An earnest post

[mroswell]

I share this issue in earnest:

Your YouTube Python tutorials are superb, and I am (almost) thoroughly enjoying them... except for a couple of things that have nothing to do with Python. One of the concerns I have is the frequent 'ham' "humor."

"You can never have too much ham" is repulsive to a certain percentage of your viewers: religious Jews, religious Moslems, vegans, and (I'm in the following three categories) people who are concerned about the impacts of factory farming, people who are concerned about environmental justice, and people who are concerned about nutrition and health.

Some resources to explain the factory farm and environmental justice concerns:

• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-kind-of-antibiotic-resistance-shows-up-on-a-hog-farm/
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-drug-resistant-bacteria-travel-from-the-farm-to-your-table/ -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1637958/

I had a friend who died at the age of 25 from MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant infection. So, I don't take the question of antibiotic resistance lightly. Our cultural joy in factory-farmed meats (and that's how must ham is produced in the U.S.) should be tempered with an understanding of the impacts.

And check out NutritionFacts.org for some of the health impacts of getting tapeworm through pork exposure. For instance this video: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/avoiding-epilepsy-through-diet/

People show up to their doctors, get put on a host of drugs, and most of the time, their doctor doesn't even tell them that a percentage of epilepsy is caused by tapeworm. The most compelling part that I remember from that video, is that even Orthodox Jews who have never consumed pig products could get it... via handling by their household help. The infection is transmissible.

Search 'tapeworm' on the site for the relationship to other health impacts as well.

Even without considering migraines, and epilepsy, and exposures to antibiotic resistant bacteria, and poop in the water, and chemical residues such as pesticides and hormones and heavy metals, and racial disparities (which would be a lot to dismiss)... a cup of boneless ham could contain a shocking 2,100 mg of sodium, yielding high blood pressure.

So, yeah, there are a lot of ways to go wrong with too much ham.

I realize you will never likely change the videos to reflect this information. And that many people will want to pile on the "humor" But I share this information in earnest, as I mentioned. Each mention in the video makes me sad, because I'm aware of the toll.

[TPayneExperience]

Wow, sounds like you really know your stuff.

I don't actually consume ham very often (only like 2-3 times a year). Everyone in the program community use the default 'foo' and 'bar' as garbage keywords for example functions or print statements. I think they're bland/boring, so I looked for something different and came up with 'ham' after watching 'Ponyo'.

That's it, it's PURELY a joke and I'm not advising anyone to change their diet.

Thanks for your time and I really do hope you become an amazing programmer. :)

[mroswell]

Thanks for the response. I'm working on it. Just watched your terrific "ahah!" @decorator video. You're an awesome educator.

My other pecadillo (I mentioned above that there are more besides the common practice of using humor to highlight food that causes antibiotic resistance, etc.) is that I find that in most curriculum, 100.00% of gender references are male. I actually don't remember which video it was, methinks the one with the Butcher subclasses (which number was that?). Sure enough... male names... Where there is a gender reference in technical training, until very recently, 'twas always, always, always male. I think you might've had a sorceress in there, too, so you're doing better than average! But perhaps more points for named characters in this gender-reference counting metric?

I have no idea how you got as skilled as you are, both the programming skillset, and the ability to explain it so vividly. Obviously, practice, practice, practice, but I've also been at it for a long time, and still not where I want to be... 55-year-old grey-haired lady here. (Have regular expressions, will use 'em...) I'm off to learn what Ponyo is.... looks interesting...

BTW, I inherited a selenium test suite. It's the appearance of \@classmethod decordators that got me here--or rather to your YouTube channel.) I'm working my way up to that video in the hopes that I can sort out what they're doing. Also discovered a 10-page section in an unrelated book ("Python Tricks: The Book"), which is going to be my backup plan.

Keep up the great work.

I know that as a nutrition educator (and programmer--yeah, both--the latter for pay, the former by credential), and someone on a healing path, I'm far more sensitive to nutritional environments than most. It's bad out there (online and offline), with expected results.

Nothing you've done in your training is boring :) I'll be on the lookout for more content and code you've produced.

[TPayneExperience]

Thank you for the kind words!

I made examples with just male because I wasn't thinking about it. I'll make an effort to include more females in future videos. :)