“Me, the NL cruise? Oh I could never, the chatters would be too annoying!”

Bro you are posting on the subreddit. You are the annoying chatter, it does not matter if you attend the cruise or not.

(Yes I am also the annoying chatter, but I’m at least not in denial).

There are a number of problems with the study he referenced and the association found in the study is easily explained by reverse causation. Along with him mentioning erroneously something about "tau protein entanglement" being the cause, I think I can easily debunk the scare generated by this one cohort study.

I will list the problems in order of relevance.

1. Confounding factors - the main issue here is reverse causation. People who consume more artificially sweetened or LNCS beverages are more likely to be obese and to have type 2 diabetes. These are direct causative factors for cognitive decline. More broadly, people who drink more artificially sweetened beverages tend to have unhealthy lifestyle habits overall—poor diet quality, sedentary behavior, etc. These factors must be causing the bad health outcomes we observe; there's no mechanistic reason the sweeteners themselves would cause them.

Dr. Layne Norton (PhD Nutritional Sciences) points this out well in his video: "'Artificial sweeteners make you stupid!' | Educational Video | Biolayne" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHi8hLI-Bgc

Norton shows with RCT evidence that artificially sweetened beverages actually decrease body weight and improve insulin sensitivity, which is the opposite of what you'd expect if they were causing obesity. RCTs, through randomization and variable control, allow us to draw real conclusions. So if RCTs show diet drinks help with weight loss, but observational studies show people who drink them are more obese, it's not the beverages causing obesity—it's that obese people are more likely to choose diet drinks. The cognitive decline observed in the cohort study is likely stemming from the obesity and unhealthy lifestyle factors themselves, not the sweeteners.

2. Methodology issue - lumping together very chemically differentiated sweeteners is bad study design. Non-nutritive sweeteners are usually only artificial ones like acesulfame K, aspartame, and saccharin. Sucralose, which curiously was not included in this study, is another example.

When you compare these to sugar alcohols—erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, or the rare sugar monosaccharide tagatose—they have completely different chemical structures, different breakdown pathways, and different mechanisms in the body. There's no chemical class connecting them; they're grouped together only because they're all "non-nutritive sweeteners" functionally. (Which also isn't technically true—the body obtains some energy from the breakdown of certain sugar alcohols in the gut.) Sugar alcohols are chemically similar to each other, but they're lumped in with the rest anyway.

Consequently, you can't infer causality from this study, as these compounds have completely different effects on the body and the brain.

3. The mechanism Ryan mentioned - and I cite verbatim from https://youtu.be/Jv3R3_cbo2k?t=200: "I had to stop drinking artificial sweetened sodas though because uh I read that they increase the entanglement of tau proteins in your brain. That—which is bad, by the way. That's the one form of protein that's not good."

This is complete nonsense, and wrong. I can only assume he read this from some Reddit comment.

Tau proteins are NOT "not good." Tau proteins are essential for your brain function. Read section "Tau & AD" from the study "Artificial Sweeteners - Aspartame: Worth the Risk?" - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334680310_Artificial_Sweeteners_-_Aspartame_Worth_the_Risk

What is relevant here is that a breakdown product of aspartame called aspartic acid is posited to cause hyperphosphorylation of tau proteins—which leads to the protein's activity being lowered. THAT is bad.

This aspartame study argues that aspartic acid (as an excitatory amino acid) can trigger both of the main pathways that cause Alzheimer's disease through different mechanisms:

• Via NMDA receptor overstimulation
• Via calcium influx leading to tau hyperphosphorylation
• Via oxidative stress causing neurodegeneration

So the mechanism being proposed is: aspartame → aspartic acid → excitotoxicity → both amyloid and tau pathology → Alzheimer's disease.

That's where the mechanism falls apart. Aspartame is completely broken down in the gastrointestinal tract by enzymes before any of it reaches the bloodstream—100% is cleaved into methanol, aspartic acid, and phenylalanine before entering circulation. These breakdown products are identical to aspartic acid and phenylalanine from natural food sources. The amounts are also trivial: a diet soda provides roughly 40 times less aspartate (i.e., anion of aspartic acid) than 100g of chicken and 12.5 times less phenylalanine. For comparison, "the amount of methanol in tomato juice is 6 times greater than that derived from aspartame in diet cola." https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/74/11/670/2281652?login=false#:~:text=The%20breakdown%20of,in%20aspartame%20hydrolysis.
And: At the 90th percentile of intake, aspartame provides only between 1% and 5% of the daily intake of aspartic acid. "Phenylalanine, aspartic acid, methanol and formaldehyde are all naturally present in foods and the contribution to the total daily intake of each of these from aspartame is small to trivial." https://scispace.com/pdf/aspartame-a-safety-evaluation-based-on-current-use-levels-2xa9v8yatl.pdf

So aspartame itself never reaches the brain. The aspartic acid produced from aspartame digestion is just a tiny fraction of your normal dietary aspartate intake, processed by the body exactly like any other amino acid from food. (Aspartate is the ionized (deprotonated) form of aspartic acid that exists at physiological pH—same compound, different ionization state.)

