The World Map is a Lie.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

Most of us grew up looking at roughly the same world map: Canada stretched massively across the top, Greenland looking enormous, Russia dominating half the northern hemisphere, and Africa sitting underneath them looking comparatively modest.

There is just one problem.

That familiar picture of the world is badly distorted.

The map most of us recognize is based on the Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. And to be fair to Mercator, his map was never really intended to teach schoolchildren how large the continents were compared with one another.

It was designed for navigation.

That distinction matters.

A Round Earth Has to Be Distorted to Become a Flat Map

You cannot take the surface of a sphere and flatten it onto a rectangle without changing something.

Try peeling an orange and pressing the entire peel perfectly flat without stretching, tearing or overlapping it. You cannot do it.

Maps have the same problem.

Cartographers therefore choose what they want a particular map projection to preserve. Depending on the projection, that might be shape, direction, distance or area.

National Geographic explains that every flat-world projection contains some distortion because Earth's curved surface cannot be transferred perfectly onto a flat surface.

National Geographic:
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/map/

That means there isn't really one single "correct" flat map.

But there are certainly maps that are better suited to certain purposes than others.

And Mercator has one enormous weakness when we use it as an ordinary world map.

It seriously distorts size.

Why Mercator Was Actually Brilliant

Mercator's projection solved a very real problem for sailors.

It preserves angles and compass bearings remarkably well. A navigator could plot a constant compass direction as a straight line across the map.

For sixteenth-century ocean navigation, that was extremely useful.

National Geographic's biography of Gerardus Mercator explains that his 1569 map was specifically designed to allow sailors to use latitude and longitude to plot routes.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/gerardus-mercator/

So Mercator wasn't incompetent.

His map was extraordinarily clever.

The problem came later, when a navigation tool became one of the dominant ways generations of people were taught to visualize the entire planet.

Greenland Is Not Almost the Size of Africa

This is where things get wild.

On a Mercator map, Greenland can look comparable in size to Africa.

In reality, Africa is about 14 times larger than Greenland.

National Geographic specifically points this out when explaining Mercator distortion.

It also gives another excellent example:

On Mercator maps, Alaska can appear larger than Brazil.

In reality, Brazil is roughly five times larger than Alaska.

National Geographic:
https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2017/03/22/a-whole-new-world-in-boston-public-schools/

The distortion increases the farther you travel from the equator.

That means northern countries and regions become progressively inflated.

Canada.

Russia.

Greenland.

Northern Europe.

Alaska.

All appear much larger relative to equatorial regions than they actually are.

Meanwhile, Africa and South America look comparatively diminished.

Canada Looks Absolutely Enormous

As a Canadian, this one is especially interesting.

Canada really is enormous — about 10 million square kilometres.

But Africa is more than three times Canada's area.

Russia is about 17 million square kilometres.

Africa is still substantially larger than Russia.

Yet the visual impression many Mercator maps give us is almost the opposite.

Once you've spent your entire childhood seeing the world depicted that way, those proportions become embedded in your mind.

That is why seeing another projection for the first time can be genuinely jarring.

Africa suddenly looks enormous.

Because Africa is enormous.

The Gall-Peters Map Tried to Fix This

One famous alternative is the Gall-Peters projection.

Instead of preserving the familiar shapes we see on Mercator maps, Gall-Peters prioritizes area.

That means countries appear in much more accurate proportion to one another.

Africa finally looks appropriately huge compared with Europe and Greenland.

South America becomes much more prominent.

Regions closer to the equator are no longer visually minimized simply because of their latitude.

But Gall-Peters comes with its own distortion.

Countries can look stretched vertically near the equator and flattened horizontally toward the poles.

National Geographic discusses that trade-off here:

https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2017/03/22/a-whole-new-world-in-boston-public-schools/

So Gall-Peters isn't the perfect map either.

There isn't one.

Then Came Equal Earth

A newer projection called Equal Earth may be one of the most interesting compromises yet.

