Wind Energy, Not Nuclear, Is the Future."
So what "lefty" individuals/organizations/magazines are you thinking of?
My two cents; The professional standards that have generally kept the media honest are largely irrelevant today. I'd appreciate more media criticism and good investigative journalism to uncover the real story when narrative has taken over. The topic doesn't matter. Keeping this vital profession on its toes is hugely important.
This. The exposés of cases like Kenosha or Loudon County, where the mainstream narrative was so far from the truth, are some of my favorite content and one place where Jesse really shines.
Oh snap these are the sorts of subjects I was wondering about when reading yet another op-ed and need for "truth in journalism," about how Joe Rogan needs to step down and beg forgiveness, when so many 'akshual' news organizations couldn't find their own shit-story in the toilet they just got up from.
It's not quite motte and bailey, but it's still news orgs not really doing their job and lynching an entertainer for doing his.
Your website says you're interested in the replication crisis in social sciences, and you recently wrote a post about how all us non-scientists kind of have to pick and choose whose word to take for things, which often leads us to just revert to our biases. I'd love to see you dive deep into this problem -- how do we know what's true, and how do we leverage expertise without falling into cults of authority?
To be honest I'm a bit worried about the idea of you moving away from culture war stuff. In "Why Do I Suck?" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-do-i-suck Scott Alexander talks about why he's not really inclined to write about the latest wokeness problem any more: "first of all, Jesse Singal, Freddie de Boer, and Bari Weiss have probably already written things on it and they probably all did a better job than I would". I like de Boer and Weiss a lot but I don't trust them nearly as much as I trust you and Scott. If both of you are backing off, I don't know who to point my woke friends to.
I work in criminal defense as a mitigation film specialist. I use the documentary medium to break down for judges (in a short film) what sequence of events led to the offense in question.
It's a frustrating job because the attorneys who hire me are constantly having to pander to federal judges who can simply "opt" to not believe in certain scientific facts. For example, we just did a film for a guy who had been diagnosed in his teens as a manic depressive. We were trying to make the argument in the film that because our client came from a culture where mental illness was taboo, he was discouraged from any kind of med management/therapy. Fast forward a few years, our client gets drunk and walks into a store, gets into a little fight with another guy and pulls a gun on him. My plan was to trace everything that happened that day with the offense all the way back to the client not receiving proper mental health treatment and therefore self medicating with alcohol.
Lead counsel calls me after I submit the film and says
"Judge doesn't like psychology stuff. He doesn't really believe in it. Can we just talk about his head injury? It looks like he fell off his bike when he was 10. Judge likes head injuries more than the psychology stuff...even if there's no brain trauma. He likes that stuff more"
I can't tell you how often I have to deal with the anti-science nonsense that goes on in the criminal justice system at the sentencing phase..
It would be nice to expose these failures of the system, these judges. Everything they say is public record and they say some brutally dumb, nay, medieval things.
And defenders are kind of enabling them at times. They want good results for their clients so they "tolerate" the backwardness of backward judges.
A lot of forensics science is also apparently less solid than it's commonly presented to be. Science and the intersection with criminal justice sounds like a very interesting topic.
The way the federal bench is so insulated is probably good for preventing political pressure from influencing them but it absolutely leads to a ton of obstinate fossils who are petty tyrants of their courtrooms. One thing I like about working in state court is that the judges have to be more up to date on these things because they don't want to be the idiot judge who makes the newspaper and has that be the first thing that comes up in the google search come election time
I am going to get selfish and pitch all my favorite sensitive subjects:
- A piece contrasting the lives of (a) online sex workers, (b) illegal IRL sex workers, and (c) legal IRL sex workers. There was a wonderful book called BROTHEL many years ago about a legal brothel in Reno, and it was eye-opening because it turned a lot of the arguments about what would and wouldn't happen in a legalized sex work environment on their heads. (There are still pimps, for instance!) There doesn't seem to be a lot of neutral reporting on this subject, and I'd be interested in how the IRL sex work world has changed given the online-all-the-time boom.
