Why Is There So Much Ultra-Processed Food Nowadays?
To understand why our supermarkets are overflowing with ultra-processed foods, you have to go back — not just to the postwar years, but to the very roots of how we came to see food not as culture, but as product.
In the early 20th century, the United States underwent a seismic shift. Industrialization didn’t just change how we worked — it changed how we ate. Food began its transformation from something grown, harvested, and prepared locally to something manufactured, branded, and shipped. Mass production techniques perfected during World War I and II — initially used to feed soldiers — were repurposed in peacetime to feed civilians. Canning, freezing, and dehydration turned food into a shelf-stable commodity.
And then came the Green Revolution — a wave of agricultural innovation in the 1940s through the 1960s that turbocharged the production of monocrops like wheat, corn, and soy. These crops, heavily subsidized by governments, became the raw materials of a new food economy. The problem was that no one could eat bushels of corn or mountains of soybeans directly. But food scientists could turn them into high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, soy lecithin, and modified starches. Suddenly, you weren’t eating corn — you were eating the afterlife of corn, in the form of a frosted toaster pastry or a cheese-flavored puff.
This was the dawn of ultra-processed food — food that’s more the product of chemistry than of nature. These weren’t just processed foods (think: pasteurized milk or canned beans). These were re-engineered, hyper-palatable, additive-laced consumables designed to stimulate your brain’s reward system and keep you coming back for more.
But it didn’t stop with science. Marketing became the next ingredient. In the 1950s and ‘60s, companies realized that the story around a food could be more compelling than the food itself. Breakfast cereal wasn’t just cereal — it was a cartoon character, a prize in a box, a promise of vitamins and minerals. The grocery store became a battleground not of nourishment, but of narrative.
Meanwhile, home cooking declined. The rise of two-income households, longer work hours, and suburban sprawl meant less time in the kitchen. Convenience became king. Who had time to roast a chicken or knead dough when there were frozen pizzas and Hamburger Helper on the shelf? Ultra-processed food promised liberation from labor — but what it really offered was disconnection.
Disconnection from ingredients. Disconnection from tradition. Disconnection from our own bodies’ hunger and fullness cues.
So why is there so much ultra-processed food?
Because we subsidized its raw ingredients.
Because we engineered it to be addictive.
Because we outsourced our cooking to corporations.
Because we forgot how to feed ourselves.
We are now eating for shelf life instead of life. Ultra-processed foods dominate not because they’re better — but because they are cheaper, more profitable, and aggressively marketed in a world that has equated convenience with progress.
If we want to change this, we have to reclaim food from the factories and remember what it means to eat something that was once alive. Something that nourishes, not manipulates. Something your great-grandmother would recognize as food — and, ideally, cook with joy.
Do Pro Fighters Have To Register Their Hands As Weapons?
No, professional fighters do not have to register their hands as weapons.
This is actually one of those persistent myths that’s been floating around for decades, often repeated in movies, TV shows, and internet forums. You’ve probably heard something like, “He’s a trained fighter — his hands are legally considered deadly weapons.” Sounds dramatic, right? But it’s not legally true.
So Where Did This Myth Come From?
It likely originated from a misunderstanding of how the law treats trained fighters in self-defense or assault cases. While there’s no official registry for “lethal hands,” the law does take training into account when determining if someone used excessive force. In other words:
If you’re a trained martial artist, boxer, or MMA fighter, and you seriously injure someone in a fight, the court might hold you to a higher standard of responsibility.
But that’s very different from your hands being legally “registered as weapons.” There’s no paperwork, no database, no card-carrying killer fists.
What Is Considered a “Deadly Weapon”?
In legal terms, a deadly weapon usually refers to an object — a gun, knife, bat, or anything that can cause serious harm or death. A person’s fists generally aren’t considered deadly weapons unless there’s extreme violence or a specific legal statute involved (some states have their own quirks).
So in a courtroom, if a professional fighter beat someone to a pulp, a prosecutor might argue that the fighter’s training made the attack more dangerous — but that’s about proving intent or recklessness, not because their fists are “registered weapons.”
There’s no legal requirement in the U.S. for pro fighters to register their hands as weapons. But their skills can be a factor in how self-defense claims are judged.
Let me know if you want a version of this answer that sounds more like it came from a lawyer, a stand-up comedian, or a fight fan.
How Did Germany De-Radicalize Its People After The Fall of The Nazi Party?