It was introduced in 2018 by cartographers Bojan Šavrič, Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny.

Equal Earth is an equal-area projection.

That means the relative size of countries and continents is preserved.

Africa is represented proportionally to Canada.

Greenland is represented proportionally to Africa.

Europe is represented proportionally to South America.

But unlike Gall-Peters, Equal Earth tries to keep the continents looking much more naturally shaped.

The developers describe it as a visually appealing equal-area alternative to Gall-Peters.

You can see it here:

https://equal-earth.com/equal-earth-projection.html

And the full Equal Earth map site is here:

https://www.equal-earth.com/

If you're accustomed to Mercator, spend a minute simply looking at Equal Earth.

Watch what happens to Greenland.

Watch Canada.

Watch Russia.

Then look at Africa.

The proportions suddenly make considerably more sense.

What About Robinson and Winkel Tripel?

There are also compromise projections.

The Robinson projection, for example, doesn't perfectly preserve either area or shape. Instead, it tries to make the overall world look reasonably balanced.

National Geographic itself eventually moved toward another compromise projection called Winkel Tripel.

The word "Tripel" refers to its attempt to minimize three types of distortion: area, distance and direction.

National Geographic adopted Winkel Tripel for its signature world maps in 1995.

More information:

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/selecting-map-projection/

That tells us something important.

Professional cartographers aren't arguing that one magical projection finally solved everything.

They're asking a different question:

What is this map supposed to show?

For navigation, Mercator can be excellent.

For comparing the geographic size of countries, it is terrible.

For teaching the general arrangement of the world, something like Winkel Tripel makes sense.

For understanding the true relative area of countries and continents, Equal Earth is much more useful.

Even Google Maps Uses Mercator

Interestingly, Mercator never really disappeared.

Google Maps and many online mapping systems use a variation called Web Mercator.

There is a practical reason.

Web Mercator works extremely well for smoothly zooming from a world view down to streets, buildings and individual locations.

At local scales, the enormous global distortions aren't nearly as important.

National Geographic notes that many popular digital mapping platforms use Web Mercator precisely because it works well technologically for interactive maps.

Again, context matters.

There is nothing sinister about using Mercator for navigation or web mapping.

The mistake is assuming that the resulting world image gives us an accurate visual comparison of landmass size.

It doesn't.

Maps Shape How We Imagine the World

This may be the most interesting part.

A map isn't merely something we consult when we're lost.

It's a mental framework.

If you spend decades seeing northern countries dramatically enlarged while equatorial countries appear smaller, that image becomes your internal model of the planet.

You don't walk around consciously thinking, "Greenland is enormous."

You simply absorb the proportions.

Then someone shows you that Africa could swallow Greenland roughly fourteen times over, and your brain goes:

Wait. What?

That reaction tells us just how powerful visual representation can be.

The Mercator projection wasn't necessarily lying to us.

We were simply asking it a question it was never designed to answer.

And perhaps the best lesson isn't that we need to replace one "wrong" map with one "right" map.

It's that we should probably look at several.

Mercator shows navigation beautifully.

Gall-Peters exposes relative area.

Winkel Tripel gives us a useful compromise.

Equal Earth shows us something generations of Mercator maps often concealed from our intuition:

Just how enormous Africa, South America and the equatorial world really are.

Once you see it, the old map never quite looks the same again.

Sources and Further Reading

National Geographic — Map Projections
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/map/

National Geographic — Gerardus Mercator
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/gerardus-mercator/

National Geographic — Gall-Peters vs. Mercator
https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2017/03/22/a-whole-new-world-in-boston-public-schools/

National Geographic — Selecting a Map Projection
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/selecting-map-projection/

National Geographic — Investigating Map Projections
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/investigating-map-projections/

Equal Earth Projection
https://equal-earth.com/equal-earth-projection.html

Equal Earth World Map
https://www.equal-earth.com/

                                                                                 

Personal Thoughts on Using AI

 Written by me.

