Recent submissions

Comment · 8 months ago
YoY change in jobs is still probably not the best way to visualize overall market health. As you say, you also have to take into account the number of people of fill the jobs. To me it seems like the least misleading statistics would be a graph showing unemployment and underemployment % over time. I'd probably also toss in graphs of length of unemployment period as well as various median wage percentiles (quintiles or deciles maybe) over time.
Comment · 1 year ago
It all comes down to glutamate and gaba again. It's been really interesting to see how fundamental these two molecules are as I have learned more about medical biology/neurology. They are implicated in so many medical and psychiatric conditions, yet you tend to hear much more about the monoamine transmitters (serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine, etc). But they are also hard to target for therapeutic purposes because gabaergics (barbituates, alcohol, z-drugs, etc) are often dangerously addictive; gaba just feels good... until the bill comes due. Maybe someday we will find a way to upregulate gaba activity in the body/brain without the inevitable crash. Hopefully we will, at least for the sake of people that suffer from over/under-excitatatory diseases.
Comment · 1 year ago
Agreed. The child prodigy is overvalued in popular perception. It is a subject of fascination precisely because it is uncommon. Most really great work is done by people with plenty of experience; it's just not that interesting when an experienced person does good work.
Comment · 1 year ago
Same. I've been explicitly told "Neutral Face. Don't smile." for my passport and driver's licenses in NC, FL and CA (Redwood City too).
Comment · 1 year ago
I wonder what everyone else thinks about this claim made by the article:

> The enduring strength of a state-dominated Chinese system that can pivot, change policy and redirect resources at will in service of long-term national strength is now undeniable, regardless of whether free-market advocates like it.

The writer claims that a command economy gives them an advantage over a free market economy. Top-down production targets and price controls didn't really work for the Soviet Union, but maybe the more immediately-available and granular data available nowadays makes it feasible? The US already has a way to encourage production through various methods (e.g. subsidies). It seems to me the real difference is not the economic system, but that the Chinese government is less beholden to existing interests (that aren't the CCP). The US seems to often be unable or unwilling to accept the temporary pain of a big change, even if it would be better off in the long-term.

Comment · 1 year ago
There do seem to be parallels to America's rise to the dominant global power. In particular, they have so much of the global manufacturing infrastructure, like the US did after WW2 destroyed much of Europe's, and I don't see a way for the US to compete with China's cheap labor and agglomeration economies. And they are generating more and more of the research in high-value sectors, kind of like the US scooping up all of the physicists during the war.

There are other roadblocks that the US didn't have to be sure, their very top-heavy population pyramid and they have less arable land (which probably doesn't matter so much except in wartime or as a national security concern). It still feel like the only things that might derail the current trends are internal social unrest or a major war.

Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 5 years ago
Thunder-cougar-falcon-bird?
Comment · 6 years ago
> The drums of the 24 m analog calculators are of course not 24 m long.

I was disappointed

Comment · 6 years ago
> religious intake of ~3 litres (250 ml per kg)

Intake of what? (I'm guessing water?)

Comment · 6 years ago
Seconding this. It's been like night-and-day since I started using a CPAP.
Comment · 6 years ago
Gabe Newell just applied for NZ citizenship as well
Comment · 6 years ago
I was surprised to learn this too!

Looks like they were only married for around 8 years (1957 to 1965), so they divorced before he was really famous. Maybe that's why it's not more widely known?

Comment · 6 years ago
It could also be both; not because someone recognized him, but still because of who he is (non-random). Maybe he was just said some neo-nazi shit to the wrong person.

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