In the systems I work on this has been a big one. In SQL people are pretty good about not writing `select *` in production code, but when querying directory servers, redis, mongodb, etc. people get sloppy. When a system is small, it's enticing to pull in lots of data and work with it in code instead of writing real queries. This doesn't scale.
Unless you use an ORM, in which case I'm used to seeing it be all SELECT * all the time. And then you get an entire generation of engineers who've never known any other way to talk to a database going around complaining about how this Miata is so slow when really it's just that nobody ever taught them how to shift out of first gear.
Yes, some sites use text that is too small, but...
Browsers have (stateful) per-site zooming and if you want all text everywhere to be bigger, operating systems (including mobile) let you adjust this at the system level.
Like yours, many responses to this research make the appeal to nature: natural things are good and unnatural things are bad. However, that misses the point because xylitol does occur naturally. It is produced by our bodies and is found in some fruits. It isn't a novel compound created in a lab.
The human desire for sweet foods is also quite natural. Sweetness is one of the fundamental tastes that humans can detect, and we naturally seek out sweet foods.
An appeal to history is not the same as an appeal to nature.
Traditional diets and foodstuffs aren't necessarily optimal, but they do evidence themselves as adequate for sustaining a community for some number of centuries.
Novel diets and foodstuffs don't have that benefit, and are often accepted into daily life on a weakly evidenced hunch that its "safe until proven otherwise" and an often unevidenced assumption that it must at least be better than whatever imperfect thing its replacing.
Choosing not to hop onto the hype train for every new novelty is a personal choice, but a decidedly reasonable one.
In the case of sugars and sugar substitutes, adhering to a traditional pattern simply means treating sweetness as a luxury and accent rather than a daily staple. Not a big ask for people who mean to care about their health (not everyone needs to).
Please note that traditional century-old diets have a great track record of sustaining communities, but it's not necessarily the case that the old diets can lead to long lifespans given our current levels of food availability. For instance, my grandmother used to tell me that I needed sugar to grow strong, so she added a ton of it to my milk when I was little. Refined sugar wasn't as readily available, or equally cheap, a long time ago so the small amounts of sugar that made sense in the past doesn't make sense today. She meant well, but the old knowledge unfortunately ended up creating a perverse incentive.
What you are saying makes complete sense, but it's important to have in mind that when going all-in with "traditional" foods, one still needs to worry about overall intake - the century-old foods can still kill you if your diet isn't balanced.
> An appeal to history is not the same as an appeal to nature.
Would it surprise you to know that as recently as 1850 in the USA 50% of all children died before the age of 5? Does that change your opinion of how well people were doing in 'history'?
> Novel diets and foodstuffs don't have that benefit, and are often accepted into daily life on a weakly evidenced hunch that its "safe until proven otherwise" and an often unevidenced assumption that it must at least be better than whatever imperfect thing its replacing.
Can you explain what you mean by this in relation to xylitol? It is not a 'fad' or 'novel' diet.
> In the case of sugars and sugar substitutes, adhering to a traditional pattern simply means treating sweetness as a luxury and accent rather than a daily staple. Not a big ask for people who mean to care about their health (not everyone needs to).
I assume that you eat wild game and refrain from non-local and out of season ingredients as well?
> I had a boss once that owned the building to the business and charged rent to ensure zero profit.
This is common and legal structure designed to, among other things, reduce taxes owed. It only becomes a problem if the business has shareholders who are not participating in the scheme to shift money to the land company.
I can't find a public link to the 2023 report, but the 2022 report is linked below and it has some more information. It is based on a survey of 2000 "creators." It says that from their sample: "Over 35% of the creators surveyed have been building an audience for over four years and earn over $50k annually."
