To give an idea of the massive contribution that Jaen (and marginally the rest of Spain) gives to olive oil supply, Spain olive oil exports are about ~45% of world supply. There’s a lot of olive oil in Jaen, and most of it is some of the best olive oil you can try. Most of the worldwide award winners in EVOO competitions are from Jaen, though not all, as other parts of Spain also contribute excellent olive oil.
Spain has some of the best and some of the worst olive oil in the world, mostly because it has about 45% of total world supply, and because people in the country care a lot about EVOOs.
It’s true that Italian olive oil has traditionally had a lot better marketing. When we talk about p70 and p80 olive oil quality, Spain wins hands down over Italy and other producers. Don’t get me wrong, Italy and Greece have excellent olive oil too, but it’s much harder to find and usually a lot more expensive. If you’re at a supermarket and have to decide between Italian and Spanish olive oil, chances are that the Spanish olive oil will be much better and, sometimes, even cheaper. A common practice in Italy, even though they don’t like to admit is, is that they import Spanish olive oil, relabel it, and sell it as their own.
One thing Italy, Greece, and other parts of the Mediterranean have is different and more diverse olive tree varieties. Frantoio is a good example.
The most important thing when buying great extra virgin olive oil is to buy straight from a well-known producer. If you buy from an intermediary, the chances that they’ve cut the EVOO with other oils (a common practice in markets outside of Southern Europe, like the US) to cheapen them is high.
Agreed - it's all in the dose and the response. Not even mentioning the selection pressure for us to adapt to at least small amounts of alcohol in our diet, which has been present in basic things such as fermented fruits that we had to eat in our ancestral environment.
I think nobody would argue drinking a lot of alcohol, or substantial alcohol, is detrimental for health.
The question being argued is whether drinking a small amount of alcohol is detrimental to your health. This is a different matter altogether.
We, humans, have been drinking alcohol for millenia. I'm skeptical to the idea that a small amount, say, a glass of wine for lunch every day or so, can harm us, especially for active individuals. There has been a natural selection process for us to adapt.
I believe what Taleb is doing here is of great public value, and I commend him for that.
I spent some time working with CBT for alcohol use disorder, mainly treating "active individuals". I've heard your line of reasoning many times. No level of alcohol consumption is considered risk free from a scientific point of view, at least the view of the senior researchers and professors I worked quite closely with.
So, I don't think this is providing "great public value", on the contrary I would suggest spending time with the research and treatment of the many individuals starting out thinking that "a glass of wine for lunch every day or so" can't "harm us".
I almost completely stopped drinking because it hurts my surfing performance, and surfing so so much nicer then drinking, so it was a good trade off.
But I’m curious nonetheless, can you give some examples of those risks? I keep seeing people mentioning them, but haven’t seen many well informed reasonings
Medical risks are the most commonly mentioned, for instance, alcohol is a major risk for cancer and, in some regions, has overtaken smoking as a leading risk factor. But in my personal experience, the most damaging consequences of alcohol use (disorder) are its negative effects on relationships with spouses, children, other relatives, and friends. It doesn't only affect the person willing to take the risk, but also others.
What a puritanical response.
By your argument, anything that could be abused is verboten. Feel free to live (and argue that way). I'll do the opposite. I'll trust to documented, well researched data rather than someone's "Trust me bro" reasoning.
From a certain point on we must start being adults again and become aware that some health risks are worth the price when it comes to drinking a glass or two of wine/beer every-once in a while. Because wine/beer have helped us become more of a social animal over the millennia, i.e. have helped us become humans, and suddenly reversing that for the sake of, I don't know, 6 months-a year of prolonged living in their late 70s - the 80s is not worth it.
With that said, I'm fully aware that excessive alcohol intake (i.e. alcoholism) has been destroying lives for millennia, too, but that's what life is, we can't turn it into this aseptic thing where every risk is accounted for.
I think your base assumption is flawed: just because we've been drinking alcohol for millennia doesn't mean it's safe or good for us. Natural selection doesn't magically fix everything; there needs to be some sort of selection pressure, and "dying a little bit younger" is likely not enough to weed out people who don't get the "alcohol is good for you" genetic mutations. Especially when people who drink only a moderate amount of alcohol still overwhelmingly live through and past reproductive age.
