Indeed. Although it's much easier to eat healthier in, say, Japan than the USA because of a different food culture and different food infrastructure (as mentioned in two videos I linked to in another comment).

BlueZones has supported initiatives to make healthier eating -- and exercise and other good things -- easier to do by default in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://albertlea.bluezonespro...
        "Blue Zones Project(r) is a community-wide well-being initiative that helps make healthy choices easier for everyone in Albert Lea and Freeborn County. When our entire community participates, small changes contribute huge benefits for all of us: Lowered healthcare costs, improved productivity, and a higher quality of life.
        While many traditional health initiatives focus on diet and exercise programs, we focus on changing our community's culture and environment so that individuals are nudged into making healthy choices. We take a systematic approach to improving well-being through policy, building design, social networks and built environment across all sectors of our community. By optimizing the places that we live, work and play, we can make the healthy choices the easy choices so we naturally adopt healthy behaviors and have the opportunity to LIVE LONGER, BETTER(r)."

The Suppers clubs described in "Logical Miracles" are another approach to make healthier eating more the default in the USA:
"Logical Miracles: 100 Stories of Hope and Healing" by Dor Mullen
https://www.amazon.com/Logical...
        "Why is it so hard to eat right? What does it take to turn around the habits that make us sick and fat? Logical Miracles is a collection of stories by people in The Suppers Programs who found their personal solutions by experimenting with whole food. In an environment of nonjudgment, we cook, taste, and feel our way to health, and we forge new friendships based on healthy living. For five years, pilot Suppers groups have been helping people with a range of food-related challenges find their path, especially people with depression, anxiety, learning issues, obesity, diabetes, and problems with alcohol. No special diets. No fees. No commercial messages. The only requirement for membership is the desire to lead a healthier life. Now we'd like to share our logical miracles, our road maps, our recipes, and especially our hard-earned wisdom related as stories of hope and healing. Welcome to Suppers."

Also tangentially related:
""Stop Moralizing Air Conditioning" -- How Institutions Shift Responsibility Onto Individuals: On Civilization, Responsibility, and the Ethics of Preventable Suffering"
https://jdjayne.substack.com/p...
        "In my first essay on responsibility, I argued that affirming existence means accepting responsibility for a world we did not create. We emerge into the world shaped by the generations before us, and bear the burden of responsibility for ourselves and future generations ahead. Civilization, then, is the organization of that responsibility at scales greater than any individual could achieve alone.
        As civilizations grow and gain more capacity to prevent suffering, preventing that suffering increasingly becomes a collective responsibility rather than an individual burden. My claim is that modern institutions often fail this responsibility by concentrating authority while displacing responsibility back onto individuals through moralizing, bureaucracy, and institutional incentives.
        By institutions, I mean the durable organizations through which societies coordinate responsibilities that no individual can bear alone; governments, markets, corporations, and other structures of collective action.
        By moralizing, I mean the habit of transforming practical and institutional problems into questions of individual virtue. Rather than asking how we should collectively organize to reduce suffering, we ask whether those who suffer deserve relief in the first place.
        The result is a culture that blames individuals for suffering that civilization has already acquired the capability, and thus the responsibility, to prevent. ..."

In this case, institutions collectively managing trillions of dollars a year in the USA between industry and regulatory-captured government agencies have successfully shirked any responsibility to help people be healthy -- and instead such institutions have displaced that responsibility onto individuals by essentially blaming individuals for lack of willpower to resist all the carefully engineered traps the organization have created for individuals including children (like via ultra-processed foods, constant food-related advertising, artificially low prices via government subsidies for animal products, "health" insurance that covers getting sick but not staying healthy, and so on).

An example of such institutional power in action and how ludicrous pushback is often made to seem (Coca Cola's response was to tell them to individually just stop drinking their product if they had concerns):
https://organicconsumers.org/w...
        "William Lamar, the senior pastor at D.C.'s historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, is tired of presiding over funerals for parishioners who died of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
        So on Thursday, he and another prominent African American pastor filed suit against Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association, claiming soda manufacturers knowingly deceived customers about the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages -- at enormous cost to their communities. ...
        Obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and lower-extremity amputations are all far higher among people of color than among whites. These communities also drink more soda -- and are exposed to more soda advertising.
        "It's become really clear to me that we're losing more people to the sweets than to the streets," said Coates, who said he has seen members of his congregation give their infants bottles filled with sugary drinks. "There's a great deal of misinformation in our communities, and I think that's largely a function of these deceptive marketing campaigns." ...."

