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Friday Fun Thread for May 17, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I feel like food and these questions are sort of like Pre-Keynes in economics. We did not have good explanations for the Depression at the time. And while Keynes I think got a lot wrong (I’ve read his books) he was also origional and got some conversations started on how to manage a modern nation state economy. Now after Bernanke’s central bank we can basically achieve the end of recessions (and inflation though woke got in the way of good policy in 2020-2022).

Nutrition feels like it’s in a place where we don’t even have great models or great explanatory text. It’s probably almost as important as economics.

On (2) it feels correct to me that attraction is more malleable. While people are saying men are more attracted to hourglasses and it does seem like the middle tier pin-up girl fits this; I would argue for the very rich/high status the preference would be for the 5’10 super model look. If the choice is between Giselle or peak Britney Spears the high status person will prefer Giselle. Though Bezos seems to have gone with the Spears type.

Now after Bernanke’s central bank we can basically achieve the end of recessions (and inflation

What? how?

The Fed learned how to operate at the 0 lower bound. The only thing that ended the 2008 expansion was Covid and that was a choice by policymakers to cause a recession. Without getting super long winded because the subject matter is a PhD thesis the evidence seems strong as we have gone thru a 14 year expansion which also included planning a short recession and rapid recovery.

Don't know much about economics (had to google "0 lower bound"). Got any reading suggestions for understanding what you mean by operating under that condition?

Maybe I worded it wrong. 0 as in the end of humanity so you can no longer rebuild. It’s a complete loss.

Even if you took a bet where 30 humans survived in probably 10-20k years they would have restarted civilization. Which is a small amount of time compared to the useful life of earth. SBF was willing to take bets of complete loss which means things can’t regrow.

I think you thought I was asking about a different comment of yours? I was referring to this comment:

The Fed learned how to operate at the 0 lower bound. The only thing that ended the 2008 expansion was Covid and that was a choice by policymakers to cause a recession. Without getting super long winded because the subject matter is a PhD thesis the evidence seems strong as we have gone thru a 14 year expansion which also included planning a short recession and rapid recovery.

The 0 lower bound is when interest rates hit zero. The Fed has traditionally eased or tightened monetary policy by changing interest rates.

They now have policy frameworks to use when they can no longer ease by cutting rates lower since rates are already 0.