This was a very heartfelt post, thank you for writing it up. I see a lot of parallels here in the way my parents thought about me and my siblings growing up.

I think the issue though is one of trajectory. It seems like more and more people are struggling to make it. The thought of working extra to pay for something nice is fading somewhat as working “extra” becomes a necessity just to afford food and housing. There’s a huge upsurge of people going into debt currently via financing their groceries for example.

We should develop robust safety nets to prevent this. We have the resources to make decent groceries and shelter available to everyone. We need to push back hard against every attempt to resist making it actually happen

Thank you for created wired headphone content!

No I get what you’re trying to say, the problem is your arguments make no sense

The number of musicians on the stage is irrelevant. I’ve seen plenty of shows with a single guitarist. They aren’t costing other musicians anything by doing their own thing

You also are trying to make the point that people “suddenly” care just because it’s AI even though you reference nearly 50 year drama in the same post

Yea there are parallels between the AI slop situation and other technological advances (invention of the camera, moving pictures, typewriters, and so on) which you are trying to illustrate but your illustrations are misguided. There’s a clear difference, and your strategy of throwing artists under the bus isn’t going to accomplish anything. Not that you seem to actually want to accomplish anything other than making some grand proclamation about society

To be honest, reading thru the study and poking at some of the discussions about it online, it seems to not be remotely saying what people are saying it’s saying lol.

Like they weren’t able to find many of the results they expected in actual human samples compared to the mice. They also found that slower weight loss seemed to correspond with fewer and less severe epigenetic changes.

That second point there was never really expanded on beyond a throwaway statement, but it jumped out at me because the humans studied received bariatric surgery. Which causes massive weight loss very quickly. They even cited that as a potential confounding variable.

It’s also not really about “fat cells multiplying” at all, but rather how a collection of dozens of different factors differ between never obese and formerly obese samples, and only at the two year mark after a weight loss intervention.

Their own conclusion is that “they have not proven” their findings have anything to do with weight regain. This is then bizarrely and immediately followed by what can only be described as an unprompted advertisement for Ozempic, along with speculative musing that further study is needed to determine if it could be used to “erase or diminish” the epigenetic memory (despite semaglutide being unrelated to the experiments and appearing nowhere else in the paper?). Interestingly enough, there’s also an extant conflict of interest statement linking one of the researches to several pharmaceutical companies, including Novo Nordisk

All in all, it strikes me as nothing more than yet another case of bad science reporting. With people kind of going in with preconceived notions, glossing over all of the details, and emerging with snippets taken out of context (body remembers being fat! It changes your genetics!). Lo and behold all the online discussion centers around just the provocative headline and the speculative sections of the paper.

It seems like the researches even deliberately tried to use language to bait this type of response from the general public (although this is now just speculation on my part). In summary, I am unpersuaded by the available evidence. Thank you however for linking it! There is a lot of other interesting info in there

Righteous, thank you! I’m in the muck right now at work but I’ll give it a read when I can

Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean?

DJs never performed with bands? Disc Jockey. They’ve always played pre-recorded music.

Synthesizers also aren’t used to replace musicians. It’s a totally different sound. That’s like saying the piano replaced the upright bass because it can hit all the same notes. Just not how that works.

Also why throw shade at synths at all? They’re very far from fake instruments, if you’ve ever sat down to actually understand them and listen to synthesizer dominant music outside of the 80s pop you dislike so much

Seconded, I flipped to youtube then flipped back to check. This is top tier monkey content, people!

Thank you, no rush! If so could you please reply in a new comment so I get a notification?

Gotcha, yeah and thanks once again for the discussion. What I’m looking for basically is just evidence for the claim posted above us, specifically that “it is a fact that weight loss results in lifelong ravenous hunger due to fat cell signaling”

Scientists all the time come out with reviews and proposals that ultimately fizzle out without supporting evidence. So before I am able to believe any specific claims I need to see that it’s an actual scientific finding rather than just something tentative that has caught headlines (like I said, it happens all the time).

Since you like reading studies in general, for your own amusement I would suggest investigating the claim “cooking rice with coconut oil, then leaving it in the fridge overnight, will reduce the calories absorbed by your body by half!”

