The unimportant news thread

[Todd]

Would that also apply to classical music forums?

That depends on the zealousness of the people compiling any list or lists of "platforms" subject to such warnings.  Arbitrary and capricious rules are the best.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Pope Francis is the first pope to attend a G7 summit.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-francis-g7-biden-nato-leaders-ai/

[Todd]

From CNBC: Nvidia passes Microsoft in market cap to become most valuable public company

From Fortune: Nvidia rally continues as analyst projects chipmaker to reach $5 trillion valuation

Not a bubble.

[Karl Henning]

"Sean Foley, curator of herpetology at the Riverbanks Zoo & Garden in Columbia, said the reptile is a harmless watersnake, "most likely" a brown watersnake, The State reported."

Well, who knew water snakes grew that big?

https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/what-beast-huge-snake-found-by-hiker-near-south-carolina-creek/MHQLESN6VJFRFJVHYSJ7SD2FLA/

[DavidW]

From CNBC: Nvidia passes Microsoft in market cap to become most valuable public company

From Fortune: Nvidia rally continues as analyst projects chipmaker to reach $5 trillion valuation

Not a bubble.

Nvidia planned well when they jumped into machine learning and hardware AI before it exploded. They've positioned themselves very well.

[Karl Henning]

"Sean Foley, curator of herpetology at the Riverbanks Zoo & Garden in Columbia, said the reptile is a harmless watersnake, "most likely" a brown watersnake, The State reported."

Well, who knew water snakes grew that big?

https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/what-beast-huge-snake-found-by-hiker-near-south-carolina-creek/MHQLESN6VJFRFJVHYSJ7SD2FLA/

Sean Foley says it's harmless, but what's a water snake that large feeding on? The water snakes I've seen eat crickets and guppies. I don't see this feller settling for such a diet.

[Todd]

Nvidia planned well when they jumped into machine learning and hardware AI before it exploded. They've positioned themselves very well.

Being positioned well is one thing; having a market cap over fifty times gross revenue with a PE ratio of eighty is another.  These types of stock runs have occurred before.  They all end the same way.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Considering it. CNN: This $50 shiatsu massager is like a massage therapist for my neck and shoulders.


https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/reviews/mo-cuishle-shiatsu-massager

[Todd]

From The Economist: China has become a scientific superpower

[DavidW]

I'm tempted to put it down to a culture of out of control publish or perish mentality in US higher ed. It has gotten to the point where profs are churning out several papers a year working on trivial problems without much time to be thoughtful nor groundbreaking.

But it could just be a larger quantity and better financial support in China. More papers mean more important papers as well.

[Todd]

But it could just be a larger quantity and better financial support in China. More papers mean more important papers as well.

Evidently, China cranks out a lot of lower quality papers as well, but the important story is that it has basically reached parity with the west qualitatively.  Some people will be uncomfortable with that for various reasons.

One of the more interesting tidbits to me was the relative emphasis that China places on agricultural science.  It makes sense from not only a strategic standpoint, but also an ecological adaptation standpoint.  Greenhouse gas emissions ain't goin' nowhere soon, and climatic changes and resulting shifts in land productivity along with factors such as crop disease virulence necessitate more comprehensive food production strategies. My cheeseburgers gotta come from somewhere, so researchers gotta solve that problem.  I don't care if the solutions come from Haidian or Ithaca.

[Spotted Horses]

I'm tempted to put it down to a culture of out of control publish or perish mentality in US higher ed. It has gotten to the point where profs are churning out several papers a year working on trivial problems without much time to be thoughtful nor groundbreaking.

But it could just be a larger quantity and better financial support in China. More papers mean more important papers as well.

It is about funding, not just the level of funding, but the requirements and hoops that must be jumped through. Historically U.S. funding for science and technology research grew faster than the economy, then it grew but not as fast as the economy, then it grew, but not faster than inflation, then it actually shrunk when the Great Recession hit. I'm not sure where it is now.