- I'm also interested in Christian "ex gays," being a Christian and a gay. There was a nonjudgmental book about them called STRAIGHT TO JESUS years ago, and I think we're due for an update on this community of people who are, like, living third rails.
- Also: surrogacy! There is a huge disconnect between the talking points around surrogacy from the conservative / feminist side of the issue, and the (surprisingly careful) laws that are being developed around it. I had a conversation with an advocate recently and was surprised how underinformed nearly everybody who talks about the issue, left or right, is.
I feel like I read opposing takes on these questions pretty regularly and always come away confused about whether there's scientific consensus, or just consensus among lay writers. So, yes, I'd also appreciate a good journalistic take from someone who has read some studies and isn't trying to sell me a memoir.
My desire would end up faIling into a culture war space, unfortunately, but I would like to see someone who isn’t a right winger dig into what truly happened between Fauci and the rest of our scientific community as Covid broke out.
There appears to be a period in which many scientists thought it was man made, then we have a phone conference and a bunch of redacted emails, followed by everyone agreeing that it wasn’t man made.
In a sane world, people would be investigating this the way that Russia got investigated. Of course, we don’t live in that world.
I am reading/hearing about mismanagement of COVID policy and narratives mostly in the conservative press, yet I'm seeing many liberal scientists on Twitter grow increasingly frustrated with the CDC, its promotion of bad studies and stats, and the lack of good RCTs. I think there's a real opportunity for liberal/mainstream writers to interview the sorts of infectious-disease specialists, virologists, and public-health experts who are being ignored right now.
I'm fascinated by this weird anti-seed oil thing I see among certain nutrition aficionados. It's related to "science," so I think it would be in your wheelhouse. But I have trouble finding any solid sources of why soybean oil is so much worse than avocado or coconut oil; just it's related to a terror they have about polyunsaturated fats. I don't get it and I think it's time for a journalist to dig in and figure out a) where it comes from b) if there's any merit.
There are various reasons why some people avoid seed oils. I do mention my own approach below, but to be clear, I'm not trying to make a claim one way or the other as to whether the reasons are valid. People's criteria for being convinced of a thing vary. I can briefly summarize the two main reasons, though.
One has to do with omega ratios, with the idea being that, in modern diets, we get not enough omega-3 and way too much omega-6, and that it has negative health consequences, particularly as it relates to inflammation. Another is around the idea that polyunsaturated oils are not very stable and oxidize easily, especially in the conditions under which they're produced, stored, and used to prepare food. (Being heated many times, for example.) Again, the idea is that this has negative health consequences, particularly as it relates to inflammation.
Personally, when I looked into it, I found the steelman version of the arguments convincing enough that I avoid such oils when I can, but I don't go overboard trying to eliminate every last thing. I don't really think it's completely settled science right now, though, which is pretty true of nutrition, in general.
Nutrition is still a very under-explored Wild West, and the studies that we have are overwhelmingly observational, and often small or poor-quality, none of which is ideal. There's also good reason to think that optimal nutrition is much more individual than we tend to conceptualize it as. While there are, of course, broad needs that are consistent across people (bare minimums for specific vitamins and minerals, etc.), even there, the optimal amounts can vary based on individual genetics, medications, health status, specific allergies/intolerances, and more.
Knowing what we need to stay alive isn't really the hard part. (Although, it sometimes has been! See link below for the interesting saga of treating scurvy.) The hard part is figuring out what is actually *optimal* for human health broadly or given individuals, in particular. Unfortunately, we're mostly left to fend for ourselves in figuring out the details. It's absolutely confusing, and it's not at all surprising that this state of affairs produces so much conflicting advice. But naturally, regardless, the advice is usually dispensed with a hearty dose of unwarranted assurance that the speaker has the One True Answer, because that seems, depressingly, to be the only way we know how to frame anything, anymore.
