Results for “solve for equilibrium”
136 found

Solve for the equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

A Buddhist temple in central Thailand has been left without monks after all of its holy men failed drug tests and were defrocked, a local official said Tuesday.

Four monks, including an abbot, at a temple in Phetchabun province’s Bung Sam Phan district tested positive for methamphetamine on Monday, district official Boonlert Thintapthai told AFP.

The monks have been sent to a health clinic to undergo drug rehabilitation, the official said.

“The temple is now empty of monks and nearby villagers are concerned they cannot do any merit-making,” he said. Merit-making involves worshippers donating food to monks as a good deed.

Boonlert said more monks will be sent to the temple to allow villagers to practice their religious obligations.

Here is the full story, via S.

Solve for the equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

Google Docs could soon suggest ways to improve the quality of your writing in addition to fixing straightforward grammar and spelling errors, the company has announced. A purple squiggly line will appear under suggestions to help make your writing more concise, inclusive, active, or to warn you away from inappropriate words.

Here is the full story.  Just as Google and Amazon search have become worse, the more general point is that franchise values tend to be cashed in at some point.

The new equilibrium, solved for

by  Tyler Cowen in

Ticket sales for Chris Rock’s comedy shows have reportedly spiked since Sunday night.

Live event ticketing site TickPick sold more tickets to see Chris Rock overnight than it had in the past month combined, according to a tweet from the company Monday.

Rock is set to perform standup at Boston’s Wilbur Theater on Wednesday. On March 18, the cheapest tickets were sold for $46, but had increased to $411 by Monday, according to TickPick’s public relations representative Kyle Zorn.

Here is the full story.  Now solve for the next one!

Solve for the Kiwi Covid equilibrium?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Elimination was so popular with voters that every major political party backed it.

But over the past two weeks, the National, Act and Green parties have all peeled off from the government, vocally denouncing the new approach or offering new plans of their own. Ardern and her ministers continue to equivocate on whether elimination is over at all – a hemming and hawing that Smith says could hinder them from communicating a clear new vision for New Zealand’s path forward.

In one sense, Ardern could now be a victim of her own success, says Ben Thomas, a communications consultant and former National government staffer. The government’s elimination campaign was so compelling and its results so strong, that it won huge support – polling above 80% through most of the pandemic.

“Part of the prime minister’s problem is that she did such a good job of rallying New Zealanders to this cause, of convincing them – correctly – that elimination was an achievable goal, and of instilling a real fear of the virus. That’s a very hard thing to unwind from,” Thomas says.

Smith says: “Elimination was something that New Zealanders could be proud of, it brought us together and became a common goal.” And the challenge now is to find – what is the common goal during a suppression strategy? Probably vaccination rates – but to give us this same pride that we had last year in our Covid response again that is the big challenge facing Jacinda and her team now.”

The most likely candidate for that new vision is vaccination, but it’s harder to capture the urgency of that message while simultaneously arguing the country is still eliminating the virus.

Here is the full story, via Rich Dewey.

Solve for the Fairfax County third dose equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen

I am genuinely unsure how this one is going to play out:

There is no proof of medical condition required to receive a third dose of vaccine at one of the Fairfax County Health Department vaccination sites, and individuals will not be asked to provide medical documentation.

Then there is this insanity, for people who in expected value terms need it most:

There is not enough information to recommend an additional vaccine dose for people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Studies are currently underway to evaluate the protection provided by the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to people with weakened immune systems. Recommendations for these people will be coming in the near future. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend that people with a compromised immune system who have received a dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine start a new vaccination series with Pfizer or Moderna.

But I guess we’ll be telling them something different a few weeks from now!  Or maybe not.  Here is the cited press release.

Sentences to ponder solve for the cycling equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

Austin Cyclists Split On Sharing Bike Lanes With Pizza Delivery Robots

Some Austin cyclists are not happy about the robots using bike lanes, while others are optimistic that sharing their path will lead to good things down the road…

“My personal view is that I don’t believe these belong in the bike lane,” said Jake Boone, who serves as vice-chair of the city’s Bicycle Advisory Council.

“I almost feel like we’re the test subject for this new technology, and that does bother me,” he said. “What if in two years we have several hundred of these on the road?”

Here is the full story, via Mike Doherty.

Solve for the football culture equilibrium that is Mexican

by  Tyler Cowen in

Many fans shrug off accusations of homophobia and insist the chant is just a joke. “We do not scream at the goalkeeper because of his sexual preference, we don’t even care about it,” a YouTube commenter on a 2016 public-service video denouncing the chant wrote. “We shout to create chaos, because it is part of the atmosphere of a stadium in Mexico.”