You have to imagine a country in ruins. Not just physically—the cities are bombed out, the infrastructure is shattered—but morally, spiritually, culturally. The German people had just lived through twelve years of the most intense propaganda regime in modern history. From cradle to grave, the Third Reich wrapped itself around everything—education, art, language, even what constituted “truth.”
And then one day… it’s gone.
But here’s the problem: the ideas didn’t disappear when the Swastikas came down. The Allies knew this. The question wasn’t just how to rebuild Germany—it was how to unbuild Nazism. How do you surgically extract a belief system that millions of people lived and breathed… without killing the patient?
Enter denazification. A messy, flawed, and controversial process. In theory, it was supposed to purge Nazis from every sector of German society. Teachers, judges, journalists—if you’d supported the regime, you were out. People had to fill out detailed questionnaires about their affiliations. Tribunals were held. Some were barred from public life. Others were imprisoned. A few were executed.
But here’s where it gets murky: you can’t fire an entire country. Germany needed to function. And the deeper the Allies looked, the more they realized that if they removed everyone who had supported or participated in the regime… there might be no one left to run the water supply.
So pragmatism kicked in. And that meant a lot of former Nazis quietly re-entered society, especially as the Cold War escalated and the West needed a stable, anti-communist Germany.
But de-radicalization wasn’t just about purging people. It was also about reprogramming a culture. The Allies—particularly the Americans—invested in education reform, rebuilding the media, promoting democratic values. They introduced the German public to the horrors of the Holocaust through forced camp tours, photos, and newsreels. Imagine being marched through a death camp and being told: This was done in your name. Some were defiant. Some wept. Most were silent.
And then came the generational shift.
The postwar generation—those who came of age in the 50s and 60s—started asking their parents the hard questions. What did you do? Did you know? That culminated in the radical student movements of the late ’60s. West Germany, in particular, began to confront its past in a way that most defeated nations never have. The memory of the Holocaust became embedded into its national identity—not something to be hidden, but something to be reckoned with, publicly and continually.
And that is maybe the most important point: de-radicalization wasn’t a one-time thing. It became a cultural process. A wound that never fully healed, but one Germany chose not to ignore.
Compare that to, say, post-Civil War America or post-colonial Britain—nations that often buried the worst parts of their past. Germany, for all its flaws, chose to stare into the abyss.
And that might be the only way to truly de-radicalize: not with tribunals or paperwork, but with relentless, uncomfortable honesty. Across generations.
What’s It Like To Date Some With Borderline Personality Disorder?
There’s no before and after when you date someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. There’s only during. And even that doesn’t feel right. Because nothing about it is linear. There’s no plot structure. No act breaks. It’s all feeling — full-volume, all the time — like someone broke the dimmer switch and welded it to “blinding.”
I fell in love with someone who loved like it was the last thing she’d ever get to do. And for a while, it was electric. When she looked at me, it was like she was seeing something no one else had ever noticed. I wasn’t just a person — I was a lifeline. A lighthouse. A religion.
Until I wasn’t.
See, with BPD, love isn’t something they feel — it’s something they become. Same with rage. Same with fear. There’s no firewall between the emotion and the identity. So when she was hurt, she didn’t say “I’m upset.” She said “You hurt me. You betrayed me. You’re just like everyone else.”
And I’d stand there, blinking, confused — because I was late getting milk? Because I didn’t text back in twenty minutes? Because I paused too long before saying “I love you”?
The logic wasn’t always there. But the feelings were. Always. She’d go from laughing on the couch, quoting Daria reruns and eating cereal straight from the box, to sobbing in the shower, saying I was going to leave her. That she knew I was going to leave her. That she could feel it coming.
And the worst part? I couldn’t even say she was wrong. Because when you’re constantly walking on glass — not eggshells, glass — eventually you start fantasizing about bare feet, just so you can feel something else.
She needed me to prove I loved her — daily, hourly. Through devotion, through defensiveness, through dropping everything the moment her fear showed up wearing the mask of anger. And I did it, at first. I became this version of myself I didn’t recognize — apologetic, anxious, vigilant. Hyper-aware of tone. Of words. Of what I wore. Of how long I looked at my phone.
But here’s the thing. You can’t logic someone out of a feeling that has no logic. You can’t reassure someone who’s already decided you’re a villain in a story they never wanted to be in. I spent so much time trying to be the exception to her rule: that everyone leaves. That love is conditional. That no one ever stays.
But eventually, I became the rule.
Because love isn’t enough when it’s mistaken for oxygen. Because no matter how hard I tried to anchor us, I couldn’t stop the storm — not when the storm was her.
