"To start, some people were given milkshakes, and everyone was asked to taste and rate cookies, cakes or nuts. After filling up on a milkshake..."

"... most of the testers ate less. But the dieters in the group did the opposite. If they had the shake first, they actually ate more during the taste test. It appeared that because they had 'blown' their diet anyway, they decided they might as well just eat more food.... The researchers called this cycle of dieting, breaking the diet and then overeating the 'what-the-hell' effect." 

From "Try Intuitive Eating to Break the Diet Cycle/Today’s Eat Well Challenge will help you avoid the 'what-the-hell' effect and tune into your body instead" (NYT). 

"Intuitive Eating" is reverse-engineered from the "what-the-hell effect." Step 1 is to convince yourself that this isn't a diet and you are completely disconnected from the "diet culture." Step 2 is to observe your patterns of hunger attentively. Step 3 is to very attentively observe your relationship to all the various foods. How do you really feel? 

I'm putting all this in my own words, so let me add, in my own words, that this sounds soooo boring. I look ahead to see how many more steps, and there are 10! 

Let me try to compress the next 7 steps into as few words as possible — damn the steps format: Eat mindfully. Be kind to yourself. Enjoy life in your body.

"Tiny worms often breed in the mish, but are not dangerous. The saying 'the worms of the mish arise from it' means it is a problem that cannot be solved..."

"... but is not worth worrying about. The maggots comes from flies laying eggs on the cottage cheese that is left to drain on a straw mat, by the farmer in the open air. Sometimes they add Borax to kill the maggots, but you cannot use again as fermenting agent. If Mish is prepared in a factory, it does not contain any maggots."

I looked up "Mish" in Wikipedia. I love the simplicity of the image of this stuff...



And I love the metaphorical potential of the worms that arise from the food itself and that are not worth worrying about... though I am always going to object to maggots in any food you might want me to eat and the worms actually don't arise from the food, they are introduced by the flies, and it underscores that you don't want flies landing on your food.

But, anyway, I was looking up "Mish" because I was trying to figure out if there was any reason why I shouldn't link to this piece — "Trump Demands CNN Apologize for a Poll Showing Biden in the Lead" — written by someone who goes by the name Mish. This is at TheStreet, a website co-founded by Jim Cramer. I haven't come up with any reason not to read this article. Don't know if there are any worms arising from within, so let's dip in:

The Trump campaign claims is the CNN poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling." "It's a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President"... Two days ago Trump says he "hired respected pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, to analyze today's CNN Poll"...

Unusual Cease and Desist Order

The demand for a retraction and a very unusual cease-and-desist order came out today....

Totally Amusing Response

“To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media,” said CNN executive vice president David Vigilante. "CNN is well aware of the reputation of McLaughlin and Associates. In 2014 his firm famously reported Eric Cantor was leading his primary challenger by 34 points only to lose by 11 - a 45 point swing. The firm has a C/D rating from FiveThirtyEight"....

At the Verticality Café...

... it's time for the late-morning snack, third breakfast, or early lunch, if you will. Never brunch, not unless you're a breakfast skipper. Breakfast skipper — that sounds like another name for Cap'n Crunch. The term "brunch" goes back to 1895, according to the OED, which finds it first here:

1895 Independent 22 Aug. 2/1 Breakfast is ‘brekker’ in the Oxford tongue; when a man makes lunch his first meal of the day it becomes ‘brunch’: and a tea-dinner at the Union Club is a ‘smug’.

A smug, eh? That never made it into the OED as a definition of "smug," but I think a tea-dinner at the Union Club sounds really nice. You'll have to wait a few hours for that, and you'll have to come up with your own notion of the "Union Club" — which was a "gentleman's club" in London from 1800 to 1949.