Whether or not a drinker is an "active individual" may not affect the damage (or non-damage) alcohol does; there's no reason to assume that changes anything.
I like a drink here and there as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to pretend there's zero harm.
No, no. You got this backwards. You and others arguing your point have to find solid evidence that small alcohol quantities have that “risk” or “harm”.
In absence of evidence, it’s a better default to think that it’s not harmful as explained by my arguments above. I’m not arguing selection pressure is a strong argument in favor of no harm, I’m arguing that it's a better argument in absence of strong evidence saying otherwise.
The linked document explains how there’s not such thing as strong evidence in habit of the small alcohol quantities are harmful hypothesis. Making papers and running studies is hard, they depend on small sample sizes and statistical analysis that more often than not is flawed.
But, alcohol is something that has been present in our ancestral environment (e.g. fermented fruits). If anyone's telling me, our bodies didn't learn to at least tolerate small amounts of it without any major side effects, I'm going to be asking a lot of follow-up questions.
I think it's much easier to argue this case than, say, tobacco or "drugs", which are arguably more recent inventions, depending on your exact definition of drug.
Same logic applies to heavy metal like lead and others. Also cyanide and arsenic. And so on. We still actively avoid them. Just because we can tolerate them via various process does not mean it wouldn't be better to avoid them altogether and minimise exposure.
If alcohol was invented today, people would be like "no way we allow a juice that makes you happy, stupid, aggressive and endangers yourself and others and has high addictive levels".
If alcoholic drinks were invented today they would probably taste about as good as junk food so there would be no loss. Can you imagine any business promoting a product that requires years to sitting in precise storage!?
Lots of things we eat and drink and use would be illegal if invented now. Refined sugar, many herbs. Even rice can contain arsenic, as can some root vegetables. Maybe even electricity - something that is easily fatal, and can start fires?
Omnigent seems to compete more against Orca https://github.com/stablyai/orca
They both went to be the Agent IDE layer, where you come with your tasks and everything is taken care of. I've been using Orca for a handful of tasks and have been largely enjoying it. My default barebones workflow is ghostty + zmx on ssh connections.
In constitutional monarchy systems like the UK, the king/queen serves a merely representative and largely symbolic role. Morocco's king actually rules over the country. That is a big difference.
Can you elaborate on what symptoms do people with ADHD have that the ADHD “sympathizers” don’t? How can one analyze themselves “on close inspection” to know if they truly have ADHD?
ADHD usually runs in families. There will likely be a direct relative who went undiagnosed, but who fits the ADHD criteria. Also symptoms from early childhood onwards - it's not something that just happens one day. It's a lifelong pattern of behaviour.
If you're concerned I strongly recommend you speak with a professional. Everyone's ADHD manifest in slightly different ways and nobody on the internet can diagnose you.
Not OP, but I would say that people's self analysis should focus around examining/describing their own internal existence, not external-view terms from the medical industry. If you suspect you have a problem that can be diagnosed and helped by the medical industry, go right ahead and seek out that help. But regardless you've also got to do the work internally, and externalizing your locus of control onto the medical industry undermines that.
I use Adguard/wipr to great success. Why's uBlock Origin better? Also, wipr now has filtr, which provides URL filtering at the macOS level, so it's as efficient as it gets.
Seconded for Wipr. It's my favorite adblocker I've tried yet (although 1Blocker is also really nice). And if the author sells it to some creepy company, the Safari API means that the new owner can't spy on my viewing. I'm not sure how it could be materially improved by using less privacy-respecting APIs.
Quick question: how do you distinguish content blocker extensions from regular extensions? All the Adblockers I know have to use both to be effective at hiding ads, especially on YouTube.
In that case, the new owner can still do the spying.
I use AdGuard, Wipr, and uBlock Origin Lite on my iPhone, and uBlock Origin on desktop.
I swear there are little gaps in each that the others get, but they're very minor. When uBlock Origin Lote recently released on iOS (within the last year), I noticed a few more things blocked. I also prefer the custom element removal or uBlock and can reuse my desktop filters.
It's free, so I'd recommend adding it as an addition to the bunch.
I think the limitations are similar to the manifest v3 issues that the Chrome version has. Specifically, you (the ad blocker) send the browser a list of sites to block, instead you blocking them yourself. That means it's way harder to do clever things like scriptlet injection to find ads and get around adblock detection.
