malademental's recent activity

  1. Comment on The pathetic life of an internet "alpha male" in ~life.men

    malademental
    Link
    I'm going to sound like an old man, but I'm really concerned for kids these days. I feel that, when I was a kid/teen, peak masculinity was Son Goku. Now it's Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan. :(

    I'm going to sound like an old man, but I'm really concerned for kids these days.

    I feel that, when I was a kid/teen, peak masculinity was Son Goku. Now it's Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.

    :(

    22 votes

  3. Comment on I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path in ~talk

    malademental
    Link Parent
    Yup. You have a point, some comments on that video were borderline.

    Yup. You have a point, some comments on that video were borderline.

  4. Comment on I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path in ~talk

    malademental
    Link Parent
    Thank you. I just watched it. It was interesting. As always, he is a great speaker and great entertainer. However I disagree with his point. Two things comes to my mind: The guy who theorized the...

    Thank you. I just watched it. It was interesting. As always, he is a great speaker and great entertainer. However I disagree with his point.

    Two things comes to my mind:

    1. The guy who theorized the Big Bang was Christian: Even though he used it to tell Christians "hey, the bigbang is not imcompatible with God", I feel he kinda implied it as a flex to the mostly-atheist audience. At that time (1930s), everybody was mostly Christian for societal reasons, they didn't want to fight on two fronts (religious heresy and science invalidating old theories). It's like saying "Galileo was a Christian", he had no other choice... Today, I would expect 99% of people working on proving/disproving the Big Bang are not Christian because they can.
    2. I felt that his main point was leading nowhere: This kinda of unhealthy middle, "let's just agree to disagree." But some stuff are not debatable. Today, for example, I would vehemently disagree with anybody disputing climate change. This is not a two sided debate, there is overwhelming proof, and a bunch of lobbyist paid by oil companies. What is there to agree to disagree?! I don't accept "let's agree we have different beliefs" in this case. For me same goes for religion, there is observable and measurable reality and beliefs passed from generation to generation based on stories from 2000 years ago. I don't understand how they're equivalent. It's very hard for me to agree to disagree on this. I'm not saying you shouldn't believe, if that's what makes you feel better, but I do feel that you have to turn off your brain at some point to believe...
    6 votes

  5. Comment on I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path in ~talk

    malademental
    Link Parent
    That's interesting, because this part of your comments helps me understand other comments saying I might be over-reading into Destin. I totally hear you. And I know exactly what you're talking...

    I even might have some qualms with the "made in the USA" stuff, not because I think it's bad for us to do more manufacturing and production and such in the US (that's all fine and good) but because of the weird isolationism, patriotism, nationalism, etc those conversations and supporters often fall into which I refuse to even remotely be associated with. There's a certain kind of blanket "China makes low quality things" sentiment that has a xenophobic bent to it that rubs me the wrong way (many of your quality electronics are also made there, etc, nuance is required) and so on. Not all made in the US products are good either... I am okay with buying things made elsewhere or made here with materials sourced elsewhere. I am a global citizen more than I am a citizen of any nation (certainly have no problem wanting things to be better for us here, including opportunities and trades and capabilities, as long as it's done mindfully)

    That's interesting, because this part of your comments helps me understand other comments saying I might be over-reading into Destin.

    I totally hear you. And I know exactly what you're talking about. But I didn't read Destin's video this way, but I could see how it could be also interpreted the way you describe. What I saw was "look, if we want to support local skills and good working conditions, we have to bring back labour and skills back here. And when we look around, most people claiming to 'make stuff here' actually don't."

    Of course, I'm biased because I'm one of these people vocal about "bringing back manufacturing to Europe." I think stuff made in China and India are a disaster for workers and is ripe for exploitation from horrendous safety to forced labour, and I'm not even talking about the environmental standards of these factories.

    And you're right, stuff made in Europe isn't perfect either. For example, some Polish factories have polluted entire rivers, the meat industry in Germany has exploited eastern-european posted workers (for non EU folks, more information and what are posted workers). Damn, even the regulation about how factory should handle chemicals is named after an Italian chemical disaster!