Thanks for this thoughtful reply! I understand, however that omega-3s are also a type of polyunsaturated fat, so I do find a blanket resistance to that fat odd. Why would people not just say we eat too much omega-6, instead of too much polyunsaturated fat?
So, again, I can only explain my understanding and best guess. If it's sufficiently intriguing, by all means, research the topic further, but I'm *really* not trying to suggest anyone change their diet based on my take.
I think those people probably shorthand the advice that way because of the second reason I mentioned. Polyunsaturated fats are generally unstable and oxidize easily (heat, light, oxygen can all speed degradation), so they don't do well under the conditions we typically subject them to for food use, not just in the final step of cooking, but even in their preparation and storage before reaching the end consumer. The idea is that using oils high in polys as cooking oil is ill-advised, because eating oxidized oils contributes to bodily inflammation. (Example of one such study, showing inflammation in rats: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22974219/)
So, my guess is that people are just simplifying the message or possibly had an incomplete understanding of it in the first place, because that's what always happens. Information gets corrupted to one extent or another through a long word-of-mouth telephone game.
I totally agree with this, and would even maybe expand on it a bit. There's a lot of science-y sounding nutrition advice out there and I have to admit I am a bit overwhelmed by the task of sorting out what has backing and what doesn't, so I end up going with my gut (no pun intended). Would love for someone smart to do that work for me!
One complicating factor is that so much of the stuff that shouldn't be a matter of politics at all, kind of is at this point. Very few things that interest me currently lie outside the (American) culture war, and that is not because I'm necessarily drawn to the culture war itself, but because it sucks things in like a vortex. Especially findings that are interesting, because what is interesting is often controversial.
What I would be interested in, and this also goes well with your psychology research, is looking at the ways in which knowing more about what makes the human mind tick might make us kinder to each other, while also helping us avoid the pitfalls of being human. To take a couple of examples:
1) It seems to be the case that just like our brains are calibrated for hearing and producing the sounds of our native language, our face-recognition faculties are also calibrated for recognizing the faces we are exposed to most often. This means that people who have grown up in ethnically homogenous environments really do become worse at distinguishing the "out-group" faces of other ethnic groups. As we all know, this can have disastrous consequences such as in the cases where the wrong black man gets convicted of a crime based on the eye-witness testimony of a white person. Knowing more about why people might make such mistakes (while not necessarily being racist in any meaningful way) can help the justice system and society generally be smarter about stuff like this, which is better for everyone.
2) There's supposedly a decades-old study (I did look this up after hearing about it, but I can't remember what I found) that tricked research subjects into believing they had a visible mark on their face, and were asked to report back on how this affected their encounters with others. Allegedly, this had a big impact on how these subjects perceived other people's treatment of them, even when they objectively weren't treated any worse than they normally were. While this study may be overblown, or has failed to be replicated, this (alleged) finding would suggest why people who are outwardly similar (same racial background etc) report such different experiences of racism for instance. What we read into other people's actions is not only about the other person, but also about our own expectations. The micro-aggression can literally be in the mind of the aggressed, to a great extent, even though this obviously isn't always the case.
I like this. There's so much pushback against the idea that we're all just fallible human beings mostly trying to do our best (when we're not overthinking everything we and anyone else does or says). Digging into some of the cognitive whys of how we draw bad conclusions and poor assumptions and how those things affect society would be cool.
Trends in academia: Declining male enrollment, the shrinking number of tenured faculty, grad student labor issues, student loan debt. What are students like today vs. 15 years ago? How are the pressures and incentives changing for faculty? I’m sure Troy has loads of insights that would be interesting to discuss.
Dating, marriage, kids. I'm primarily thinking about data, trends, and discourse. I’m married but fascinated by Gen Z dating patterns and data. Plus, how different apps have changed the experience.
Psychology (especially with Troy on board): Trends in the population, new research. Problems with old research. Best practices for anxiety and depression vs. useless fads.
