My argument wasn’t “vaping isn’t healthy” or “vaping is more harmful than cigarettes”. It was “more research is needed”, which each of those studies I linked support. Thank you, though, for proving my point in your attempt to build a lovely strawman to argue against.

The number of ingredients is irrelevant, especially since the idea that there are “at most” 6 ingredients is simply wrong: https://hub.jhu.edu/2021/10/07/vaping-unknown-chemicals/

A major area of concern for vaping is the fact that vaping generates much higher concentrations of nano-particles compared to regular cigarettes, and therefore may penetrate much further into the lung material (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312322/ and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0210147). There are also concerns about contaminants, variations in delivery devices (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312322/), and other confounding factors that require a lot more research to ascertain the long term impact.

As for whether I have a study or information contradicting the conclusion that vaping is safer than smoking, it depends on whether you selectively ignore the parts of the studies that say “more research is needed” (because apparently that’s an “ignorant take”), but searching for “peer reviewed articles electronic cigarettes safer than tobacco” returns these top results (I did not cherry pick in any way, and instead took the top results sequentially):

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2042098614524430: “In conclusion, toxicological studies have shown significantly lower adverse effects of EC vapor compared with cigarette smoke. Characteristically, the studies performed by using the liquids in their original liquid form have found less favorable results; however, no comparison with tobacco smoke was performed in any of these studies, and they cannot be considered relevant to EC use since the samples were not tested in the form consumed by vapers. More research is needed, including studies on different cell lines such as lung epithelial cells. In addition, it is probably necessary to evaluate a huge number of liquids with different flavors since a minority of them, in an unpredictable manner, appear to raise some concerns when tested in the aerosol form produced by using an EC device.” Granted, it does go on to say that existing evidence shows that vaping is safer than tobacco, but clarifies that there still needs to be more research on some of the unquantified risks of vaping.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5469426/ This is an older study using a very small sample size. It focuses on e-cigs as a tool for smoking cessation, but also concludes “Similar to cancer risk, there are no published data describing the long-term lung function or cardiovascular effects of e-cigarettes; ongoing surveillance, especially once e-cigarettes are regulated and standardized, will be necessary.”

• https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0129443 This study was primarily measuring how likely e-cigs were to get people to stop using tobacco, rather than comparative safety (despite the title). The conclusion makes clear that it is not known (at the time; this was 9 years ago) if e-cigarettes could be considered “safe”: “Adding e-cigarettes to tobacco smoking did not facilitate smoking cessation or reduction. If e-cigarette safety will be confirmed, however, the use of e-cigarettes alone may facilitate quitters remaining so.”

I’m not sure what your Google search was, but its probably best not to cherry pick a single source to support your claim.

It is premature to declare vaping safer than smoking, as there is relatively little comprehensive research on the long term effect of vaping. The whole “vaping is safer” spiel is not that different than when doctors were paid to tout the health benefits of cigarettes: propaganda not based in conclusive science.

I’m confident that the amount of things you cannot imagine is quite substantial; certainly far more than that of an average person.

How do the other countries find out about the diagnosis? Are you expected to self-disclose?

Not to mention that it’s questionable whether the average Republican gives more than the average Democrat, or if it is just a case of a small population of extremely wealthy individuals donating large amounts for reasons of tax benefits (in addition to the political motivations you mentioned).

Then there’s also this from one of the authors of the study: ‘It also wasn’t obvious “whether donors were being purely generous or whether they would also benefit from their donation. This relationship is called consumption philanthropy, in which people give to a religious organization or a school from which they will derive a benefit in the form of, say, a better religious education program or a new gymnasium.” Giving to a food bank or a homeless shelter has a very different outcome than does giving to a private school.’ (https://nonprofitquarterly.org/republicans-give-more-to-charity-than-democrats-but-theres-a-bigger-story-here/)

“Without context” is one of the favorite argument methods of conservatives. It’s not that they disagree about the context. They don’t understand the concept of context nor its relevance.

I was especially freaked out when I realized it works offline.

I’ve got a slightly different version of this problem. I work from home, and if my wife drives my car out of or into the driveway while I’m on a call, even if I’m in my office in the basement, my phone will disconnect my earbuds and route my audio to my car.

I don’t think its too uncommon for tourist areas to try to pressure tourists to pay with foreign currency that has a favorable exchange rate to the local currency. That way they can make extra money by quoting a figure in USD (or other currency) that they know they can exchange for much more than the regular cost in local currency. If pressured with “I don’t have USD, so its either local currency or I go elsewhere” they’ll usually give in and accept local currency.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of my coworkers that I interact with at this point in my career seem to be very strongly NT. The other autists mostly seem to have migrated to roles where they can operate primarily independently and without interruption (I’m in IT, surprise surprise :) ).

I loathe each and every one of those, except “swim-lanes” which I can accept only because I hear it used when talking about actual flowchart swim-lanes (which is still a better term than “rows that represent different roles or actors within a given work process”).

I’m curious of how much of the annoyance at these jargon terms is generational. I’ve seen a couple versions of this article (https://www.businessinsider.com/workplace-jargon-gen-z-and-millennials-left-out-work-2023-6) floating around the past couple of days, and people my age (I’m gen x) and older seem to be the main people relying on workplace jargon.

I used to hate all of the office jargon so freakin’ much, but eventually decided that it is an excellent tool for masking. I still avoid a lot of the phrases listed, but some have made it into my regular vocabulary because they easily identify complex yet frequently relevant concepts. I’m much less likely to wind up in spin if I can say “we should focus on such-and-such because it is low-hanging fruit”; otherwise I’ll tend to dive into a deep analysis of the relative benefits compared to the work effort involved of every relevant item, just to convince people that “such-and-such” is the best place for us to focus our limited resources.