The context here is English speakers, not the whole earth. The vast majority of people on earth to not speak English or live that far north (or south), but this is hacker news which is a different population: we speak (or at least read) English. Those populations are heavily skewed to Northern Europe (Germany is mostly too far north and they are as far south as English is common), North America (half of the US is too far north, much less Canada). There are scattered areas elsewhere of course (India, New Zealand, Australia come to mind, I believe all get enough sun)
Funnily enough, this doesn't appear to be true. Your "scattered areas" comprise a solid majority of the world's English speakers: India and Pakistan alone have almost as many English speakers as the US, and adding in the Phillipines tips it over. Similarly, Nigeria has more English speakers than the UK.
That is to say, I don't think it's accurate to say that the English-speaking population is "heavily skewed" away from sunny areas.
On top of that the context is people taking vitamin D supplements worried about the supply chain. While im sure there are some people who supplement unnecessarily, the distribution of people who take vitamin D is definitely focused northwards.
Statements can be technically correct out of context while still being effectively wrong or misleading in context. It is hardly a nitpick.
If you had some evidence that the majority of people who take vitamin D supplements could get it from the environment, then I would agree its a nitpick. But that's very different than the majority of people in general.
Regardless of how valid the criticism is, there are eight comments jumping down my throat over a comment that already included a qualifier and further jumping down my throat over my saying "Yeah, I realize that. I did use a qualifier."
I don't intend to reply further to any of this silliness. The number of people who feel the need to state yet again that I am wrong is really just crazy. It has no basis whatsoever in any real need to clarify what is true here. If that was what was going on, it would have stopped when I posted my comment saying "Yeah, I covered that with this qualifier -- I realize supplements make sense for some people" after the first three comments overlooked my qualifier to act like I am wrong and stupid.
But I am done arguing this. If people wish to add another twenty comments urgently and strenuously repeating the point that "Due to some nitpick or other, you are so very, very wrong here!" they can have at it. But I'm not replying further to this completely ridiculous thread.
A qualifier, that is poorly written is not a “get out of jail free card” for being wrong.
Those 8 comments are there to teach you a lesson. I hope you are paying attention.
I like to pick nits. No personal insult is intended, I thought your comment was very good, but I found a tiny nit to pick and since I was stuck in a car (my wife was driving) for several hours...
