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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Might be a hold over from Reddit is Fun but I can’t say I’m keen on the way the voting is displayed there. Seems to take up too much real estate maybe?

    Either way, I’m not a fan of colouring certain text or the lines dividing each post. Both these things make is too busy for my taste.

    Then again, maybe I’m just bland.

    Here’s what posts look like in my compact configuration of Jerboa:







  • Look, I’ve no interest in arguing the percentage of people that eat a full chocolate bar in one sitting vs not.

    What I will point out is that according to a couple headlines I skimmed just now, Snickers appears to be America’s chocolate bar of choice, weighing in at 50g. In the comment you replied to, I was talking about a 180 gram bar of of chocolate.

    You won’t catch me eating three and a half Snickers.

    Moving on.

    I like Consumer Reports. The samples of bars they chose across the chocolate industry seem fine to me. Where I take issue is in the way the data is presented. The article represents neither the manufacturers portion sizing on the nutrition label nor the FDA daily consumption figure.

    Also, I’m sure it’s only a fraction of people that bother to read the nutrition labels before purchase. If lead content was written there, then that small group of people would see that information.

    I only meant that even these people wouldn’t bother with this type of due diligence - that it would necessitate an organization like Consumer Reports. While it’s an important thing to check, and I am glad they did the checking, my overall point was that the results tell me that lead and cadmium levels in chocolate are not something anyone needs to be particularly concerned about.


  • I read the Consumer Reports article you linked, but honestly I can’t imagine lead levels in chocolate is something anyone would need to be concerned about.

    The testing methodology CR used boils down to ‘we sent the chocolate to a laboratory for testing and turns out there’s lead above the safe limit in each bar.’ Consumers aren’t going to do this.

    Also, the list on the article is flawed in my opinion. It shows the amount of lead and cadmium found in each chocolate bar, but doesn’t scale it to the size of the bar. CR estimates in their risk assessment the daily consumption of chocolate by looking at the portioning of the bars on the nutrition label, and the average by the FDA of 30g.

    In Tony Chocolonely’s case, these figures are the same. As their regular bar size is 180g and the portioning is 1/6 a bar - 30g. This means that the CR listing a Tony’s bar at 134% of the daily limit of lead, it would also mean eating 500% the amount of chocolate the FDA expects.

    If you adhere to the average of 30g, Tony’s is only 22% your daily lead limit.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’ve eaten a full bar in a day. But it’s far from a daily occurrence, and I’m certainly not thinking of the health ramifications when I indulge.

    Even at 265% the lead limit, the Hershey’s bar is 120g, so a portion is 66%. The most frightening thing about that bar is that it’s Hershey’s.


  • Really goes to show what economies of scale can do. Castronova chocolate appears to have 65 gram bars at a price of $12. That’s only 5g/$.

    Tony’s Chocolonely, a commonly touted ethical chocolate company, sells 180 gram bars for $6. 30g/$. Half the price for triple the chocolate comparatively.

    That said, there’s not much to really compare. Castronova seems to be going after a different market with most of the bars being titled as their place of origin and composition, not what taste to expect. A smart move for a business with a smaller footprint.

    The few bars I saw mentioning flavours were the lavender dark milk, lemon and lemon salt, and Fleur de sel - an apparently high end French sea salt. Quite different than Tony’s milk honey almond nougat or white raspberry popping candy.

    They won’t be replacing our orders from Tony’s, but Castronova has a 12 pack I think we’ll get to see what they are like. Thanks for recommendation.


  • Sounds like my usage is just different to yours. I can’t remember why but I got accustomed to listening to audio at increased speed around a decade ago and slowly cranked it up to the point that now I can follow certain people’s conversations slightly higher than 2x. Only with voices and cadence I’m familiar with though. Any guests on a show can really throw me off.

    The silence trimming aspect is a bit absurd honestly. It makes laughter sound almost all the same and robotic; you have to infer where comedic, dramatic, or thoughtful pauses in the speech are; and if there’s a more rapid fire back and forth in the conversation it can be tricky to follow. Although that last point doesn’t happen with podcasts where all the speakers record separately and it’s edited together to be coherent.

    If you listen to a lot of shows, with hundreds of hours of episodes, it’s worth dialing up as much as you can stand. Then again, if I didn’t have two dozen podcasts with decades of backlog, I sure wouldn’t be listening at auctioneer pace.