I hear a lot of people disliking and dissing chatgpt and other ai tools.

The one said, "you're talking to a soulless machine."

My response, "but I'm talking. I'm getting the thoughts that evolve into fears, out of my head.  And in turn, the soulless machine helps me cope by clarifying the thoughts and the fears too."

Others say, "you can write, why are you using that?"

My response, "yup I can but have I?  Had I started the plethora of ideas I've had since I was very young?  Nope but I have now thanks to this thing that helps me do that more quickly."

Some critique, "oh they use a lot of AI slop."

My response, "but they're getting it done and getting their messages out there.  I had my kids' book for a farking decade and a half with no cover because I didn't know how or where to do it myself.  Within an evening I was able to create images and bring these characters to life."

Socrates feared that teaching people to write and thus, write things down, would diminish our memories.

The first calculator pulled loads of criticisms.

The first computer too.

For the people who fear their kids are talking to soulless machines, ask yourself WHY they feel the need to do that.  The answer will show you the way if it's not too late to change familial behavior.  

This thing is filling a much needed void.  Tools do that.  

Creatives like myself are getting shit done ... FINALLY!!!!

And I am grateful for it. 

                                                                                      

When New Memories Disappear, Old Ones Can Still Tell Us Who We Are.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

One of the strangest things about dementia is that memory doesn't simply disappear from newest to oldest in a perfectly orderly fashion. A person may have no recollection of what they ate for lunch, who visited that morning or what happened yesterday, yet remember the name of a childhood neighbour, the layout of a house they lived in sixty years ago, the words to an old song or some obscure detail from their working life.

That raises an interesting question.

Could spending time talking about the memories that remain actually help someone's self-esteem and sense of identity?

Researchers have been exploring versions of that question for decades.

It's Called Reminiscence Therapy

There is an established approach in dementia care called reminiscence therapy.

At its simplest, it involves encouraging someone to talk about experiences from their past. Photographs, familiar music, household objects, old neighbourhoods, family stories, weddings, jobs, holidays, recipes and childhood experiences can all provide starting points.

Importantly, the objective isn't necessarily to improve memory.

It isn't a quiz.

Instead, reminiscence can provide access to parts of a person's life and identity that remain available even as recent memory becomes increasingly unreliable.

A Cochrane review examined 22 studies involving 1,972 people with dementia. Researchers looked at outcomes including quality of life, cognition, communication, mood and behaviour. The effects varied depending upon how and where reminiscence was used, but researchers found some benefits, including improvements in communication and some measures of quality of life. Cochrane review: Reminiscence therapy for dementia

A later systematic review and meta-analysis examined 29 studies involving 3,102 people with dementia. Reminiscence therapy was associated with improved cognitive function and quality of life, as well as reductions in depression and neuropsychiatric symptoms. The researchers concluded that reminiscence may be a useful non-drug intervention, particularly in nursing homes and other long-term-care environments. Study in the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing

More recent research continues to find promising results. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 26 randomized controlled trials involving 2,766 people with cognitive impairment. Reminiscence therapy was associated with improvements in cognitive function, depressive symptoms and quality of life, although it did not significantly improve every outcome examined. 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis

What About Self-Esteem?

This may be one of the most interesting aspects of reminiscence.

Think about what progressive memory loss can do to someone's sense of competence.

You don't remember who brought you coffee this morning.

You don't remember what you ate for lunch.

Someone tells you that you had a visitor yesterday and you have absolutely no recollection of it.

People increasingly remind you where things are, what day it is, what you're supposed to be doing and what happens next.

Without anyone intending it, everyday life can become a continual demonstration of what you can no longer do.

Now change the conversation.

What was the house where you grew up like?

What did your family grow in the garden?

What did you do at your first job?

How did people celebrate Christmas when you were a child?

What was your mother famous for cooking?

Who was the funniest person in your family?

Suddenly the person with dementia may know things nobody else in the room knows.

That is a very different psychological position.