Then the funding mechanisms changed. A university based researcher will typically have to spend 100% of his or her time applying or supporting grant proposals. The proposals are required to specify in detail what will be discovered and how it will be economically beneficial. It makes it extremely difficult to fund anything that deviates from scientific consensus. Only a small group of superstar researcher get big foundation grants (Howard Hughes Institute, etc) which allow them to bypass this. This has eviscerated scientific research efforts in the U.S.

[Florestan]

The proposals are required to specify in detail what will be discovered and how it will be economically beneficial.

IOW, Kepler, Galilei and Newton would have been denied any grant whatsoever. 

[Todd]

This has eviscerated scientific research efforts in the U.S.

From the NCSES: U.S. R&D Increased by $72 Billion in 2021 to $789 Billion; Estimate for 2022 Indicates Further Increase to $886 Billion

From The White House: The 2024 Budget provides $101.2 billion for basic and applied research, an increase of $3.5  billion above the 2023 enacted level

[Spotted Horses]

From the NCSES: U.S. R&D Increased by $72 Billion in 2021 to $789 Billion; Estimate for 2022 Indicates Further Increase to $886 Billion

From The White House: The 2024 Budget provides $101.2 billion for basic and applied research, an increase of $3.5  billion above the 2023 enacted level

The second, basic research funding, seems to reflect an increase not keeping pace with inflation. Healthy funding growth would keep pace with gdp growth.

[Todd]

The second, basic research funding, seems to reflect an increase not keeping pace with inflation. Healthy funding growth would keep pace with gdp growth.

Not really.  A portion of basic research is funded by the private sector as well, and always has been.

Also, "keeping pace with inflation" is not the same as "eviscerated".

As with everything else, more money is always needed

[Spotted Horses]

Not really.  A portion of basic research is funded by the private sector as well, and always has been.

Also, "keeping pace with inflation" is not the same as "eviscerated".

As with everything else, more money is always needed

Evisceration may be hyperbole, but the decline in public support of basic research came around the time of the financial crisis, John Boehner's battles with Obama over the federal budget and "sequestration." That is when the U.S. share of high prestige scientific publication in your graph starts falling. At that time cuts meant that institutions like the NSF and NIH only had budget to fund renewals of existing research, which starved new research. Renewals have historically had a 50% chance of being funded, and new proposals something like 25%. At that time approval of new projects fell to 5% in some area, 1 in 20 grant proposals funded. And a proposal not agreeing with current consensus was the kiss of death. That suppressed innovation. The other irony is that the various stimulus programs during the crisis targeted "shovel ready," including science. Funding was dumped on established labs, putting new labs at a disadvantage and training lots of students and postdoctoral researchers for jobs that had vanished in the funding squeeze.

[Todd]

That is when the U.S. share of high prestige scientific publication in your graph starts falling.

It's not my graph. 

The bottom line is that total declassified US research spending is about $1 trillion/year, with about $100 billion going to basic and applied research.  That is a lot of money by literally every real-world standard.  Everyone always has many reasons why they need more money.  Politics is how choices are made.  There is no reason to believe choices made previously were bad.  It's OK if the US doesn't maintain some vaporous lead in this arena.  Really, it is.  As mentioned before, some people will have a hard time adjusting to changes.

Incidentally, Nature reported in March that China will spend ~$10 billion on basic research this year and other sources put Chinese R&D at between $450 billion and $650 billion.  So, the US still outinvests China, especially in declassified basic research.  This means that perceived shortcomings in US scientific research are not down to funding, but other issues, presumably institutional mismanagement. 

Without citations, the other stats in your post are anecdotal.

[drogulus]

     

     Everyone likes real estate. What I find interesting is how the different income classes value stocks versus how they value gold. I judge that there's a knowledge gap going on that explains it. The stock market is opaque to non-participants, while gold is (at least on the surface) easy to grasp. If I had no money to invest in either I could understand how to buy gold. The stock market is scary even for many middle income people.

     Given the enormous publicity given to crypto it's encouraging to see that even among the least sophisticated it's fabulously untrusted.

     Re bonds: Is the 60/40 portfolio on life support yet? Yow!

[Karl Henning]

Dipshits at Stonehenge