TeaBrain

Once again, regardless of how free the US market was in the mid-20th century, this is not the most unique privilege about the US today, as you put it in your previous comment. Any country could institute the same market regulations and degrees of freedom as the US, but only one country can have the position of having the dominant reserve currency and dominant trade currency.

>And why do you think the dollar is dominant in international trade?

The dollar isn't dominant in international trade because the domestic market is free, like the above user was referencing. The dollar has been the dominant reserve currency and currency for international trade since it overtook the pound for both of those functions in the mid 20th century, which didn't coincide with the US having a free market.

Also, I wasn't make any causal relationship in my comment, like you seem to be implying. The fact that USD is the dominant reserve currency and dominant trade currency is unquestionably more unique than having free markets, considering that the US is truly completely unique in both of these regards, while it is not nearly as unique in having a free market.

That is interesting, although I'm not seeing the comment you're referencing. I read the article this morning, but I hadn't noted that there were possibly multiple types of screw worm. Looks like the Cochliomyia hominivorax is only one that the Americas typically have to deal with, so that was the only one that made sense in the context. However, that a anti-parasitic is more effective at killing one type of screw worm than another doesn't mean much by itself. That statement would hold true even if it had 99% efficacy against one type vs 98% efficacy against another.

This old study found ivermectin efficacious in treating screw worm infected cattle:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-0813....

Someone probably said something similar in the 1960s when Buffet avoided crowded Go-Go era investments in the 1960s to his benefit.

>The only unique thing about America is free markets

This is less unique than the dollar being the dominant reserve currency and dominant currency for settling international trade.

How predictable. I'm referring to the purpose of the publication grouping stats together in a story. Saying "causation and coincidence" is to say nothing. There is never a clear direct "causation" in financial price movements, and both the readers and the publication are aware of this, but that does not mean there is not an implicit narrative. Financial news publications don't mention random coincidental stats just for the amusing random coincidence. The language will always be ambiguous, but pairing specific stats with price moves in ambiguous language is still effectually to create an implicit narrative.

The difference between an explicit and implicit narrative.

There's always a story that can be thrown together for every price movement, although it looks like apple did miss sales estimates in China by several percent. Looks like they also withheld guidance on services growth.

Bloomberg reported that the shares fell because their sales in China under-performed estimates.

From the linked article:

"We can be certain that autism rates have gone up for artefactual reasons—diagnosis, changing awareness and incentives, etc. rather than real increases in the number of people with autism—by exploiting policy changes. For example, above, I mentioned the Massachusetts saw autism reports increase 400% in one year due to a change in school reporting."

This is exactly the issue that I'm getting at, which is shared with the above user's assertion. We cannot be certain of any of this. Especially not because of some handpicked examples by the author. None of this is provable or falsifiable, even if a the handful of disparate examples picked by the author seem compelling. Besides the examples of reporting changes, the author's arguments almost wholly rely on untestable counterfactuals.

Also:

"A single piece of evidence indicates that there is no real epidemic of autism. As remarked in a review in a 2020 Nature Reviews Disease Primers article:

No significant evidence is available supporting that autism is rarer in older people, which provides further evidence against the suggestion that autism is increasing in prevalence over time."

This doesn't provide evidence of anything. The absence of evidence does not constitute evidence. This is just an argument from ignorance. This is little different from saying that there is no significant evidence that people 500 years ago had lower rates of being diagnosed with a given disease, therefore the rates of people with that disease were likely the same as now.

>It is well understood already that the number of autistic people is not actually increasing. What is increasing is our understanding of it and the number of diagnostics.

I see this idea thrown around whenever this topic is brought up, but this is just a contemporary opinion of certain researchers and science commentators. It is both unprovable and unfalsifiable.

>Autism is not a disease, it's a neurodivergence, and it is very important to understand that autistic people are not broken, but simply function differently.

A teacher I had in high school has an adult child with severe autism who is still living with her, because he can't take care of himself. He's not simply functioning differently, nor is anyone else that has the condition so severely that they can't perform any job.