Publishing trends and economics: You’ve covered the changing landscape and shifting incentives for journalism, but every type of publishing is getting less profitable for most creators (books, music etc). Kindle Unlimited and self-publishing have become huge, with good and bad consequences.
Fun internet shitstorms: Any topics you don’t use for B&R for whatever reason. I loved Trace’s piece on the r/antiwork drama.
Personal: I enjoyed your Callin episode about New Year’s Resolutions (sleep, food). Obviously you have zero obligation to talk about your personal life if you don’t want to, and considering the amount of hate you get on social media, I understand if you’d rather not.
This may sound trite, but I want you to write about whatever you WANT to write about. I think writers do better work when, independent of any concerns about what other people will think of it, they write about things that are really of interest to them at the moment. If you were to keep writing about the culture wars just because you think it's what your audience wants, you'd get stale.
If I were to tell you what I want to read, I'd really be giving you a list of things that I ought to write about.
Steroids! How safe are they (and other PEDs) to use for general fitness?
You've already had to dive into the weeds of testosterone et al anyway, and juicing over the years has gone from a very niche thing that only pro athletes/bodybuilders did to being surprisingly common. Joe Rogan casually talks about being on roids because they make him feel youthful.
How far have we come from the days of risking bitch-tits (as they were called in Fight Club) - are roids something that normies can safely dabble in, or should they still be treated like meth and given the "not even once" treatment?
I read the third sentence above as: "You've already had to dive into weed" and I was like, "When?!!" So Jesse, any coverage of legal(izing) weed would be highly appreciated - and your pod co-host would be an excellent source, I'm sure!
Here is a culture war adjacent topic that you can write at least 15 articles about.
Dark Patterns in the Technology industry.
Basically all the ways Tech Platforms and products make it REALLY hard to get off the platform, end subscriptions, stop tracking your data, or ignore your feedback.
Basically what are all the ways tech companies manipulate you into staying on their platform or keep you registered against your will, and how can you protect yourself against that.
Everyone on the internet is impacted by these on a daily basis, and it could even lead to some positive change if enough people are aware of how they are being manipulated silently.
Hi everyone!! I'm so excited to write for 💖Jesse Singal💖
PIPE DOWN
Don't reenact the cycle of abuse Katie has put you through, Jesse!
Hurt people hurt people.
Nuclear energy. A growing number of lefties are embracing it, including Jacobin. Meanwhile, the Mark Jacobson team at Stanford maintains that we can get to net-zero emissions with 100% renewables, no nuclear required. Can we? Have nuclear power plants somewhow gotten safer as its advocates claim? Is the nuclear industry funding the Breakthrough Institute and other nuclear proponents? Lots to get to the bottom of here.
I'm pro-nuke, but I agree that Jesse would be a great guy to help us sort out fact from propaganda on this subject. (And if I'm wrong on nuclear, I'd be happy to change my mind.)
Hearty concurrence from another pro-nuclear-power reader. An explainer of the science for lay readers would be great. If Jesse wants to add a culture-wars angle to see what it does for readership numbers, I'd love to read an exploration of why anti-nuclear-power dogma hasn't really budged on the left for half a century.
anti-nuke is a coal psy op, obvs (idk if it actually is but that's my pet theory and I'm sticking to it)
Agree with you about nuclear energy and Jesse being a good person to explore it, but I'm commenting to tell you I love your username!
Thanks very much! I have to admit, I had to look yours up -- what a cool and unusual word!
In the spirit of taking good-faith counter-arguments as seriously as possible -- i.e. "steel-manning" -- the question that most needs answering is something like this:
"Chernobyl. Fukushima. Explain why accidents of this magnitude won't happen in the system you propose."
An exploration of the lingering effects of those accidents and expected duration of those effects might be in order -- what is the half-life if something goes wrong? Also, for giggles: maybe go back to before these disasters and examine the public assurances of safety that preceded them -- how closely do they resemble the current assurances?
