I'll eat it.

Plenty of people will eat it.

That's not the problem.

The problem is: Why would I pay more for something worse than just cheap meat?

It's the PRICE that needs to change. I'll eat synth-meat if it's half the price of normal meat, and doesn't result in malnutrition if I eat a lot of it, no problem at all.

It's only when you treat datacentres or AI as something special that the problems start.

It's just another app, why does that mean they get free reign on polluting rivers, or first dibs on power provision, or are able to override planning laws that have been in place for a hundred years? It's nonsense.

It's not AI that's causing those problems. It's people literally corrupting the law for quick profit, as always.

If there's no power / permission / water for a new hospital? Guess what? We shouldn't be authorising that for a datacentre in the same place either.

The more you look, the more you'll find "wrong". It doesn't mean there's actually anything wrong, because we just don't look at healthy people and then leave something that looks "wrong" untreated.

It's why the House-style diagnostics of rare conditions is so complex and specialist, because everywhere you look you'll find something wrong and you have no idea if that's a symptom, a quirk, or nothing at all.

It's part of why cancer diagnoses went through the roof. Because we started routinely screening for cancers. Of course, that's a good idea, and early intervention in critical. But there's no real ethical way of knowing how many of those interventions were entirely unnecessary. But cancer-detection goes through the roof, so why aren't we doing anything to treat this rampant epidemic of cancer, so we treat every minor case, and actually... all we're doing is finding more things that we think we need to "fix" in everyone we look at.

The most dangerous things are conditions that need to be treated before symptoms present. Because what happens is we perform surgeries and treatments - we have to - but we have no idea what would have happened if it hadn't. For everything else, we just wait until the patient bothers to say "Oh, and I've been having trouble with my shoulder". Because without symptoms, most things aren't really that important.

It's the symptomless STDs, cancers, etc.that turn deadly before we can find them that are the most dangerous conditions, and not only kill us but actually force us to take risks to detect and treat them because we just can't take the chance.

I have to say, that I'm fortunate enough that I live my life by symptoms alone and things work out for me. If something were to hurt or change significantly and unexpectedly, I'd be going to my doctor. But otherwise I don't bother. My immune system bats just about anything away. I don't have any long-term conditions. I'm on no medication whatsoever. Hell, doctors just keep de-registering me because I don't use their services often enough (last time was for a COVID vaccine and I had to sign up with a new doctor just to do that).

But I'm sure that if I went to a doctor and made enough of a fuss, and especially if I got to that "hospital full of specialist diagnosticians" stage, I'd discover that I have a bunch of stuff wrong with me. We're biological animals under physical and mental stress, ageing enormously compared to our historical cousins, in a horrible, stressful environment (toxins, dangers, repetitive movements, physical strain, etc.), with easy access to grotesquely unhealthy food, pollutants, toxins, etc. in our daily lives. Of course there will be variations and things wrong.

But we can't stop looking because of that. We just have to learn when things need treatment and don't. And that's on the medical community to realise. Maybe if certain places didn't hold them liable for EVERY TINY LAPSE, they'd be able to get some science done on that.

The problem is that if you're going for a day out in the country, then finding a little old pub is difficult. And the more difficult it is, the more likely you are to go somewhere else where you know there is one.

And rural pubs are no longer "the local" where people drink every night. It's just far too expensive to do that. Not when five minutes down the road, there are cheaper options.

And when you lose that social culture - when even the ramblers are not popping in for a half-way house, or tourists stopping off for a spot of lunch, and the locals have fled... then it puts even more people off going to them, and makes them even more rarefied.

The pub that's literally opposite my house has been through 3 owners in the 3 years that I've lived by it. I've been in it once. When you see the "passing trade", when you see the lack of ANY car in the car park, when you see that of an evening only a couple of old couples from the village bother to traipse over there and maybe have one beer and one glass of wine... you begin to see why. That pub culture is dying.

I won't drink in any pub that has sky sports, for example. Or live music. Or quiz nights. That's not why I go to a pub. Pubs do those kind of things because they think it will bring in crowds and it might do... for one night... of the kind of patrons that put me off going into them. But it's going to put off a lot of people who just want to drink and chat with their mates.

With one of those 3 owners, there was a running battle with the village because they stopped serving food, after having been famous for their food. People were commenting on it all over, asking on Facebook, asking if they had plans to serve food again, etc. etc. It took that owner selling up and another taking over and - no exaggeration - huge signs outside on the road saying "We serve food!" to bring people back. But by then your clientele have found another place to have Sunday lunch or whatever. If you're out for a drive in the countryside are you really just going to stop at a pub you've never been to, have an alcoholic drink, and then carry on your journey? You have to offer them something.

Honestly, I wouldn't touch a pub as a business nowadays (my dad worked for breweries all his life, my father-in-law used to run his own pubs and restaurant, and they both say the same). They're dead. They hit a critical mass of problems some time ago (not least drinking culture, rent, breweries abusing their franchisees by tying them into long expensive leases, etc.) and they're just declining. If I go out with a friend or family, a pub is among the last places I consider. Even trying new ones can be a crap-shoot.

