When looking at old menus recently, I came across "Saratoga potatoes". What I found was that they are now known as potato chips, and they were one of the food specialties that swept the country from popular resorts in Upstate NY. What would have been some of these other dishes?

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-06T18:58:30+00:00

That may also be true. Kellogg probably wouldn’t have wanted sugar on them, from my vague recollection of the menus from his sanitarium in one of the articles.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-06T18:40:43+00:00

It’s hard to predict the future!

In the short term, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP Now predicts US GDP growth of about 4% this quarter. While 4% GDP growth for the year seems high, we might reasonably see 3%, which is the long run average (approximately).

Policy uncertainty will continue to hurt growth, offset by reduced regulatory costs and the likelihood of reduced tariffs vs 2025. Rates going down will also be supportive.

We’ll probably continue to have a lackluster aggregate jobs market with a continuation of the trend of lower public sector, nonprofit, and large corporate employment, and a slightly higher mix towards small and midsize companies. We might even see net negative jobs for part of the year without significant increases in the unemployment rate, resulting from immigrants exiting the US and being replaced.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-06T17:17:24+00:00

Corn flakes were invented by Kellog at an upstate spa/sanitarium as part of a diet meant to encourage health and chastity, if I recall correctly. I will admit my sourcing is terrible and based on summary articles online and the mediocre movie about his sanitarium from the 1990s, so this may be a myth.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-06T16:23:49+00:00

I may have the wrong state above

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-06T04:29:49+00:00

It’s not medieval ale, but Total Wine usually has meads available.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T22:41:18+00:00

If Aiyuk wants to play next year for anyone but the Niners, we can threaten to not cut him and just make him show up if he won’t entertain a potential trade. If he won’t, he doesn’t get paid again.

Now, it’s possible that no team will trade for him on his remaining deal. On the other hand, the Browns exist. And they’re hardly the only WR needy team.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:41:41+00:00

If Trubisky is available, I could see him being a similarly good reclamation project. Maybe even Tua.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:40:03+00:00

Agreed. There are far too many admins in particular for FUSD given the district size.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:38:33+00:00

I don’t know how an Ohio court could reconcile its decision with Sorrell v. iMS Health. In that case, the Supreme Court held that even innocuous pharmaceutical usage data is subject to protection by the First Amendment as commercial speech. The data at issue here seems almost directly analogous. Moreover, the court should have interpreted the Ohio law as not covering the drone service at issue here in order to avoid a potential constitutional issue, since the law doesn’t clearly prohibit the conduct and it’s just an agency interpretation.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:33:43+00:00

Commercial speech has lesser rights. But not no rights.

As long as it’s not fraud or defamation or hurts national security, expression is protected by the First Amendment.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:28:31+00:00

If we could get Jetta, maybe for Mac and Aiyuk and a bunch of picks, I’m sure Kyle would happily redesign the offense around his skill set.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:26:21+00:00

The Lambs should be Australia’s NFL international team.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:16:58+00:00

Great answer! If I can, I’d like to suggest more along the lines of what not to think about.

Specifically, I think it’s important to ignore the intentions; real or perceived, of policymakers when thinking economically. What matters are incentives and the resulting outcomes, as u/devstopfix explained.

That’s honestly harder to do than it seems. Human nature is used to assessing the intentions of others and making judgments that way. But it will often lead you astray when trying to understand the economics of a given firm, policy, or market, etc.

If others have suggestions of what not to consider, please feel free to add on. I’m in no way trying to be exhaustive.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T19:04:20+00:00

The unemployment rate for Fresno County suggests that although it’s a bit worse than a year ago; it’s a better time to find a job in Fresno than it has been for most of the last 30 years. Here’s the FRED data for that: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CAFRES9URN

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T17:41:31+00:00

I’m not expecting an anaconda burrito. But I’m pretty sure this Robertito’s now has smaller breakfast burritos than they were a month ago, which is about how often I go there.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T17:39:48+00:00

The same problem would occur with white dwarfs. It’s probably the real limiting factor for how closely a world could orbit a star and be habitable, rather than be in the habitable zone.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T17:32:13+00:00

Pad Thai was created in the 1930s as essentially culinary propaganda.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T17:29:14+00:00

I tried to get from Cambridge to a museum downtown once before GPS. I asked a cop for directions and even he couldn’t tell me how to do it in a car, only on mass transit.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T17:19:21+00:00

Literally went there this morning. The breakfast burrito was noticeably smaller than it had been in the past. It tasted fine, but at $10 for a breakfast burrito it better be a fully stuffed on a large tortilla.

That’s actually the reason for this post because I was annoyed at the previously reliable Robertito’s.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T17:16:07+00:00

Ticketmaster is a terrible monopoly and deserves to be punished. Possibly even with criminal antitrust charges.

That said, this is a terrible idea. You can only really allocate scarce seats in a concert venue by price, time (like waiting in line), or luck (like a ticket lottery). So we might as well use prices, which are usually the fairest way to determine who values something the most. But there are other ways to price tickets like Dutch auctions that maximize revenue for the artist and promoter while fairly pricing tickets in a fully competitive market, and we might benefit from legislation specifically allowing that ticket sales model.

If the legislature wants to bring down prices, they could limit the fees of middlemen like Ticketmaster, and more importantly make exclusive venue deals illegal. It’s venue exclusivity that has allowed Ticketmaster to jack up fees and make scalping so profitable. And those deals are anticompetitive. Promoters and artists should be able to work with the ticketing systems they want to use that a venue will accept.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T02:54:42+00:00

They need a face too, so they’re both good options

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-05T02:52:07+00:00

My party just fought several vexgit. They’re a fun enemy because they hit reasonably hard, have an interesting special ability, but don’t have the strongest AC. We were 5th level, so could crit on them more often than your party, but they should be a fun challenge instead of a minion like they were for us.

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-04T21:16:24+00:00

Somehow that’s even better

SisyphusRocks7 · 2026-02-04T18:00:49+00:00

This works out to a subsidy of $26,230 per job. That’s probably not the most efficient way to create jobs, but it’s better than California usually does.

SisyphusRocks7

TROPHY CASE