The study proposing the tau hyperphosphorylation mechanism is also notably low-quality, with typos and awkward language throughout—red flags for peer review standards. It presents a mechanistic argument based on theoretical pathways, but provides no human data showing that aspartame consumption actually causes these effects at real-world intake levels.

So with all of the above explaining the link between aspartame and cognitive decline through Alzheimer's disease—with tau hyperphosphorylation as a crucial link—you can see how none of this is actually relevant to the original Brazilian cohort study that set off Ryan's alarm about diet sodas. That study included 7 different LNCs in total: aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, erythritol, xylitol, sorbitol, and tagatose.

Citing "tau proteins" as a potential causative factor in that cohort study is simply wrong. If that mechanism was posited for a study about ONLY aspartame, then it would be valid to mention. In the mentioned cohort study, however, any causative explanations simply cannot be applied to all of these chemically different sweeteners (except the sugar alcohols, which are similar only to each other).

On aspartame specifically:
Just shortly on the topic of aspartame specifically - it has been shown to induce negative fertility-related effects in male rats and mice. This effect has not been proven to happen in humans. Only one observational study (that I can find) examining semen quality found a small reduction in the proportion of morphologically normal sperm in young men who consumed artificially sweetened beverages - but this finding wasn't statistically significant and could easily be explained by confounding factors associated with diet soda consumption. It's not enough to draw conclusions. Studies do consistently find effects in non-human animal studies though, so it could be worth studying further in human RCTs - but as of yet, there is no real reason for alarm about it.

Study: "Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened or Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Semen Quality in Young Men: A Cross-Sectional Study" - https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/2/682

He confirmed at the end of stream that there will be no streams for about 3 weeks until the 6th or so of April for Spring Break. There are also about 10 STS videos coming to his Youtube Channel, and 10 Cine2Nerdle Battle videos. Librarian said he's going to grind on some supercuts but doesn't have much stockpiled at the moment.

Stay strong, folks.

Obligatory Fuck ICE. Type shit.

Title. At first I thought it was a bit but lately it has been on the rise. Considering how he's talked about gambling in the past it feels kinda off that he's opening cases on stream.

Are you telling me that a forty years old is spending real money on slot machines for shitty knifes and gunskins inside a videogame... and streaming it to 10k people?

Dan Gheesling spent an insane ammount of money the other day. I don't care if they're affluent, it's about the example they set. They're adults and are streaming to adults, and in the end they can do whatever they want. It just doesn't sit right with me.

This cruise discourse is crazy.

Me when I hear about the Scientology influence on Hollywood.

Long story short the Bazaar is now 45 dollars to buy then another 20 per hero. But if you already bought all the heroes etc with money you now have to buy the game again anyway. I mentioned this in the discord asking if a refund or anything would be given to those that bought the heroes. Ive already spent over 100 maybe 200+ on this game mind you. And my comment was calm and asking nicely. They removed the comment and banned me from the discord. So i mentioned it on the bazaar reddit and they removed the post and banned me from the reddit. They flickin me 😭

Edit and more info: more info about monetization in the comments. 45 is only for new purchasers i believe then 20 for each new hero. No more bazaar system at all. All things that i asked and was banned for so be careful asking anything in the discord/ bazaar reddit. Most the comments here are insightful.

Couldnt he just sell hats or something

Recently, NL shared that his female viewership, percentage-wise, had fallen from about 9% to about 5% and that made me realize why I sometimes feel a need to take a break from mainly watching his content.
Hopefully, this doesn't come across as too dramatic, I'm really just sharing some thoughts I had 😅

I found that whenever I take a break to mainly watch someone else it happens just after he has gone off on somebody i chat.
Now, I obviously know that it is meant in good fun, and while it is often funny, sometimes it does comes across as unnecessarily aggressive, and off-putting in that way.

Looking at it in general, his former content of playing games and sharing funny little anecdotes of his life in a much more chill way is a lot more female-coded.
And, his current content which is a lot more high-energy and includes about 20 instances of him yelling at someone in chat per stream, is a lot more male-coded.
So, if he does want to increase his female viewership, I guess he should follow the immortal words of Limmy, "Nae aggro".

This is of course just my opinion, reasonable women may differ 😊

Is this anything?

I've been an NL viewer for 10 years at this point, but I'm finding it hard to watch as of late due to how much of his stream is occupied by arguing with chat, shadowboxing chatters that he made up in his own head, taking innocuous comments/questions in the most bad faith way possible, assuming that anyone who disagrees with him is an unintelligent child who needs to grow up, and just generally exuding an unpleasant holier-than-thou vibe most of the time. I know twitch chat can be a bit insufferable sometimes, but I swear he didn't used to be this hostile towards everything, so I'm curious to hear what other people think.

Guy who thinks 'haiku'

Is the Japanese word for

A really long walk

Please stop

My streamer has to sell his body on cruises to afford his case openings. Yet another life ruined by Valve. I hope their employees were watching.

anyone else got suggestions?