CharonY

So what then do you think infectious diseases are associated with? Do you think that anyone is safe from them or that it only occurs in certain folks?

You are overthinking it. They are a sign that at some point bed bug got into this area. It could be from folks accidentally carrying in, contaminated fabrics or furniture, etc. There is not that one weird rule that makes them appear form nothing.

I hope you are not implying that cockroaches magically appear when leftovers are present. Rather, they are present in a given habitat and while in urban settings much of it could be human leftovers, they are as happy to munch on all types of organic matter think feces, dead skin and so on. Waste control can limit cockroach presence, but depending on how many are around and how sealed your home is, they might keep coming back. Bed bugs are adept in hiding all kind of areas (beyond sleeping areas think anything porous, like wooden joints, carpets) etc. The lesson here is that that they are resilient bastards and it can take a lot of effort to find and get rid of them.

Your claim was a different one: I.e. the claim was that the pain is the reaction, not an effect of the reaction. In some cases defense reactions can cause pain, as well as damages from the reaction as well as damages from pathogens or other external factors. That is strange as pain is that it is a fairly common symptom https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/neurological/depts/multiple-sclerosis/ms-approaches/pain-in-ms It is not credible. Here is a news article on the paper I had in mind https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/multiple-sclerosis-linked-to-shingles-idUSTRE75F6R9/ Again, as the likelihood increases after infection, the recovery hypothesis does not make a lot of sense. But more importantly, MS is not associated with an pathogen per se (with one possible exception*). Rather, a hallmark of the disease is that our own immune system decided to attack myelin, a structure that surrounds parts of our neurons. IOW it is an autoimmune disease. The challenge is that for autoimmune diseases in general we really do not know how these exactly work. Generally speaking things like chronic inflammation but also acute infection increase the likelihood that our immune system starts damaging our body. The link to viruses here is the hypothesis is that once you got some sort of infection, especially after a sever one, your immune system can be whacked a bit out of balance and it may accidentally misidentify parts of our body as foreign entities. Again, getting an infection increases your risk. * I will add one possible link to viral infections which has one piece of compelling evidence, though I am not yet 100% convinced that it is the right mechanism. The study I am referencing to is an epidemiological study which found a much higher risk (some 30-fold) for MS for folks infected with the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). This likelihood is much higher than the link to shingles. However there are two challenges. The first is that almost everyone (90%) of folks are infected with EBV. The authors of the article did a clever design study to be able to follow the few uninfected folks and also look at it longitudinally (i.e. tracking those that were first EBV free and then got infected later in time). Still, the issue with such study design is that there could be statistically anomalies and that the study would be hard to reproduce in that forward. Still, the evidence is very interesting, especially given the huge effect size. The second part is that while there are general hypotheses, the precise mechanism remains elusive. There is an idea to do an empirical experiment. As EBV vaccines are in development, it might be possible in the future to just compare MS rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated folks which could provide more insights into the link.

I think there are a lot of issues and few benefits. The major one being that the major driver of extinction is the reckless destruction of habitats. Even if this was not a stunt (and there are reasons to believe it is) it doesn't address the root problem. If the technology was perfected we basically found a way to make interesting exhibits for zoos but are doing little beyond that.

Pain are not a defense reaction. Though defense reactions, including inflammation responses but also general injuries can cause pain signals. I am also pretty sure that your memory is wrong or folks were telling you wrong things. Most studies show that having shingles increase MS risk. There is no clear link but some assumptions include that the immune response is overreacting to viral infections of nervous tissue and start attacking it (specifically myelin, which causes MS). Other potential pathways are linkages via inflammation pathways. Other viruses, including Epstein-Barr are also linked with increased MS risk. I seriously doubt there are studies that show protective functions.

I think Soros is still recalibrating his space lasers. And I think the autopen for the checks broke.

I think the point I am trying to make is that the trade landscape has changed and expanded massively post WW so any historic comparison will be difficult. Number of players is probably also not a good metric, as, well historically there were way fewer players, and some potential players were still colonies. The most famous large-scale tariffs in the US was probably the Smoot-Hawley act in 1930 and it is being used as an example how economically disastrous this approach is and I don't think that many have attempted something similar after seeing its impacct. Now, obviously no one knows what the actual heck is going on right now in the US, but comparisons that were made just after the announcement (using the weird reciprocal table they had) suggest that in terms of effective tariffs on US imports in percent, it would surpass the Smoot-Hawly. The lattter was wround 20% and the reciprocal tariffs were estimated to land around 24ish, but again, who knows? The administration certainly doesn't.

Depends a lot on the metrics you are using. Global trade has a much higher volume than it had in past times. The current world trade volume is somewhere around 25 trillion. In the 1950 that was about 62 billion according to the world bank. So the absolute impact is much higher. Whether Trump is getting suggestions from Russia or not is probably secondary as whatever he is doing is not really distinguishable from being, you know, a moron.

I think we are about to find out. And the direction it is going is apparently to cover up stupidity, rather than trying to correct it. Probably, though even then I would think (without having any real knowledge on that matter) that for example the relative size and types of economies would matter, too. For example. the US has transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. While the latter does not ship goods, it still results in a huge amount of money influx (and in many cases more than balances deficits). Likewise, if a smaller country delivers valuable resources to a larger one, but cannot afford the higher-end products that the other economy produces, it can cause an imbalance, but as the larger economy ultimately might make profits within its borders, it is not really a loss. In other words, trade is clearly not a zero-sum game and having someone trying to control it without really understanding it, does not lead to good results. Same issue with central planning of Soviet economy.

