I would not myself call Bernie Sanders a populist.

But he has been labeled that, and to deny the reasoning would be disingenuous.

You can employ populist strategies or have populist tendencies without being an outright populist. At the same time, a lot of Trump's policies are also "unpopular" yet a huge number of people, myself included, would label him a populist.

You're putting to fine a point on it / missing the forest for the trees, etc, etc

I fail to see the connection.

In one case, you are not in power and selling yourself, and perhaps vaguely referencing policy ideas you would pursue.

In the other, you are in power and are explaining, in much more detail, why and how, one particular piece of legislation or policy should be enacted in exactly the way you are proposing. You will be joined by a great many of your peers in support of this. You will be publishing the relevant details and analysis for the media and others to digest and share conclusions about. In this scenario, all the thinking and debating has already taken place prior to releasing the plan to the public and there is majority consensus. If you are a unilaterally acting executive, like the President, you would not need this consensus, but if you failed to convince a majority of the population that the actions were right and justified, then you should not take those actions.

There's dangers with Bernie Sander's style as well.

Ideally, a lawmaker or leader should not be concerned with appealing to the public, but instead, with making the best decision possible for the tribe.

The public has is own ideas about what the best decisions should be. And lawmakers and leaders are often disconnected from the experiences of the public. So it's often true that an elite has no grasp of what is the right decision for a non-elite. Even when the most noble of intentions is being wielded. Likewise, the general public can be less informed or misinformed about matters. At a minimum, every member of the public is at least somewhat insular in its views about what are good decisions for the population at large.

Populism is a terrible approach because it appeals to these very factors. It's a quick, feel-good message that the masses, in the absence of pre-existing biases or deeper thought, will happily accept.

Therefore, the CORRECT approach for a lawmaker or leader to proceed is:
(1) Consult with as many smart people about things as possible. (2) To consult with the population they represent and take their fears, gripes, and biases into account. (3) To consult with other lawmakers and leaders to discuss all these inputs amongst themselves. (4) To take into account historical realities and sociological realities. (5) To propose a plan that will best address the populations needs (6) To SELL THAT VISION using honesty and facts back to the population and amass as much support for the subsequent policies as possible ideally a sizable majority.

Populism, sadly, has the effect of eroding trust of that kind of process because it encourages some leaders to lie to the people to keep them happy. Then the leaders and lawmakers who are trying to follow the formula above, face an uphill battle in step (6).

"License to Live"

You can "apply" for a "License to Live" and it grants you, government-supported, up to an extra 100 years of healthy life extension, which includes government supported vasectomy or sterilization. Only people who have had no more than 2 kids are eligible to receive such a license. People who have only had o or 1 child can get up to 150 years of govt-supported life extension.

Caveats:

If you become unhealthy (heart disease, cirrhosis, cancer, etc) then you are only allowed to continue receiving treatments on the public dime if they are reversing your disease. If not, then you'r left to foot the bill if you wish.

Buying your own life extension still requires the same basic child count and sterilization policy.

When the public policy runs out, you can buy your own.

People who want to have more kids can opt out and reverse their sterilization but will forfeit any legal means of life extension afterward.

The evil I refer to is the idea of taking pains to commit random, motiveless murder of a helpless innocent victim for no reason other than to do it.

Most murders have a highly relevant and particular motive to the murderer. Even terrorism has a motive, but to achieve that motive it must have a broad reach. Hacking a medical connection to kill one person won't achieve that.

Yet surely, someone would do it just to prove they can.

You might say a terrorist would want to do it many times over because that would be effective. But I counter that doing it just once would lead to the closure of whatever loophole he exploited; to continue any further would be an expensive cat and mouse game. No terrorist sees the ROI in that. So it's a dead end.

So, in reality, what we're looking at —as the only viable scenario— is a sick loser who wants to incite disgust and sorrow.

Hence, "never underestimate people's capacity to be mind-blowingly evil".

*blowingly

never underestimate people's capacity to be mind-glowingly evil...
it seem's they have this thought in mind

The problem with diabetes is that either you're T1 and you don't produce insulin (therefore no response) or T2 and your cells are insulin resistant and the temporary extra insulin you get from a diet soda has no effect because the cells just ignore it.

I posted a citation above. But do your own research. Nothing is conclusive in nutrition. Far from it (just look at the cholesterol debacle). But the evidence is damning.

Like I said, go ahead and be a lab rat, but be informed.

Re insulin response in sucralose: http://www.medicalnewstoday.co...

Also, protein itself elicits an insulin response.

Admittedly the case for Aspartame is weaker, and I can't find the citation right now, but despite early studies showing no insulin response for Aspartame, a more recent study DID make make a correlation.

Either way, artificial sweeteners being associated with insulin resistance regardless of BMI has been well-established. It stands to reason, given the evidence that Sucralose has been confirmed to result in an Insulin response, and that Insulin management in general is a tricky thing, that one should treat all artificial sweeteners with the same level of suspicion in this regard.

The only thing that excuses Stevia for now is that studies have shown a beneficial effect as opposed to any negative effect. Feel free to be a lab rat, just be an informed lab rat.

I forgot to point out above: when the insulin tells your cells to uptake the free blood sugar, unless you've been exercising a lot, it's your fat cells doing so.

So even though a diet soda has zero calories, you just got a tiny bit fatter.

The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.

The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).

This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.

Now for the popular reason they're getting rid of it:

Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.

This seems like a relatively minor reason to stop using aspartame unless you're consuming vast quantities. Regardless, people think it's a neurotoxin and can't have that. (Forget about all the other benzene additives, colorants... even caffeine itself is a toxin).

Anyway, glad to see they are doing away with it. Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame at producing a phantom insulin spike. (And people get upset at the chlorine... but say nothing about drinking chlorinated water or soaking in hot tubs).

This is a mystery to me... color changes. The building changes color as it moves?
We need a better TFA. The one linked explains pretty much nothing.
Someone mod this guy up too.

Accurately and precisely canceling out camera shake (indeed the movement of the building/foundation where the camera itself sits too) on something like this would seem to be a big deal.

I guess instead of having accelerometers on the building they put them on the camera? Article didn't really get into this aspect.

Democracy? Democracy?

Also, "peace" is debatable. There are a lot of people who would not feel at peace living under the Hamas world-view.

posting to undo moderation. I aimed for funny but mistakenly released on overrated. ugh.