Research into reminiscence among older adults without dementia has specifically examined this dimension. A systematic review involving 31 studies and 1,829 older adults found reductions in depressive symptoms and improvements in life satisfaction. Researchers also found positive effects involving self-esteem, psychological well-being and happiness, although the self-esteem studies weren't sufficiently comparable to combine statistically. Systematic review in the International Journal of Nursing Studies

Another systematic review and meta-analysis involving 27 studies and 1,755 older adults found significant improvements in depression and life satisfaction. Studies examining self-esteem also reported improvement, although there was considerable variation among the studies. 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis

None of this means reminiscing is a magic treatment for dementia or that every person will respond the same way.

But it suggests something worth considering:

Perhaps remembering isn't only about memory. It can also be about identity.

Don't Turn Reminiscing Into a Test

There is an important difference between inviting someone to reminisce and testing their memory.

“Do you remember who this is?”

“Don't you remember going there?”

“What was your neighbour's name?”

“Remember when we did that?”

Even when asked lovingly, these questions can inadvertently create another opportunity to discover something has disappeared.

An alternative is simply to open a door.

“Tell me about the house you grew up in.”

“What did you do for fun when you were young?”

“What did your dad do for a living?”

“What did you grow in your garden?”

“What was your first car?”

“What was dating like back then?”

And perhaps some of the best questions are those for which the person asking genuinely doesn't know the answer.

Something important changes in that interaction.

The person with dementia isn't being helped to remember.

They're teaching someone else.

They're the person with the knowledge.

They're the storyteller.

They're the expert.

For someone who increasingly has other people telling them where to go, what they've forgotten, when their medication is coming and what happens next, having something valuable to give another person may matter enormously.

Follow the Feeling, Not the Facts

Reminiscence doesn't need to become historical fact-checking either.

A story told about something that happened fifty years ago may contain inaccuracies. Details may become mixed together. Two different events may merge. Names may be wrong.

Unless the mistake actually matters, correcting it can defeat the purpose.

The interesting question isn't always:

“Is this memory completely accurate?”

Sometimes it's:

“What is this person experiencing while telling me?”

Are they animated?

Laughing?

Proud?

Interested?

Engaged?

Do they suddenly have more to say?

If so, perhaps the conversation is already accomplishing something valuable.

There is also an important caution here. Not every old memory is pleasant. Reminiscence can uncover grief, trauma, regret and loss. If a subject produces obvious distress, there's no reason to keep digging simply because remembering is supposed to be therapeutic.

The person's emotional response should lead the conversation.

The Memory Doesn't Have to Last for the Experience to Matter

This may be one of the hardest ideas about dementia for families to absorb.

An experience doesn't become meaningless simply because someone won't remember it tomorrow.

If someone laughs for twenty minutes and later forgets what was funny, they still laughed for twenty minutes.

If an old song makes someone feel safe, that safety existed.

If telling a story makes someone feel interesting, knowledgeable, funny or useful, that feeling existed too.

And if talking about an earlier life allows someone to spend half an hour inhabiting the parts of themselves that remain accessible instead of repeatedly confronting the things they've lost, perhaps that has value all by itself.

We spend enormous amounts of time thinking about what people with dementia can no longer remember.

Maybe occasionally we should ask them what they still know.

And then sit down and listen.

                                                                                    

Yes, Canada Really Was Invited to Join the United States

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

Here’s one of those strange historical facts that sounds made up until you read the original document.

Article XI of the Articles of Confederation, adopted by the United States in 1777, specifically mentions Canada:

“Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union…”

That wording is genuine. You can read it yourself in the U.S. National Archives.

What it meant was fairly straightforward: Canada was given a standing invitation to join the American Confederation. Unlike other colonies, which required the approval of nine states before admission, Canada would have been admitted automatically if it chose to accede.

That last part matters. Article XI did not make Canada American territory, nor does it provide some dormant legal mechanism for the United States to claim Canada today. The Articles of Confederation were eventually replaced by the U.S. Constitution, which created a different process for admitting new states.

