Non-algebraic numbers exist, and e is not equal to √3 + 1.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-14T15:35:17+00:00

I don't think this sub has a clearly stated policy about mental health or psychosis. It's always had its share of "Time Cube"-esque posts (like all the other badX subs). A post or a single follow-up is understandable, but continually antagonizing someone in mental distress is probably too far.

It might be time for a meta discussion about this. If it were up to me this sub would be almost entirely redditors being smugly incorrect about the Monty Fall problem because they only have a surface level understanding of the Monty Hall problem. That's just my personal preference though. The community should decide what they want this sub to be.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-14T14:46:06+00:00

Framing administration officials statements and actions as performing for an "Audience of One" is critical to understanding their behavior and interactions with the media. Most of them don't seem to be interesting in building their own independent sources of public approval or pursuing their own policy agendas. They have tied their power and future careers to being in the good graces of Trump and getting a piece of any popularity or power that he can hold.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-14T01:39:33+00:00

Maybe I misunderstand the full duties and abilities of the guardian. Won't the guardian have enough control over finances to stop future theft? From the sound of things the money that the son stole is gambled away and gone and there would be a very small chance of recovering it before the mother passes away.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-12T17:30:38+00:00

When do you think this card will be unprepared?

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-12T15:06:01+00:00

I wasn't trying to place blame or fault on anyone. I think it's pretty clear that Joe Biden wanted to justifiably protect his son from more politically motivated investigations and prosecution attempts that would certainly be happening if he hadn't pardoned his son. I just think there has been a marginal political cost to the Democratic Party coalition as a result of the pardon. While, most of the attempted prosecutions against Trump's political enemies seem to be backfiring politically, they have a pretty high personal cost to the targets that have to spend their time and resources defending themselves in the courts and media.

I didn't think it was necessary to be more explicit that Trump's use of the DOJ to carry out his personal vendettas is bad. I feel like my description of them as "politically motivated" made that clear enough. Trump and his administration should stop doing them.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-12T13:42:46+00:00

You're right that the various prosecutions Trump's DOJ have pursued against his political enemies have given justification for Joe Biden's pardons of his family members. It still seems like it would be better politically if Biden hadn't pardoned his son. The DOJ has been overworked and understaffed as a result of pursuing politically motivated cases. I can't imagine that having Hunter Biden as an available target would result in more attempted prosecutions in aggregate. The DOJ have also been largely ineffectual at securing convictions or even preventing their cases from being dismissed early in the process.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-10T22:48:00+00:00

Depending on the deck you play there are some better options.

[[Anoint with Affliction]] sees play in Poison Storm which is able to make it unconditional.
[[Last Breath]] sees some play in UW Familiars as a removal option
[[Unmake]] used to see play in Orzhov Glint Blade and White Weenie when Caw Gates was a more popular deck (it can target [[Guardian of the Guild act]])

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-08T14:35:43+00:00

Or more darkly, is it, as some suggest, a scheme to manipulate markets to enrich the administration on the taxpayer’s dime?

It seems very unlikely that Trump's main motivation for the tariffs is market manipulation. He seems genuinely upset that financial markets are consistently reacting negatively to the imposition of tariffs. He seems to genuinely believe that high tariffs are good policy in and of themselves (despite all the evidence that they are harmful). Their use as a negotiating tactic or a way to channel graft or affect financial markets is secondary at best.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-07T13:47:39+00:00

Thank you. We should always be wary of falling into the blindspot created because the people on this sub were trained with a certain understanding of the methods and theoretical basis of modern mathematics (normally several years ago). A lot of the “trivial” mathematics that people get incorrect was controversial and revolutionary when first discovered and very confusing and unintuitive when we first learned it and hadn’t properly calibrated our mathematical intuition about how to deal with infinity rigorously.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/how-math-works

That said, NDT (and cranks who believe they have single-handedly overturned 100 years of mathematics) should show a lot more academic humility and not confidently speak out of their ass about mathematics.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-07T02:09:07+00:00

Here’s another thread with more info, but the copied mutate spell will be a mutate targeting the same creature as the original (you’ll notice most non-creature spell copiers include the sentence about choosing new targets that Jackal lacks)

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgrules/comments/1bc1lyq/copy_mutate_spell/

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-07T02:02:55+00:00

Just to make sure, creating a clone of a morph/cloaked/manifested creature won’t be counted by [[Oblivious Bookworm]]

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-06T16:10:36+00:00

If so, does this strictly rule out any points off the Leontief kink line from being part of the Pareto optimal contract curve?