    But that's the thing, when H&M sells shirts made by slaves, they can just go "I didn't know! It was my supplier, they never told me!" and the supplier is some shell company out of Singapore for which the EU can't do anything about it. If it was made from Hemp cultivated here, if forced labour was used, we could stop the operation and put people in Prison. (I could even see the state or authority temporarily taking over the operation in order to avoid supply chain disruption.)

    Also I wanted to add, AFAIK, a lot of the high quality electronics are not made in China. If I'm not mistaken, chips (CPUs and GPUs) are mostly manufactured in Taiwan (if you consider that to be outside of China), and RAM as well as NAND (= Flash) are mostly manufactured in South Korea. This is because the skills are only there. While the working conditions are not stellar, my understanding is that the labour law of these countries is superior to mainland China. Unless I'm wrong, the rest of the electronic manufacturing is just putting high quality components on a board, while has been done in China for cost cutting reason, I understood that a lot of it has moved to South East Asia (Vietnam and Malaysia) because Chinese workers were becoming too expensive. AFAICT, very little skill is needed there, it's basically European pick-and-place machines putting components on a PCB and local humans putting the PCB in an injection-molded plastic part.

    All I'm trying to say is that I'm not so sure about "China makes a lot of quality products", China couldn't make a ballpoint pen until 2017! I know that they have massively caught up since then on metal manufacturing and other manufacturing technologies, but for example while catching up, they're still far behind on chips.

    Anyway, I agree with you that it's much more nuanced. And as of today, Shenzhen in China is one of the best place to assemble complexly layered PCBs with reflow ovens But I think we could catch up if we wanted to. And yes, Trump is right, China is definitely the top manufacturer when it comes to magnets.

    My main point is, if you take my country (France) and oversimplify, you have two jobs, skilled workers work in offices, and unskilled workers clean offices. That's it. The manufacturing is mostly gone, and a few semi-skilled people will open a shop. (Retailer, hair dresser, ...) I think bringing manufacturing back will help alleviating the rise of the far right. If people have meaningful job and can afford things, they'll start not caring about immigrants and "the burden of regulations."

    And yes, you're right, I'm sad to see that a good chunk of people who agree with me are a bunch of racist nut jobs. But I didn't take Destin as one of them. I could be wrong though.

    7 votes

  6. Comment on I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path in ~talk

    malademental
    Link Parent
    Yes! I think "the Golden Retriever of science channels" is actually the best description of Destin, which matches the humbleness mentioned by @Greg in their comment. But if your golden retriever...

    Yes! I think "the Golden Retriever of science channels" is actually the best description of Destin, which matches the humbleness mentioned by @Greg in their comment.

    But if your golden retriever started to pull the leash in the direction of your nearby church, wouldn't you be a little bit disappointed?

    2 votes

  7. Comment on I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path in ~talk

    malademental
    Link Parent
    That's good to know. Thanks! As I said, I try not to be too judgemental on this specific point. However I have to admit, reading the comment there is a spectrum from you "I live in the south and...

    That's good to know. Thanks! As I said, I try not to be too judgemental on this specific point.

    However I have to admit, reading the comment there is a spectrum from you "I live in the south and 'Sir' is slighly correlated to conservatism, but it's wider than that" to other comments "I moved to the south and while it's more prevalent, it's heavily linked to religious conservatism."

    I'll take the middle :) .

    7 votes

  8. Comment on I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path in ~talk

    malademental
    Link Parent
    Well, I consider myself a Mark Rober almost-hater so I didn't want to dwelve too much on it because I could have turned my post into pure Mark Rober criticism. But, Yes I agree with you, the "I...

    Well, I consider myself a Mark Rober almost-hater so I didn't want to dwelve too much on it because I could have turned my post into pure Mark Rober criticism.

    But, Yes I agree with you, the "I worked at NASA" is just the cherry on top. And you described the Sunday (subscription box + brainrot for kids) and the sprinkles (fast-forward the science part and keep only the entertainment)

    For me his entire content is garbage, so I tried to prevent him living rent free in my mind :) .

