juanjmanfredi

That first scenario you portray is economic growth. Any city in the country would be thrilled to have to deal with the "problem" of being too attractive to both businesses and people.

Do you expect that contracts with Palantir will be under any scrutiny? Do you really think Peter Thiel would have supported this administration if that was at all a risk?

Lots of Americans think the government needs to be more efficient. Very few Americans think the way to do that is closing national parks, cutting veteran healthcare, and firing the nuclear security workforce. It is easy to be pro spending reform but still be unhappy with DOGE's body of work thus far.

This attitude is like demanding that an overweight man amputate his arm.

Agreed on that. My disagreement is with the statement that everything that was once referred to as high energy physics is "not looking so good". Nuclear physics in particular does not feel stuck in the way I've heard some high energy physicists talk about their field.

What are you considering "high energy physics"? "1/3-1/2 of Nobel Prizes in the 20th century" is a significant overestimation unless you are including topics not traditionally included in high energy physics. For example, there were many Nobel prizes in nuclear physics, which shares various parallels with high energy physics in terms of historical origins, experimental techniques, and theoretical foundations. But nuclear physics is in a very exciting era of experimental and theoretical developments, so your "not looking so good" description does not apply.

You said it yourself in your original comment: small and sustainable changes are the way to go. I agree that much of the cultural discourse around dieting is harmful. The promise of every diet commercial is that if you eat in this special way for three months you'll be the picture of health and then there is no need to worry about what you put into your body. This is not only a bad plan for being healthy, but it also heaps additional shame on a person when they are unsurprisingly unable to maintain the significant lifestyle changes required by the diet.

The bottom line for me is that both 1) CICO is the dominant consideration in weight loss and 2) small and sustainable changes made over time are far healthier in the long run than an instantaneous and significant change. Of course, point (2) applies much more broadly to any health or lifestyle goal.

I admit I'm distrustful of such a dramatic title. The central message from the originally posted article is that losing weight is mostly a matter of maintaining a caloric deficit. This is has been understood for some time now. What is the "new research" that is so important, in this case?

Inflation metrics show that the economy post 2008 was in fact under stimulated, which is why the recovery from the financial crisis was so slow. The recent COVID-related stimuli are what went too far.

I agree with your first two paragraphs.

To the extent that our present time is at all unique, I subscribe to Robert Putnam's thesis that much of what we see today can be explained by the drop in social capital in American life over the past several decades. Less socialization means less trust in other Americans or in the government, fewer norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness, and increased polarization. There are various reasons for this, television being a prominent example. Surprisingly, it seems as though these trends were firmly in place well before the internet or 24 hour news came along.

I'm not sure I understand. Could you point me to a resource that goes into more detail?

Anybody who has a credit card, mortgage, or retirement account needs to have a high-school level understanding of math.