And the spin on how silly such concern about institutional failure is made to seem:
https://taphaps.com/delman-coa...
        "According to the pastors, it is because Coke's commercials often feature misleading images of young, slender people gulping the fizzy beverage, smiling and sharing good times. "It breaks my heart and I'm saddened by the way in which we're losing so many people. I'm losing more people to the sweets than to the streets," Delman Coates added, according to The Blaze. However, the pastors' claims aren't supported by available evidence. In fact, most surveys show people believe sugar to be harmful, but choose to consume it anyway, another article on The Blaze reported.
          This hasn't deterred the pastors from blaming the company, though. "Marketing for Coca-Cola is focused around health and fun and showing very sexy bodies in their advertising. You never see an obese person. If the people are consuming Coca-Cola at this rate, there is no way those bodies would look like that," William Lamar claimed. "It's almost as if they are selling joy. They are equating this product with the things that people are hoping for - joy, smiles, family. But, this product will not deliver that. It delivers the exact opposite. Silence around this issue is violence." ....
        "Our hope is that Coca-Cola will discontinue marketing these drinks as something that is healthful and healthy," William Lamar said, but instead, Coca-Cola dismissed the pastors' allegations, calling them "legally and factually meritless," adding that they "will vigorously defend against them."
        "America's beverage companies know we have an important role to play in addressing our nation's health challenges. That's why we're engaging with health groups and community organizations to drive a reduction in the sugar and calories Americans get from beverages," the American Beverage Association said in a statement defending the industry's conduct. "Unfounded accusations like these won't do anything to address health concerns, but the actions we're taking, particularly in areas where obesity rates are among the highest, can make a difference." ...."

(Obesity may actually be driven more by animal products than sugar, but they certainly overlap as problem areas, and they likely make the problems caused by each other worse.)

by Jeff Nelson, Veg Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "For years we've been told that if one study proves the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest way to eat, it's PREDIMED.
        Doctors cite it. Dietitians cite it. Influencers have built careers on it.
        The headline: Mediterranean diet cuts heart disease by 30%.
        So I sat down and opened the actual paper. Not the press release -- the supplementary tables, where almost nobody looks.
        In today's video I walk through the trial's own tables -- what that 30% actually means, where it came from, and why I think anyone with blocked arteries should be asking a different question entirely."

Spoiler: a low-animal-fat low-seed-oil-fat diet like Ornish, McDougall, Fuhrman and so on suggest actually reverses heart disease rather than maybe just slow it a bit like the Mediterranean diet.

One can then argue about whether fats from nuts, seeds, and avocado are a net benefit (and I am leaning more that way) or whether all fats are problematical (like, say, McDougall suggested). Related by Dr. Fuhrman:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/arti...
        "It is important to stand up to individuals who can hurt others with dangerous nutritional advice. We usually see such arguments coming from the meat-promoting nutritional gurus, attempting to find some flaw in a study that demonstrates the dangers of too much animal products in the diet. The number of studies corroborating that more animal products in the diet contribute to the development of chronic disease and premature death is deafening and indisputable at this time.
        However, a similar development is occurring in the denial of the harm that results from omitting nuts and seeds from the diet - and the attempt to bolster support for an extremely low-fat vegan diet, which is clearly dangerous. It has been brought to my attention that a series of videos has been posted and promoted on YouTube attempting to discredit the studies documenting the lifespan-extending properties of including nuts and seeds in one's diet. The individuals represented here want to try to protect their legacy of promoting an extremely low-fat vegan diets (nut and seed exclusion); unfortunately, according to a preponderance of evidence, this outmoded and disproven stance does lead to premature death. Unable to shut down the avalanche of evidence, they attempt to discredit the studies. The facts are: extreme low-fat vegan dieters are at higher risk of depression and dementia, as well as premature mortality, from all causes, and the evidence increases every year. ..."

Here are some arguments against Fuhrman's position on supplementing DHA/EPA though (Jeff is also in the very-low-fat camp overall it seems to me):
"The DHA Dementia Promise Just Took a Hit" by Jeff Nelson -- VegSource
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "Are Vegans Being Sold a Story on DHA? It seems so. For years now, vegans have increasingly been told that if they don't take DHA supplements, they may be putting themselves at risk for dementia or Alzheimer's disease. I've always been skeptical of how certain those claims sound, because the actual evidence has never seemed nearly that clear-cut to me. ..."

A big underlying concern is that arteries can leak (hemorrhagic stroke) and so they need to be repaired from the inside, which if it goes too far (too much animal fats, especially in the context of sugar also causing arterial inflammation) then you can get deadly blockage (an ischemic stroke or heart attack).