    11 votes

  9. I feel that Destin (SmarterEveryDay on Youtube) is straying from the path

    ~talk Ask
    Disclaimer: I'm dismissive of religious beliefs Just for the record. I'm was raised and am an atheist. I use to have a period where I was ostensibly against religion. I have soften my stand the...
    Disclaimer: I'm dismissive of religious beliefs Just for the record. I'm was raised and am an atheist. I use to have a period where I was ostensibly against religion. I have soften my stand the last ~10 years, I believe I'm more tolerant and don't care what people believe in if it makes them feel better, from religion to homoeopathy. However, I still vehemently oppose any pseudo-science or religion being brought up when discussing real science.

    I don't know if you know Destin Sandlin. He has a youtube channel named "SmarterEveryDay." I believe he would self-describe his channel as "a red-neck doing sciencey stuff."

    The guy has everything, from the southern accent to videos about seemingly-dumb red-neck things that involve a significant amount of engineering and the opportunity to teach about science. If you don't know him, some (not all) of what I consider his best videos are:

    The large part of his content is like this. Maybe not of this quality, but the theme is often some, what he calls, "redneck" thing turned into an engineering challenge. And overall, the quality of his videos is quite high.

    Sometimes he will just tag along with some expert explaining their fields. These are also entertaining and IMHO educational pieces of content. If you want examples, there are:

    And more rarely, he will post weird, life advice or motivational content. Usually this is wholesome or harmless, but it feels disconnected from the rest. Examples are:

    I've always like Destin. This is not a university class, and in the past he has taken some shortcuts with safety. But overall, I think he is an honest content creator, and he is entertaining and educational. He also has increase the safety of his experiments, and been educational about (see the video linked above about bullets hitting bullets) I feel that he has kept the clickbait as low as he could get away with Youtube's algorithm, and that's rare in this day and age, therefore I respect him for that. Overall his content is, IMHO, humble and wholesome.

    I think this contrasts with Veritasium which has become way too clickbaity, and Mark Rober who reminds you every 5 minutes that he quit his job at NASA to do Youtube. By the way, did you know Mark Rober used to work at NASA?

    Of course, Destin is not perfect. He has taken, what I consider to be, bad sponsorship in the past, such as NordVPN which is just a shady VPN (just use Mullvad or Mozilla VPN if you want to circumvent geoblocking), HelloFresh which is overpriced food delivered by a Roach Motel company, or Casper Mattress which AFAIK is a dropshipping company selling products with some health concerns. But many other Youtubers took these sponsorship, so I won't criticise him too much for that. Also his quest to make something 100% in the USA is very laudable, at least to me.

    There are some weird stuff though. I'm trying to not be too much parasocial, but most of his content that is not science related feels... weird. It's often about family, helping the poor, being a good member of the community, which I think are good values to have, but it has this weird religious semi-conservative undertone that I can't really pinpoint, it's more like an uncomfortable feeling.

    Most of his videos used to finishes with a reference to a bible verse in gray over a black screen. This has disappeared most likely as the Youtube algorithm started asking him to link to his other videos at the end of his videos. I also always find weird the videos with his kids because they address him as "sir". I don't know if it's cultural, but in France (where I'm from and where I live) this is usually associated with radical Catholics (aka "traditionalists")

    I've pro-actively tried to avoid judging him on the last part, because I believe people can live their life as they wish as long as they don't hurt anybody.

    But now, I'm torn... He has recently made more and more references to the bible for historical and biological facts. The two videos, I have in mind are:

    And this is starting to bother me. I don't mind the past "I have some belief I want you to know, but unrelated to that, I put it aside, here is some engineering/science video." However, I do mind the recent "I'm talking about science, and let me tell you how it matches my made up beliefs based on a book made up by people 1000s of years ago."

    I know that Destin owes me nothing. And the counter point should be "hey... if you're not happy just stop watching him." But I just feel that I'm watching a guy who spend more than a decades building his brand and audience just tearing it appart, and it was a good brand and audience. I'm just sad about it, but maybe I'm overreacting.