Still, the historical fact itself is fascinating.

More than two centuries before anyone began joking—or talking seriously—about Canada becoming a “51st state,” America's first governing charter already had a place waiting for Canada.

History has a funny way of leaving little breadcrumbs behind.

                                                                                    

When Silo Stops Feeling Quite So Fictional: Finland Sends 2,000 People Underground.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

There are coincidences, and then there are coincidences that arrive with just enough atmosphere to make you look twice. This week, while watching the final episodes of Silo, I came across reports that Finland had just moved more than 2,000 people underground as part of a major civil-defence exercise. No, Finland is not secretly reenacting the show, and the exercise was publicly planned and organized. Even so, the timing was difficult not to notice.

The Finnish exercise, called Shelter 2026, took place in Kuopio on September 2 and 3. More than 2,000 people participated in drills centred around Luola, a huge underground sports and events complex that can also function as a civil-defence shelter. In a real emergency, the facility can hold roughly 7,000 people. The scenario reportedly involved disruptions to electricity and water, cyberattacks and an increased threat of missile strikes. Participants were moved underground, the shelter was secured, and they spent around two hours inside as part of the exercise.

On its face, this is straightforward emergency preparedness, particularly in a country like Finland, which shares a long border with Russia and has spent decades developing one of Europe’s most extensive civil-defence shelter systems. Underground spaces there are often designed for dual use, meaning that sports halls, parking structures and other public facilities can be converted into shelters during a crisis. From a practical standpoint, it makes sense.

Watching it through the lens of Silo, however, makes it feel a little different.

What makes Silo so effective is not simply the fact that people live underground. Humanity has built bunkers, tunnels, shelters and hardened facilities for generations. The more unsettling idea is the psychology required to get an entire population to accept underground life in the first place. Fear does most of the work. If people become convinced that the outside world means immediate death, they do not have to be dragged underground. They will run there voluntarily.

That is what struck me most while watching the final episodes. The silos appear ready, the people are nearby, and then the catastrophe arrives in the form of explosion, wind, panic and urgent orders to get underground. Whether every part of that event was exactly what it appeared to be remains one of the more interesting questions in the story, but the mechanism itself is obvious. Once enough fear is introduced, confinement can begin to look like safety.

That is where the Finnish drill becomes interesting, not because it proves anything sinister, but because it shows how much real-world planning already exists for moving large numbers of people underground quickly and efficiently. The difficult part is not always building the shelter. It is getting people into it, maintaining order once they are there, controlling information during the crisis and deciding who has the authority to determine when it is safe to emerge again.

Those are also some of the darker questions at the heart of Silo. What happens after the doors close? Who controls the information? Who decides what the people inside are allowed to know about the outside world? What happens when years pass and the original event becomes memory, then mythology, then official history? At what point does a shelter stop being a place of protection and become something else entirely?

That tension is what gives the series its power. The authorities inside the silos do not maintain control simply through walls and locked doors. They control memory, history, perception and access to information. Eventually, people stop asking what actually happened and begin asking what they are permitted to know. The physical structure matters, but the real prison is informational.

There is no evidence that Finland’s Shelter 2026 exercise was anything other than what officials say it was: a large-scale civil-defence preparedness drill. Still, culture has a funny way of changing the way real events look. Watch footage of 2,000 people entering an underground shelter on an ordinary news broadcast and it looks like emergency planning. Watch the same footage after several hours of Silo, and suddenly the questions become harder to ignore.

Maybe that is one of the real strengths of dystopian fiction. It does not have to predict the future to be useful. Sometimes it simply trains us to notice the structures around us and to ask better questions before we ever need them.

                                                                     

                   

Zero Sugar Doesn’t Mean Zero Effect --Why diet sodas, zero-sugar colas and artificially sweetened drink mixes deserve a closer look.

Researched and written by ChatGPT

For years, we were taught a remarkably simple equation:

Sugar is bad.

