Baking powder is in the pH neutral range because it has acid and base in it...that's the point of it as a leavening agent. I think you meant baking soda, which is alkaline. However, regardless, if that was the case, none of us chewing through tums would get cancer. Look, you want to give this old crank argument about big pharma, but you're just poorly informed.

No alkaline will "cure" cancer. It might prevent some forms due to stomach acid wounds?....but it's not related to infection. Baking soda can only treat symptoms. It won't cure an infection.

Also, if administering alkalines could cure disease, big pharma WOULD be all over it because there are a lot of more effective solutions than baking powder or calcium carbonate that could target the acidity more precisely. Tums just dissolves in your stomach and stops working. More complex packaging, which they could patent, could ensure it works outside the stomach to prevent colon irritation, for example.

A reliable cure for heartburn would be quite profitable for big pharma, especially if OTC. A HUGE portion of adults over 40 have it regularly. We have lots of money and lots of need. It's not that they're not motivated. it's that baking soda doesn't work. If it did, no one would have heartburn!!! Every doctor would tell you just to take it. Doctors want to cure you. They want to keep you healthy. They have no financial motivation to keep you sick. They'd rather see 1000 mostly healthy patients less frequently than 100 depressing, sick ones every week. Remember, the sicker you are, the less money you have to spend. You're either not working to full capacity or you've already spent a huge chunk of change to stay alive.

I'm even skeptical that pharma doesn't want to cure you. I don't think they're that insidious or calculating. I think they want money for useful treatments. There's no evidence of pharma suppressing cures to ensure you're addicted to their drug for a lifetime. They'd rather charge you 10,000 for a single shot cure than 100/month for the rest of your life. It's easier money that way. So if you're going to make stupid stoner conspiracy claims, provide some evidence next time.

That's because it's difficult to remember the name of something you made up just now.

A couple of things about the issue.

Firstly, it's usually explained using insult and hyperbole. That's not a way to get others on your side. There's an old saying "it's not enough to be correct, you also have to be effective". It's usually used on... wait for it... nerds, who are typically very smart but cannot communicate well, and who fall back on insults when they cannot communicate well.

Secondly, for some reason no one wants to debate the issue. The mantra is "the science is settled", which isn't really how science works, but there are STILL gaping logical holes in the entire edifice that no one wants to clear up. Such as: other than rising global temperatures, the theory hasn't made testable predictions of any consequence that have actually come true. For example, in 2005 after Katrina, someone noted that "due to climate change, hurricanes will become stronger and more frequent", and then we had about a decade of no major hurricanes.

Thirdly, and this is the one that really bothers me: even if the science is settled, even if the conclusions are correct, climate change does not indicate what should be done. I've reviewed probably two or three dozen experiments aiming to mitigate the effects over the years, they ALL had the best of intentions, and they've ALL failed, sometimes spectacularly, and always adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than if we had done nothing.

In the meantime, since 2000 when Al Gore brought the issue into the public eye, I've seen the rise of solar panel farms, windmills are everywhere in the midwest, and we've gone from about 2% renewable (year 2000, mostly hydropower, and discounting wood) to about 30% today (also discounting wood). New technology is taken up at an exponential rate, so expect those numbers to rise faster in the near future.

Several technologies have been developed that we're right on the edge of deploying (carbon capture by electrolysis, fusion energy generation, robotic labor (various companies)) or in the middle of deploying (EVs, various companies) that should help enormously.

And finally, the issue has become political. The premier maker of EVs, the one who made EVs that people want to buy, is vilified by the political side that wants you to believe in climate change. A sect of that side wants to replace capitalism with communism, even though the resource utilization of that model is one third to one half of what we have today, and would slow down the innovation and advancement that might help us solve the issue.

But if you're not on board, you're a science denier.

It took 40 years to convince everyone that smoking was bad for us, now we have to endure the people who think they're right and have to insult us because we don't believe them.

Stop badgering us about it, it's not about science it's about economics, and it won't be a problem in a decade or two.

(Note for the observant: This post is rife with observable trends and verifiable facts, so expect the other side to downvote it into oblivion, because that's the way to convince people.)

Reddit is not all things for all people. There's a popular /. consensus that they hate the politics discussion. I don't give a rat's ass. I don't want to "dunk on liberals" or berate conservatives. I want to see new tools for my hobbies, rumors about upcoming product developments, discussion of technique or troubleshooting, etc. My joy in life is doing hobbies, not having "real discussions of complicated topics." That sounds like homework.

