The US is getting a little crazier

[cromwell]

12 DIET cokes. Not coke Zero, DIET coke. And is that a 330ml CAN or a 560ml BOTTTLE


Either way that explains the guy's orange colour


(Here comes the lab coat bt)


DIET coke is sweetened by lots and lots of aspartame.  Back in the mid 90's DIET coke had a warning on the AMERICAN labels not to drink more than 2 litres a day. UK labels had no such warning.


Aspartame is a fascinating chemical. One end has sticky out bits that con your tongue it's sugar. They trigger the taste buds perfectly. But the peril is in the chemical at the other end, which forces those sticky-out bits to hold that configuration and pretend it is a sugar.  It is the amino acid phenylalanine. Now unless you are REALLY unfortunate and have a nasty, nasty genetic quirk that means you can't break down phenylalanine, so you get Phenylketonurea which does really horroble things to you, Phenylalanine, and Aspartame,is pretty harmless. Well, as harmless as any of the 40 naturally occurring lethal poisons in a glass of the freshly squeezed juice of an orange picked by your own hand from a tree in a florida - or israeli, or south african if you prefer - orangery


Any of those poisons will kill you stone dead in surprisingly low volume were it not for your liver.


As soon as you swallow the coke, or the orange juice, the substance passes to your stomach, and thence to the duodenum and other bits of your small intestine. Once there, these items are sucked through the intestinne into the blood vessels surrounding it, and thence via the hepatic portal vein to the liver, where the cells of the liver feast upon the incoming bounty, latching on to those stickY out bits and hauling them inside. Once in, certain nasty poisons have the active site (the bit that reacts nastily with your metabolic processes) BLOCKED.

There are two general ways.


A molecule of water is split into H+ and OH- components, and where the nasty poison has a suitable (usually Amino NH4+) sticky out bit or similar analogue with a positive charge, the poison is hydroxylated by a dehydrogenase enzyme to make an (R)-OH molecule where R= nasty unwelcome poison locked off by the OH from hurting you.


Where the nasty poison has no suitable charged area, the poison os attacked by a glycosyl transferase enzyme which tries to stick a sugary molecule on the end of the poison.


Now I always get this next bit wrong. One of those (either the hydroxylated poison, or the glycosylated poison) is pumped out of the liver back into the blood, where the kidneys seize hold of the newly stuck on bit, and suck it into the bladder, where it waits until you piss it out. I THINK this is the glycosylated form because of what I know happens at the other exit route.


The OTHER now inert poison is shoved out the bile duct, where the basic (as in, opposite of acidic) qualities of bile neutralise the hydrochloric acid your stomach hit your food with to break down the proteins. The exuded poison is itself basic in nature which is why adding an OH- worked, and now it helps stop you getting duodenal ulcers....


The nasty poison continues to exit via the rectum.




OK that marks the end of your detoxication masterclass.


BUT THERE IS A PROBLEM


Aspartame is hit at one end by one enzyme, and at the other by the other, and in the ensuing struggle to break down this nasty piece of shit, the enzymes lock on and will not let go.


I used this to great effect in my lab for a process called "affinity chromatography". You have a gel, to which you bond aspartame, or something like it. You then pass a crushed up extract of whatever cells of whatever organ interests you past this and the aspartame locks onto whatever enzyme group you want to grab ... and will not let it go without severe chemical intervention.


In the living cell, there is no such release. One molecule of aspartame traps one, or maybe two, molecules of vital detoxicating enzyme.


Now, your liver is a battle ground, in which you grow half a new liver every 14 days. Lots and lots of the bile produced by the liver is its own dead cells, killed in the line of duty, protecting you.


Think of carbon monoxide. In the normal way of things, oxygen binds to the red blood cell in the lungs, and lets go at the other end.


If you take in some carbon monoxide, it bonds where the oxygen should go, and does not let go. That red cell is now useless.


But the liver breaks down red blood cells and the spleen and long bones make new ones. So there is a circle of life. Breathe in a BIT of carbon monoxide and yes SOEMof your red blood cells are taken out. But not enough to seriously bugger you. Sit in a closed garage with a car engine running thought - and you lose red blood cells to carbon monoxide faster than you make new ones - and then you die.


So it is with aspartame.


Drink a can of diet coke, and you lose some of the liver's ability to detoxicate poisons.