It’s a total and blatant piece of misinformation based on a chain of bad news reports made about a study that claimed something totally different, and was subsequently never confirmed. Yet I have met people in real life who swore by the method (even though they struggled to lose weight regardless of this supposed calorie cutting “hack”).

The weight loss space in general is totally flooded with this type of misinfo which is why I get so particular about it. Thank you again!

Could you direct me to the paper where it was proven? There seems to be a notable amount of bad journalism and broad misrepresentation of the science on this topic.

We are basically discussing whether or not obesity is an inescapable condemnation, so we should not sensationalize the topic whatsoever, and we should especially not present it as a fact if it is not a fact

Thank you again for the link, but it seems like you’re just reiterating the hypothesis without any supporting evidence? We have a proposed mechanistic explanation for the phenomena that requires further study. My point of contention is that it should be presented as such, and not as a granted fact

I’ve read the first study already, it doesn’t comment at all on the hunger signaling aspect.

The second study is just proposing this as a mechanism which may account for weight regain. They spin off pretty quickly into a more matter-of-fact tone while presenting the hypothesis itself, but at the moment it remains speculation. I obviously haven’t had the time to click through to every reference in there, but so far the links I have checked similarly lead to speculation.

Basically I think it’s somewhat dishonest to present this hypothesis as a statement of fact. I feel like the inevitable result of this mischaracterization will cause people to not even try. Why bother if something is probably impossible, or only one in a million could do it?

Thank you for linking it however, and I will be very interested to know if Professor MacLean verifies the concept. Of note, in the conclusion they propose that environmental and behavioral interventions will be important for combatting this effect, if it does turn out to be true

I’m down 100lbs and been chilling there for a a while actually. (I do bulk/cut cycles of around 30lbs for bodybuilding so my total weight loss fluctuates from like 120lbs to 90lbs depending on how that’s going. Just for disclosure)

But I’ve heard a few people mention this idea that “fat cells stick around forever” and “send hunger signals to fill you back up”. Do we have a scientific source for this?

My other thing with it is like, that’s not the reason someone gets fat the first time right? Because the idea is your fat cells start multiplying after a certain weight? So regardless it still seems important to address that first cause and not repeat it

But for me personally I just haven’t really experienced it at all lol. I’ve found that actually the type of food I eat makes me hungry and more likely to go off track. Like any fast food, most prepackaged snacks and prepared meals from the grocery store.

Like I could eat an 800cal pint of ice cream then have dinner 45 minutes later. But 200 calories of frozen grapes and I’m like, stuffed lol. Or I’ve also noticed if I have a doughnut in the morning (work offers them) I’m hungry all day, but eggs cheese oats and yogurt leave me satisfied to the point where I’m not hungry at all when I get home, and eat just because I know I need the nutrition from dinner.

Anyway sorry for rambling, really I’m just curious to get to the bottom of the “depleted fat cell” thing. I had never heard of it the entire time I was losing weight/maintaining then all of the sudden I’m hearing it pop up in lots of places, even lemmy now

Thank you for personally attacking me!

“It’s worth it to push through the pain!”

Neither, I personally determine the meaning of art. Please feel welcome to ask about any pieces you are unsure of

Well, you can hardly call it “uncontroversial” if “so many people” so strongly disagree with your absolutist characterization of an entire medium of art, right? It seems to me to be quite divisive in fact

But I’m intrigued by this, you consider not only games but also shows and movies to be childish indulgences? I think a more reasonable assessment would be that they have the capacity to be such. But what people want to communicate to you is that through these mediums, they’ve experienced powerful artistic catharsis that has improved their lives, and yes, even connected them with and strengthened their relationships with others.

Sure, a child may have all the time in the world to rot their mind in Fortnite. But there is an artistry to experiencing a craft, just the same as there is an artistry to crafting it. Investing in your capacity to be critical of cinematography, as opposed to simply letting the film flash before your eyes. Eventually you learn to tell the difference between reality tv and great works like Twin Peaks.

