ricecake

joined 1 year ago
[–] ricecake 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/07/nx-s1-5026948/conservatives-in-red-states-turn-their-attention-to-ending-no-fault-divorce-laws

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna161562

There's a massive difference between the social stigma attached to coming out, and the revocation of the legal rights associated with marriage.
It's not even that long ago that people couldn't visit their life partner in the hospital following an accident, because they weren't married.

Limited access to certain types of contraception in certain areas is a very different beast than overturning the case that ruled that contraception isn't criminally indecent.

If you don't know how far civil rights have come even in the past 20 years, or how much further back than that they openly want to push things back, I don't think you're paying attention.
Abortion had just as much legal protection as porn or gay marriage, and it "wasn't going anywhere" until it was suddenly gone.

[–] ricecake 87 points 1 week ago (13 children)

What have they got to lose?

Gay marriage, contraception, porn, legal divorce? Just off the top of my head.

[–] ricecake 60 points 1 week ago (1 children)

While true, it's kinda tangential here, no?

If you suddenly disappear with no markers of violent crime, it's unlikely they're going to jump to charging someone with murder on the grounds of "you were once extremely insensitive and rude to her".

[–] ricecake 36 points 1 week ago

The notion of getting a special edition white one, then swapping the shell to a custom black is funny.

[–] ricecake 32 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Right? Like, four years ago we had to shutdown big chunks of the world, inject trillions of Dollars of money into circulation to keep things vaguely moving, millions of deaths, logistical and manufacturing delays galore, and people are pissed that we're not better off than we were before. So pissed that they want to take control from the people who have been turning it around and give it back to the people who fucked it up in the first place.

[–] ricecake 19 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I'm always confused by the need for the Democrats to be more policy specific, when they're the only party that actually shares any policy.
I feel like people aren't saying they're unsure of the specifics of Kamala's policy points, so they're going to instead vote for the guy who rambles incoherently for an hour about evil Mexicans.

[–] ricecake 30 points 1 week ago

I had two premature babies in the NICU (twins with last minute maternal complications, everyone is fine but things were early), and they benefited so much from donor milk.

Newborns in general and preemies in particular have basically no immune system. NICU preemies are also susceptible to a very serious intestinal condition that can cause parts of their intestines to die.

Breast milk is filled with antibodies and various immune response related proteins that help bootstrap their immune system and might essentially prevent the intestinal issue entirely.

Once you're developmentally advanced enough there's no real long term difference between formula and breast milk, but before then the immune compounds we can't make synthetically are basically medicine.

It's a little odd because breast milk seems more intimate than something like blood, but it's arguably more impactful.

[–] ricecake 5 points 2 weeks ago

What? No, I just like making ice cream and I research my hobbies. Why would you think I hate dairy?
Closest I get is thinking that it's silly to insist that something like oat milk ice cream isn't ice cream.

[–] ricecake 1 points 2 weeks ago

Those aren't typically used to mask anything, or to let you increase the air quantity. They're typically used to keep the product stable during freezing, otherwise it can either turn into a brick because they froze too solidly, or because all the air escaped during cold storage.
In terms of cost savings, it does let them shorten the time needed to let the mix sit before churning, but that's just because it helps the fat globs come back together easier.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with using the gums. Xanthan is the only one really that isn't available in an organic formulation, since they're just bean powders mostly.

What's the difference between using coconut oil or pectin like Hagan dazs does (a fat solid at higher temperatures that works as a stabilizer, and a fruit derived gelling agent) and using guar or locust bean gum? They're all just plant powders and roughly equally processed.

[–] ricecake 11 points 2 weeks ago

It's actually because icecream has a defined air and fat content, and if you leave those guidelines you stop being icecream.

[–] ricecake 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Changed with ice cream in general? No. But there are things that have been possible to add to ice cream for a while that do what you describe. It could be that you're just starting to notice, you shifted brands, or the brand you liked shifted formulations.

Many people dislike the things that get added to ice cream, and so there are definitely brands out there that don't include those things.
In my opinion the worst of the additives is not nearly as bad as a lot of people would make them out to be.

In the broadest sense possible ice cream is sugar, fat, water and thickener where the fat has been cooled to a solid and allowed to just start to re-form into a lump, the ice hasn't been allowed to form crystals big enough to notice, and the thickener and sugars glue the fat and ice together such that they trap miniature air bubbles.
Some people insist that the fat and thickener have to come from cow milk in the form of milk fat and milk proteins, but that's a bit pedantic for my tastes.

The easiest way to cheap out on ice cream is to add a lot more air. Since we sell it based on volume, if we churn more air into it we get more ice cream to sell for the same quantity of ingredients, and the only effect is that the ice cream is lighter, softer and fluffier.
There's a legal maximum to how much air you can mix in though.

The next hurdle you run into is that milk proteins are actually kinda shit at keeping those air bubbles trapped. Adding things like guar gum or carrageenan will make it much gloopier and hold those air bubbles better.
This makes the ice cream last longer in a warehouse without the bubbles getting out and leaving your ice cream as a brick.

Next is rampant ice crystal spread, which can turn the ice cream into a brick in the warehouse. This can be slowed down using something called methylcellulose. It's basically processed plant fiber ground into a powder. It's also used in pills as the inert binder, and as a dietary fiber source.
It's popular because is known to be safe and inert, it's very cheap, it prevents ice crystal formation, and it has the fun quirk of getting thicker as it warms, for the added property of keeping your ice cream fluffy and areated as it warms up on your drive home.

Finally, you can tweak the fat blend. This one isn't as common because milk fat is already insanely cheap since we subsidize the hell out of the dairy industry.
Changing the blend to use fats that are solid at higher temperatures does have utility for things you expect to be eaten slower, at higher temperatures, or if you want parents to not be mad that your ice cream makes kids extra sticky.

By far the biggest way that I've cream will save costs is by putting as much air in it as possible. It lets them sell you less in the same size box for the same price.
It's a case where shrinkflation means making things bigger, which is fun.

The brands that didn't take that route invariably rebranded as "premium" ice creams, so they can charge more for the same thing without raising consumer ire.

[–] ricecake 23 points 2 weeks ago

Codifying a right in the constitution when the case law making it legal has been explicitly name dropped as something to overturn by a supreme court justice is not in the least performative.

Before Roe was overturned, it was understood that the supreme court didn't flip precedent because it messed with too much stuff, removing legal assumptions that people have been relying on, like unconstitutional laws banning gay marriage or abortion being inapplicable.

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