I agree with the sentiment that there is significant absurdity hiding beneath all the economic abstraction around employment and investment, which obscures the origin of money as a requirement. The way I see it (and this is a rather centuries old observation) is that the economic system is set up so that most of the population requires earning money for their survival. Earning money is a social requirement not a biological one. But if the resources are cheaper now that money is more valuable, what is the problem with earning less money for one's work? The problem is that some people would rather keep charging the same for what they sell. If one doesn't own much, then one can't afford waiting for a better deal. In this situation having power means owning money, houses, land, machinery and little debt. This makes workers require the same salary in order to survive and perform their jobs, this contributes to the (abstract pseudo-)problems of less employment, less consumption, less debt obligations being fulfilled. The real problems is on the one hand the resources required for survival being out of reach, and on the other resources, machinery and skills going to waste. For many, directly tackling the real problems may come dangerously close to disregarding social requirements. Hence, we keep talking about this problems in abstract terms, so that important members of society can live off the rent, by convincing the rest, by whatever means necessary, of the survival-money exchange rate. Money is a peaceful mean to make them follow orders.
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security
of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich
against the poor, or of those who have some property against
those who have none at all." - Adam Smith
"Consistent with our results, it has been shown that FADS genetic variants have a stronger effect on PUFA metabolism in African Americans than in Americans of European descent as a result of differences in genotype frequencies." - Genetic Adaptation of Fatty-Acid Metabolism: A Human-Specific Haplotype Increasing the Biosynthesis of Long-Chain Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3376635/
"One effect of this highly social system of mathematics is the tendency
of mathematicians to follow fads." This is a common complaint about programmers. Perhaps one could say this is another aspect of the Curry-Howard Correspondence.
ALA is alpha-linolenic acid (the essential omega-3 fatty acid). LA is linoleic acid (the essential omega-6 fatty acid). They are the "raw materials" of the Arachidonic Acid Cascade.
Presumably this is somewhat parallel to the poly- and mono-unsaturated fat versus saturated fat. The bones of these chemicals are pretty similar but what hangs off the molecule makes a huge difference in behavior, like CO2 versus CO.
So does this mean they should have similar effects on the body or that they are different enough to be essentially just two different fats that are significantly different enough not to draw conclusions that ALA causes the same (potential) effects as LA as brought forth in the article?
They're both polyunsaturated fats. While an over-simplification Omega3s (which ALA is) tend to be anti-inflammatory and have tons of positive effects of cardiovascular health (up to a point - more on this later) while Omega6s, which are necessary for our survival, do tend to have an inflammatory effect.
The goal is to be high-ish in Omega3s without getting mercury poisoning and low in Omega6s.
The modern diet - so if you go out to eat at all, if you cook with corn/canola/soybean/cottonseed oils or shortenings like Criso, if you use 90% of most modern pre-made marinades, salad dressings, cereals, chips, crackers, cookies, and even most bread (not including some brands of butter bread), they all load up on "seed oils" (Meaning LA).
When people say a good diet is rich in whole foods and low in processed foods - this is what is at the heart of it. Processed foods tend to be high in omega6s, high in sugar, and high in sodium,. The latter 2 are largely for taste, or in salt's case taste and preservation.
Omega6s are used b/c the oils are super cheap. These are oils that couldn't exist without modern industry, in the bulk in which we produce them. (unlike say..beef tallow, coconut oil, butter, olive oil, ghee, duck fat, etc.) And initially they were sold by non-food industries as a way to maximize profits on byproducts from other industrial processes.
They have incredibly high smoke points and they don't go rancid or spoil, so if you want to make say... Cheeze-Its or Pringles, it's a perfect choice for production - it's cheap, it's stable, it doesn't burn easily, it doesn't spoil, etc..
What's worse is we've radically changed what we feed animals too - chickens, pigs, cows, and now all of the meat we eat also has a much higher omega6 profile than it ever did before these seedoils came along or "corn" became the staple of our lives from ethanol to chicken feed.
Foods high in Omega3s tend to be fatty fish, the low mercury types would be salmon and sardines, mostly. Tuna is good too but higher in mercury. and you'll want to eat the wild versions of these b/c at least in Salmon's case it also contains an antioxidant called Astaxanthin, which is an amazing anti-oxidant. Salmon get this from eating Krill (Krill get it from eating algae - and it's why krill and salmon are red/pink).