Therefore, no sugar must be good.

That little bit of logic has helped create an enormous market for diet sodas, zero-sugar colas, flavoured water enhancers, energy drinks and powdered drink mixes that contain almost no calories and no sugar at all.

And because they contain no sugar, many people treat them almost like water.

They aren’t.

That doesn’t mean every artificially sweetened drink is dangerous. It doesn’t mean drinking a diet cola once in a while is going to hurt you. And it certainly doesn’t mean replacing six cans of full-sugar soda with six cans of zero-sugar soda can't dramatically reduce your sugar and calorie intake.

But “better than drinking a mountain of sugar” is not the same thing as “good for you.”

That distinction has somehow disappeared.

The Health Halo

Imagine somebody tells you they drink five regular sodas every day.

Most of us immediately recognize that as a lot of soda.

Now imagine they tell you they drink five bottles of water every day, each flavoured with a zero-sugar drink packet.

That sounds healthier, doesn't it?

Yet depending on the product, those five drinks may contain repeated doses of intensely sweet compounds such as aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose or other non-sugar sweeteners.

The calories may be gone.

The sugar may be gone.

The sweetness — and the ingredients producing it — certainly aren't.

And because the word ZERO is plastered across the package, people can lose the natural restraint they might have had with the original product.

One becomes three.

Three becomes five.

It's just flavoured water, right?

Not exactly.

Even the WHO Says the Goal Shouldn't Be Replacing Sugar With Sweeteners

This is where things get interesting.

In 2023, the World Health Organization issued guidance recommending that non-sugar sweeteners not be used as a strategy for controlling body weight or reducing the risk of chronic diseases.

That group includes familiar sweeteners such as:

• aspartame

• acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K

• sucralose

• saccharin

• stevia and stevia derivatives

The WHO's review found that replacing sugar with these sweeteners did not appear to provide a meaningful long-term advantage for reducing body fat.

Observational research also showed associations between long-term non-sugar-sweetener consumption and increased rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and premature death.

That does not prove the sweeteners caused those diseases. The WHO itself points out that the evidence may be affected by confounding — for example, people already at greater risk of obesity or diabetes may be more likely to consume diet products in the first place.

That's an important distinction.

But here's the part that rarely makes it into the advertising:

The WHO now specifically advises that reducing free sugar should ideally be accomplished without simply replacing it with non-sugar sweeteners.

Instead, the organization recommends gradually reducing the overall sweetness of the diet.

In other words, the answer to drinking ridiculously sweet sugar water all day may not be drinking ridiculously sweet artificially sweetened water all day.

Maybe the answer is becoming less dependent on everything tasting ridiculously sweet.

What About Headaches?

This is another area where the conversation gets polarized unnecessarily.

You've probably heard someone say:

“Aspartame gives me migraines.”

And you've probably heard someone else respond:

“That's been debunked.”

The actual research is considerably messier than either statement.

One randomized, double-blind crossover trial specifically recruited people who reported developing headaches after consuming aspartame.

Participants reported headaches on 33 percent of the days they consumed aspartame compared with 24 percent of placebo days.

Interestingly, the difference was substantially greater among participants who had previously been very confident that aspartame triggered their headaches.

The researchers concluded that some people may be particularly susceptible to headaches associated with aspartame consumption.

Another controlled study, however, found no significant increase in headaches with aspartame compared with placebo.

So no, the evidence does not support saying:

Aspartame causes headaches in everyone.

But it also doesn't justify telling someone who repeatedly gets a headache after consuming it that their experience is impossible.

Bodies aren't carbon copies.

And if someone regularly develops headaches while consuming large quantities of artificially sweetened drinks, stops drinking them, and the headaches disappear, removing the suspected trigger is a pretty reasonable experiment.

But Aren't These Sweeteners Approved as Safe?

Yes.

And that's another distinction worth understanding.

Health Canada currently considers aspartame safe when consumed within its established acceptable daily intake.