^^^^+++^^^^^
Right -- and/or, if we assume there WILL be occasional Fukushimas, is there a compelling argument that a nuclear-heavy system nonetheless causes less death and destruction than other alternatives?
Jacobin is "embracing" nuclear power? I don't see evidence of that:
In a recent Jacobin podcast, Jacobin science writer Leigh Phillips certainly asserted that nuclear should be one leg of a green and labor-friendly transition.
But that topic does not appear in Phillips' other Jacobin writing nor, to my knowledge, is it a theme or position of the magazine vs privileging other types of renewable energy, like in this 2020 piece: "Offshore Wind Energy, Not Nuclear, Is the Future."
So what "lefty" individuals/organizations/magazines are you thinking of?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/21/fight-climate-crisis-clean-energy-nuclear-power
+1
+2
My two cents; The professional standards that have generally kept the media honest are largely irrelevant today. I'd appreciate more media criticism and good investigative journalism to uncover the real story when narrative has taken over. The topic doesn't matter. Keeping this vital profession on its toes is hugely important.
This. The exposés of cases like Kenosha or Loudon County, where the mainstream narrative was so far from the truth, are some of my favorite content and one place where Jesse really shines.
Oh snap these are the sorts of subjects I was wondering about when reading yet another op-ed and need for "truth in journalism," about how Joe Rogan needs to step down and beg forgiveness, when so many 'akshual' news organizations couldn't find their own shit-story in the toilet they just got up from.
It's not quite motte and bailey, but it's still news orgs not really doing their job and lynching an entertainer for doing his.
Your website says you're interested in the replication crisis in social sciences, and you recently wrote a post about how all us non-scientists kind of have to pick and choose whose word to take for things, which often leads us to just revert to our biases. I'd love to see you dive deep into this problem -- how do we know what's true, and how do we leverage expertise without falling into cults of authority?
yes!
To be honest I'm a bit worried about the idea of you moving away from culture war stuff. In "Why Do I Suck?" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-do-i-suck Scott Alexander talks about why he's not really inclined to write about the latest wokeness problem any more: "first of all, Jesse Singal, Freddie de Boer, and Bari Weiss have probably already written things on it and they probably all did a better job than I would". I like de Boer and Weiss a lot but I don't trust them nearly as much as I trust you and Scott. If both of you are backing off, I don't know who to point my woke friends to.
Yep, I wish Scott were writing his old "Let's think this through" posts and hope Jesse will continue to sprinkle them in here and there.
I work in criminal defense as a mitigation film specialist. I use the documentary medium to break down for judges (in a short film) what sequence of events led to the offense in question.
It's a frustrating job because the attorneys who hire me are constantly having to pander to federal judges who can simply "opt" to not believe in certain scientific facts. For example, we just did a film for a guy who had been diagnosed in his teens as a manic depressive. We were trying to make the argument in the film that because our client came from a culture where mental illness was taboo, he was discouraged from any kind of med management/therapy. Fast forward a few years, our client gets drunk and walks into a store, gets into a little fight with another guy and pulls a gun on him. My plan was to trace everything that happened that day with the offense all the way back to the client not receiving proper mental health treatment and therefore self medicating with alcohol.
Lead counsel calls me after I submit the film and says
"Judge doesn't like psychology stuff. He doesn't really believe in it. Can we just talk about his head injury? It looks like he fell off his bike when he was 10. Judge likes head injuries more than the psychology stuff...even if there's no brain trauma. He likes that stuff more"
I can't tell you how often I have to deal with the anti-science nonsense that goes on in the criminal justice system at the sentencing phase..
It would be nice to expose these failures of the system, these judges. Everything they say is public record and they say some brutally dumb, nay, medieval things.
And defenders are kind of enabling them at times. They want good results for their clients so they "tolerate" the backwardness of backward judges.
Sad stuff. But also interesting.
A lot of forensics science is also apparently less solid than it's commonly presented to be. Science and the intersection with criminal justice sounds like a very interesting topic.
Seconded!
