naevaTheRat

not applicable to aus anywhere afaik

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Age related cognitive decline is extremely well documented. There is no way around it, you can slow it sometimes but everyone shows decline, it's well established. Particularly between 60-80 decline starts becoming rapid.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41999-025-01377-8 for example is a longitudinal study of several hundred adults. They find:

Advancing age was associated with poorer performance across all cognitive domains. Processing speed and executive indices declined earliest, with significant decrements evident in the early 70 s. Neither linear regression nor ANCOVA using test year revealed any improvement in neuropsychological test performance; instead, significant deterioration across multiple domains was observed.

If you think people can be too young to think clearly because their brain is far enough from a healthy adult human's as to represent one unsuitable for decision making you necessarily must draw the same conclusions around aged brains. It's not bias, it's just decay. We all rot in the end

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 15h ago

I did say it'd be funny, not good.

RE max: just as human brains start life half formed and silly, they end life that way too. It is well established that we suffer cognitive decline after a lifetime of various insults to the brain and general aging. Nobody is ever as sharp as they were in the mid twenties. We try and make up for this with wisdom but we all go to the grave early or a shell of ourselves.

The cognitive arguments around a minimum extend to a maximum. Realistically you can't, but you can't have a well defined minimum either. I think it would be cool to let anyone interested vote, provided they can pass some general knowledge stuff first if they're say under 16 or 14 or something to demonstrate they're cognizent of what they're doing.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 17h ago

It is interesting that there is no maximum voting age. It is difficult to construct an argument for a minimum that doesn't become one for a maximum.

I think we should just implement actual democracy, instead of this bourgeois half-measure. But if we are sticking with elitism a general knowledge test of recent events/political system knowledge/literacy would be a very funny way to weight votes.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

Looking at the warnings is not looking at evidence? I'm not watching an hour long non verifiable video lol. Someone linked the article it's based on and it's not academic but sort of ok although doesn't actually cite much and I had to do a bunch of work to check various claims.

People should just link verifiable shit or refer to specific, fact checkable events and statistics. Youtube is just random people, it's magazine articles for the illiterate.

But whatever. No matter what they did you'd find some measure where they weren't doing your ideal thing and call it deficient. A criticism that could be leveled against any country. They're doing better then Vietnam, Indonesia, slightly worse than Thailand, they're better in women than Japan but worse for men. whatever. China bad I guess.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

I read the article, I also looked up chinese cigarette warnings. They have warnings.

They're like the same as Icelands

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

15 year old install, one issue with crashes because of a regression in nvidia drivers that was solved after a month, I just rolled back till then.

Idk wtf you imagine people doing.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

they have warnings on the boxes lol

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

Things are improving though and they're not making the same mistakes as other countries with nutty sin taxes that just grind people to dust and allowing capitalist shitbags to trample everyone while pretending like they're not incentivised to avoid regulations by tax money.

Idk if you've traveled Asia but everyone smokes. attitudes are wildly different. They're making progress without pissing everyone offx that's good.

I'll happily criticise the real garbage china is doing, like as they mechanise they are shifting arduous manufacturing to Thailand copying the same model as the west, but unlike China Thailand doesn't have the strong government and the population to do what china did and become a regional education powerhouse to free themselves from sweat shop slavery so it's just callously replicating colonialism.

Or how their cultural programs are pretty token in the face of defacto han supremicy and whenever ethinic minorities stand in the way of an infrastructure project suddenly they're not so important.

Or how in the special economic zones companies that are darlings are allowed to shit on worker's right like huwai and the 996 week.

Or how as they transition to a mature economy opportunities for the youth evaporate and they haven't found an answer and are suffering from the same soul crushing bullshit as Europe/anglosphere.

But they're making reasonable progress on smoking and bringing the people along without punitive measures for drug users. Tobacco use is ingrained culturally in a way that it hasn't been for over a century in Europe.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

So you're mad at the government for not being worse about freedom?

The aus government raised taxes on smokes for money while saying it was about protecting people till we got gang warfare, gonna criticise them as much too?

naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

Liberation pledge sorry, I'll never eat with carnists practicing carnism. I mean would you sit at a table and watch people torture a puppy and feel find because you didn't partake? Or eat somewhere with enslaved waiters but serve yourself?

One of my most fundamental beliefs is that subjecting other minds to domination and violence for pleasure is impermissible. Tbh I'm honestly surprised more people aren't vegan given most people think of themselves as people who would choose to be kind if it were an option. Very few people think they would be among the varst majority that would have endorsed the transatlantic slave trade, yet we enslave other species who we have every reason to believe feel very similarly to ourselves without thought.

https://www.daringgourmet.com/traditional-kartoffelpuffer-reibekuchen-german-potato-pancakes/#recipe - a german potato pancake that traditionally includes egg but doesn't need it. If you omit flour and cook it till the potato breaks down and glues together you get rösti