    What's your opinion?

    51 votes

  11. Comment on Germany’s expansion of border controls is testing European unity in ~society

    malademental
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I understand, and somewhat approve what Germany is doing. I'm consistent with myself since I already posted my opinion a few months ago here :) . (You don't need to click, I'm putting the...

    I understand, and somewhat approve what Germany is doing. I'm consistent with myself since I already posted my opinion a few months ago here :) . (You don't need to click, I'm putting the highlights further down in this comment)

    I'm left leaning, and I do not believe in the open door policy. I do believe that communities and groups of people should have the right to self-determination and the right to decide who and who isn't part of their community, and IMHO borders play a part in achieving this. As I said in the linked comment:

    This doesn't mean "nobody should get in", just "regulate the flow in the fairest way".

    I know that the following point is the same as the far right, and I'm aware that it's easy for me to say sitting in my comfortable arm-chair in safety in France, but I believe that we should do what we can so that people don't have to flee wars, famine, and persecution. The issue is that when the far right says it, they mean "the problem is over there, and we should give them a few cents, and ignore them", when I say it, I mean promoting economic development, democracy and mechanized agriculture by using tax-euros from Europeans. Easier a said than done, but there is a plethora of ways, from the stick (sanctions targeting corrupt ruthless country leaders) to the carrot (tax-euros subsidised training and tools for farmers, tax-euros subsidised small businesses incubators, ...)

    For the record, I do believe in Schengen, because I'm a proponent of the Federal States of Europe as one nation, as it is now, without any further expansion. (Even though I think some countries should be kicked-out or pressured into reforming. Yes, you heard it Hungary)

    This is what I was saying about the situation, I don't blame Germany, I blame Schengen's failure: (I changed some words to matches with my current comment)

    In the 80s, European countries decided that the borders should be moved to the edge of union, thus making the EU the [community] for the borders. This was, in my opinion, a good thing.

    The main issue is that the control of these borders was not handed over to this [community] (the EU) [but to part of the community]. So Germany has to control almost no border, except its airports and harbours, while Greece has to guard kilometres of land.

    It's easy to blame individual members for violating the Schengen agreement, but I would argue that the Schengen agreement was never designed to be correctly enforced:

    1. Member states have disproportionate burden when controlling external borders. (See my previous Germany vs Greece example)
    2. Many member states have no incentives to control their borders. During the refugee crisis, Greece had to do border control for Syrian refugees headed to Germany and Scandinavia. Right now, Italy has to do all the border control for North African and Sub-Saharan migrants headed to France and Benelux. It's much cheaper to wave them through.

    The real issue here is that the Schengen agreement is broken. And member states are just doing what they can do. (re-establish de-facto borders) The agreement can't be fixed. Countries with external borders don't want to handover border control to the EU, because their right-wing governments were elected on the premise of controlling their own borders. Countries without external borders don't want to pay for controlling other countries' border, because they already removed border control from their budget.

    I know this is not a popular opinion in amongst left or left-leaning people like me. But I'm always open to discuss, even though I most likely heard many of the counter points already :P

    2 votes

  12. Comment on Norway's government wants to relax restrictions on abortion to make it legal for women to terminate pregnancies up to the eighteenth week of gestation in ~society

    malademental
    Link
    If you're wealthy you can fly to the Netherlands, and basically get an abortion, no questions asked, up to 22 weeks. The round trip Oslo-Amsterdam with Norwegian Air Shuttle is ~€250. But since...

    If you're wealthy you can fly to the Netherlands, and basically get an abortion, no questions asked, up to 22 weeks. The round trip Oslo-Amsterdam with Norwegian Air Shuttle is ~€250. But since non-Dutch residents will have to do the procedure privately, I expect the most of the cost to be induced by the medical procedure itself. The first clinic on Google says they have staff speaking English, German, French and Polish.

    I know for a fact that this is what many women do, in France, where I live. "I'm past the term for abortion, I'll take a train to Amsterdam, and bypass French law." And the fact that some clinic advertise speaking Polish tells me this is not only a French thing.