For some, the chant merely illustrates wider homophobia in society.

Here is the proposal of an American academic:

“Convince fans that it brings bad luck to their own team,” Doyle said, “and this nonsense will stop.”

Now that’s a plan.  The actual (new) rule is to stop play if the chants become too extreme:

Nearly two years ago, FIFA approved a disciplinary code that allows referees to end matches if fans use chants or display behavior deemed to be homophobic or racist. However, because of COVID-19, Mexico’s national team has played few games in front of fans since the rules were adopted.

But when the team returns to the field May 29 to face Iceland in Arlington, Texas, Yon de Luisa, the Mexican federation’s president, said the new code will be strictly enforced.

If you are feeling just a bit generous in interpretation:

There is vigorous debate over whether the chant is offensive since the offending word is said to have many meanings in Spanish, one of which is a derogatory slur used to demean gay men.

Some countries should be just a bit more woke!

Has Andrew Granato solved for the capital gains tax equilibrium?

by  Tyler Cowen in

https://twitter.com/agranato42/status/1385323838733438976

Obviously there may be caps on such deductions, as discussed in the chain of tweets, and furthermore, if I understand this correctly it is normalizing the basis at zero.  So you don’t have to take this entirely literally, but nonetheless it is an interesting comparison to consider — the return to selling shares just might not be that high, especially if you can get some non-tax benefits from the donation.

So if you compare the decision to buy equities to a real estate investment, which is probably not going to lose its more favorable capital gains treatment…

Here is the link, via Amihai Glazer.

Solve for the equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

In their efforts to rein in illicit massage businesses across the country, police sometimes rely on sting operations in which undercover officers engage in sex acts with spa workers, according to law enforcement experts and police records reviewed by The Post. While such tactics are generally permitted by law…

Here is more from Douglas Macmillan and Abha Bhattarai at The Washington Post.

Solve for the China equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

Chinese government officials are warning their American counterparts they may detain U.S. nationals in China in response to the Justice Department’s prosecution of Chinese military-affiliated scholars, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Chinese officials have issued the warnings to U.S. government representatives repeatedly and through multiple channels, the people said, including through the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

The Chinese message, the people said, has been blunt: The U.S. should drop prosecutions of the Chinese scholars in American courts, or Americans in China might find themselves in violation of Chinese law.

Here is more from the WSJ.  Three to four years ago I used to explain to friends and family that I needed to visit China as much as possible very quickly, because soon enough my opportunities would be over.  And it seems that now — even without the Covid factor — we have reached that point.

The vaccine makers have solved for the equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

GSK has made a corporate decision that while it wants to help in public health emergencies, it cannot continue to do so in the way it has in the past. Sanofi Pasteur has said its attempt to respond to Zika has served only to mar the company’s reputation. Merck has said while it is committed to getting its Ebola vaccine across the finish line it will not try to develop a vaccine that protects against other strains of Ebola and the related Marburg virus.

Drug makers “have very clearly articulated that … the current way of approaching this — to call them during an emergency and demand that they do this and that they reallocate resources, disrupt their daily operations in order to respond to these events — is completely unsustainable,” said Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, an organization set up after the Ebola crisis to fund early-stage development of vaccines to protect against emerging disease threats.

Hatchett and others who plan for disease emergencies worry that, without the involvement of these types of companies, there will be no emergency response vaccines.

Here is more from Helen Branswell, you can follow her on Twitter here on the evolving coronavirus situation, she is maybe the single best follow on that topic?

NIMBY build for the homeless solve for the equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

At an average cost of $531,373 per unit – with many apartments costing more than $600,000 each –  building costs of many of the homeless units will exceed the median sale price of a market-rate condominium. In the city of Los Angeles, the median price for a condo is $546,000, and a single-family home in Los Angeles County has a median price of $627,690, the study states.

Here is further information, via Rob Moore.

Solve for the New York equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

Black lawmakers and activists are blocking a push to legalize recreational marijuana in New York, warning that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposal could perpetuate the racial inequality that it purports to fight.

The lawmakers — including some of legalization’s most vocal supporters — say that unless people of color are guaranteed a share of the potentially $3 billion industry, in the form of job training, adult education and licenses in the industry itself, there may be no legalization this year.

That is from Vivian Wang and Jeffrey C. Mays in the NYT.

Solve for the candidate quality polarized equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

Consistent with the predictions of this model, we also show that, in more conservative states, low quality conservative candidates do better relative to high quality conservatives, and vice versa.

And this:

We also show that voter beliefs about the candidates harden over the course of the primary…

That is from George Deltas and Matthias Polborn on SSRN.  Via Kevin Lewis.