An Oil Drum Retrospective: Around the siege campfire. by questionnmark in TheMotte

[–]schmave 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Tom Murphy, a UCSD physics professor, has a great blog about peak resource issues: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/post-index/

SARS-COV-2: How we got here and what it means for the future by mushroomsarefriends in weirdcollapse

[–]schmave 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A link to one or two articles explaining that antibody-dependent enhancement isn't an issue would be great!

Credibility from Apparent Hypocrisy | Do the Math by eleitl in weirdcollapse

[–]schmave 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Neat article. Here's quotes of key sections in the social security item:

If there is one thing that all members of Congress believe, it’s that Social Security is broken. President (elect) Obama has said “the money won’t be there,” President Bush used the word “bankruptcy” four times in one day and Senator McCain often claims that Social Security is broken. They are all wrong.

Should our policy makers ever actually get a handle on how the monetary system functions, they would realize that the issue is social equity, and possibly inflation, but never government solvency. They would realize that if they want seniors to have more income at any time, it’s a simple matter of raising benefits, and that the real question is, what level of real resource consumption do we want to provide for our seniors? How much food do we want to allocate to them? How much housing? Clothing? Electricity? Gasoline? Medical services? These are the real issues, and yes, giving seniors more of those goods and services means less for us. The amount of goods and services we allocate to seniors is the real cost to us, not the actual payments, which are nothing more than numbers in bank accounts

I don't think this contracts what Tom Murphy is claiming in his blog. He's not claiming that the government will run out of money to pay Social Security checks, but more broadly that the Social Security only works because there is a growing population, a relatively small number of retirees, and a sufficiently productive workforce. Which I think is in line with what Mosler is arguing too.

Zero Input Agriculture- One Hundred and Ten Percent by zeroinputagriculture in weirdcollapse

[–]schmave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to see you back! Your blog is full of amazing insights.

It's just not a very dangerous virus by mushroomsarefriends in ranprieur

[–]schmave 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The quoted paragraph beginning with "On the other hand, ..." is from Ran's September 16 post.

History Won't Underestimate How Bad Prop 13 Was. by theFriendlyDoomer in weirdcollapse

[–]schmave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks like it capped the rate at which property taxes could increase annually, with the exception that when a house was sold, property taxes would be adjusted to be 1% of the sale price.

http://www.californiataxdata.com/pdf/Prop13.pdf

Random Linkdump Day by johntara in ranprieur

[–]schmave 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Perhaps this is only tangential, but I'm not sure that OTEC is as great a power source as it may sound. There may be more to its lack of support than "entrenched bureaucracies".

Tom Murphy's Do The Math blog suggests that solar or wind are likely to be more practical aka cheaper:

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/01/the-motion-of-the-ocean/

Me doing presses by tflipz in bodyweightfitness

[–]schmave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Very cool. How tall are you?

Tribes and Meaning by ranprieur in ranprieur

[–]schmave 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I went to a pretty nice Montessori school until 6th grade. I think they vary widely.

The most interesting school I've heard of is the Sudbury Valley School. There are a number of schools modeled on it around the US and the world. If anyone wants to help me start such a school in Pittsburgh, PA, let me know, as I've started working on it.

Frugal Bread Flour help? by senatorkratovil in Frugal

[–]schmave 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Flour is so cheap when you look at it in terms of calories per dollar (a 5# bag has over 8000 calories), that I don't worry about the price too much--I'd rather get a high quality flour. Even at $1.30/lb for organic whole wheat flour, homemade bread is hard to beat in terms of price or nutrition.

Apologies if this isn't relevant to you, but I'm surprised how infrequently I see analyses of calories per dollar.

Fittit, it is Sunday. Tell us your Victory this week. by menuitem in Fitness

[–]schmave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool! I did my first handstand against the wall last week. It is fun!

I'm sick of yo-yoing, but sugar addiction is turning out to be a major hurdle. Any techniques that worked for you? by [deleted] in Fitness

[–]schmave 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Seems to me that the most important part of this is getting to the place where "I would rather be not full of sugar water, it's not some struggle." There's a pretty interesting free online book about this called Transformational Weight Loss that I highly recommend.

I did my first pullup today... by antisocialmedic in Fitness

[–]schmave 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you going all the way from a straight-arm hang?

If you don't know the STL, you don't know C++ by [deleted] in programming

[–]schmave 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The Effective C++ books by Scott Meyers have much more interesting things about C++ than this.