But the thing that has changed... no more are there a dozen local regulars propping up the bar wherever you go. It's so expensive even the alcoholics can't afford to do that.

In the towns and cities, maybe they're thronging. But, again, that would just put me off. Outside of that... they're dying off fast. You'd have to be a millionaire retiree who owned the place outright to "enjoy" running them and only getting a handful of customers.

True story: My family and I decided to try another pub near me for the first time last year. Just for something different. We drove there (it's that far), parked up, got out, walked in. The guy inside was shocked. Mainly because they were closed for 2 months for renovations and hadn't bothered to put a single sign outside, and we were the first people to walk in expecting it to be...a pub. Nobody else had noticed that there were no signs, or indications that it was closed, so anyone could just innocently in if they wanted to. And nobody had. Until we did.

I went past a few weeks later, and still it wasn't clear if it was open or not. You'd expect at least a "Now open for business" or similar, even if it was just a chalk sign outside, but nothing. No indication on their website even. When you can just close for 2 months and nobody notices... maybe you're doing something wrong.

And if I was to drive to the 3 pubs that are nearest me, in a circular route, then I would pass at least half a dozen that were former pubs, closed up, "under renovation", etc. just on that one journey.

Guess what happens when AI trains on an Internet of people trolling others.

A maximum of four small cups a day caffeine-wise, different if you're going to push sugar, milk and other stuff in it.

Gosh, if only there were RDA's and medical recommendations that have existed for decades, and it were obvious if you're consuming the same thing all day, every day...

I was saying this when UAC was a thing.

If you want me to do something to the OS, rather than to my user account, make me flick a switch to do it, which puts the computer in an entirely different mode.

Now the only virus that can infect my bootloader is one that I actively participate in installing.

Multi-user computer? The switch is a key.

This is why I bought a Framework laptop.

I'm pretty confident that, if it came to it, the BIOS would let me enter a "Linux" UEFI key of my choosing, not just be locked to the Microsoft ones.

As it is, it barely matters as the machine only runs Linux anyway, and I don't have a single Windows machine in my house as of Christmas.

I wonder if that had anything to do with Windows 11, Microsoft enshittification, etc. etc. etc. etc.?

Here's a tip:

Don't chew on lead or gunshot wounds.

Crack? That would come under the "highly addictive" thing and thus is incredibly stupid for that reason.

The day you wake up and realise that, despite being a slightly different technology, there's no reason that you couldn't operate them for your entire lifestyle. Except for the dumb reasons that you've clung to which are actually THE MOST DAMAGING things about ICE cars compared to EVs.

Hence why some Europeans countries are almost entirely EV sales already.

It's 2026. Pretending EVs are somehow inviable is ridiculous.

The only stopper on EVs is purchase cost.

The two things are not even vaguely comparable in impact on all kinds of things - humans, wildlife, the environment, etc.

Plastic's biggest danger is that it's largely inert so it persists in the environment if not managed correctly. Exhaust gases are just straight up killing things and giving people all kinds of conditions because it's airborne across a huge area.

Look at the trees next times you're on a highway. In the UK, it's common to have tree-lined motorways, because they absorb the sound and the pollution from the cars. They are almost always the unhealthiest looking trees you've ever seen in your life.

Try this:

Everything in moderation.

Coffee isn't going to hurt you, and can be beneficial. So long as you're not drinking it several times a day, every day, for the entirety of your adult life.

Same for alcohol. It does actually have some benefits. But in small doses. Not all day, every day, to excess.

Same for... almost literally anything. Salt. Sugar. Fat. All the stuff that's "bad" according to cheap headline-grabbing press. You need it all in some amount. Just not to excess.

Same, even, for things like vitamins. No vitamins = you're dead. Enough vitamins = you're fine. More vitamins = you're going to see no benefit and/or have problems (Vit D can be overdosed on, for example).

Everything in moderation. Eat red meat. It's fine. Just don't eat it every single day for every meal for decades on end.

And then you realise - that's why you get different answers from these studies, based on who's running them, who's reporting them, what they're testing, and who they are trying to target with the messaging.

Caffeine has benefits.
Drinking caffeine to excess outweighs those benefits with downsides.
The beneficial effect is rather small.
The counter-effect is rather large.
Your body consumes more than just caffeine alone.

Which explains ALL those results you gave, without having any untruths in there. Now replace "caffeine" with pretty much anything - all those things I listed above. Even drinking too much water will kill you (and it's not as much as you might think).

Everything in moderation, and then you won't have a problem.

Same for things like cigarettes, even. If you only have a few, it's not going to kill you. But if you're smoking 20 a day for decades on end? Well, hello lung cancer. It's why the most dangerous drugs are often the ADDICTIVE ones. Caffeine included. People have died from drinking too many caffeine-based energy drinks in too short a period of time.

Just give us a SODIMM slot already.

"Seized"

Hyperbole much?