Drink twelve, and you lose twelve times that ability


Keep that up day after day, and you destroy the liver's ability to deal with everyday poisons, and your skin shoes the classic yellow - orange tint of jaundice


Oh, plus you're risking bladder and bowel cancer from the aspartame


I like coke. I drink a whole 500 ml bottle of the stuff once a month when i treat myself to a Greggs Mexican baguette and Coke meal deal.


But that's the full fat stuff.  With Sugar


I would no sooner chug a diet or zero coke with is carcinogenic payload of liver wrenching aspartame than i would snort the real thing that gave the bottle its name.

Cheers John......cheered me up no end
Since giving up smoking now over 30 years ago I turned in to a fat sod,now as well as my beer I like my tea and with sugar too so switched to sweetners with that very chemical,so thirty odd years of aspartawhatsitsface now you tell me I'm poisoning myself

[HDQQ]

I can't argue with that. I wouldn't know where to begin. But I do drink proper Coke (sparingly) when I want cola and I avoid the Diet version.

Now, about Brexit . . .   

[johnofgwent]

So Donald Trump's gone now and Joe Biden is installed in the Oval Office. Apparently the new president has removed the former president's Coke button, which he pressed whenever he wanted a Diet Coke, which was about 12 times a day. So I'm challenging someone on here, as an experiment, to drink 12 cans of Diet Coke per day for a week and report back on what their mental state is like at the end of the week!

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trumps-diet-coke-button-seems-to-have-left-oval-office-when-he-did-2356558So Trump's gone now

12 DIET cokes. Not coke Zero, DIET coke. And is that a 330ml CAN or a 560ml BOTTTLE


Either way that explains the guy's orange colour


(Here comes the lab coat bt)


DIET coke is sweetened by lots and lots of aspartame.  Back in the mid 90's DIET coke had a warning on the AMERICAN labels not to drink more than 2 litres a day. UK labels had no such warning.


Aspartame is a fascinating chemical. One end has sticky out bits that con your tongue it's sugar. They trigger the taste buds perfectly. But the peril is in the chemical at the other end, which forces those sticky-out bits to hold that configuration and pretend it is a sugar.  It is the amino acid phenylalanine. Now unless you are REALLY unfortunate and have a nasty, nasty genetic quirk that means you can't break down phenylalanine, so you get Phenylketonurea which does really horroble things to you, Phenylalanine, and Aspartame,is pretty harmless. Well, as harmless as any of the 40 naturally occurring lethal poisons in a glass of the freshly squeezed juice of an orange picked by your own hand from a tree in a florida - or israeli, or south african if you prefer - orangery


Any of those poisons will kill you stone dead in surprisingly low volume were it not for your liver.


As soon as you swallow the coke, or the orange juice, the substance passes to your stomach, and thence to the duodenum and other bits of your small intestine. Once there, these items are sucked through the intestinne into the blood vessels surrounding it, and thence via the hepatic portal vein to the liver, where the cells of the liver feast upon the incoming bounty, latching on to those stickY out bits and hauling them inside. Once in, certain nasty poisons have the active site (the bit that reacts nastily with your metabolic processes) BLOCKED.

There are two general ways.


A molecule of water is split into H+ and OH- components, and where the nasty poison has a suitable (usually Amino NH4+) sticky out bit or similar analogue with a positive charge, the poison is hydroxylated by a dehydrogenase enzyme to make an (R)-OH molecule where R= nasty unwelcome poison locked off by the OH from hurting you.


Where the nasty poison has no suitable charged area, the poison os attacked by a glycosyl transferase enzyme which tries to stick a sugary molecule on the end of the poison.


Now I always get this next bit wrong. One of those (either the hydroxylated poison, or the glycosylated poison) is pumped out of the liver back into the blood, where the kidneys seize hold of the newly stuck on bit, and suck it into the bladder, where it waits until you piss it out. I THINK this is the glycosylated form because of what I know happens at the other exit route.


The OTHER now inert poison is shoved out the bile duct, where the basic (as in, opposite of acidic) qualities of bile neutralise the hydrochloric acid your stomach hit your food with to break down the proteins. The exuded poison is itself basic in nature which is why adding an OH- worked, and now it helps stop you getting duodenal ulcers....


The nasty poison continues to exit via the rectum.