Tariffs and trade deficits are not related to debt, however. And generally speaking most do not think that a trade deficit on its own is a meaningful indicator.

Trade wars are also an expression of nationalism and has at least some ideological foundation. Also, one should add that the idea of free trade was mostly a post WW idea. In some ways protectionism was the norm rather the exception in the olden days.

Maybe beside the point, but while this four occupations categorization goes all the back to the Zhou dynasty and while certain parts of the hierarchy tend to be fairly stable, the esteem for farmers moved a bit around. While they were placed above merchants, they were still considered part of the lower class during Tang. I think (and might misremember) the elevation of farmers coincided somewhat with the decline of aristocracy and the rise of scholar-officials in the following Song period. Merchants had always and interesting mix as they had significant practical power due their wealth (and had means for social mobility by sponsoring family and other folks to participate in Imperial exams) but despite that, or perhaps because of that, they had low social standing. I think the Chinese might see it as double insult. One, disregarding the technological standing of China, but also two, the attempt to use the term peasant as an insult. Though I suspect that the latter might be more an issue with older folks as the younger ones,

If one wanted to be systematic, one would need to 1) list out all ingredients and their respective concentrations. 2) identify all toxicological data for each ingredient and sort by level of evidence. There are different levels of evidence ranging e.g. from cell cultures, which can be fairly far away for some toxic indicators, to animal tests to evidence in humans. The latter is usually the best but they are rare as we do not purposefully harm folks (hopefully). 3) identify evidence for trickier aspects of toxicity, such as long-term use (e.g., evidence for bioaccumulation, carcinogenic effects, etc.) 4) estimate a threshold value that can be generally considered to be safe 5) compare point 1) with all these aspects and provide a best estimate of potential harm. The toxicological knowledge will evolve over time if people do more research.

It is astonishing to me that folks are talking about a constitutional crisis, yet the broader reaction to this is in the population is muted, to put it mildly. Approval rating still sit at around 40%, for example.

Not precisely my field, but I think evidence is mounting that inflammation and associated interactions with our immune system are some of the major drivers of dementia. This comes from different areas of research and is not limited to viral infections. For example, major surgery also triggers inflammation pathways and in patients with stronger responses, the likelihood of rapid dementia onset is higher.

They wrote a beautiful letter....

You and me, brother. I do some work in that area and it ain't a pretty picture I am seeing.

In a narrowly defined topic, for sure. Take medical health experts and ask them whether there is a net benefit of population-wide measles vaccination in terms of overall health burden, you will get very clear answers from actual experts. The reason is that this question is a) anchored on a set of metrics that are well defined (health burden is perhaps a bit vague but is used here as a proxy of a whole range of measures that can be used) b) is based well-understood mechanisms, and c) has a host of both, research as well as empirical data that clearly point at a conclusion. This is not a good example of an attempt at a very narrow space. The issue here is "success". You could instead ask the question: how do tariffs impact aggregate wealth? This could result in much more targeted arguments. Also, while I do not have specific expertise, I doubt that there are many economists who would argue that broad tariffs are somehow going to increase aggregate wealth. The negative impact on the economy are fairly well-known but I have not seen an honest argument how it would increase wealth. Also, things are usually not a just a simple pro and con, but about what possible mechanisms are there and what the impacts of these issues are. As mentioned already, the more we know, the easier it is to form a consensus. There is no good reason to assume that a consensus can never be formed, we have in fact many of those.

No, even worse, they equal 1. I.e. they are not doing anything. I have criticized that a bit off topic in the other tariff thread (which presumably was not really on tariffs). They had this whole page rambling on and ultimately what they say is that we calculated the trade deficit and multiplied it by 1. But to appear clever they chose add two constants which cancel each other out. I did not pick up on the fact that they might have used LLM to do that, I chose to assume stupidity. But again, it seems that we have to multiply stupid with the laziness factor. And unfortunately they do not cancel each other. That is not the case- everyone, including areas with no human populations got a flat 10%.

I think you should take a step back and take a broader view. It is a bit speciest to dismiss the work of a whole group of folks, just because they lack opposable thumbs, or articulating fingers. Also, I assume that sardines are a perfectly culturally appropriate way of compensation, even if not regurgitated. Listen, the world is global, no to ways around it and it is unfair to dismiss the ability of someone just because of SQUAWK, sorry, I mean cultural differences. Except leopard seals and orcas. Can't trust those bastards.

Considering that the majority of discussions you found point to an anti-tariff slant, doesn't it suggest that for some topics there is, in fact, consensus? I.e. if there is little contra it is likely that there are simply no good models to support it. That is ultimately how consensus look like. If that is not what you are looking for, could you elaborate?

Sounds like a plan. But please, don't blame we if you catch autism

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08800-x As the title of the study suggests, researchers found evidence that shingles vaccine might delay or prevent dementia. It is based on prior work which have found that herpesviruses might be implicated in certain forms of dementia. The study also found evidence that beyond the virus there might be some modulation of the immune response that could contribute to dementia protection.

Isn't it great? We now have an natural experiment where we got two variables in one go! I would argue that the midterms are a critical milestone. If the voters decide to keep empowering Trump, the US has truly fallen into autocracy and fascism. I would agree that the existing systems have shown to crumble by the power of not caring and this might open the door to other extremists. That being said, I suspect that being not stupid really matters if there are levers left that need to be manipulated. If, for example the GOP cruises through the midterms despite all the visible and tangible harms they have been doing, you could put a wet Mentos in charge and folks would continue to run any evil agenda they might come up with to feed the mob.