Usenet was an echochamber for like minded, technically-skilled individuals. It was great for Linux and programming and maybe some extremely male-oriented bands and movie genres, like heavy metal or star trek. There were barely any women and few who weren't computer enthusiasts. I don't want to talk to LARP-ers and tech workers. They're at my day job.

I want to hear from chefs, cooks, DIY-ers, artists, artisans, plant enthusiasts, dog lovers, perverts, people from far away, and people who are nerdy about thing other than computers, especially those I'd encounter naturally. I was able to get very specific advice on my specific niche interest in a very specific species of succulent houseplants and how to fertilize them...or how to fix my ailing blueberry bush. I get more joy from that than ranting about wokeness, the DSA, or Gen-Z or whatever assholes enjoy bitching about these days. There are subreddits that have art challenges that allow me share my drawings and painting of very specialized niche interest with a worldwide audience...something that would have been my dream as a teenager.

Reddit is not perfect, but if you can't see why it is so superior, then your interests extremely narrow and I feel sorry for you. I wish you had more that brought you joy in life than argument and controversy, for your sake as a human being, alone.

Reddit's beauty and joy is fully it's network and community. Their practices as a business are hit or miss, but I do applaud them for the bot/spam management. It's far better than I've seen on usenet, forums, or any other form of social media, especially X and facebook.

Nope, definitely not. I remember usenet well and used it often. It was nothing but a nerd echo chamber. It was great for autistic dedication to a specific male-oriented band or discussing Linux and garbage for anything more civilian. Also, the spam was legendary. Reddit's strength is their bot management and diverse network. My hobbies involve non-nerds, like chefs, artisans, artists, mechanics, DIY folks, as well as nerds. If my only interest was programming, sure, usenet is great. If I wanted to do anything involving arts and crafts?...it was desolate.

Some places do that. It doesn't help. Many countries have tried cash payouts that far exceed the diaper budget. Also, rich people tend to have similar numbers of kids to middle class folks. The main barriers to having more kids is housing and support. Most high paying jobs are in areas with expensive real estate, so having room is a massive issue, but even if we had enough housing, most parents can't fathom having a 3rd kid because having 2 is such a struggle today. You have to do sliding scale daycare and have LOTS of it, which you implied. In my area, most daycares have a 3-6 month waiting period. But daycare only helps the first 2 kids. You have to do more: free pre-K and afterschool programs to replace daycare once your kids get older. Even if you're wealthy enough to have a stay-at-home parent, the burden of the family gets overwhelming and most quit after 3.

Countries with great support networks have managed to raise their birthrate. The only proven way to raise the birthrate is to support the motivated to have 4 or more, including putting as much of the burden on the state to raise the kid, if the family chooses to. It's EXPENSIVE, but so is finding yourself in a nursing home in your twilight years with a massive personnel shortage of people to take care of you....as well as a lack of taxpayers to fund everything you depend on ranging from gov to basic industry.

That's only 1 variable. It's been tried to disappointing results. You can double everyone's salary and it will barely make a dent. If you've had kids and a working wife, you know how bad it gets. The good jobs? They're in expensive real estate areas....nearly everywhere in the world. So houses are hard to find, daycare is hard to find, and support is terrible once you have a kid.

Once people get a job in the city, they don't want kids. You can't make someone want them. All you can do is make existing parents have more. So you're never going to get every couple to churn out 3 kids, but you can make families of 1 or 2 have 3 or 5. However, support is the main factor. Work is a massive burden and even if your wife isn't working, many kids is a massive burden.

Data has shown that incentives don't make a lick of difference, but support programs have. Sliding scale daycare is 1 great way to get people to have their 1st or 2nd kid. However, if you want anyone to have more than 2, you need support for older children: sliding scale daycare for young ones and free afterschool programs for older kids.

Additionally, you need to alter the culture for parenting flexibility. That's tricky because the gov can only set rules for gov jobs. My job is great about it. I can step out during the morning or afternoon for a school event and make the hours in the evening. Jobs that are rigid and stuck in the past are a huge burden for families. Even if you have a stay-at-home mom, the dad needs the flexibility to be involved with his kids' lives if you want families to go past 2 kids.