    In my opinion all EU countries should go to 22 weeks. Right now, it's basically discrimination between poor women with a local abortion limit, and women with a 22 weeks abortion limit because they can go to Amsterdam.

    32 votes

  13. Comment on ‘Ted Lasso’ heads toward Season 4 greenlight with options pickup for three core cast members in ~tv

    malademental
    Link
    Ouch. This reminds me of the demise of Skins. This was a teen show, and each season was a year of British high school. Since high school in the UK is 2 years, it was supposed to have only two...

    Ouch. This reminds me of the demise of Skins. This was a teen show, and each season was a year of British high school. Since high school in the UK is 2 years, it was supposed to have only two seasons. However, the show got popular, and they ordered a third season (7 were made in total).

    The premise of the show was high-school!! So they started with brand new characters, one of them was the younger sister of the previous character, it was totally different show... It ruined for me. They should have left it after two seasons. The show was complete!

    Ted Lasso is the same. They should stop squeezing money from its success. It was a three-act story, and the three acts were told. Whatever they do, I'll watch it because I love Ted Lasso and cant resist to watch it, but I know I'm going to be disappointed. There is no way they can do a Ted Lasso season 4 without feeling like The Matrix Resurrection.

    They should do like Vince Gilligan did with Breaking Bad. Do a prequel show like Better Call Saul. I would love to see a coach beard prequel, or something like that.

    6 votes

  14. Comment on Imane Khelif brings lawsuit against x for "acts of aggravated cyber harassment” in ~lgbt

    malademental
    Link Parent
    I'm not well versed in Common Law, but my understanding, is that if I punch you in the face in the street. You go to the police, and file a report and press charges against me. I imagine that the...

    The article calls this a lawsuit as well as a criminal complaint. And I don't understand enough about French law to know if there is a difference here in translation.

    I'm not well versed in Common Law, but my understanding, is that if I punch you in the face in the street. You go to the police, and file a report and press charges against me. I imagine that the district attorney can choose to prosecute or not. If they do, they need a high burden of proof, they will most likely ask you to testify. Whether the jury decides that I'm guilty of battery or not, you can always sue me in civil court, for money, and you'll have to face a lower burden of proof.

    This is totally different in French law. I'm not an expert, I just went to law university for one year, before I dropped out :)

    If I punch you in the face, you can report it to the police, and it will go into crime statistics. (Déposer une main courante) Or you can formally press charges. (Porter plainte) The thing is that in France, we have a saying "le criminel tient le civil en l'état" (the best translation I could come up with is "civil courts enacts criminal decisions as is"), this means that the civil lawsuits will wait for criminal courts to statute, before ruling with the same decision. Usually, this puts pressure on the public prosecutor to prosecute when you press charges. Because the ruling of the criminal court will affect the ruling of the civil court. During the criminal proceedings, you can be a "civil party", this means that you will be a third party to the criminal trial in addition to the defendant and the public prosecutor, you can bring your own witnesses, and question the ones brought by others, ...

    That's why most cases in France start with a criminal case. A criminal case is any case where there is a victim, it could be battery, like in my example, but it could also be "injure à la personne" (lit. insult to a third party), harassment, ... Many of these cases will be ruled directly by a qualified judge and two "assesseurs" (these are full time volunteering citizen, with ~2 weeks of basic training, with an okay pay, they act as two jurors with a judge). Juries are reserved for "blood crimes" as we say in France, which are basically rape, murder and in some cases of child abuse.

    10 votes

  15. Comment on I'm visiting the region you're from, what's your favorite food I should try? in ~food

    malademental
    (edited )
    Link
    In my opinion, Northern French is food is much more working-class than the rest of France. I think it has a lot of similarity with the American food culture: A Welsh, which I just learned right...

