fancifalmanima

Here is a poem in an invented language

Which looks like the French

But the words are different, the sounds unique

And their mysterious and unknown meaning

I walked the streets of the city

I saw the people living their life

I heard the noises and the laughter

And I felt the warmth of life

But when I looked at the words on the posters

I didn't understand what they were saying

And I felt like I was lost

In a strange and unknown world

So I closed my eyes and listened

The sound of the words in my head

And I started to dream

Of a world where words had meaning

A world where I could talk

And be understood by all

A world where words would be magic

And where dreams would be real.

AKA -- free trade. Global free trade exists because the US wants it to. In that sense, it's currently winning/won. The size of the US military and economy (and it's close allies) are largely what enforces that world order.

Personally, I think it's better than the old model of imperialism (it's certainly way less violent and has rapidly increased living standards across the globe). But it's still a case of the big powerful countries enforcing their will on smaller countries.

    Respect Belarusian, Kazakh and Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in the existing borders.[17]
    Refrain from the threat or the use of force against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
    Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine to influence their politics.
    Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
    Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
    Consult with one another if questions arise regarding those commitments.[13][18]

Sounds more like the test is just testing for an adaptation that happens to be well suited to living in a upper-middle class to wealthy environment. If resources are scarce, the kid that takes what they can get now rather than trusting other people will do better in the long run.

Realistically, we're in a place where significant prices increases (which has happened, obviously ) and a significant price drop would both have a significant economic impact. Both groups (home owners, and renters) are large. And while a chunk of people that own homes are investors, there are a ton of people that own their home and pretty much depend on selling and capturing the equity in the future for either their next house or retirement. Many of those people are just middle class folks, well into the fat part of the bell curve. Obviously on the flip side, more expensive homes makes it more difficult for new homeowners to buy in, and break out of the renting cycle, build equity, build wealth, etc, etc, and that's also bad. Just wanted to point out the flip side of it.

You've very insight-fully described the policy debate/disagreement between people in pretty much any liberal democracy. Respecting my property rights is actually an infringement on your liberty. Not being able to legally kill me without some just cause is also an infringement on your liberty. What's often lost in the conversation on liberty is that everyone agrees that its a matter of degree. IE -- everyone having absolute liberty isn't viable. Absolute liberty would effectively just be an anarchy. Its just a matter of where the lines are. But somehow the conversation ends up getting reduced absolutes on both sides.

That's not to say that European swords were better than Japanese swords in every way. This is one of many, many factors. And I'm sure there were plenty of crappy longswords at the time (and crappy katans), so you kind of also have to decide if you're comparing the best examples, average examples, or low quality items as well. The skill of the wielder is also important. If you're throwing out a bunch of random soldiers without a ton of training and giving them a sword, you might want to give them something they're less likely to break. My understanding that is there was a period in Japan where only samurai were allowed to carry swords (if my reading is to be believed), who were generally very skilled. They would probably know how to avoid putting their blade in situations where it would be prone to breaking.

And Japanese traditional Japanese sword making techniques are extremely impressive and interesting to read about given the materials that were available at the time.

I live in a 2 income house with a kid, I'm not sure that the alternative (considering the economy as a whole and not just home prices) is actually preferable.

It's also probably pretty difficult to disentangle the effect on home prices from more women working from the effect on home prices from other things like low interest rates. There's likely not a single cause for this, but rather an outcome of some aggregate of causes. It's entirely possible that more women working does increase home prices some, but that it's only some fraction of the overall increase we've seen, and that families come out ahead on this economically by a wide margin. Especially taking into account the aggregate effect a larger labor force has on output and productivity.

me -> deposit $100 in bank a -> bank a loans $95 to business -> business deposits $95 in bank b -> bank b loans $90.25

This loop repeats indefinitely until we're talking about fractions of pennies. The reserve ratio (and bank willingness to loan up to that ratio) determines the money multiplication effect. No bank is loaning more than it's actual deposits, it's just the effect of the same dollar getting deposited and loaned multiple times.

If you buy bread made from bleached white flour, sugar (in pretty much any white bread you buy from the supermarket), bread conditioners, preservatives, etc, it's probably considered ultraprocessed. It can also sit in your pantry for weeks.

(note that I'm generally pro wfh, but on the climate side it is feasible that running the AC or heat in your home more during the day is less efficient than driving to work and congregating with bunch of people in a building designed for energy efficiency. I'm not saying that the claim in that article is true, just that I'm not sure that it's settled)

Anecdotally, I ended up getting a CO2 monitor for my house, and had to set the central air fan to run pretty regularly (when not feasible to open windows, which is much of the year year -- quite hot) to circulate the air to keep CO2 levels at a point where they weren't potentially effecting my cognitive abilities (i noticed that's I'd start feeling lethargic and getting headaches, etc). The house is just designed to be sealed up for efficiency, rather than an office building which is often designed to circulate air to avoid that problem. CO2 levels throughout the house have dropped, but there's certainly an energy cost to that.

In short, from an economic growth perspective -- things have generally worked out. Not that things are perfect, or that I love that anything sitting in my bank is slowly losing value. Just that things have been generally going in a positive direction and I'm personally cool with a slowly devaluing dollar if that means that same general trend continues.

Sure it has it's problems, but I think what you're describing is an area that's rising (eastern europe) vs an area that rose in the past and is dealing with an equal balance of ups and downs. So it looks like a hellscape. That being said, the governments there do make some weird decisions, and issues with rent prices could be solved by allowing new/higher density construction.

What I'm getting at is income and standards of living are probably rising in your area faster than California, and that makes it feel like its wealthier/more pleasant on an absolute scale when it's in a phase of catching up.

If it took off, and non technical people became more engaged in the space, I really don't see a reason to assume that traditional banks wouldn't accept bitcoin deposits and offer off-chain loans (re-creating the fractional reserve system we have today as well). Unless there was some law preventing it.

I think those two tools together would enable the US government to take on increasing debt loads in bitcoin, and to inflate the currency pool in one of the ways it's able to do with the dollar (the reserve ratio). So I'm sure they'll figure it out.

If it took off, and non technical people became more engaged in the space, I really don't see a reason to assume that traditional banks wouldn't accept bitcoin deposits and offer off-chain loans (re-creating the fractional reserve system we have today as well). Unless there was some law preventing it.

With a bank, they have a financial incentive to stay a part of the international banking system at least.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/

It looks like New Jersey was hit early on (when it was also rampant in New York) and Florida got hit later. It could be that hospitals do better at treating it now. Obviously that's speculative. But there are like 30 things I could think of that would make it difficult to make direct comparisons between states. Climate is another one -- Florida is nice all year round, so you can have family/friend gatherings outdoors. I also live in a warm state, and we've just done family/friend stuff outside, even Christmas. At this point we do things indoors when everyone there is vaccinated, and outdoors otherwise. In the case of Florida, turns out all those people that ignored restrictions and went to the beach were something like like 20x less likely to spread it than people spending time indoors. Again... speculative. Point being, you'd have to somehow have the data you need to properly control for a multitude of factors if you wanted to make direct comparisons (including some solid reasoning on what to control for).

When I'm searing something, I even prefer that it sticks slightly more to the stainless as it typically releases when it's done anyways -- and my anecdotal experience is that I get a better sear from the surface of the meat sticking to the skillet more firmly.