More money is not the main problem. It's a huge one, but the bigger issue is lack of resources. Daycares in my area require a 6 month application process. Spots go often. It's harder to get into daycare in some areas than many ivy league universities.

It's not cheap, but sliding scale childcare and LOTS of it, will help the birth rate, help families, and be a MASSIVE stimulus since nearly every dollar is paying for human labor for a segment of unskilled (no formal training) women, most of which are very young or very old. But even the programs for older go out to a diverse pool of individuals and are great investments in future citizens to build skills and a sense of community.

However, many gov have tried throwing money at the problem and hoping for the best. It's easy, but it just doesn't work well. It requires a lot of follow through since the resistance to reproducing is very complex and the causes are many and you can have infinite money. So long as you have a job or other responsibilities, it's a huge load. Reducing the load reduces the friction to the 3rd kid and beyond.

Put simply, you have to make it EASY to have kids. Nothing else really works.

They're massively popular and the best forum site I've seen for every interest of mine. There has NEVER been anything like it thusfar. I've never seen a site control bots as well as they do. Reddit has literally changed my life because it allowed me to engage in my various hobbies much moreso than I have been able to before with a diverse group of people of varying technical prowess. It's the king example of the network effect.

I am VERY happy with them because I have a long memory and remembered what it was like before them: having a login for each forum and the chaos of poorly-managed message boards...plus limited participation for non-technical interests.

The API had a lot more downsides for me and most users than benefit. Shitty websites were scraping Reddit and saving your old posts, including deleted one and monetizing them. Then every AI scammer was scraping it to build their models and contributing nothing in return. I am honestly happier with Reddit when it's used on their terms. I know abusers were a small fraction of the API users, but they really were ruining a good thing for lots of reasons.

The criminals are those that make off with billions in crypto heist, ransomware, or blatant Trump corruptions; not people hiding in the dark to steal your purse at knife point (does that even still happen ?). And a tiny solar LED with a motion detector is enough to get you to find your keys.

Many think bananas perish too fast. If they want to GMO some more shelf-stable bananas, it will allow farmers to sell more crops and more people to enjoy them. There are countless benefits to produce that is more robust to transmit. VERY FEW of us live anywhere near where bananas actually grow. Now...if you've got some hatred for GMO foods?...fine...let's just label things and let the market decide.

I don't want to force you to eat GMOs if it's against your beliefs. However, don't scold those who are trying to do something good for humanity. I am fine with GMOs, especially if they're more nutritious or cheaper. I'd like to pay less for my fruit or ensure my local grocer makes a little more money selling them.

In Chicago in 2024, there were 586 homocides in Chicago and 6 fatal police involved shootings. When you live in a bad neighborhood you're 195x more likely to be killed by a criminal than a cop. Again...I don't want to be killed by a police officer, but the probability is MUCH MUCH MUCH more likely that I will be killed by a routine criminal.

So...they were a victim of a crime. The criminal happened to be a law enforcement officer. So you're advocating for less police? no police? I clearly stated that EVERYONE who lives in a ghetto or bad neighborhood wants BETTER police and often more of them. Whether or not your assailant was a cop, professional criminal or random mentally ill person, only privileged people in comfort can scream ABJECT STUPIDITY like ACAB or "defund the police". For the rest, the rely on the cops to protect them from worse people. And yeah, if someone is going to bring a criminal cop to justice, it will be some branch of law enforcement.

No one is saying police are perfect, and they should be held accountable for all crimes and every application of force should be appropriately scrutinized and investigated. However, you're comparing bullets and bee-stings. Both kill people. However, I'll wager you'd rather walk through a flower garden with buzzing bees than an active shootout.

You're absolutely correct. The hardcore rightwing nutjobs will twist the truth any way to ensure their narrative survives, even if it means completely denying reality, but there are many voters who are in play who are not hardcore. They're often not well informed, so they hear from their right wing nutjob buddy that the democrats want to bring communism and abolish the police...and their left of center friends scold them for not picking up the nuance of their horrible messaging and branding. Remember, the couch is always on the ballot. Lots just hate politics and stay home unless you motivate them.

The best parallel is UX. You can make your website idiot-proof and intuitive and compelling....or you can make it however you want and scold anyone who can't figure out what you had in mind....say that they're the problem because they're not smart enough to figure out your genius ideas....good luck with that if you want to actually win an election.