So that's why I think Fuhrman may be more right on that than, say, McDougall -- where nuts and seeds might help reduce the risk of hemorrhagic stroke among other benefits for vegans by helping with the repair process without it going to far to clogs -- and so might be preventing dementia resulting from many small hemorrhagic strokes? (My speculation.) And it is also maybe why vegans not eating nuts and seeds (or maybe avocados) might potentially benefit from a little animal fat to reduce hemorrhagic stroke risk? Although there might be other issues in play like some fat in the diet helping with neural growth or brain maintenance given the brain is mostly fat.

But Jeff Nelson raises good points on whether supplements for DHA/EPA are essential or create new risks in that and other videos. I'm still a bit on the fence about such supplements even though I currently take an algae-based one.

One reason nutritional information is so confusing -- beyond the complexity of the human body itself -- is because there is so much money on the line (literally trillions of dollars a year in the USA between animal agriculture and the medical system). So there are huge incentives to sow confusion (similar to some other big issues like smoking or climate change). A great movie on that is "What the Health" (mentioned in a previous post by me). There are also not many incentives to research simple unpatentable health-related things like eating better.

As is pointed out in that movie, the animal products industries learned from the cigarette industry that you don't have to win an argument with scientific proof to win in the marketplace; you just have to cause enough confusion by spreading conflicting-seeming information that people give up trying to make sense of things and just keep on with their bad habits (to their own long-term suffering and to someone else's profit).

Interesting. Thanks for the suggestion! Here is a nutritional comparison on the lettuce with frozen spinach and yes the spinach has a lot more of various things (although they don't mention oxalates in that comparison which spinach also has more of):
https://comparator.food-nutrie...

I was trying a McDougall-ish approach then which is why the fat is so low on purpose. In general I otherwise have some nuts and seeds (and occasionally avocados too) which also add micronutrients (and protein for the nuts and seeds). Here is the spinach & lettuce comparison against pumpkin seeds, almonds, and avocado, and also beans:
https://comparator.food-nutrie...

I was glad to find that specific nutrition site as otherwise some nutrition sites require a sign up (although those may also have other great features like scanning barcodes). I thought to look for one from a comment someone made that it is good to sanity check what you are eating to look for specific nutrient deficiencies. That's how I learned I am eating a lot less calcium then when I was eating Mozarella string cheese in lettuce wraps.
https://meal.food-nutrients-ca...

I still need to work on the calcium issue (whereas protein is not an issue for me). Maybe more sesame, chia, or flax seeds? I have a container of chia seeds just sitting in the cupboard, so maybe this will help motivate me to work them into something I eat. Spinach might also improve the calcium situation (except for the oxalates, which is an argument for cooking it). More beans might help with the calcium too.
https://vegfaqs.com/seeds-high...
https://health.clevelandclinic...

Yes, that statement should come with an asterisk proviso. If people get all their calories from table sugar, then yes, they won't be getting any protein (as you say). But if people get all their calories from a variety of whole plant foods, then they will essentially get enough protein. So yes, there is an assumption there that people are not eating some monodiet of, say, all fruit (which is low in protein).

But all fruit and sugar are the rare exceptions of being low protein. For example, eating just potatoes essentially gets you to the RDA of protein (but eating a variety of foods including beans is healthier).
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prot...
https://www.eatthismuch.com/ca...
https://www.eatthis.com/potato...

Wild horses eat mostly grass and must get enough protein to be so big and strong. But, admittedly, they eat a lot of grass all day. Likewise gorillas eat lots of vegetation all day.

Related funny video on protein:
""Where do you get your protein?" The Ultimate Response 2025"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Where do vegans get their protein? Let's answer this with the newest data from recent trials, the logic, personal experience, and my friend TRENton."

As Mic the Vegan mentions there, "Fiber is the new protein". The more important question most US Americans should be asking is "Where am I getting my fiber?"