I still think about her. A lot, actually. Not with resentment — not even close. I think about the way she held my hand like it was keeping her tethered to Earth. I think about the nights she stayed up talking about death like it was a childhood friend she hadn’t seen in a while. I think about how often she said, “Don’t give up on me,” even as she was running away.
Dating someone with BPD is like loving a fire. It’s beautiful. It’s wild. It lights up everything around you. But you will get burned. Not because they’re cruel — but because they’re scared. Because they’re hurting. Because no one ever taught them how to hold love without squeezing it until it disappears.
And I don’t hate her for that. I never will.
But I finally learned to stop hating myself for not being able to save her.
Is Bodybuilding Terrible for Your Health?
Let’s stop pretending. You didn’t get into bodybuilding to be healthy. You got into it because you hated how you looked naked. Maybe you wanted to look good on the beach, or in the mirror, or in the eyes of someone who wouldn’t otherwise give you the time of day. Health was a side benefit—if that.
Now, is bodybuilding terrible for your health?
Well, that depends. Are we talking about your average gym rat, or the guy with a suitcase full of Winstrol, insulin, and enough GH to give a lab rat diabetes?
Let’s break this down like a post-cycle liver enzyme panel.
1. Natural Bodybuilding? No, That’s Not Terrible. It’s Boring.
You want to lift weights, eat chicken and rice, sleep eight hours a night, and take creatine like it’s 1997? Great. You’ll look decent. You’ll probably live longer than the general public. Your colon will thank you.
But don’t call that bodybuilding. That’s fitness. That’s Planet Fitness with a pump cover.
True bodybuilding—the kind that wins trophies and gets you backstage passes to the ICU—that’s a whole different animal.
2. Competitive Bodybuilding? Now We’re Cooking With Cytomel.
Let’s talk about gear. Steroids. Insulin. Diuretics. The real stuff.
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Steroids jack up your red blood cell count and thicken your blood like molasses. Ever try pushing that through capillaries? That’s how you stroke out at 37.
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They also wreck your cholesterol. HDL (the good guy) tanks, LDL (the artery-clogging bastard) spikes, and triglycerides go for a joyride. That’s a recipe for plaque, high blood pressure, and eventually—boom, cardiac event.
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And the real kicker? Steroids literally make your heart bigger. Sounds cool, right? “Big heart.” Except it’s your left ventricle—the part that pumps blood out of your heart—and it grows thick and stiff like overcooked steak. That’s called left ventricular hypertrophy, and it doesn’t end in a standing ovation. It ends in arrhythmias, poor cardiac output, and sudden death. You don’t feel it coming. You just… go.
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Insulin? Yeah, the “secret weapon” of the pros. Except it doesn’t care about your six-pack. One mistake and you’re in a diabetic coma faster than you can say “IIFYM.”
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Diuretics? Let’s see… you’re already dehydrated from dieting, but now you want to flush sodium and potassium too? That’s a great way to flatline backstage because your heart forgot how to beat in rhythm.
And don’t get me started on clenbuterol. Your heart’s not a fat burner, but go ahead—beta-agonize it into oblivion.
3. The Psychological Toll
You think this is all about the body? Look at the minds of bodybuilders who’ve been doing this for 20 years.
Obsessive. Depressed. Delusional. Most of them can’t stop because their identity is built on being 280 pounds with veins on their traps. They get smaller, they feel worthless. They stop the drugs, and their endocrine system waves a white flag.
Nobody talks about the mental cost. But I will: it’s massive. And the longer you do this, the more your whole life bends to serve the temple of hypertrophy. Nothing else matters. Not sex. Not relationships. Not even money. Just size.
4. So Is It Terrible For Your Health?
Yes—if you’re doing it right.
If you’re a real bodybuilder—one who lives for the sport, for the freak factor, for the vascularity that scares children—then yes, you’re probably shaving years off your life. You’re playing chemist with compounds that weren’t designed for 10x dosages and year-round use. You’re training through injuries, ignoring warning signs, and chasing a look that requires 24/7 sacrifice.
But I’ll say this:
Most of the bodybuilders I knew didn’t care. They’d rather die huge at 50 than average at 80.
And if that’s your choice? Fine. But don’t pretend you’re doing it for health.
You’re doing it for power. For control. For ego. For some broken piece inside you that only feels okay when you’re bigger than everyone else in the room.
Just be honest about that.
And maybe—just maybe—you’ll survive long enough to regret it.
