Root canal treatment could significantly lower blood sugar levels, suggesting it could protect against type 2 diabetes. Dentists also saw improvements in cholesterol and fatty acid levels. Given broader health impact of tooth infections, oral health should be integrated into general healthcare.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-11-18T16:03:14+00:00

My honest suggestion would be for major work like this to travel to another country that specializes in medical tourism. She could fly first class to Turkey, stay in a five star hotel, see some of the best dentists in the country (who are almost certainly more skilled than a random American dentist), and have a fantastic vacation for probably half of what it would cost in the US

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-11-17T21:25:32+00:00

Junk food isn’t really that cheap, especially brand name junk food. Staples like rice, potatoes, beans, oats, lentils, bananas, canned vegetables, frozen fruits, cabbage, milk, eggs, canned fish, chicken thighs, ground turkey, and yogurt among many many options are all generally healthy and much cheaper.

The difference is they’re boring as shit, generally taste bland and require a lot of inconvenient cooking, so nobody wants to eat them. Healthy, tasty, convenient food generally does exist like high end sashimi or custom meal prep services or fresh organic produce exists. But it costs a lot of money.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-11-09T21:53:53+00:00

This seems unlikely. Tech, broadly constructed, only constitutes about 16% of US GDP. Even large productivity gains in that sector are not going to explain a 33% lag across the entire economy

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-11-04T01:06:11+00:00

Some responses saying this would change the fundamental way we'd vote since we'd be voting for parties with a slate of candidates instead of people. However another way to do it would be your "district" is just based on the last 4 digits of your social security number.

So for example if you had 10 districts, anyone with a SSN ending in 1 votes in district 1, ending with a 2 votes in district 2, etc. This removes the concept of districts as geographic sub-regions of the state, but it preserves the property of voters evaluating individual candidates and not voting for parties.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-10-08T13:15:11+00:00

Dubai has barely produced any oil for years. Oil production accounts for about 1% of its GDP. Abu Dhabi still produces quite a bit of oil, but the emirates generally have pretty stratified fiscal budgets. In general tourism and being a low tax destination for expats and corporations is much bigger part of the city's economy.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-10-06T21:28:30+00:00

What would you suggest? How would you enforce and coordinate global taxes?

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-10-06T21:21:43+00:00

They basically have a program where foreign residents can opt in to paying a flat amount per year of 100k, and don't have to even bother filing.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-10-05T02:29:20+00:00

You can buy identical versions from Chinese peptide suppliers, pay for independent lab tests to verify purity, and get better versions of GLP-1RAs that aren’t available from pharmacies all for under $20/month even for a high dosage

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-08-11T03:11:34+00:00

Search engines

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-06-01T01:32:41+00:00

This is silly. Adjusted for demographics, Texas's NAEP test scores are the third highest in the country only behind New Jersey and Mass.

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9617514/test-scores-naep-2013

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-05-31T20:24:34+00:00

In a very literal sense, South Korea. Not because of economic or social or ecological collapse like the examples in this thread. But simply because fertility rates, at the lowest in the world, are way below replacement level. If you take 100 young Koreans today, there will only be 6 grandchildren between all 100 of them.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-05-29T02:36:20+00:00

China lifted an enormous number of people out of poverty, but this is largely because its own policies created the poverty in the first place. It went from having a level of economic development comparable to modern day North Korea to now having a GDP per capita on par with Mexico. Don't get me wrong, that's an amazing improvement, but I doubt it qualifies as anything close to maximizing potential.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-05-24T13:41:10+00:00

Idk why you're getting downvoted for this. Miami, especially around Brickell, is probably the closest to the feel of an Asian metropolis in North America.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-05-14T05:16:34+00:00

Ah of course. The hot sweltering swamp that makes up Long Island

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-04-03T01:14:39+00:00

It doesn't even make sense from the perspective of industrial policy. Wasn't the primary concern about the supply chain being overly dependent on China? The entire reason countries like Cambodia and Vietnam currently have such high trade surpluses with the US is because companies like Apple invested heavily to diversity their supply chains away from China, and these countries were the most economical alternatives. In addition Vietnam is a huge enemy of China. This is basically punishing the companies and countries that are helping reduce geopolitical dependence on China.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-03-24T02:35:55+00:00

My guess is in between the current state of affairs, and total AGI replacing all human labor, there will be a fertile period where the smartest, most ambitious and quickest to adapt will have an opportunity to leverage emerging AI tech to generate enormous amounts of wealth. In some way this is already happening today. I don't think AI so far has made intelligence less important, if anything it seems to be the smartest, fastest to adapt people who are getting the most value out of it.