While this is not completely accurate (sodium is lower in the specific products I actually ate, and portions may not be exact, does not include supplements like for vitamin D or algae-based DHA/EPA, etc), here is an approximation of a day of plant-only food I ate a while back showing enough protein (even not eating any beans that day):
https://meal.food-nutrients-ca...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
        "Garth Philip Davis (born January 28, 1970) is an American bariatric surgeon, physician, and author. Davis specializes in weight management and is known for his advocacy of plant-based nutrition. ...
        Davis is a board-certified surgeon who specializes in bariatric surgery and Medical Weight Loss at Mission Weight Management Center in Asheville, North Carolina.[2][5]He is now back in Houston, Texas, working for Houston Methodist and Methodist West, and is serving as the medical director for the Comprehensive Metabolic Disease Management Center. ...
      Davis is best known for his book Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It, which argues that a high-protein diet of animal source foods causes people to be overweight and more susceptible to certain diseases, such as cancer and diabetes. Davis states that people can get all the protein they need from a plant-based diet. Davis has written that there is "a broad consensus that including plants and limiting animals in our diets is the single best thing we can do for our health"."

Personally, I question the value of bariatric surgery for most people compared to diet and lifestyle changes (like eating more beans), but it is different from plastic surgery.

Dr. Fuhrman -- who I also linked to a video from -- is an expert in nutrition and health (although he has his own conflicts by selling products, although he has claimed he donates all the profits from them to nutritional research).

Unfortunately, "captured" government policy and short-term profit maximizing make it hard to lose weight in the USA even when you want to. Some related videos:

* "I Investigated The World's Skinniest vs Fattest City" by Will Tennyson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      "Little Rock, Arkansas, US vs. Tokyo, Japan"

* "How Japan escaped Obesity while America got Fat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

* "Why a Big Mac Costs Less Than a Salad"
https://archive.nytimes.com/ec...

* "What The Health - Full Documentary" (and criticism and response):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://informationisbeautiful...
"'What the Health' Now Debunked by Vox | REBUTTAL" by Mic the Vegan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Here is a video that is hilarious (if very sad) when you think about it, as another example of calling out unnecessarily and risky medicine substituting for diet and lifestyle changes:
"This 99 Cent Food [a can of beans] Mimics Ozempic -- Here's How (And How to Use It): Weight Loss Doctor Explains"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj...
        "In 2023 we reported a study that we conducted comparing the prices of meat-like veggie burgers and vegan ground meat to animal meat. We recently expanded our study to include canned and dried beans because these products are often less expensive sources of protein, iron, and other nutrients that are also supplied by veggie burgers and vegan ground meat. ... In both cities, dried beans cost the least per serving, followed by canned beans, then by animal meat, and then by veggie meat. Dried beans cost between 10 cents and 20 cents per serving, depending on the type of bean and the location of the store. Canned beans cost between 25 cents and 40 cents per serving. Compare that to 80 cents to over $2 for a serving of animal meat and 80 cents to $1.24 for a serving of veggie meat. It's clear that beans offer significant cost savings. When you're looking for a low-cost, nutritious, convenient food, remember beans!"

As Dr. Fuhrman, an expert in nutrition, said in the previously linked video at 2:54: "If you can remember anything from this podcast, it's said based on these cited studies] more animal protein shortens lifespan and more plant protein -- paying attention to it, and getting more plant protein, not overeating calories of course -- makes you live longer."

My grocery bill went down eating more the way people like Dr. Joel Fuhrman on recommends. Processed food and animal products -- especially organic ones -- can be expensive.

Killing Us and What We Can Do About It by Garth Davis M.D., Howard Jacobson: https://www.amazon.com/Protein...
====
An acclaimed surgeon specializing in weight loss delivers a paradigm-shifting examination of the diet and health industry's focus on protein, explaining why it is detrimental to our health, and can prevent us from losing weight.

Whether you are seeing a doctor, nutritionist, or a trainer, all of them advise to eat more protein. Foods, drinks, and supplements are loaded with extra protein. Many people use protein for weight control, to gain or lose pounds, while others believe it gives them more energy and is essential for a longer, healthier life. Now, Dr. Garth Davis, an expert in weight loss asks, "Is all this protein making us healthier?"

The answer, he emphatically argues, is NO. Too much protein is actually making us sick, fat, and tired, according to Dr. Davis. If you are getting adequate calories in your diet, there is no such thing as protein deficiency. The healthiest countries in the world eat far less protein than we do and yet we have an entire nation on a protein binge getting sicker by the day.

As a surgeon treating obese patients, Dr. Davis was frustrated by the ever-increasing number of sick and overweight patients, but it wasn't until his own health scare that he realized he could do something about it. Combining cutting-edge research, with his hands-on patient experience and his years dedicated to analyzing studies of the world's longest-lived populations, this explosive, groundbreaking book reveals the truth about the dangers of protein and shares a proven approach to weight loss, health, and longevity.
====

Also: "How Do You Prevent Protein Deficiency? Dr. Joel Fuhrman"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
        "In this informative discussion, Dr. Joel Fuhrman breaks down the importance of protein adequacy and optimal macronutrient ratios for longevity on a plant-based diet. Learn about the surprising fat content of meat, the risks associated with low-carb diets like keto and carnivore, and the science-backed approach of the Nutritarian diet. Discover the crucial role of nuts and seeds in promoting longevity, as demonstrated in the Adventist Health Study, and gain practical tips for fueling athletic performance with whole plant foods."