In Blade Runner's case, the art design is superb. As I mentioned in my parent comment, that's not what I referred to as generic. The script though is what is generic and ham-fisted compared to the novel. It's also not a case of that meme, as I was comparing to the novel, and to earlier films which it is derivative of while taking just the skeleton of the plot from the novel.

The art design, which is the most influential aspect of the movie, is superb, but compared to the novel, the movie's script is that of a generic thriller.

That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.

That's interpreting a lot from just four words. Opinion probably wasn't the best word for what I was referring to, but more-so their reference point for claiming that it is arguably his best work. My comment may seem dismissive to someone who hasn't read PKD, but VALIS is generally never considered a contender for his best work. To suggest that it is seems absurd which is why I responded as I did.

Sure, if you are reading the word "arguably" completely literally, but that's not the colloquially understood implication of the term when used to describe a work. Obviously the author of the parent comment is implying they they would possibly consider it the best PKD novel, but the colloquial meaning implied when someone uses the word arguably, generally isn't just to describe one's own opinion, but a significant portion of the popular or critical consensus.

One person could take a position opposed to the general held consensus on any topic, but if one person is the only one to hold this opinion, in english, it would generally not be described as a position that is "arguably" the case, even though if you read the word literally, one person is technically arguing it.

Also, I asked because I wanted to get the above user's opinion on the matter, not your dismissive comment which isn't contributing anything. I've read the VALIS trilogy, but I've never heard any of VALIS trilogy novels described as possibly PKD's best work.

I agree that the book title is great, but I've never understood the fawning over the movie. The art design is great, but the movie script turned a contemplative story into a generic thriller with a unique aesthetic.

Arguably according to whom?

Ryan Petersen was on the Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast a few days ago.

Calling the Fed bankrupt isn't a close to accurate description of what was described in the column. The post describes a unhealthy balance sheet, but the Fed can't go "bankrupt" in the common sense, as it banks itself, with the assets held on it's ledgers purchased and backed by the hypothetically infinite monetary supply. All that was described in the column wasn't bankruptcy as they put it, but how the Fed organizes assets by their quality.

I'm not making any attempt at analysis, just casual speculation as to the reasoning behind other peoples' actions. You're mistaking my guess-work of others' analysis for my own.

Yeah, I saw that. I was just looking at a chart of the yield over the last year. The yield has dropped below where it was for most of the last 12 months, besides a less than three month period from late July to early October last year. If Bessent is listening to people like Dalio though, he may be wanting the yield to go down below 3%, which is what I think Dalio said was necessary to avoid a debt spiral.

Bessent had repeatedly been saying that he wanted to drive down the yield on the 10 year treasury. The stock market sell-off has been somewhat effective in doing this, with the 10 year's yield having been driven down over 50 basis points in the last two months, although I doubt this precipitous selloff is really what he had in mind.

Also, in Anthem, the two main characters end up living self-sufficiently in secluded wilderness.

Because if adding fluoride to water isn't additionally preventative beyond the use of toothpaste, then adding the fluoride to the public water system is just wasting public funds.

Another question is whether there's still evidence for continuing to fluoridate water with how common toothpaste use is now. If nothing else, if it isn't providing benefits over toothpaste use, then fluoridating water could just be a waste of public funds.

Unlike the shareholders of a company being acquired, the shareholders of an acquiring company do not need to be asked prior to the company making an acquisition.

Wow, you weren't kidding about the relative density between those areas. I'd consider Oak Park dense compared to most suburbs, just not as dense as some neighborhoods in Chicago. I'm most familiar with the north side neighborhoods and had those kind of lots in mind, with their near non-existent front yards, with front steps right off the sidewalk, and virtually no front driveways.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9405345,-87.6750174,3a,75y,2...

>That street is basically identical to most of the city of Chicago. The only difference is fewer 2-flats.

The front yard space and number of driveways in the Oak Park link also stuck out to me.