That is a fascinating job that I had no idea existed. I second criminal defense/legal system exploration.
The way the federal bench is so insulated is probably good for preventing political pressure from influencing them but it absolutely leads to a ton of obstinate fossils who are petty tyrants of their courtrooms. One thing I like about working in state court is that the judges have to be more up to date on these things because they don't want to be the idiot judge who makes the newspaper and has that be the first thing that comes up in the google search come election time
I am going to get selfish and pitch all my favorite sensitive subjects:
- A piece contrasting the lives of (a) online sex workers, (b) illegal IRL sex workers, and (c) legal IRL sex workers. There was a wonderful book called BROTHEL many years ago about a legal brothel in Reno, and it was eye-opening because it turned a lot of the arguments about what would and wouldn't happen in a legalized sex work environment on their heads. (There are still pimps, for instance!) There doesn't seem to be a lot of neutral reporting on this subject, and I'd be interested in how the IRL sex work world has changed given the online-all-the-time boom.
- I'm also interested in Christian "ex gays," being a Christian and a gay. There was a nonjudgmental book about them called STRAIGHT TO JESUS years ago, and I think we're due for an update on this community of people who are, like, living third rails.
- Also: surrogacy! There is a huge disconnect between the talking points around surrogacy from the conservative / feminist side of the issue, and the (surprisingly careful) laws that are being developed around it. I had a conversation with an advocate recently and was surprised how underinformed nearly everybody who talks about the issue, left or right, is.
Ooh surrogacy is a great one--and third party reproduction in general. A lot of messy ethical issues that we're still sorting out.
Surrogacy would be fascinating. On sex work, I almost never enjoy coverage in this area. I think it requires a lot of reporting to do well.
@Nina - True. In fact, that book BROTHEL took years for the author to write. She relocated *to* the brothel in question for a while to report.
All of these topics would get an instant click from me!
Antidepressants - are they effective? Is therapy effective?
I would add TMS and ketamine and psychedelics
I feel like I read opposing takes on these questions pretty regularly and always come away confused about whether there's scientific consensus, or just consensus among lay writers. So, yes, I'd also appreciate a good journalistic take from someone who has read some studies and isn't trying to sell me a memoir.
YES! Good one.
My desire would end up faIling into a culture war space, unfortunately, but I would like to see someone who isn’t a right winger dig into what truly happened between Fauci and the rest of our scientific community as Covid broke out.
There appears to be a period in which many scientists thought it was man made, then we have a phone conference and a bunch of redacted emails, followed by everyone agreeing that it wasn’t man made.
In a sane world, people would be investigating this the way that Russia got investigated. Of course, we don’t live in that world.
I am reading/hearing about mismanagement of COVID policy and narratives mostly in the conservative press, yet I'm seeing many liberal scientists on Twitter grow increasingly frustrated with the CDC, its promotion of bad studies and stats, and the lack of good RCTs. I think there's a real opportunity for liberal/mainstream writers to interview the sorts of infectious-disease specialists, virologists, and public-health experts who are being ignored right now.
I'm fascinated by this weird anti-seed oil thing I see among certain nutrition aficionados. It's related to "science," so I think it would be in your wheelhouse. But I have trouble finding any solid sources of why soybean oil is so much worse than avocado or coconut oil; just it's related to a terror they have about polyunsaturated fats. I don't get it and I think it's time for a journalist to dig in and figure out a) where it comes from b) if there's any merit.
There are various reasons why some people avoid seed oils. I do mention my own approach below, but to be clear, I'm not trying to make a claim one way or the other as to whether the reasons are valid. People's criteria for being convinced of a thing vary. I can briefly summarize the two main reasons, though.
One has to do with omega ratios, with the idea being that, in modern diets, we get not enough omega-3 and way too much omega-6, and that it has negative health consequences, particularly as it relates to inflammation. Another is around the idea that polyunsaturated oils are not very stable and oxidize easily, especially in the conditions under which they're produced, stored, and used to prepare food. (Being heated many times, for example.) Again, the idea is that this has negative health consequences, particularly as it relates to inflammation.