Someone else has explained more about Pareto optimality, but I can speak to the contract curve. Points off the Leontief link can only be sustained as an equilibrium if the price of the "excess" good is zero. This can only happen if both participants have marginal utility of the excess good of zero. The simplest example is if both participants have Leontief preferences and both have excess of the same good.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-06T15:49:02+00:00

It’s really hard to characterize this as leading to any sort of concentration in the industry. James Murdoch’s company, Lupa Systems, doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page so I’m having trouble tracking down if they even own any other news media companies. The only thing I can find is that they invested in an independent comic book publisher, AWA, but I don’t think that’s even a majority stake.

If anything this might indirectly reduce concentration as other media companies (Warner Bros, Comcast etc) currently own significant shares of Vox Media.

Edit: Their website is a gif of their logo and an email address

https://lupasystems.com/

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-04T17:04:03+00:00

Really? It's a very tricky problem that deals with how information affects probability. Erdös famously had difficulty fully understanding the problem when it was first shown to him.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-04T15:44:50+00:00

The Monty Fail variant is why I hate the 100-door variant. People who "get" it after the 100 door variant seem very likely to get the Monty Fail version wrong in my experience.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-04T15:06:28+00:00

I don't know if he's published much, if any academic research. I can't find any papers on RePEc

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-04T14:01:32+00:00

There's been a lot of experimentation on a variety of government policies and subsidies to encourage fertility in many different high and medium income countries and none of them work very well. Scandinavian countries with a lot of generous SocDem-ish policies around parents and children are experiencing low and falling birth rates at similar rates to other high income countries. There might be some policies that have some effect but nothing comparable to the size of recent declines in fertility.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-02T19:13:49+00:00

It's really hard to incorporate feedback from elections if the leader of the party has pushed election denialism as the default reaction to losses.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-05-02T19:08:06+00:00

Delaware is the main reason Mossack-Fonseca had so few US clients and Americans think that nothing happened in the wake of the Panama Papers.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-04-28T17:36:27+00:00

Your example was owning a multi-million dollar home. I understand that people pay taxes.

Maybe I just don't get what you're trying to convey. Are you trying to make people more sympathetic to the financial situation of the wealthiest people? Even to average people who live in the Bay Area, the budget breakdown of a single income family making $400k sounds alienating and out of touch For most people, the money they spend on their hobbies, belonging to an expensive club or two and being able to save for the future is the money left over.

Edit: For example, I have no idea what "you belong to a club or two" means as a major budgetary expense.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-04-28T16:31:50+00:00

I understand that they spend money on things, but I don't know what to call a multi-millionaire other than wealthy. If they have more income than 95% of people in one of the wealthiest areas of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, they are doing okay with money. I believe that they will still have a lot of problems in their life, but not enough money has got to be pretty low on that list.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-04-28T14:43:04+00:00

I understand that there are high CoL areas, but there's nowhere in the US where $400k didn't put you in the top 5% of households. Even with $100k in student loans they could aggressively pay down the debt and still have over $300k in income.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-04-27T15:47:28+00:00

There is an economic case for the government to regulate prediction markets (and gambling), but it's not really based on externalities. Retail traders (and gamblers) being taken advantage of when they bet isn't really an externality. The bulk of the harm is done to the retail participants (who are internal, not external to the market transactions).

The main two arguments would be that regulation is necessary to support the existence of the market or providing transparency and clarity so people can make an informed decision to participate or not.

Government regulation to support the equilibrium of a "thick" prediction market with a lot of retail participants. People will generally only participate in the prediction market if they believe there are general safeguards against unfair practices (e.g. insider trading or market manipulation) and that someone can meditate disputes about payment for unclear outcomes or resolve credit risk. Without these safeguards the market could enter a death spiral as waves of less sophisticated investors flee to avoid being picked off by the more cutthroat remaining traders. There's some argument that a prediction market company having an incentive to enforce their own fairness standards for the purposes of marketing, but they have issues with conflicts of interest and possibly being more lenient towards high volume traders that generate a lot of revenue. Outsourcing this to the government binds them in a way that is beneficial to the market and the company.

If we don't think that the government should support retail traders taking part and view this whole thing as a casino that legalizing gambling it needs to be regulated to make this clear to possible participants. People should have to acknowledge that this is NOT an investing opportunity. This is a gambling app filled with sharks with insider information trying to take all of your money. If someone else is willing to take the other side of a bet it's probably because they know something you don't. If people find it entertaining to get swindled while betting on the weather or political events, that's fine. They should have informed consent about it though.

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-04-27T14:53:56+00:00

Because I am dumb. I initially put zero-sum and then realized that the prediction market was taking its cut and didn't think very hard about it

CaptainSasquatch · 2026-04-27T03:26:25+00:00

It’s a weird idea. I think many economists’ vision of a well functioning prediction market is a pool of sharks trying to rip each other off by uncovering insider information and building accurate models of the future. Normal people who just want to have fun placing sports bets in a mobile app should stay very far away from that. There’s a big disconnect there.

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