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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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I can just not eat the junk right? I'm not making promises, but you can trust me when I say that I keep my weight within a mostly respectable range while having a rather degenerate diet.

This is genuinely hard in America! HFCS is in a lot of things. There are comparisons of products in the UK to US products, the American version is full of all kinds of weird stuff: https://foodbabe.com/food-in-america-compared-to-the-u-k-why-is-it-so-different/

There are stories of Americans moving to Europe and losing weight without effort, plus the reverse.

I think nobody should idolize or denigrate countries excessively. America isn't the worst country in the world but it's probably not the best either. There are different kinds of 'best' and worst too, tradeoffs between wealth and health and affordability, quality of life, crime, sane politics and so on. As much as I like Australia, there are all kinds of things wrong with it too. Nuclear power is illegal for instance and we're busily wrecking our energy market with renewable aspirations. The same quality of planning that fumbles all our defence procurement is also wishing for (but not building) enormous amounts of solar, wind and cables to link them all up.

I notice how you fastidiously avoided referring to the drop bear infestation, blink and I'll call for help.

I broadly agree that to qualify a country as "best", you do need to at least flesh out the criteria you're considering, as well as how much you weigh them.

In the realm of comparing say, the US, Australia, Singapore or even Canada, I see no reason to really argue over which must necessarily reign supreme. They all have their perks, but I think most observers will agree that UK, and certainly India, can't compare by the metrics people typically care about the most.

I think I did a decent job of outlining why the US in particular appealed to me!

I'm rather sleep deprived, but I'll chase down your link later.

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