Personally, when I looked into it, I found the steelman version of the arguments convincing enough that I avoid such oils when I can, but I don't go overboard trying to eliminate every last thing. I don't really think it's completely settled science right now, though, which is pretty true of nutrition, in general.
Nutrition is still a very under-explored Wild West, and the studies that we have are overwhelmingly observational, and often small or poor-quality, none of which is ideal. There's also good reason to think that optimal nutrition is much more individual than we tend to conceptualize it as. While there are, of course, broad needs that are consistent across people (bare minimums for specific vitamins and minerals, etc.), even there, the optimal amounts can vary based on individual genetics, medications, health status, specific allergies/intolerances, and more.
Knowing what we need to stay alive isn't really the hard part. (Although, it sometimes has been! See link below for the interesting saga of treating scurvy.) The hard part is figuring out what is actually *optimal* for human health broadly or given individuals, in particular. Unfortunately, we're mostly left to fend for ourselves in figuring out the details. It's absolutely confusing, and it's not at all surprising that this state of affairs produces so much conflicting advice. But naturally, regardless, the advice is usually dispensed with a hearty dose of unwarranted assurance that the speaker has the One True Answer, because that seems, depressingly, to be the only way we know how to frame anything, anymore.
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/01/11/reality-is-very-weird-and-you-need-to-be-prepared-for-that/
Thanks for this thoughtful reply! I understand, however that omega-3s are also a type of polyunsaturated fat, so I do find a blanket resistance to that fat odd. Why would people not just say we eat too much omega-6, instead of too much polyunsaturated fat?
So, again, I can only explain my understanding and best guess. If it's sufficiently intriguing, by all means, research the topic further, but I'm *really* not trying to suggest anyone change their diet based on my take.
I think those people probably shorthand the advice that way because of the second reason I mentioned. Polyunsaturated fats are generally unstable and oxidize easily (heat, light, oxygen can all speed degradation), so they don't do well under the conditions we typically subject them to for food use, not just in the final step of cooking, but even in their preparation and storage before reaching the end consumer. The idea is that using oils high in polys as cooking oil is ill-advised, because eating oxidized oils contributes to bodily inflammation. (Example of one such study, showing inflammation in rats: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22974219/)
So, my guess is that people are just simplifying the message or possibly had an incomplete understanding of it in the first place, because that's what always happens. Information gets corrupted to one extent or another through a long word-of-mouth telephone game.
I totally agree with this, and would even maybe expand on it a bit. There's a lot of science-y sounding nutrition advice out there and I have to admit I am a bit overwhelmed by the task of sorting out what has backing and what doesn't, so I end up going with my gut (no pun intended). Would love for someone smart to do that work for me!
Incidentally, I linked that particular discussion of scurvy, because it goes some way toward demonstrating *why* this stuff can be so complicated.
I’d love to see you write non-culture war stuff and vote for any topic except ska.
In all seriousness, I’d love to know about the state of our knowledge on the chemical mechanisms of antidepressants.
One complicating factor is that so much of the stuff that shouldn't be a matter of politics at all, kind of is at this point. Very few things that interest me currently lie outside the (American) culture war, and that is not because I'm necessarily drawn to the culture war itself, but because it sucks things in like a vortex. Especially findings that are interesting, because what is interesting is often controversial.
What I would be interested in, and this also goes well with your psychology research, is looking at the ways in which knowing more about what makes the human mind tick might make us kinder to each other, while also helping us avoid the pitfalls of being human. To take a couple of examples:
1) It seems to be the case that just like our brains are calibrated for hearing and producing the sounds of our native language, our face-recognition faculties are also calibrated for recognizing the faces we are exposed to most often. This means that people who have grown up in ethnically homogenous environments really do become worse at distinguishing the "out-group" faces of other ethnic groups. As we all know, this can have disastrous consequences such as in the cases where the wrong black man gets convicted of a crime based on the eye-witness testimony of a white person. Knowing more about why people might make such mistakes (while not necessarily being racist in any meaningful way) can help the justice system and society generally be smarter about stuff like this, which is better for everyone.