    In my opinion, Northern French is food is much more working-class than the rest of France. I think it has a lot of similarity with the American food culture:

    • A Welsh, which I just learned right now after looking it up to find an English recipe, is originally from the UK and known as Welsh rarebit. This is a French version of it, you'll get it in any northern French brasserie or bistro.
    • Filet Américain which is the Belgian-style tartar steak. This raw minced beef, pre-seasoned and macerated overnight. (This is different from the typical french tartar steak which is minced on-order, and seasonings are served on the side, not mixed in.) This is very popular in northern France, as we're bordering Belgium.
    • Frikandel with Fries. Belgians will say this is typically Belgian, and French people will say this is typically Northern French. Of course, both agree that this has to be eaten with mayonnaise. I'm a Samurai Sauce aficionado myself, which is acceptable as it is mayonnaise-based.

    I realize that most of this could also apply to Belgium. But our cultures are so intertwined between Northern France and Belgium, that it would be hard to have something typically northern French which is not a thing in Belgium.

    Others that could have made the list:

    • The Submachine gun which is a bagette sandwich, with fries and burger paddies. (In Northern France, it will usually have a pure-beef paddy, where as in Belgium it will be a meat-loaf paddy, pre-seasonned, with pork/beef/chicken mixed with egg whites)
    • Endive with Ham Gratin, which is a leafy vegetable typical from Northern France and Belgium, wrapped in ham, covered with cheese and broiled.
    • Sugar Pie which is more a cake than a pie :). I was raised on this.
    6 votes

  16. Comment on Schengen ain't what it used to be in ~society

    malademental
    Link Parent
    I find the "in the 1800s there were no borders, and everything was fine" argument to be a little disingenuous. If you take the US, at that time, free plots of lands were available as far as the...

    I find the "in the 1800s there were no borders, and everything was fine" argument to be a little disingenuous.

    If you take the US, at that time, free plots of lands were available as far as the eye could see. They were looking for any starving Irishman to help plough the land, and control the land. Working in a factory in the US was as rough and as badly paid as in any industrialized European country.

    In Europe, moving from one land to the other did not have any influence on your life. Most people were mostly poor, and not able to move around. If you moved, you were moving from one place a with a ruthless dictator, to another place with a less ruthless dictator or a semi-democracy. The states were not providing any welfare or basic service to their residents.

    These were very different times. I would much prefer being an average Pakistani in 2024, than an average German in 1875. (I chose Pakistan because it is a not too underdeveloped country, while still being underdeveloped. I chose Germany because the second German empire was amongst the three wealthiest countries in the world at the time.)

    7 votes

  17. Comment on Schengen ain't what it used to be in ~society

    malademental
    Link
    There are two mindsets: 1. people should be able to move around and settle as they wish, 2. sovereign entities should have the right to control who can cross their border, and settle. (This...

    There are two mindsets: 1. people should be able to move around and settle as they wish, 2. sovereign entities should have the right to control who can cross their border, and settle. (This doesn't mean "nobody should get it", just "regulate the flow in the fairest way")

    The first mindset is often associated with the radical left, even though I hear it, I disagree with it. And for the sake of the argument, I'll assume that most people share, what I consider to be the most reasonable, second mindset.

    In the 80s, European countries decided that the borders should be move to the edge of union, thus making the EU the "sovereign entity" for the borders. This was, in my opinion, a good thing.

    The main issue is that the control of these borders was not handed over to this entity (the EU). So Germany has to control almost no border, except its airports and harbours, while Greece has to guard kilometres of land.

    It's easy to blame individual members for violating the Schengen agreement, but I would argue that the Schengen agreement was never designed to be correctly enforced:

    1. Member states have disproportionate burden when controlling external borders. (See my previous Germany vs Greece example)
    2. Many member states have no incentives to control their borders. During the refugee crisis, Greece had to do border control for Syrian refugees headed to Germany and Scandinavia. Right now, Italy has to do all the border control for North African and Sub-Saharan migrants headed to France and Benelux. It's much cheaper to wave them through.

    The real issue here is that the Schengen agreement is broken. And member states are just doing what they can do. (re-establish de-facto borders) The agreement can't be fixed. Countries with external borders don't want to handover border control to the EU, because their right-wing governments were elected on the premise of controlling their own borders. Countries without external borders don't want to pay for controlling other countries' border, because they already removed border control from their budget.

