On being mortal:

From the CDC website on leading causes of death of Americans (2017):

These numbers are rough (my personal tabulations and typed out):

1. Heart disease (~650,000 deaths a year)
2. Cancer (~599,000 deaths a year)
3. Smoking (~160,000 deaths a year)
4. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): ~146,000
5. Alzheimer’s Disease (Type 3 Diabetes): ~120,000 
6. Diabetes (probably Type 2): ~80,000

So what is the significance of all this? My thoughts:

1. First of all, it looks like heart disease and cancer are the two things you want to avoid if you want to live to be 133 years old in excellent health. It seems the only rigorous way to prevent heart disease and cancer is intermittent fasting, and abstaining from sugar.
2. Smoking kills a shitload of people … Phillip Morris is evil. They are trying to paint themselves as the ‘good guys’ now, and apparently under “Why Invest in Phillip Morris?” they wrote: ‘We’ve built the world’s most successful cigarette company. Now we’re building our future on smoke-free products that are much better choices.’ I wonder if these e-cigarettes and vape things will become Smoking 2.0 (I think vaping is less bad than cigarettes … but who knows the downside of excessive nicotine in the brain?). But these sneaky bastards at Phillip Morris has the audacity to say stuff like: ‘It’s not the nicotine that makes cigarette smoke so harmful. That’s due to the chemicals that are formed during the burning process.’ I personally think that nicotine is probably less bad than a lot of things, but we must also be critical and think about potential harms of nicotine in the human body (like cancer).