Venezuela battles obesity amid dearth of good food

Mannequins stand at a store that sells clothing for over weight people in downtown Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2014. The Venezuelan government has launched a public relations campaign to halt a steady rise in obesity that, if left unchecked, threatens to lead to a costly, public health crisis. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Venezuela’s socialist government is sounding the alarm about growing waistlines in a country where record food shortages are making it harder to put healthy meals on the table, prompting many people to fill up on empty calories.


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Activist or Capitalist? How the ‘Food Babe’ Makes Money


Ms. Hari declined to disclose the details of her arrangement with Green Polka Dot Box, but said that she is not currently working with them. The company declined comment, citing confidentiality agreements.

Another company she has plugged in editorial posts is Nutiva, which sells organic "superfood" such as hemp and chia seeds. The company’s affiliate-marketing program promises a 10% cut of sales on referrals, according to its website. The company did not return calls for comment.

The FTC requires disclosure

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Why Silicon Valley Needs The Coder Grrrls Of Double Union, The Feminist Hacker Space

The lack of women in the tech world isn’t just a pipeline problem–it’s one of rampant sexism. Enter the haven of Double Union.

At Double Union, San Francisco’s feminist hacker space, Amelia Greenhall was creating a sign for the front door. She had never used a vinyl cutter before, but she plugged the machine into her computer as if she had used it a million times, quietly designing the font and the Double Union logo, one U nested inside another. After a few minutes, she slid a piece of hot-pink vinyl paper into the feeder and watched as it etched her creation. When Greenhall, the space’s executive director, got to the door, she realized her mistake. Only about half of the letters would peel off the sheet, and she couldn’t pick off any part of the logo.

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Mapping and Travel Planning Program for the Roman Empire

Let’s say that you’ve been transported back in time to the Second Century A.D. You’re in Eburacum, a Roman fort located in what is now Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK. You want to get Tanais, which is a Greco-Roman colony at the mouth of the Don River in what is now Russia. How do you get there?

Google Maps isn’t going to help you. But ORBIS will. Provided that you can get a good WiFi signal, you can pull up this complex mapping and travel planning program from Stanford University.

ORBIS comes with many different options to help you select your route. You chose to go as fast as you could, by any means possible, and during the summer. Well, you didn’t hire a horse relay–you’re not made of denarri. But you did rent horses for the journey.

You’re throwing a lot of money at this problem, but it’s still going to take you a long time to get from England to Russia compared to modern standards. You’re riding horses over what is now southern France, central Italy, and Serbia. You’re also traveling by ship and riverboat. The trip will take you more than 60 days.

If you don’t have a lot of money available, then you may have to travel by foot and slower sea-going vessels. Then the trip will take almost 84 days.

ORBIS is fun! You can explore it here.

-via Marginal Revolution

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Barcelona Chooses Renewal, Not Revolution

The team will still be built around Lionel Messi and its tiki-taka style of soccer under its new coach, the former player and youth team coach, Luís Enrique.

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Disneyland’s original Prospectus Revealed!

Thanks to an anonymous benefactor, Boing Boing is pleased to present the first-ever look at the original Disneyland prospectus. Read the rest

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why Karl Ove Knausgaard is bad

William Deresiewicz at The Nation: So why are we even talking about it? Because My Struggle is in the process of being anointed as a literary masterpiece, and not just in Norway. “Karl Ove Knausgaard Is Your Favorite Author’s Favorite…

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why Karl Ove Knausgaard is good

Ben Lerner at The London Review of Books: Or, without being certain that it’s good literature. ‘It seems like a child has written it,’ Knausgaard told an interviewer. ‘There are childishness, stupidity, lack of wisdom, fantasies. At the same time,…

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Karl Ove Knausgaard speaks

An interview at The Paris Review: It’s not like writing in a diary, though. A novel opens space between a writer and his or her material, the space of literature. There’s less distance between writer and diary than between writer…

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The Small Stuff

There’s a risk that a focus on small details in these critiques might suggest a lack of perspective, a trees/forest problem. But getting the small things right, consistently, contributes to the overall polish, clarity and authority of our writing.

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