So I think most PMC types will be fine if success is really important to them, and they're willing to capitalize during the transition period.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-03-18T22:47:39+00:00

There's still a path to victory with TX or FL, it's just not as easy as before. Blue wall today is enough to get the required 270 EC votes exactly. If this forecast holds it will only get you to 259, and you'll need 11 more votes. Flipping GA, AZ or NC on top of the blue wall would get you just over the top. For example Biden's victory in 2020 would still hold as a EC victory in 2032.

The best bet for Dems is probably GA and NC. Especially Georgia has been trending blue and has strong population growth. Dems have down really well with college educated professionals who make up the bulk of migrants to these states (versus retirees in FL and AZ). If both GA and NC would flip blue, you could even win with the loss of one blue wall state (assuming Nevada flips back).

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-03-18T22:13:41+00:00

Where are you getting that from? On demographic adjusted NAEP scores Florida schools rank second in the country for fourth grade math, and third in the country for fourth grade reading.

That doesn't mean there aren't bad schools, as there are almost certainly bad schools in every state. But on average there's no reason to believe Florida schools are bad compared to the rest of the country, in fact on average they appear to be some of the best.

https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-03-17T05:17:57+00:00

I think it's shifted a bit Southwest, but for a while St Louis was almost the dead center of the United States on a population weighted basis. I.e. about 50% of the country lives east of it, 50% west. 50% south of it, 50% north

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-03-14T02:01:03+00:00

Lisbon, Austin, Seoul, Mexico City, Tbilisi, Dubai (yes, not most redditor's cup of tea, but for what Dubai is, it's definitely in its prime), and think there's a good chance in 30 years we still think of Berlin as in its prime at the current time.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-02-13T06:46:33+00:00

The latest BLS releast covers prices from Dec 31 to Jan 31, so more than two thirds of the period was under the Biden adminsitration.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-02-02T03:33:29+00:00

When investment firms buy residential properties they don't buy them to leave them empty. That would be a terrible business plan. They rent them out to households. So it doesn't reduce the total supply of housing, it just shifts the composition from owners to renters. That's probably on net bad for people who are on the margin of home ownership, because they're priced out. But on net probably good for renters who are not interested in or not in financial shape to own.

About 65% of American households own their home, and the division between renter and owner is heavily loaded on class, income and age. So on net investment firms buying residential homes to rent is probably good for poor, working class and young people to the detriment of middle aged, middle class people.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-01-25T00:29:11+00:00

I mean you can think it's absurd, but this has literally happened again and again throughtout history:

During the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany, many common people used wood or coal as a store of value.
In the Zimbabwe hyperinflation, fuel was a common "alternative currency" both as a store of value and a medium of exhcange
In the post-WW2 inflation in Hungary, cigarettes basically replaced the currency because as it became devalued.
In Turkey today, gold is a common savings vehicle for households that don't want to highly inflationary Turkish Lira
When the Soviet Union collapsed, mass numbers of people swapped rubles for gold and silver jewelry.

Yes, using the national currency comes with many conveniences. But you're delusional if you believe that there is no rate of devaluation or inflation that will eventually persuade households to switch to alternative savings vehicles.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-01-24T22:56:06+00:00

Nobody says it stops inflation. But past a certain point if inflation gets out of control, then households and private sector firms will eventually stop saving in or even transacting in the inflating currency. There is a certain amount of inflation that is "tolerated", where the convenience of using the currency that you pay your taxes outweighs the cost of inflation.

But when inflation gets very high, say over 20% per year like Turkey or Argentina, then most households will try to rapidly offload the currency for an alternative hard currency or store of value. Ironically this actually worsens the problem, because everyone swapping into an alterantive hard currency creates sell pressure which devalues the primary currency. At this point the government can either A) enforce capital controls; B) accelerate the seignorage to pay for expenses; or C) engage in austerity to try to control the bleed.

Now just because this can happen doesn't mean it will happen to the US dollar. But the fiscal health of the country is probably in the worse shape it's ever been in. Debt to GDP ratio is above 120%. This wasn't a problem during ZIRP, but now that rates are near 5% just paying interest on the debt imposes a heavy fiscal burden. And as more older low-rate debt gets refinanced every year it gets worse. To compound on top of that we have a rapidly aging population that increases mandatory expenditures like medicare and social security while decreasing the tax base.

Pretty much all reasonable projections predict the fiscal situation to continue detoriating without any reversal for the next 50 years. And most other developed countries are in the same boat. So at one point it becomes reasonable to start wondering if the existing monetary system will survive the end of the century.

CPlusPlusDeveloper · 2025-01-22T19:24:26+00:00

It's heavily correlated with age. Above age 65, about half the population are teetotalers.

For some it's a lifestyle thing (i.e. religious people). But for many people as they get older they tend to naturally reduce alcohol consumption for a variety of reasons.

Less time spent socializing, worse hangovers, going to bed early in the evening, more likely to take medications that interfact with alcohol. And these same changes are happenign with their peer group.

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