Meat has been marketed based on scaring people about protein.
Dairy has been marketed based on scaring people about calcium.
You can generally get enough of each if you eat a varied whole-foods plat-based diet especially one including beans and nuts and seeds etc.. Calcium is actually the harder one than protein (since if you get enough calories from whole foods you generally get enough protein):
https://www.worldofvegan.com/v...

Adoption is a function of existing adoption and existing availability of resources.

Extremely good OS' and truly amazing computers have failed, not because they were too expensive or had issues, but because they were perceived to be unpopular OR simply lacked enough software that could run on them.

Extremely bad OS' and truly awful computers have succeeded for the opposite reason.

Linux has an extremely good architecture, at least for machines that are mostly operating with CPUs. When most of the work is done by the GPU, it's less obvious that Linux provides the necessary mechanisms to manage resources and abstract away the hardware specifics. That doesn't mean I expect Linux to start fading, but I don't think a centralised OS is necessarily where things will go. However, the reason it hasn't done better so far is simply because potential users and potential software houses had a negative view of it (even though actual users were almost invariably loving the system).

Windows is crashing now not because it is a slow, bug-ridden piece of spyware (which it is, but users have never cared about that in the past), but because it is perceived in increasingly negative light.

They can get vertical samples from space and the ground. What they can't get from space or the ground is how the internals of a system evolve.

The problem with "models" in the abstract is that there are a lot of them and some of the time the thing you want is to know the same point relative to the system and not to the mudball.

Lots of people have gut feelings about AI, positive or negative.

Most of the AI research I can see people doing is focusing on single-element problems (such as finding counter-examples to a mathematics hypothesis) or solving very simple engineering systems (at most a dozen or so components). Most of the benchmarks are even simpler (write a short story at the level generally asked in English classes of primary school kids).

As a result, I think that people have developed either a very cynical outlook or a very optimistic look. Neither of these is entirely realistic, for the simple reason that no actual useful problem fits any of those descriptions.

Digging much deeper, I'm finding that when problems get into the hundreds or thousands of elements, even ChatGPT Sol 5.6 and Claude Fable 5 struggle badly to keep track of accurate relationships, let alone any level of detail.

If you want to solve a relatively simple coupled system (whether to use solar panels or direct solar heating, and which side of the house to place them), I'm sure AI is fine. If you want AI to write a five hundred word story detailing a conversation between Kim Possible, Rufus, and a smoked herring, I'm sure it could cope. Just.

If you want it to do anything hard enough that a human could do with an assistant, the tests I've been using (meaningful rather than synthetic problems) suggest you've developed a fantastically expensive blue smoke generator. We are going to need to see the inference engines developed for previous generations of AI, and the reasoners developed for the semantic web, and perhaps tools that haven't begun to be imagined yet, before AI can do anything non-trivial.

A balloon is not static, it moves with the atmospheric system it is in. Ergo, it tells you how that system evolves. A drone cannot do this.

A drone can stay put, relative to the ground, telling you how a location's atmosphere evolves. A balloon cannot do this.

These are solving completely different types of problem.

You could, of course, construct a hybrid, as balloons are traditionally single-shot. If a balloon carries the measurement gear and a drone capable of carrying that same gear PLUS a deflated balloon, then you can have something that operates as a balloon until it reaches some pre-set location, whereupon the balloon's gas is released and the drone flies the ensemble to a collection point.

It obviously gives us guarantees in terms of what the source will do and what the compiled code should need.

These do not provide memory safety, so memory bugs would not be solved by these. They will find unexpected behavioural issues, though.

The precondition and postcondition statements are not cunningly-disguised assert statements because they're not asserted at runtime. They're enforced at static check and/or compile time.

The policy hints mean that if the kernel is doing something you're not expecting, you find this when testing the code. Equally, though, it means that users cannot cause the software to venture into realms unknown through many of the usual attack vectors because those will require permissions that aren't there.

IIRC the accident statistics on Tesla and Google auto-driving vehicles show that they're safer than an average newly minted 16 year-old driver, and we've (almost) all been that person at one time.