village-idiot

What a strange thing to get angry at me for.

The difference between "politics" and "world events" typically comes down to the geography of the observer.

> Well, they have to give your location information to the government.

It's not like this requirement was an inevitable outcome of governments. We can change laws.

This is why I included the bit about direct observation. Before dragnet surveillance, you would need to travel near someone who had an active interest in you specifically in order for your location to be marked down. With a dragnet surveillance system every movement you make can be used to unmask your whereabouts after the fact, regardless of whether anyone observed it at the time.

DNA also just ends up all over the place for innocent reasons. If someone gets murdered in a rental car that I rented last month, chances are my dna will be there. DNA evidence often struggles when it comes to temporality, as it can tell you who and where, but it can’t tell you when the evidence was placed there.

Historically there have been some pretty bad abuses in court over the accuracy and reliability of dna evidence, with some convictions that had to later get overturned.

Turns out even genetic databases need an index.

Your location isn’t private if you’re observed in a location where you have no expectation of privacy, i.e. outside. But if I’m at a friends house, I absolutely have an expectation that my presence in their home is private to the world at large.

The problem is that dragnet surveillance does not:

1. Handle the subtleties of how we expect privacy to work.

2. Require direct observation of someone in a context where there is no expectation of privacy.

It just works all the time, and contains the ability to unmask private events in the past.

USDA guides have historically referred to “sweets” as something to consume “sparingly” without any concrete recommendations around maximum grams per day. Up until 2015 they have provided no guidance around added sugars in other products, including in the 6-11 servings of bread (!!) recommended per day.

In 2015 they finally released a recommendation that sugar make up no more than 10% of an American’s daily calories, which is insane.

Also at a practical level, a recommendation to remove fat from diets is a recommendation to add sugar. A wide variety of foods are just absolutely disgusting if you have neither fat nor sugar, and if you declare that the reduction of dietary fat is the main goal for Americans, the result will necessarily be more added sugar. The dietary guidelines still recommend that Americans eat leaner cuts of meat and switch to 1% milk, as if they haven’t already done that.

How many people do you know that have replaced a personal car with Uber? I’ve known two people like that, and everyone else I know uses them in place of traditional taxis.

This is a strong argument for a second car, which would be much cheaper than a divorce.

This isn’t terribly surprising.

First, we always overestimate new technology’s ability to solve problems, while underestimating the side effects. So any grandiose claims about self driving cars fixing congestion should’ve been met by more skepticism in the press.

Second, we already know that people are willing to spend a large amount of money on personal transit that goes above and beyond the bare necessities of transit, at least in rich western nations. I see no reason why that would suddenly stop once the vehicle’s owner is no longer behind the wheel.

I remain shocked at how many people eat in their cars, especially messy or aromatic Foods. I love in ‘n out, but I sure as heck don’t want the inside of my car to smell like it.

All of these seem preventable to me. Especially the juice, don’t give your kids sweet drinks in the car.

Also, juice is basically just soda. All sugar with very little redeeming value.

> I don't know that you can attribute bad eating habits to the recommendations of public health organisations.

Americans have actually followed the recommendations of the USDA for years. They replaced saturated fat with “heart healthy” seed oils, and they diligently consumed low fat diets.

Keep in mind that official recommendations will affect what foods are available for sale too.

> My understanding is that processed foods and sugary drinks are consumed in great numbers, but that is certainly not in accordance with the recommendation of any public health organisations that I know of.

In the United States nutrition labels have a maximum daily amount of most nutrients, except sugar. The official line has been that saturated fat causes heart disease, and that replacing fat in packaged goods with sugar was ok. This is why we have candy in the United States proudly labeling itself as a “fat free food”, and we used to have marketing campaigns touting the weight loss benefit of sugar.

This is finally starting to turn around, but the public health agencies have been laggards when it comes to the realization of how bad sugar is, not at the forefront.

And that’s not even getting into the whole bailiwick about how they process foods, which has changed in accordance with public health recommendations. They used to at least use natural fats in the few processed foods we used to eat, such as lard, but all of those were changed years ago to seed oils that were nominally less bad.

> Also, as far as I know, public vaccination programmes have greatly reduced, and almost eliminated many diseases like measles, tetanus and typhoid, not just in the US but the world over, although of course measles is making a comeback.

As I clearly stated, all public health programs should be judged by their outcomes, and the results of public vaccination have been an unqualified success.

But just because the official recommendations on vaccinations have worked, it doesn’t follow that the official recommendations on diet will too.

> Are you perhaps drawing a conclusion about public health bodies in western countries in general, from an experience with health services in the US?

Yes, that’s a fair criticism.

> I live in the UK and I wouldn't say that the national health service (the NHS) has collapsed.

That’s not what I said. I said that our health has collapsed, i.e. we’re fat and sick.