Of course you're right - what was I thinking? But at least when we were kids, the barrier between the plebeians and the ruling class was thinner and more permeable. Also, middle-class education was a lot closer in quality and content to upper class education, the primary difference being in degree and type of indoctrination.

Whispered in a Catholic church, perhaps? ;-)

Well, since you admit to being a boomer I gotta say chapeau! I probably wouldn't have the stones to admit that considering this. Is. ALL. Your. Generation's. Fault.

I think differently all the time. Certainly not in Apple slogans, so that's "differently", not "different". For purposes of anything like an actual plan though, I start with certain axioms, and then work pragmatically from those axioms. So, for example, one of those axioms is that mass, rapid die offs of humans are bad. Another related axiom is that unnecessary suffering is bad. Given those axioms, it follows that rapidly emptying human population centers without a specific plan of how people will survive is bad, because it will violate those axioms.

I am 100% all for as much independence in power generation and self-sustainability as possible. I just also recognize that the world is what it is and lots of people live in urban centers where they simply can't be self-sustainable and that specialization is one of the basic technologies that has allowed the human race to reach its current population. That means, to sustain that population, the specialized products that sustain the population need to flow from areas of production to areas of consumption. For electricity, that generally means a power grid. There are alternatives, but they tend to be more problematic, not less. For example, just having fossil fuel powered generators everywhere and expanding delivery of liquid fossil fuels. It could work, but why do it? There's driving trucks with loads of charged batteries around and swapping them with depleted batteries from people's homes. That one is problematic because the battery technology is not there yet to make it viable or competitive. Will it be someday? Maybe it actually will be, but it isn't now.

The power grid does not need to go everywhere. There does not need to be a singular grid, there could be many. Certainly people should not be legally forced to hook up to the grid when there are viable alternatives. However, for the time being, the power grid makes sense. You can propose alternatives to modern living all you want, but they have to be practical and people need to be willing to live with them.

To American oligarchs the kids' ability to do math is undesirable, because that ability would give them a) an appreciation of how badly they're being screwed over and b) the beginning of the means to do something about it.

IMO anyone who thinks that the dumbing down of society and the sabotaging of education aren't part of a plan, simply hasn't been paying attention. Or they've already fallen for the propaganda coming from the would-be architects of neo-feudalism...

I think because it is not dependable....it still quite often gets things wrong and gives wrong answers.

Hell, just the other day, it got the wrong songs on an album being discussed, info that is out there on the web for easy verification.

If you can't trust if for simple things like that, it's then a QC nightmare when you try to trust it for important code or design....where tolerances can mean life/death or at the very least....severe LITIGATION.

It's all well and good to play with math....

But in the real world what exactly does this mean to mankind.....?

Anything? What can we do with this or what does this work towards?

I'm not suspicious. I recommend reading books by Robert Lustig, Gary Taubes, and Chris van Tulleken. Note that I'm not advocating just accepting everything they say - some of it is controversial for good reasons, and some of it is probably just wrong. But for me there's more than enough logic and sense in them to result in some pretty compelling suggestions for causal mechanisms.

Not really - especially the "high caloric" content. The bomb calorimeter - with its suggestion that all calories are equivalent - has caused untold harm because it's overly simplistic to the point of being fundamentally wrong. For example, I can consume a stupidly high number of calories per day from fat; but if I get enough-but-not-too-much protein and a very limited amount of carbs, I will lose weight and be in good health. Many people on such diets have actually reversed arteriosclerosis; the calcium portion of the arterial plaques always remains, but the pus-filled blood-clot sacs shrink and disappear, and the likelihood of heart attack and stroke is drastically reduced.

I totally get where you're coming from, and I support your skepticism. But if this is something you care about, I recommend a dive - both wide and deep - into the available evidence and theories. I think you'll be surprised at the complexity.