OK that marks the end of your detoxication masterclass.


BUT THERE IS A PROBLEM


Aspartame is hit at one end by one enzyme, and at the other by the other, and in the ensuing struggle to break down this nasty piece of shit, the enzymes lock on and will not let go.


I used this to great effect in my lab for a process called "affinity chromatography". You have a gel, to which you bond aspartame, or something like it. You then pass a crushed up extract of whatever cells of whatever organ interests you past this and the aspartame locks onto whatever enzyme group you want to grab ... and will not let it go without severe chemical intervention.


In the living cell, there is no such release. One molecule of aspartame traps one, or maybe two, molecules of vital detoxicating enzyme.


Now, your liver is a battle ground, in which you grow half a new liver every 14 days. Lots and lots of the bile produced by the liver is its own dead cells, killed in the line of duty, protecting you.


Think of carbon monoxide. In the normal way of things, oxygen binds to the red blood cell in the lungs, and lets go at the other end.


If you take in some carbon monoxide, it bonds where the oxygen should go, and does not let go. That red cell is now useless.


But the liver breaks down red blood cells and the spleen and long bones make new ones. So there is a circle of life. Breathe in a BIT of carbon monoxide and yes SOEMof your red blood cells are taken out. But not enough to seriously bugger you. Sit in a closed garage with a car engine running thought - and you lose red blood cells to carbon monoxide faster than you make new ones - and then you die.


So it is with aspartame.


Drink a can of diet coke, and you lose some of the liver's ability to detoxicate poisons.


Drink twelve, and you lose twelve times that ability


Keep that up day after day, and you destroy the liver's ability to deal with everyday poisons, and your skin shoes the classic yellow - orange tint of jaundice


Oh, plus you're risking bladder and bowel cancer from the aspartame


I like coke. I drink a whole 500 ml bottle of the stuff once a month when i treat myself to a Greggs Mexican baguette and Coke meal deal.


But that's the full fat stuff.  With Sugar


I would no sooner chug a diet or zero coke with is carcinogenic payload of liver wrenching aspartame than i would snort the real thing that gave the bottle its name.

[Thomas]

So Donald Trump's gone now and Joe Biden is installed in the Oval Office. Apparently the new president has removed the former president's Coke button, which he pressed whenever he wanted a Diet Coke, which was about 12 times a day. So I'm challenging someone on here, as an experiment, to drink 12 cans of Diet Coke per day for a week and report back on what their mental state is like at the end of the week!

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trumps-diet-coke-button-seems-to-have-left-oval-office-when-he-did-2356558So Trump's gone now

you must be pleased quackers , is this the silver lining for you in the big cloud?

[HDQQ]

So Donald Trump's gone now and Joe Biden is installed in the Oval Office. Apparently the new president has removed the former president's Coke button, which he pressed whenever he wanted a Diet Coke, which was about 12 times a day. So I'm challenging someone on here, as an experiment, to drink 12 cans of Diet Coke per day for a week and report back on what their mental state is like at the end of the week!

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trumps-diet-coke-button-seems-to-have-left-oval-office-when-he-did-2356558So Trump's gone now

[srb7677]

That's the point, nobody is reporting it.

https://www.revolt.tv/2021/1/2/22210470/proud-boys-police-clash-salem-oregon

So a bunch of right wing white supremacists are burning BLM flags. Big deal. It's the sort of behaviour we'd expect from them and hardly big news. It changes nothing and matters little.

[Sampanviking]

Saw this today and laughed!

[Sheepy]

Not quite, as that is really Victors Justice after International Conflict. This is internal and the new incumbent will be as bound by any such precedent arrising, as the outgoing. Besides were any crimes against humanity committed last week? I don't think so.

The US will be under a new regime in a few days' time, they had already set out their stall, which the EU knew full well what it was, it will be interesting seeing how the US react now two fingers has been handed out by the EU towards them, it will define the next four years for US politics depending on how the US react. They know full well the Chinese waited and took the opportunity.

[Sampanviking]

∆∆∆
So,  in essence, similar to the defence of only obeying orders...?

Not quite, as that is really Victors Justice after International Conflict. This is internal and the new incumbent will be as bound by any such precedent arrising, as the outgoing. Besides were any crimes against humanity committed last week? I don't think so.