True, and they should be prosecuted as criminals. However, if your anger is directed more towards the police generally than the violent criminals they are hired to protect you against, I will be dollars to donuts, you're upper middle class and writing from a very safe neighborhood. Congrats to you! It's an accomplishment to be wealthy enough that you don't think about being a victim of violent crime. I didn't get there until my late 20s, myself. I couldn't help being born in poverty where I was much more afraid of the lawless than law enforcement.

Today, I live in an expensive neighborhood and can walk my dog at night and not be paranoid watching for people following me or emerging from dark corners or just random junkies and drunks looking for conflict. I can't remember the last time someone threatened my safety since moving away from Chicago. When I was in college, getting home after my night shift job was an adventure. It was a 15 minute walk and everyone who knew I did it, thought I was crazy for doing so. And yeah, multiple times, I had to walk faster to avoid someone following me. I got attacked in the subway by some teenagers for no fucking reason. I got mugged and jumped twice. I had to be careful not to make eye contact with the wrong person as I was walking down the street minding my own business. That's what life is like for many people in bad neighborhoods.

Anyone who has someone close to them who experienced stuff like that has a more nuanced opinion than "cops are bad." The people who live there? Like I said before, they want better cops...not less cops. They want to be protected from violent criminals. For you, they're clearly a theoretical concern, like bears and sharks for me. For someone who avoids them frequently?...crime is a massive issue and daily stress. Cops should be prosecuted for any crimes they commit, everyone agrees to that (even the unions say as much, in theory, although they clearly don't do it well enough in practice). There is lots of room for improvement. However, the last thing the victims of police brutality want is for the cops to disappear, because they're the vulnerable in society who rely on them.

Did you seriously just "ackchyually" us? It doesn't matter what it means to you. It doesn't matter what it officially means. My vote has never mattered because I've only lived in blue states. It matters what it means to people in swing states. He who explains, loses. I know exactly what you mean it doesn't fucking matter, the perception by those exposed to right wing media is that "Defund the Police" is a nicer way of saying abolish them.

Also, defunding really does imply reducing police presence and effectiveness, so perhaps that saying should be dropped entirely. It's failed messaging, at best.

Again, I'm not voting for a Trump 3rd term nor will I vote for a Republican for the foreseeable future....but hey, keep repeating "defund the police" and "ackchyually" anyone who uses the common definition instead of the one you think is best. It's a real winner politically!!!!

I'm the fucking messenger, dude. You're campaigning for the Republican Party and Trumpism, presumably unwittingly.

A difference between you and is that I was actually a victim of violent crime and lived in the ghetto on the South Side of Chicago for 5 years in the 90s and I grew up near an even worse ghetto as a child. I got used to going to sleep at night with the sound of gunfire. When I first moved, I naively asked someone why people set off fireworks every night. I knew a dozen cops by name just from my neighborhood and I knew another dozen from my student jobs. I only know a few now because I live in an expensive gentrified neighborhood. You must be fucking privileged to spout that bullshit. Now that I have a good job and expensive house, yeah, the police are a theoretical concern.

When I was living in Chicago and being violently assaulted for no reason on the subway once or mugged a few times as well as followed, they were people I was very glad to see. All Cops Are not Bastards. In my experience, even as a mixed race person, they're quite nice to you if you are nice to them.

Police brutality is a crime. Stalking people is crime. Some cops are criminals and need to be punished.

However, if I was living on the South Side of Chicago, I can tell you that everyone there who wasn't a criminal would tell you they wanted more cops and better ones, not less. They don't want them defunded...maybe augmented with social workers?...sure, but everyone who lives around crime eventually needs a cop to save them or prosecute someone who committed a crime against them. They hung out at White Hen a lot (like 7-11) and I'd make conversation with them when I saw them.

If the police are enemy #1 in your mind, you are QUITE ignorant of the ways of the world. The police are not perfect and have a LOT of room to improve, but they're not your enemy. Only those who grew up with silver spoons in their mouth have the luxury to say stupid shit like ACAB. For those of us who relied on them to keep us safe from FAR WORSE people...we were glad they were there...wish bad cops didn't do shitty things and want to see them held appropriately accountable, but we WANT effective police who follow the law.

Once you experience violent crime for yourself, you'll find your simplistic thinking as cringe as the rest of society does.