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plutonic

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As a few other people have mentioned, I find R to be the easiest tool for this job, specifically the forecast package [0]. I had to use this package for an applied econometrics course in college a few years ago, and I have been using it ever since. I find the syntax to be more straightforward than comparable libraries in Python. I also assume that this library (and other libraries in R) offer higher quality models and results than their counterparts in Python, but this is just an assumption.

[0] https://github.com/robjhyndman/forecast

Does this not imply that they are satisfied with their work for largely social, extrinsic reasons (as opposed to intrinsic ones)? Cal seems to argue that people can only be most satisfied if they are better than everyone else at some niche task. I wonder how this is any different than winning at the "rat race" that so many people seem to harp against? Is Cal then in support of the "rat race" ?

I really don't know, but my guess would be that in mathematics particular symbols denote particular meanings depending on the shape of / decorations on the character. Big g is different from little g which is different from bold g which is different from italic g which is different from Fraktur g. Because Fraktur g is different in meaning from just g, Fraktur gets a spot in the Unicode specs. Courier, while it is standard for screenplays, does not affect the meaning of the text of the screenplay as opposed to the use of another font.

Nicotine is also an acetylcholinergic stimulant, meaning it aids in the quickness of thought [0]. By removing this from your stack you probably depressed your acetylcholine for a while, making you less able to think clearly.

It might also be the lack of breaks too, but who knows.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/nty134

The mental clarity comes from adrenaline. When you fast your body slowly uses up its glycogen store and releases adrenaline to compensate. Presumably it does so in order to keep you active / motivated enough to go look for food to refill your glycogen stores. It is this adrenaline that gives you the mental clarity and causes you to have trouble sleeping when on a fast: fasting is essentially natural adderall.

On top of this, once you use up all your glycogen, your body enters a period of autophagy which causes disfunctioning cells and protein fragments to become broken down and reused. This causes your body to function more efficiently, including your brain.

There is the real issue of people holding onto illiquid assets which are difficult to monetize. E.g, the phrase "land rich, cash poor" comes to mind. Selling off small portions of land, or renting out a bedroom at a time, are difficult for logistical or regulatory reasons.

Not that I disagree with your sentiment. Just, there are non-trivial problems w.r.t. taxing wealth, as opposed to taxing income (which is probably already being paid in fungible, liquid, dollar bills).

The problem here is that when an "investor" "earns" a rate of return due to capital gains, we ought to recognize that these gains are not due to capital performing useful work (e.g., capital used to found a business) but are the result of speculation. Whether the speculation is long-term or short-term is immaterial. Because of this, aside from the company's IPO, stock market "investment" ought to be discouraged in favor of useful investment. Therefore I see no reason to tax capital gains at a rate lesser than that of income.

I spent a lot of time in New England. There, it tends to be all municipalities are legally designated towns, and if the town has a certain minimum population, it can choose to reorganize as a city. The two differ primarily in style of government: towns are run by boards of selectmen (or aldermen or selectperson .. there are many terms for the same thing) via the town meeting, whereas cities are run by a mayor (which may or may not also have a council which runs similarly to the board of selectmen). Town and city are the only legal designation, and things like village and hamlet carry no such ramifications. “Village” might simply be part of the name of a municipality (e.g. Sturbridge Village), or it may refer to a particular neighborhood within a larger municipality [0]. We sometimes call small municipalities by the ocean a fishing village, but again village has no legal meaning there.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_villages_in_Massachu...

Web by Google (TM) 6 years ago

This reminds me of many of the issues with laissez-faire capitalism: perfectly competitive markets tend to consolidate, as less efficient participants drop out of the market. Also, network effects. It seems like perhaps economists should engage in more proselytizing in order to reconvince the average person why monopolies are bad.

While it does seem useful, I’d be curious of the security implications; does wearing such a thing on your wrist make it easy for others to scan your credentials? I’m not incredibly familiar with NFC chips, but they do seem to have a much shorter range than most regular RFID chips, which seems like it might help. However all anyone would have to do is embed a reader under/in the table you sit at (say, at work or at your local coffee shop). Maybe we can keep the circuit hidden in a faraday cage, such as another (modded) microSD card slot, and just pop out the chip when needed.

Perhaps I am missing something, but the use of dimensionality in this article seems a bit overblown. The article says that a digraph meant to represent a rat brain formed 8-cliques in response to some input data. You could represent this 8-clique as a 7D structure ... but not necessarily. I am a bit worried that a layperson will read the article and think that the human brain is literally 7D in some actual way

This reminds me of Scott's post over at Slate Star Codex about Moloch [0]. The issue here isn't so much about _realizing_ the futility in pegging one's happiness to one's profitability. The issue is that for any one person to forgo this standard (s)he would be required to give up the status conferred on being a profit-generating American. This is against his/her interest. Thus, most Americans would rather work harder and be more productive/profitable and maintain their status, than attempt to achieve a more authentic happiness, and risk being perceived as a failure by others. To actually alter this standard would require changing the cultural norms around status and profitability either from the top-down, or from outside entirely.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Perhaps as a counterpoint, this poem:

The Men That Don't Fit In [0] By Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone; He's a man who won't fit in.

[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58012/the-men-that-do...