If you think these differences are simply not present in the medium of gaming then it’s no surprise you touch the nerve of people who have invested in the craft.

In summary, it’s inconsistent with the lived experience of countless millions of others for you to propose that “appreciating a painting” is a valuable use of an adult’s time, but “appreciating interactive art” never can be, and should be discarded as childish.

And as an aside, whether someone only plays games with no other pursuits to the point where their life falls apart is not really relevant to the discussion. Yes, of course that is a terrible and childish way to ruin your life. It would be equally terrible if you stayed up all binging Netflix and lost your job as a result. Once again the issue here is your perspective broadly, and how you are trying to justify it. Not the medium itself.

As a final aside, I’m (obviously) a gamer myself, as well as a multi-instrumentalist. I find creating music and playing games to be similarly enriching. The high level discussions I have with participants between the two mediums are equally thought provoking. It is a great blessing as well that games are so thoroughly intertwined with music, giving me a lot of carryover between the two pursuits.

This is however, essentially the limit of what I can manage to sustain dedication to as an adult. I would also love to get into painting, and read two novels a week, and watch all of history’s greatest films, and train for a marathon, and sail around the world, and so on. I have confronted the fact that, having only one life, I will only ever dabble in most of those things, if I am lucky enough experience them at all. But I would never think to myself that the things I have chosen to invest in primarily are inherently superior to the things that bring other people fulfillment. Entertaining thoughts like that would make me feel very childish

Yeah that’s part of what makes games specifically so valuable. It asks a lot of you. You have to meet it where it’s at. You have to muster the energy to be able to appreciate it even when life drags you down. Otherwise you can’t progress.

I obviously don’t know you, and reading books and investing time in your family is obviously great. But to anyone generally, I would say be careful and make sure you advocate for your time and energy. It’s very common for people to fall into a loop of passivity. The audiobook is on in the car but their mind is elsewhere. They endlessly scroll algorithmic slop on their phone without it ever actionably enriching them. They turn on a show at the end of the day just to tune out.

If your life is already full of the experiences that make it worth living, great! Again, I don’t know you. But irl, what I see most often when people complain about not having time for deep passions is that their job drains them, then their responsibilities drain them, then they lay, crushed, letting images on the screen flash by them as the days turn into months. Then somehow years go by and they’re left without the memory of ever living them.

In the midst of this, many people adopt the belief that they’ve simply aged out of participating in deep passions, and the way life slips through their fingers is just the way life is. This is a difficult belief to weed out once it has taken root. Ironically Outer Wilds specifically is a great way to confront this mindset lol

The real issue here is actually just your opinion of games. You consider games to be “sit around dick around” time wasters.

If that’s all it is to you then yeah you’ll naturally find yourself moving on as basically anything else will be more fulfilling.

Games to me are a form of art which have the power to change lives. A medium I’ve been continuing to develop an appreciation for my entire life, alongside other pursuits such as music. As life gets hectic into adulthood I’ve found that games are far more meaningful to me now than ever before.

And I’m not sitting around looking for time to kill. I make time to play because of how restorative and life affirming it is. Games like Citizen Sleeper, Spiritfarer, Outer Wilds, To The Moon, Slay the Princess, Hollow Knight, Eastward, Arctic Eggs. Some experiences stay with you forever, expand the depth of your empathy, and steer your heart towards kindness.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen to you if you try to crank out endless rounds of Call of Duty to the point where it interferes with you taking your dog to the vet. But I’m 100% certain all working adults would benefit from engaging with meaningful art regularly. Be it games, books, film, etc. Whatever strikes you.

Well over 300 hours in BotW here, loved it. It feels a lot more “grounded” in comparison to totk, which feels a lot more “sandboxy” at times. Both great games, just different vibes

I would also say, there were a TON of times in TotK where they riff on previous things from BotW. A lot of the enjoyment I got was the subversion of expectations. In the lead up to the game we all thought they just copy/pasted the map to save time but they actually did a TON of work to it, and it’s very interesting and nostalgic to retread over places that have changed so much.

I would guess your best bet is playing them in order, altho it’s probably fine either way