While I agree that it’s somewhat bad that there is no distinction between lossless and lossy jxl in the file extension, I think it’s really not a big deal compared to the present situation with jpg/png.

The reason being that if you download a png file you have no idea if its been converted from jpg, if it’s a screenshot of a jpg, or if it’s been subjected to lossy reencoding by a tool or a website upload process.

The only thing you can really do to try and see if the file you’ve downloaded has suffered encoding loss is to do an image search on it and see if there are any better quality versions out there. You’d do the exact same thing with a jxl file.

the production of highly processed foods

Source?

The US congressional research service thinks EU subsidies are more spread out among all types of crops, including fruits and vegetables, whereas US policy focuses more on grains, sugars, dairy, and oil seeds: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46811

That’s not a direct subsidy of food processing of course, but the crops the US chooses to support ends up incentivizing it.

And this paper also makes it sound like subsidized crops in the US end up in processed foods: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2530901

So we were talking about supply, not consumption. But regardless, yes americans choose to eat processed foods more on average. So?

Cultural factors are a thing but I think they’re used far too often to explain away trends at the population level and the effects of public policy.

The US has lower rates of food contamination from e.g. Salmonella or E coli, which I think is what that study is measuring. However, I think food in the EU generally has superior, better tasting, ingredients. There are two reasons I believe this to be the case. The first one probably has a smaller impact than the second.

The first reason that in the US an ingredient must be proven to be harmful before the FDA is allowed to ban it. In the EU an ingredient must be proven to be safe before it is allowed in commercial products.

The second reason is that while both the US and EU have farming subsidies, the way these subsidies are structured means that in the US they tend to incentivize the use of high fructose corn syrup and the production of highly processed foods while in the EU highly processed foods tend to be more expensive and “whole foods” tend to be cheaper.

As a result people in the EU tend to eat less processed food as a percentage of their caloric intake:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34647997/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8921104/

The SSN system is one of the more moronic things the US does, which is really saying something.

You can improve strength by improving your disciplines, but IIRC the shape of your body is permanently stuck the way it “normally” is at the time of your embrace (so any really recent injuries are healed, but years old scars and suchlike that you gained as a mortal are retained).

Vampires are creatures of stasis after all.

Tragically if he was a VTM vampire he would never be able to increase his gainz.