This ideal state sounds good but it is prohibitively expensive for all but deep pockets.

Ultimately the stock market trades pieces of companies. You might be "gambling" with your finances, but if the value of your 1 share of a company drops to zero, you still have 1 share of the company. Not gambling. Prediction markets are much closer to, say, fantasy sports. Educated guessing, but still guessing. If you get it right, your wager pays. Wrong, and the wager is lost.

Saying these markets aren't gambling is weasel-language. It's not even as honest as casinos. Imagine you had to play roulette but instead of playing against the house, you played against your table mates, and some of them already know the outcome before the marbles is tossed.

When the pace of bug discovery overwhelms the capacity to patch, and the discovery tools are available to... well, everybody... doing any business online is fraught with peril. You can't even triage trust by the integrity of the company. You might trust that "Valerie's Dog Treats" is legit, but their payment dependancy might be using compromised packages.

How in hell are we going to hold this thing together?

A good example, and why I used the adjective "often". There are exceptions. It depends on what you negotiate into your union terms.

The International Olympic Committee said the games are a "betrayal of everything that we stand for."

They can't betray something they never subscribed to in the first place. What you stand for isn't really important here. And you are not being asked to stand for what they do.

If it includes salaries, that's where it'll trip up. The difference between mediocrity and excellence is so pronounced that it's almost impossible to agree. The best won't agree, and will move on if it is implemented in any of the usual tiered structures.

You need to be able to pay for talent, and often that's antithetical to union philosophy.

The liver is already pretty magically awesome at healing.

Until it isn't.

That does not absolve them of blame...

Don't you worry. The justice system, executive orders, and everybody necessary in congress will do that part.

You're making my implied point. "In and of itself", as I said.

Of course if your goals are those that health facilitates, then I completely agree. But health is part of the mechanism, not the goal itself.

You're describing the type of outcome related to the person I specifically said I don't suggest - the unmoderated hedonist.

I also do not think you've made the case against it. You describe the outcomes, but in the eyes of the sufferer, were they worth it?

I don't think a healthy life, in and of itself, is all that laudable a goal. I'm reminded of The Witches of Eastwick... "When I die, I want to be sick. Not healthy." The question is, who benefits from the extended lifespan? Because it came at a cost. Opportunity cost... but a cost nonetheless.

Were I to live an austere life in perfect health, eschewing all of the wonderful but deleterious things life has to offer in favor of longevity, I doubt I would face my death without specific regret. Conversely, if I die in my early 70s of health issues stemming from questionable life choices, I'm pretty sure whatever regret I have would be abstract, and not even all that defendable. "Should have laid off the bacon and scotch... maybe... should I have? They were so good..."

I'm not suggesting people should be unmoderated hedonists. But I salt my cooking until I'm happy with the taste, I love coffee, I think beef tallow is underrated, and my smoker and grill are well loved.

The report's recommendations include avoiding processed foods, abstaining entirely from alcohol, prioritising sleep, not eating after 6.30pm, and cultivating what it calls "a not-meat mindset." On alcohol, it takes a position more forthright than current government guidance. "Alcohol is toxic, don't drink it," said Ball.

Let's hope I make it through the night.

It's so cute that you think that control of the money can be taken back. The last vestiges of your democracy - the will of the people by mandate as declared by vote - has fallen. Some of you haven't noticed yet, is all.

By philosophy I meant thematic alignment rather than identical implementation. Perhaps I misused the term.

I followed something similar in philosophy when I was supporting a mammoth critical legacy system. Not quite as automated, of course. I had sat down with the clients to go over the module list to see what we could deprecate. Turns out they thought nothing was okay to remove. Two years later I embarked on a strategy.

- Identified a series of modules and functions I thought were disused
- Installed logging to identify access and usage, and monitored it for a period
- Turned stuff off and waited for somebody to complain

I retired over a hundred pieces of the app. One time, six months later, the phone rang. I said, "We can turn it back on if you need it."

"Hold on, I'll call you back."

They never called back. :)