[Sheepy]

State Capitols Brace for Right-Wing Violence

The FBI warns that pro-Trump protests are planned at U.S. statehouses before the presidential inauguration. Long targets of far-right militias, capitol buildings now face new security fears.

On Monday, an FBI bulletin warned of the possibility of further attacks aimed at the literal and symbolic centers of representative government: "Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols" before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, starting Jan. 16, and again at the U.S. Capitol beginning Jan. 17.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-12/state-capitols-become-targets-of-pro-trump-attacks?srnd=premium-europe

Too many assault weapons awash in the population to regard observed threats as coming from only a few crackpots.
The place is getting as bad as Russia for deadly political violence...

Who would have thunk it.

[patman post]

State Capitols Brace for Right-Wing Violence

The FBI warns that pro-Trump protests are planned at U.S. statehouses before the presidential inauguration. Long targets of far-right militias, capitol buildings now face new security fears.

On Monday, an FBI bulletin warned of the possibility of further attacks aimed at the literal and symbolic centers of representative government: "Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols" before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20, starting Jan. 16, and again at the U.S. Capitol beginning Jan. 17.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-12/state-capitols-become-targets-of-pro-trump-attacks?srnd=premium-europe

Too many assault weapons awash in the population to regard observed threats as coming from only a few crackpots.
The place is getting as bad as Russia for deadly political violence...

[patman post]

∆∆∆
So,  in essence, similar to the defence of only obeying orders...?

[Sampanviking]

Well here is a thing
The media is happy to describe the events of last week as Insurrection and by extension and definition, those involved in participating in it as insurrectionists.

The uncomfortable truth however, is: irrespective of the rights and wrongs, in either absolute or relative terms, the people that took part of this can legitimately call themselves and be described as Pro-Democracy Protestors.

The reason is very simple, these are not just malcontents who did not like the result of an Election, these are US Citizens answering the call of the President of the United States, the head of State and its Commander in Chief, who told them, repeatedly, that the election had been stolen by a corrupt deep state and called on them to come to Washington and actively defend democracy.

I think this is something that will be raised time and time again, when these protestors are brought to court and I can imagine it will result in all the cases being thrown out. If they don't then a very uncomfortable precedent will have been set.

But then, we live in strange times.
The Democrats are far from guilt free as they have questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 election result by citing Russian Interference and Indicting Trump unsuccessfully on account of it. That is a pretty poisonous way to start off, so hardly surprising if its being handed back with Interest (Biden also being accused of being a Chinese Shill).
So this new second indictment is mainly about baring Trump from standing for Public Office again. Surely though, in a Democracy, this should be the choice of the electors, should it not? Should the Democrats have a say as to who Republicans can select as their leader? Is this another precedent that they really want to set?

We also have the overreach of Big Tech/Social Media, but I don't see this as a particularly tough nut to crack. Tech platforms may have terms and conditions, but only Government can enact and enforce law and a law requiring Social Media to keep open and not interfere with accounts of Public Officials is an easy one to put in place.

[Sheepy]

And maybe it should have


I recall back when I was working for a part of Hughes Aircraft back in the early 90s there was a sex scandal with a presidential or maybe just a senate candidate and I asked what the big deal was.


I found the answer one co-worker gave, which every one of the Americans there agreed with quite illuminating.


In short, they expected such a man to drop his trousers and enjoy the benefits of the job. They had no issue with his lack of morals on that. It was the fact (as reported) that he had tried to deny it to his wife when she found out that was the problem.


In short they expected a politician to be corrupt and to sexually abuse his staff. But to lie to his wife about it was a step too far.


Which is why when Larry King interviewed the Clinton's on his interactions with the woman before Monica, Hilary was very quick to jump in and say "Bill's told me everything about that and I've forgiven him".


Her exact words.


And Larry positively deflated live on TV. And of course Bill made it to the Oval Office and used his cigar in ways I'm sure the makers never intended. And good god he might have killed Monica through nicotine poisoning ....

The media driving their own form of insanity adds fuel to the fire daily. This won't be the end of it, you can bet on that, Trumpy or no Trumpy.

[patman post]

If rumours are to be believed, Clinton's impeachment was advanced by the President splashing out on a dress, whereas J. Edgar Hoover — who ran the FBI until he died of a heart attack — was rumoured to often wear one...