Articles of Distraction

[Kitan Etos]

Madonna and Taylor Swift dominate VMAs.

[Ravenshire]

Madonna and Taylor Swift dominate VMAs.

VMAs are still a thing?!?

[Angrboda]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...lmost-out/

[Kitan Etos]

Never mind, it was fake TikTok news.

[Angrboda]

They were born into a Britain still recovering from the hardships of war. Though the air-raid sirens had fallen silent, many everyday foods remained rationed, including sugar. Adults were restricted to about 3 tablespoons (40g) a day to stretch between cups of tea, baking and desserts; children were limited to less than a tablespoon. Babies and very young children were expected to have little or no added sugar.

Then, in 1953, the brakes came off. Separate restrictions on sweets and chocolate were lifted in February, followed by sugar in September. By the second half of 1954, average sugar consumption had almost doubled.

The lifting of postwar sugar rationing inadvertently created a natural experiment, whose consequences scientists are only beginning to unpick. A flurry of recent studies suggests that spending the first 1,000 days of life under sugar rationing may have left traces on people’s health more than seven decades later.

“What makes the end of sugar rationing particularly interesting is the nature of the exposure,” said Dr Jiazhen Zheng at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Guangzhou, China, who worked on several of the recent studies. “In September 1953, sugar availability changed quite abruptly at the population level, largely because of policy rather than individual choice. In a sense, history created an experiment that we could never deliberately run over a human lifetime.”

The first of this recent wave of sugar rationing studies was published in the journal Science two years ago. Dr Tadeja Gračner at the University of Southern California and her colleagues used data from the UK Biobank to compare the health of people born shortly before and after sugar rationing ended in the UK. Some had been exposed to this low sugar environment only during their time in the womb; others remained exposed for months or years, while those conceived once rationing ended were not exposed at all.

Gračner found that the longer people had spent under rationing, the lower their risk of developing type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure in mid- to later life: those exposed throughout their first 1,000 days had a 35% lower risk of type 2 diabetes and a 20% lower risk of high blood pressure than those who had never experienced rationing.

The findings prompted Zheng and others to wonder whether these effects might extend to other organ systems. Over the past few months, further studies drawing on UK Biobank data by his group and others have linked reduced sugar exposure to lower risks of a growing list of health conditions.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026...ure-ageing

[Kitan Etos]

*holds out empty bowl*

"Please, sir, I want some more sugar."

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

*holds out empty bowl*

"Please, sir, I want some more sugar."

🎼 Never before has a boy wanted more 🎼

Boru

[Kitan Etos]

Everyone's talking about the Cryptkeeper's bride.

Susan Dell.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Everyone's talking about the Cryptkeeper's bride.

Susan Dell.

Had to look her up and now I wish I hadn’t. Yikes!

It’s sad when normally attractive people decided they’d look better if their face was chopped into little bits and re-assembled.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Christian nationalism in Britain driven by people who seldom go to church, says report

Christian nationalism in Britain is being driven largely by people who rarely attend church and are more concerned with defending the country’s Christian heritage, according to research.

The report, by the thinktank Theos, identified five different groups within the UK in a survey that looked at their attitudes to Christianity and Britishness.

The group whose views most closely resembled Christian nationalism, termed “identity integrationists” by the researchers, accounted for 11% of respondents, making it the smallest of the five groups.

Although 81% of this group identified as Christian, just 13% attended church weekly, only slightly above the 11% average across the population surveyed. Less than a third (31%) prayed weekly, while 47% expressed an interest in the Bible.

The group was strongly hostile to immigration and Islam. Just 19% agreed that Christian values required welcoming and supporting asylum seekers, while 30% supported the equal treatment of religions in public life.

In contrast, another group in the survey with high levels of Christian affiliation, were considerably more religiously observant and less hostile to immigration and religious diversity. They comprised 13% of respondents.

Among these “belief integrationists”, 31% attended church weekly, 46% prayed weekly and 62% expressed an interest in the Bible.

Almost half (48%) agreed that Christian values required welcoming and supporting asylum seekers, while 63% supported the equal treatment of religions in public life.

Although they are the group containing the highest proportion of practising Christians, only 18% of belief integrationists think that defending Britain’s Christian culture and heritage is important for being Christian, compared with 90% of the Christian nationalist group.

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Arun Arora, Church of England bishop of Kirkstall in Leeds, said the distinction between cultural Christianity and practising faith was central to understanding the findings.
Arun Arora, bishop of Kirkstall in Leeds.

“What is it to be a disciple? It’s threefold: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me,” he said.

“And what I think’s interesting about the nationalists is that they want to take up the cross at marches, and display it, but there’s less of an interest in denying themselves and following Jesus.”