2) There's supposedly a decades-old study (I did look this up after hearing about it, but I can't remember what I found) that tricked research subjects into believing they had a visible mark on their face, and were asked to report back on how this affected their encounters with others. Allegedly, this had a big impact on how these subjects perceived other people's treatment of them, even when they objectively weren't treated any worse than they normally were. While this study may be overblown, or has failed to be replicated, this (alleged) finding would suggest why people who are outwardly similar (same racial background etc) report such different experiences of racism for instance. What we read into other people's actions is not only about the other person, but also about our own expectations. The micro-aggression can literally be in the mind of the aggressed, to a great extent, even though this obviously isn't always the case.
I like this. There's so much pushback against the idea that we're all just fallible human beings mostly trying to do our best (when we're not overthinking everything we and anyone else does or says). Digging into some of the cognitive whys of how we draw bad conclusions and poor assumptions and how those things affect society would be cool.
Welcome Troy! Here are some story suggestions:
Trends in academia: Declining male enrollment, the shrinking number of tenured faculty, grad student labor issues, student loan debt. What are students like today vs. 15 years ago? How are the pressures and incentives changing for faculty? I’m sure Troy has loads of insights that would be interesting to discuss.
Dating, marriage, kids. I'm primarily thinking about data, trends, and discourse. I’m married but fascinated by Gen Z dating patterns and data. Plus, how different apps have changed the experience.
Psychology (especially with Troy on board): Trends in the population, new research. Problems with old research. Best practices for anxiety and depression vs. useless fads.
Publishing trends and economics: You’ve covered the changing landscape and shifting incentives for journalism, but every type of publishing is getting less profitable for most creators (books, music etc). Kindle Unlimited and self-publishing have become huge, with good and bad consequences.
Fun internet shitstorms: Any topics you don’t use for B&R for whatever reason. I loved Trace’s piece on the r/antiwork drama.
Personal: I enjoyed your Callin episode about New Year’s Resolutions (sleep, food). Obviously you have zero obligation to talk about your personal life if you don’t want to, and considering the amount of hate you get on social media, I understand if you’d rather not.
This may sound trite, but I want you to write about whatever you WANT to write about. I think writers do better work when, independent of any concerns about what other people will think of it, they write about things that are really of interest to them at the moment. If you were to keep writing about the culture wars just because you think it's what your audience wants, you'd get stale.
If I were to tell you what I want to read, I'd really be giving you a list of things that I ought to write about.
Steroids! How safe are they (and other PEDs) to use for general fitness?
You've already had to dive into the weeds of testosterone et al anyway, and juicing over the years has gone from a very niche thing that only pro athletes/bodybuilders did to being surprisingly common. Joe Rogan casually talks about being on roids because they make him feel youthful.
How far have we come from the days of risking bitch-tits (as they were called in Fight Club) - are roids something that normies can safely dabble in, or should they still be treated like meth and given the "not even once" treatment?
I read the third sentence above as: "You've already had to dive into weed" and I was like, "When?!!" So Jesse, any coverage of legal(izing) weed would be highly appreciated - and your pod co-host would be an excellent source, I'm sure!
Here is a culture war adjacent topic that you can write at least 15 articles about.
Dark Patterns in the Technology industry.
Basically all the ways Tech Platforms and products make it REALLY hard to get off the platform, end subscriptions, stop tracking your data, or ignore your feedback.
Basically what are all the ways tech companies manipulate you into staying on their platform or keep you registered against your will, and how can you protect yourself against that.
Everyone on the internet is impacted by these on a daily basis, and it could even lead to some positive change if enough people are aware of how they are being manipulated silently.
See this website https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern for a primer on dark patterns