For example, let's look at your last question. One of the things that ultra-processing destroys is an almost-mechanical property that changes both the rate of absorption and the total amount absorbed. For obvious reasons, this alone can make the difference between being good for us and being bad. Apples are good - apple sauce - sweetened or not - is NOT so good.

Also, you may see things like carageenan, lecithin, carob bean gum, guar gum, and a multitude of other emulsifiers and smootheners. Many of these are entirely natural and exist in small quantities in fresh foods. But when they're separated from their sources and added in large quantities to things like chocolate milk - to give them that smooth texture - they also start to emulsify the mucus lining in the gut. This disrupts the gut microbiome, and can also allow things into the bloodstream which a healthy microbiome normally guards against. That 'stuff' that doesn't belong in the bloodstream can have nasty effects, perhaps the least harmful of them being increased inflammation.

To be sure, there's a lot of nuance here. But there's increasing evidence for the contention that 'ultra-processed' - vague though it may seem at first glance - is in fact a pretty good yardstick for the healthiness, or lack thereof, of the food we eat. I think ultra-processed food is a real, serious, society-wide health threat. But please, don't take my word for it. Do some digging, and if you feel that I'm wrong, get back to me and we can discuss it some more.

PS Even the 'saturated fats' thing has a lot of subtlety. Olive oil is such a fat, but consumption of fairly large amounts of it is part of the Mediterranean diet, which doctors recommend for good reason. There's even some suggestion that beef tallow is a healthy fat. But trans-fats, or other similarly modified fats, seem to promote inflammation and contribute to arteriosclerosis. And don't get me started on the whole cholesterol subject. Some of it is good and even necessary, some of it bad, and the goodness and badness may be conditional on a bunch of factors. There's probably enough nuance there for at least one good doctoral thesis.

You had me until 'pasta'. It's almost always a highly-refined carb which will spike insulin release in a manner not that much less drastic than that associated with sugar. Even whole-grain pasta is bad in that way, because the grain is ground so fine that the fibre content does almost nothing to mediate carb absorption in the gut.

It's also important to specify WHOLE fruits and veggies - not juiced or mashed. Even the act of finely chopping these foods - especially the fruits - results in a VERY different insulin response profile. Mashing them - as in making applesauce - makes them almost equivalent to ultra-processed foods, nutritionally speaking.

Umm... because it's all they can afford? Because it's all they have access to in the 'food deserts' which they live in and don't have the means to venture out of? Because they're addicted to it? Because they don't know better? Because advertising - aka brainwashing - actually works?

Take your pick - any or all of the above, plus probably more that I didn't think of.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that there's some programming equivalent to a dead-man switch that disables vehicles - and perhaps other electronic devices - if they haven't successfully 'phoned home' within a programmed time.

After all, if you're going to the trouble of designing and installing remote-kill capabilities - for all kinds of possible motives - it would be very short-sighted to NOT disable the equipment if it fails to contact the mothership within a specified period. The tricky part is making it look like a mundane failure rather than a 'Trojan horseless', so to speak...

There's been ticket scalping since the days when I was a kid...

It was always, back then....illegal to scalp tickets, but they would do things like sell a Bic lighter for $200 and throw in a ticket free with it.

I imagine they'll do something similar to get around this law over there in EU.

It isn't even desirable - never mind necessary - to worry about China's reputation when we have "unreliable numbers" much closer to home.

Why would it stop when you feed it and propagate its vacuous Subject?

Before I even clicked on the link I was pretty sure it was going to be a Peter Zeihan video, and I was not wrong. A friend of mine once wrote "Peter Zeihan has predicted 20 of the last 3 international crises", and that's a pretty accurate summation of his videos. He's smart and knowledgeable, and therefore convincing; but there are things he misses, including "the mark" on a lot of occasions, and he skews pretty heavily toward alarmism.

Whenever I encounter a persuasive pundit on YouTube I look for contrary opinions and info. I doubly recommend that practice in Zeihan's case. His vids can be part of a balanced news meal, but skipping counter opinions will likely result in a "newstritive" deficiency.