    21 votes

  18. Comment on I worked for Mr. Beast, he’s a fraud in ~tech

    malademental
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    The TL;DR is, according to this youtuber, (but they present evidence): All the "Game shows" done by Mr. Beast are rigged. Contestants are just production employees, other influencers,... Most of...
    • Exemplary

    The TL;DR is, according to this youtuber, (but they present evidence):

    • All the "Game shows" done by Mr. Beast are rigged. Contestants are just production employees, other influencers,...
    • Most of the content is basically scripted, sometimes using CGI/edits/cuts, while pretending to be genuine.
    • Mr Beast inflated his subscribers count thanks to gambling, and kid manipulation. "If you subscribe, I'll pick a random subscriber and give that subscriber a car", which is blatantly false.
    • Mr Beast will then trick his audience, by picking a member of his crew, and acting like it's a random subscriber getting a new car.
    • Mr Beast has done multiple "lottery" livestreams, where he has more or less broken every US regulation, while targeting kids.
    • A lot of Mr Beast merch' is deceptive. It's not really signed by Mr Beast himself, it never arrives, when it arrives it's with the wrong size, there is no customer support.
    • Mr Beast created a chocolate bar that he advertised as "healthy" to basically promote children gambling. (It was tied to a lottery, and regulations require you to enter the lottery without having to buy the product, but you could not do so) He was comparing the chocolate bar to Hershey's and claiming it was much tastier and healthier. A few months after, he replaced the formula with basically the same ingredients as Hershey's.
    • Mr Beast also have a pretty good clean up team to remove/copyright-strike any post/video which gives a negative image of him.

    It's a long video, that's basically the main points I could pull out. I might have missed some.

    60 votes

  19. Comment on I worked for Mr. Beast, he’s a fraud in ~tech

    malademental
    Link Parent
    It's the same in the EU, except that there is distinction between "Cocoa" and "Chocolate", kind of:

    It's the same in the EU, except that there is distinction between "Cocoa" and "Chocolate", kind of:

    [...]
    1. Cocoa butter: designates the fat obtained from cocoa beans or parts of cocoa beans with the following characteristics: [...]
    2. (a) Cocoa powder, cocoa: designate the product obtained by converting into powder cocoa beans which have been cleaned, shelled and roasted, and which contains not less than 20 % cocoa butter, calculated according to the weight of the dry matter, and not more than 9 % water;
    3. Chocolate
    (a) designates the product obtained from cocoa products and sugars which, subject to (b), contains not less than 35 % total dry cocoa solids, including not less than 18 % cocoa butter and not less than 14 % of dry non-fat cocoa solids;
    4. Milk chocolate
    (a) designates the product obtained from cocoa products, sugars and milk or milk products, which, subject to (b) contains:
    - not less than 25 % total dry cocoa solids,
    - not less than 14 % dry milk solids obtained by partly or wholly dehydrating whole milk, semi- or full-skimmed milk, cream, or from partly or wholly dehydrated cream, butter or milk fat,
    - not less than 2,5 % dry non-fat cocoa solids,
    - not less than 3,5 % milk fat,
    - not less than 25 % total fat (cocoa butter and milk fat).
    [...]

    2 votes

  20. Comment on I worked for Mr. Beast, he’s a fraud in ~tech

    malademental
    Link Parent
    I know Dandelion Chocolate. A friend of mine brought me some back from San Francisco. It's really good. I don't know what is the regulation in the US. In Europe "Cocoa" (dried cocoa powder) and...

    I know Dandelion Chocolate. A friend of mine brought me some back from San Francisco. It's really good.

    I don't know what is the regulation in the US. In Europe "Cocoa" (dried cocoa powder) and "Cocoa butter" (cocoa beans fat) are two different ingredients, even though they come from the same raw fruit. This is why you always end up with at least two ingredients on the chocolate bar. Add milk powder, sugar and whole hazelnuts, and you end up with 5 ingredients for my favourite type of chocolate :)

    You still need good sourcing of cacao, because without additional flavouring and soy lecithin to bind the whole thing, you're going to end up with a trash taste.

    7 votes