And BTW, to all the people obssessed with "paleo" / "cave men" diets and think that means "meat":

While there certainly were (just like today) some hunter-gatherer societies (such as in the high arctic) that got most of their calories from meat, the average hunter-gatherer got the majority of their calories from plants. But not highly bred high-calorie plants, but rather high-fibre wild plants, meaning that they had to eat significantly more of these fibre-loaded plants. Your average hunter-gatherer ancestor ate way more fibre than a person eating a "modern" diet today eats.

A proper "paleo" / "cave man" diet isn't a high-meat diet - it's a high fibre diet.

No, the last fad was antioxidants. Bodybuilders being obsessed with protein is entirely different from maxing protein in normal consumer food products (even things as non-protein-related as water itself)

Do be careful with that. Do remember that inflammation isn't inherently bad. Inflammation is the activity of the innate immune system, doing things like fighting/preventing disease and cancer surveillance/attack. Just shutting down inflammatory reactions (for example, long-term taking prednisone or an equivalent steroid treatment) can certainly make you feel great, but can significantly shorten your expected lifespan.

Don't get me wrong, if you have a chronic inflammatory disease, it absolutely needs treatment, and the medical system is often pathetically bad about treating them. Chronic inflammation itself can even lead to cancer, such as lymphoma. But you need to find a targeted way to control your specific condition. For example, if you have say Sjögren's with small fibre neuropathy, an appropriate treatment might be IVIG or something like HyQvia or Hizentra - not broad-based immunosuppression. Unfortunately, such treatments are expensive, and doctors often resist prescribing them, or patients end up in insurance-denial hell.

I have also been WFH for years before covid. I don't believe my circumstances are the same as everybody's, but I do know I am far from the only person whose duties almost exclusively involve working with people and things that are in another region anyway.

They really haven't. Nutrition science has been a process of refinement as we've learned more over time. E.g.:

"Fat is bad"
"Saturated fat is bad, non is good"
"Saturated fat is bad, monounsaturated is good, polyunsaturated is bad. Oh, and trans fat is really bad."
"Well, among the polys, omega 3s are good, others are bad"
Many refinements later: "Concerning this specific fat molecule, the health impacts are X, except there's evidence that people with Y genetics have Z impact..."

The earlier statements weren't wrong, they were just overly broad.

This is part of why I had the new "ultraprocessed" label. We've been working so hard to separate out what specific things are causing what impacts, and then they just leap backwards and lump everything back together again : Homemade doughnuts deep-fried in coconut oil and lard: "not ultraprocessed". Store whole-grain bread: "ultraprocessed". Such a moronic grouping. Yes, the average of the ultraprocessed category is worse than the average of the non-ultraprocessed category, but that says nothing about individual foods. It's also a back door for anti-tech/anti-science woo to sneak into food science.

The issue is that this is only relevant to sustenance farmers, people with certain diseases, and alcoholics.

It's almost impossible to end up with an essential amino acid deficiency eating any "normal" modern diet. Even a vegan eating junk food is going to get sufficient quantities (they're going to suck at bodybuilding, but they're not going to get deficiency symptoms). There's too many staples that go into modern food. Nobody eats "only corn", "only wheat", "only potatoes", "only soy", or whatnot; it's always a mix. And there's no need to get everything all at once within a single meal - it's fine for it to be spread out not just between meals within a given day, but across multiple days.

Yeah, even on a vegan junk food diet, it's almost impossible for a modern person to not get all the amino acids they need, for the simple reason that there's not just one plant used in vegan junk food - corn, wheat, potato, soy, etc - and together, even if their protein is watered down with a lot of carbs and fat, any realistic mix still hits sufficient levels of essential amino acids, as the required amounts of each to avoid deficiency aren't huge.

Vegans have other actual things to worry more about. B12, for example, requires fortification or supplements (the body stores years worth at a time, but eventually you will run out if you don't consume it). Iron is highly likely to be in the low-but-acceptable to deficient range if either the diet isn't specifically high-iron or supplements taken. Some other minerals are real but lesser risks than iron as well. Etc.

Re: protein, they're surely talking about "in a modern diet, without disease, alcoholism, etc". Of course people in sustenance diets can readily end up with protein deficiency. Some diseases can cause it, and severe alcoholism can lead people to it as well. But a "normal" person eating any "normal" modern diet doesn't really need to think about whether they're getting enough protein.

Now, deficiency aside, people working on muscle building do need to actually think about what they're eating. But again most go too far - benefits taper off after about 1,6-2,2g/kg-d. There's some uncertainty about these figures, and it's possible that there may be some benefit to somewhat higher protein intake, but there's no benefit to living off of an extreme protein diet like some do.

Yeah, the grocery stores in Iceland stock huge amounts of "Collab" sparkling water, whose main selling point is that it contains "marine collagen". Aka fish skin. People are buying fish skin soda. En masse.

This world is insane.

Put another way, employers who gave everyone an effective raise due to exigent circumstances and suffered no harm as a result are now mystified as to why their employees are reluctant to accept an effective pay cut now for no apparent benefit. Given the latter part, they rightly suspect some sort of malfeasance somewhere in management.

Workers want or even need a cost of living adjustment. Employers do not want to and may not be able to afford to increase payroll. For that reason, the COL increases are often several years in arrears as it is. WFH gives the employees an effective raise by eliminating their commute costs and an opportunity to save even more by living somewhere with a lower COL.

As an additional incentive, the employer saves on office space.

On the other hand, WHF was a win-win for employers too. The employees got an effective raise by lowering their cost of living and a reduction in unproductive daily aggravation and wasted time. The employer didn't have to actually pay them any extra to make that happen and could even save on expensive office space. It just wasn't a win for the managers who could no longer hide how bad they were at their jobs.

Perhaps not narcicism so much as short-sighted self interest. Either way, it would be in the company's interest (and the shareholders) to give THEM the heave-ho and leave the workers remote. The workaround for their ineffectiveness costs millions a year.

They won't want to touch the other side of it either. If what Flock is doing is fine, so is the creeper snapping photos on a public playground and creating a giant database somewhere.

That seems...undesirable.

Agency is just it's ability to act upon it's conclusions. While there is a great argument that AI should not be given agency, it had it.

If you're trying to say it had no sentience, I'll agree with that.

In the same sense that a gerbil has agency but not sentience. It too might escape from a cage.