Unlike most anti-oxidants, Astaxanthin doesn't flip to being pro-oxidant under any circumstances and it, particularly, prevents Poly-Unsaturated Fats from Oxidizing. Which is really important since they oxidize so easily ( this is why Omega3 based oils, for example, aren't good cooking oils).
Fish are high in EPA and DHA, which are forms of Omega3. ALA is the type found in flax or papaya or some other sources. I'd mention chia seeds but being as they're higher in oxylates than spinach, i reject them as a health food. ALA is a poor Omega3. Your body can't use it directly and it must be converted into EPA and DHA and it's done so at a really poor conversion rate. Something like only 5-10% of the Omega3s in ALA form ever get converted to a form that your body can use.
And while there's 1000s of blogs and videos going on about the benefits of Omega3s, which there are many, let me also give warning that high doses of EPA (pure EPA at 4-7g) given to patients in a clinical trial, for years, gave them heart arrhythmias. While no fun, the main cause of death from heart arrhythmias is stroke, and funny enough, Omega3s lessen the risk of death from stroke. So you'd get a heart arrhythmias but still be less likely to die from it. The lesson here, though, is the poison is in the dose.
The more you read Fire in a Bottle (blog linked in first comment), you'll notice that the human body really isn't meant to process mass amounts of PUFAs at all.
Thanks for these, really enjoying your posts here to complement the things I've figured out.
You might also enjoy the brief remarks from this old OpenVisConf USDA parallel coordinates data visualization+video of animals aggregating the things we feed them.
I find it sort of underscores your point of linoleic acid in egg likely not being stable over history, if you feed a chicken differently, even though USDA treats food as if they are, in data: https://twitter.com/thadk/status/1352034735548194817?s=20
"By 2018, farmers were spending an average of $23.58 per hectare on insecticide — 37% more than the pre-Bt levels." https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-twisted-trajector... Unfortunately the field isn't a lab, and making it look like a lab is very resource-intensive and environmentally damaging. "The cost of ignoring ‘desi’ varieties for decades has been high for India."
People and countries outside the US don't use the dollar because of the US military, any more than they use the Swiss franc because of the Swiss military. They use both currencies (and the UK pound, and the Euro, and the Japanese yen) because decades of experience show that the countries that issue said currencies are the least likely to default on their financial obligations, and are most transparent about their own financials.
Russians and Chinese themselves avoid using their own countries' currencies when abroad as much as possible because they are most aware of this. To put another way, the primacy of the dollar isn't a supply issue (something that the US directly forces), but a demand issue (it's the currency everyone else prefers to use).
(This is where you'll bring up the "petrodollar". No, the petrodollar isn't real. Well, it's real in the sense that oil is, like almost every other product, usually denominated in US dollars when sold internationally. What's not real is the theory that the US has a particular need for (say) Iraq back in the day to denominate its oil sales in dollars, as opposed to Euro. Or that Venezuela attempting to denominate its oil in yuan today surely augurs the collapse of the US economy tomorrow.)
There is absolutely nothing stopping an American, Japanese, Iraqi, Venezuelan, Russian, Chinese, German, or Indonesian company in offering its products for sale to foreign customers in Canadian dollars, yen, renminbi, dinars, rubles, Euros, or bhats. A US carrier isn't going to appear off the shores of your country for doing so.
They don't do so (or, when they do so, they also denominate in US dollars) because customers by and large prefer using US dollars. They also like using Euros, yen, and Swiss francs. (They have no problem with Canadian or Australian dollars, but obtaining it can sometimes be more difficult.) But the US dollar is the one currency that is absolutely, positively, 100% guaranteed to be wanted by both the buyer and seller, no matter where and for what.
Let me repeat: The primacy of the US dollar is driven by demand, not supply.
Also, these days it's less the petrodollar and more the technodollar as shown by the handwringing over US/China technological dependence/independence and how many key technologies in electronics/aerospace/biotech each country has or can develop to create a globally competitive and resilient ecosystem of technology products.
