exasperation

If you're asking for a big fundamental rework of the labeling requirements that already require the labels to prominently print the active ingredient on the front, and have a standardized Drug Facts label (including active ingredients, inactive ingredients, dosages, use, side effects, contraindications, etc.), then this example isn't a good one. All the different Tylenols, Robitussins, Mucinexes, Advils, and NyQuils out there are probably a better example of what you're talking about, but those are also clearly labeled.

Or if you're advocating for, like, an end to over the counter drugs, and requiring a prescription for everything, then I guess that's a position. But bypassing a doctor is going to require a little bit of effort from a ~~doctor~~ consumer, and simply reading a label isn't, in my opinion, a huge ask.

(Edited to fix mistake)

I sure as hell have. Even with OTC drugs. I've grabbed what I thought was one type of Tylenol while I was in a hurry and it turned out that Tylenol had put out something else in really similar packaging.

But the brand name is an umbrella that covers lots of different products. Tylenol is a great example because there are so many different types of Tylenol out there with different dosage, different forms (capsules, pills, tablets, gel coated versions of those), and with different combinations of other ingredients. It's something that is important to get right and check every time.

Especially with cold medicines, where different combinations of decongestants, expectorants, cough suppressants, and fever reducers are often sold in the same drug. You can't just rely on brand names, because those will sell a bunch of different products under that brand. There's like 5 kinds of Mucinex and 5 kinds of Robitussin, and that's not even getting into the different flavors or children's versions.

The problem here is that oral phenylephrine is itself an ineffective drug that was only grandfathered in because it was commonly used before the FDA was created. It shouldn't be sold at all (and the FDA is in the process of revoking its existing approval).

I really don't think people should have to look at the ingredients of a product, even an OTC drug, every time they buy it

I disagree. You just never know how things change, including things like reformulations, like when infant Tylenol was reformulated to a lower concentration. This stuff changes and consumers need to be on top of it.

I don't know how you buy drugs but I pretty much exclusively look for the list of active ingredients and quantity.

Because it's a week lol you're talking about losing water from sweating, stored sugars in muscles from exercising, and a teensy bit of fat loss.

Yes, and that is visibly noticeable on many people.

When I switch from bulk to cut the cut starts to take effect like almost immediately, and I slim down significantly within a few days. I know it's mostly glycogen and water, but it physically looks very different after the water wooshes out of your body and your muscles become more visible.

(Also, it's not exactly sweat, it's that higher glycogen levels are bound to water molecules, which get released and can actually be used by the body or discarded as excess as the body seeks an equilibrium.)

$799 in April 1984 is worth $2444 in November 2024.

Like the old joke from the 80's:

In the United States you're free to criticize Ronald Reagan. In the Soviet Union, you're just as free.

Hitting that wall is pretty common. You learn the wrong habits as you breeze through and get good grades without effort, then encounter the first subjects that require non-trivial effort. And then maybe you take some bad grades until you eventually learn, or you drop out and never figure out how to work through more difficult learning.

Some smart people might not hit that wall until pretty late (I know people who first encountered it in grad school), but regardless of when they encounter it, whether and how they get over that hump can determine what the rest of that academic path looks like for them.

Anyone can be interested in anything.

Yeah, but I'm responding to a comment that says that neurotypical people aren't curious or passionate about the things they're interested in, and I think that's too narrow of a way to define "interest."

I'd reject that way of thinking because that principle could be weaponized to accuse some neurodivergent people of not caring about people by misreading why they might not be great with social cues or things like that.

I think for most people it's just a matter of tradeoffs. You don't have to be interested in the act of doing something in order to be interested in the consequence of doing that thing.

Someone who doesn't like driving may still drive, and concentrate on driving the entire time, to get to a destination where they want to end up. For someone who doesn't like to cook but wants to eat hot food, cooking is a means to that end.

Now, if you're saying that you don't think that tradeoff is worth it to you, maybe that's true of them if they stop to think about it, too. But I'm not sure that's what's going on for most people who continue to work jobs they don't like.

Neurotypicals tend to lack curiosity and passion for interests.

When the interest at issue is human relationships and social norms, I think it flips the other way around.

Better to characterize things by what type of interests tend to appeal to which.

In the college football world the secondary market for tickets has seemed softer this year than last year. A lot of it is the change to the playoff format making it so that people have more events to split their budget across, but a lot of people lost money selling tickets under the face value for the conference games when their teams didn't make it. And just this weekend, it seemed like tickets were pretty cheap for the first round of the playoffs.

Those prices might be up from 5 years ago, but my impression is that prices are down from last year.

If you think about it elevators are just vertical trains