For aspartame, Canada's acceptable daily intake is 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day.

The U.S. FDA uses an acceptable daily intake of 50 mg/kg/day for aspartame and 15 mg/kg/day for acesulfame potassium.

Those are substantial amounts.

So this article isn't arguing that one can of diet soda puts someone above a toxicological safety threshold.

It almost certainly doesn't.

But regulatory safety limits answer a particular question:

How much of this substance can someone consume regularly without an appreciable expected health risk?

That is not quite the same question as:

Is consuming increasingly large quantities of artificially sweetened drinks throughout the day an ideal dietary habit?

Those two questions routinely get mashed together.

Zero Is a Number. Not a Nutrient.

Perhaps that's the biggest marketing trick of all.

We see:

ZERO SUGAR

ZERO CALORIES

ZERO CARBS

And our brains quietly add another word that wasn't actually printed there:

HEALTHY.

But removing something from a product doesn't automatically make the remaining product beneficial.

A zero-sugar cola is still cola.

A zero-sugar energy drink is still an energy drink.

A powdered drink mix containing artificial sweeteners isn't suddenly equivalent to plain water simply because you poured it into water.

There can absolutely be situations where these products are useful.

Someone drinking several hundred grams of added sugar every week through soda may find that switching to a zero-sugar version helps them drastically cut their sugar intake.

Fine.

Use the bridge.

Just don't mistake the bridge for the destination.

Maybe We Need to Retrain Our Taste Buds

There is another possibility that receives remarkably little attention.

Instead of constantly finding new chemicals, extracts and formulations capable of making everything taste intensely sweet without adding calories...

What if we simply stopped expecting everything we drink to taste like candy?

Water.

Sparkling water.

Tea.

Coffee.

Fruit-infused water.

An occasional sweet drink that is actually treated like an occasional sweet drink.

Our ancestors somehow survived without carrying around a 40-ounce fluorescent mango beverage from sunrise until dinner.

Perhaps we can too.

Because the real lesson here isn't that sugar is good and artificial sweeteners are bad.

It's that nutrition rarely works in those neat little marketing binaries.

Sugar-free does not mean consequence-free.

Zero calories does not mean zero biological effect.

And “zero” on the front of a package was never a synonym for healthy.

---

                                                                                    

Read Three Amigas~ Book One Download HERE!

Three Amigas Book One: Where It All Began

About sixteen years ago, I wrote a children's book about a little girl named Maddy and her two furry best friends, Sasha and Laya. I had no idea at the time that they would eventually become The Three Amigas — or that one book would turn into a whole series.

Sasha is a small but mighty Rottweiler who takes her job as guardian of the family very seriously. Laya is her younger Cocker Spaniel sister, who approaches the world with considerably more enthusiasm and considerably less caution. And then there is Maddy, the ten-year-old girl they both absolutely adore. Together, they learn about dogs, people, responsibility, leadership, friendship and the world around them — usually while having a pretty good adventure along the way.

This first book follows the girls through one ordinary-but-not-so-ordinary day: a trip to the veterinarian, a picnic and afternoon at the lake, encounters with other dogs, and conversations about everything from breed prejudice to animal rescue and what it really means to be responsible for an animal.

But mostly, it's about the relationship between a girl and her dogs.

And I've reached a point where I don't particularly care about selling a million copies of these books.

You Do NOT Need a Kindle

This part is important because I don't think everyone realizes it:

You do not need to own a Kindle device to read a Kindle book.

You can read Kindle books on a computer, phone or tablet using Amazon's free Kindle reader.

So if you have a child, grandchild, niece, nephew — or know a young animal lover who might enjoy hanging out with Maddy, Sasha and Laya for a while — please feel free to pass this along.

 THE THREE AMIGAS  👈👈

If your young readers like this one, there are more adventures waiting for them.

This is where it all began.

And sixteen years later, I'd simply really like kids to get to know The Three Amigas.