Douhua is a chinese style of tofu that doesn't involve draining out excess water. It is very soft, almost like a stiffer yoghurt. Often sweet it makes a delicious breakfast topped with savoury things. Although it sort of a pain in the arse to make and coagulate soymilk, hence why I usually use the Taiwanese style of acid curdled soymilk porridge. https://www.assortedeats.com/salty-soy-milk

Cooking vegan is very easy, protein is readily available in forms that meet or exceed the density found in meat such as kidney beans or TVP (defatted soy meat alternative, extremely cheap). All you need to do is eat a spread of grains and legumes (or lots of soy which is complete) but that can be in separate meals. You can even do extremely delicious junk food: https://theeburgerdude.com/

naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

I think he was a Cossack in the way that American's are Irish. He was a peasant, not a nomadic warrior military dude. Although he definitely emulated that and used the mythology of the Cossacks during the struggle for freedom.

naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

High quality (premium) cigarettes are THE gift especially for major events

Yeah these were crazy, ornate glossy packaging, golden (possibly gold coated or gold leaf foil inside) they smelled amazing. I've been clean about 15 years and damned if I didn't want to light one up.

I don't think it was deliberately disrespectful, no more so than the way diplomatic gifts usually carry layers of meaning and assertions of superiority and independence.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

Thanks for being less lazy than me.

My wife was involved in an international thingy about tobacco control and harm recently and when she came back with gifts of ciggies from the chinese delegation I had a double take so I looked into Chinese attitudes and anti smoking measures. It seemed wildly poor form to gift tobacco obviously.

It was very informative, and I came away from it thinking they were doing a reasonable job given the size of the state and the low reach of government authority into rural population/attitudes towards smoking in east and south east Asia.

The gift thing is that apparently tobacco is considered a respectful and universal gift, but also it probably allowed them to spruke/talk about their national monopoly which they were very proud of, and took perverse joy in ridiculing the state of Australian black markets pointing out that it was inevitable if prices kept rising and that Australia should nationalise tobacco.

I probably shouldn't be that frustrated that nobody knows much about the state of things, I didn't. I didn't have strong opinions on it though. So thanks for providing the quotes.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

They had absolutely ridiculous rates of smoking until recently, still very high in older men; low public awareness of the harms of smoking (see that paper I linked) and until recently low rates of education; and high public approval of smoking.

Do you believe governments should force people to not do things they want to do? Or that governments should let people do what they want and promote education and safety?

Like are you saying they should be more authoritarian about it? They should let private companies operate peddling an addictive drug like most developed nations? They should use price signals to trap people in poverty for the crime of being addicted? They should ban it and create a black market and public resentment?

what do people actually want?

They monopolised it to prevent western companies profiting (the companies that got everyone addicted in the first place and suppressed findings of harm), ran education campaigns and banned it in healthcare settings starting back in like 2006. As opinion has shifted with increasing education it's been more heavily regulated.

This seems like good governance that respects peoples' choices while trying to limit harms to me.

It would be cool to see stuff like plain packaging laws like we have in Aus, although iirc only one other country has done that so it's a rare and remarkable success. However aus also has extremely steep sin taxes that poverty trap people (a pack of durries is about 30 usd iirc) and this has created a vibrant black market leading to daylight firebombing of rival gang tobacconists so like it has failed pretty bad otherwise. Also private companies dumped huge amounts of money into promoting vaping leading to a massive increase in nicotine use among the young, seems like a state monopoly would've been better.

Seriously what do you want them to do? Overrule preferences or do the slow thing of changing public opinion respectfully?

Edit: also specifically what measures? A ban on advertising, in schools, in healthcare facilities (difficult! Something like 60% of doctors smoke lol), public transport, offices, and the creation of smoke free public spaces is the same as aus/usa/France/uk etc I think, ban on ads and harm awareness ads seems comparable (they don't label packets with harm warnings like some countries I think, that could be improved), a ban on private companies is further than most countries, they allow them to be sold openly unlike some countries that require them behind the counter, age restrictions are either not a thing or not well enforced which is bad, they've comitted to using price signals which personally I think is dog shit but that's also in line with other countries, they rattified the WHO treaty on tobacco which is again in line with most.

I think all you can concretely point to is that they started late (v. common in the region, different attitudes to tobacco and poorer infrastructure/education/awareness of harms) and that penalties aren't super steep but personally I think fines and harsh punishment to drug addicted people is exceptionally cruel and other means should be looked at.

I'm not sure what the status if subsidy for smoking cessation aids is but it is an active area of research in Chinese medical universities and attracts reasonable amounts of funding.

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naevaTheRat @lemmy.dbzer0.com 2d ago

China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC; Chinese: 中国烟草总公司), branded as China Tobacco (中国烟草), is a Chinese central government-owned corporation with nationally chartered monopoly status to manufacture and sell tobacco products in China since 1981.

ffs why lie.

In 2015 china instituted a ban on smoking ads, in 2016 they committed to a plan to reduce smoking through various measures, in 2023 they expanded that plan with more provinces signing up to create more smoke-free zones.

Why can't you criticise real shit about China. Why do you have to just make up lies and peddle nonsense. It is not difficult to discuss real flaws in Chinese governance

edited for civility