QTR’s Fringe Finance

QTR's Fringe Finance critically examines financial, political, and societal issues through a libertarian lens, frequently questioning mainstream narratives around topics like monetary policy, media honesty, and government interventions. It delves into the impact of economic policies, the role of alternative media, and promotes skepticism towards established financial and governmental institutions.

Monetary Policy Media Critique Government Intervention Inflation and Economic Analysis Libertarianism Financial Markets Cryptocurrency Civil Liberties Political Commentary

The hottest Substack posts of QTR’s Fringe Finance

And their main takeaways

Can non-human primates have Alzheimers?

0 implied HN points • 18 Dec 14
  1. Some non-human primates can develop Alzheimer's disease-like symptoms such as amyloid plaques and phosphorylated tau.
  2. Great apes, the primates closest to humans, show executive deficits but not memory deficits with aging.
  3. Studying Alzheimer's disease in non-human primates can provide insights into the disease mechanism.

How might nucleosome integrity affect aging?

0 implied HN points • 02 Oct 14
  1. Nucleosome-free regions of the nucleus become more common in aging.
  2. Mutation in lamin A protein can accelerate aging in severe cases.
  3. Loss of nucleosome integrity in normal aging may lead to lack of NPC accessibility.

What words do commenters on YouTube use to discuss Alzheimers?

0 implied HN points • 27 Jul 14
  1. The word 'years' is commonly brought up in discussions about Alzheimer's due to its association with the disorder's long duration.
  2. The term 'oil' in YouTube comments likely refers to coconut oil, a noted but untested treatment for Alzheimer's.
  3. Coconut oil is the only specific treatment mentioned among the top 30 words used in comments about Alzheimer's on YouTube.

Reasons to Avoid Spaced Repetition Like a Culture of Y. Pestis

0 implied HN points • 29 Mar 13
  1. Facts change rapidly, causing interference with outdated knowledge in spaced repetition.
  2. Avoid learning facts you don't believe in, as you may expect to learn the truth later.
  3. Some things are better learned through discovery processes, rather than formal spaced repetition.

The Embryology Of Spin

0 implied HN points • 12 Sep 12
  1. Spin in the abstract conclusions of a study leads to a higher risk of spin in press releases and news articles.
  2. Authors and editors should be mindful of word choice and framing in abstracts to prevent misleading information.
  3. Factors like journal type, funding source, and sample size did not significantly correlate with spin in reporting medical trials.
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The Trade-Offs Of Publicizing Your Goals

0 implied HN points • 04 Sep 12
  1. Publicly announcing your goals can have pros and cons.
  2. Announcing your goals may trick your mind into thinking you've made progress.
  3. There is a balance between accountability and not giving yourself premature credit.

Treating Alzheimers by Transpositioning the Omentum into the Brain

0 implied HN points • 12 Jul 14
  1. A surgical procedure involving transpositioning the omentum onto the brain has shown success in treating Alzheimer's disease.
  2. The success of the procedure may be attributed to mechanisms such as boosting cerebral blood flow, stimulating CSF drainage, and providing stem cells or growth factors to the brain.
  3. This surgical method challenges the notion that Alzheimer's is incurable and raises questions about the pathogenesis of the disease.

Feed Changes

0 implied HN points • 30 Jun 13
  1. Consider using Feedly as an RSS reader for a last-minute alternative.
  2. Andy McKenzie is now exclusively blogging on andrewtmckenzie.com/news.
  3. Even if you don't subscribe to the new blog, thanks for reading.

Why Did Alzheimers Clinical Trials Peak In 2005?

0 implied HN points • 17 Jun 13
  1. Alzheimer's clinical trials peaked in 2005.
  2. Highly cited paper from 2005 discussed the amyloid hypothesis.
  3. Field may be retooling from the beta amyloid hypothesis.

Cerebral blood flow regulation systematically decreases after a stroke

0 implied HN points • 13 Jul 12
  1. After a stroke, cerebral blood flow regulation decreases
  2. Stroke patients show less phase coupling between blood pressure and cerebral blood flow
  3. Repairing the ability to regulate cerebral blood flow after a stroke may vary and require further study

Where the brain spends its energy

0 implied HN points • 11 Jul 12
  1. The brain spends energy on various functions like maintaining resting potentials, synapse use, and housekeeping tasks.
  2. Maintaining resting potentials in oligodendrocytes is a significant energy cost that may not save energy on net.
  3. Myelination may not lead to energy saving but could serve other functions like allowing for plasticity.

Is *Any* Human Activity Long-Run Sustainable?

0 implied HN points • 07 Jul 12
  1. Intensive rice agriculture in the Yangtze basin has been sustainable for 8,000 years.
  2. The water infrastructure in Chengdu, China has been in place since 256 BC for flood control and irrigation without restricting fish connectivity.
  3. Forests in India have been actively managed by communities for extended periods.

The two SNPs with the strongest associations to schizophrenia

0 implied HN points • 07 Jul 12
  1. Two specific genes (HLA-DQA1 and MADL1L) are strongly associated with schizophrenia.
  2. HLA-DQA1 gene is related to autoimmune disorders, MADL1L gene helps regulate cell division.
  3. The genes impact outcomes much later in life, despite cell development occurring in the brain at a young age.

Book Review: Great Flicks By Dean Simonton

0 implied HN points • 24 Jul 12
  1. Movie ratings can reveal insights about subjective quality and how people assess it.
  2. Academic analysis of movie ratings may overlook valuable resources like imdb.com.
  3. Factors like genre, critic reviews, and directorial style can greatly impact a movie's success.

Age's Stealing Steps

0 implied HN points • 25 May 12
  1. Debilitated individuals can still have a good quality of life with cognitive well-being
  2. Doctors' lack of helpfulness towards patients may be influenced by fear of litigation
  3. Discussions around healthcare legislation and palliative care need more attention

Why Does Speed Variability Create Congestion?

0 implied HN points • 27 Mar 12
  1. Greater speed variability decreases the lifetime of groups moving in the same direction.
  2. In some situations, diversity among individuals can lead to undesirable outcomes.
  3. Diversity can push a group away from local optima and towards exploration, sometimes beneficial in complex scenarios.

Should Revenge Have Bounds?

0 implied HN points • 24 May 12
  1. Steven Pinker's book discusses the decline of human-on-human violence over history with interesting psychology insights.
  2. There is a concern about whether the benefits of reducing violence always outweigh the costs, especially seen in modern-day prisons.
  3. Debates around violence and its displacement rather than decrease, as seen in the context of US prison systems, are worthy of discussion.

How to lie with anecdotes

0 implied HN points • 12 Nov 08
  1. Be cautious of drawing conclusions from anecdotes.
  2. Numbers can be manipulated, but anecdotes are even easier to manipulate.
  3. It's important to be skeptical of information, whether it's based on anecdotes or statistics.

When You Should Be Most Skeptical

0 implied HN points • 20 Jun 12
  1. It's important to be skeptical of authors we agree with ideologically.
  2. Searching for self-justification can limit our perspective.
  3. Being skeptical of our own views can help counter confirmation bias.

No Darkness But Ignorance

0 implied HN points • 28 May 12
  1. Proposal for a web lottery where neuroscientists bet on replicability of published neuroimaging papers.
  2. Initiatives like randomized replications in psychology show potential for promoting honest consensus in research.
  3. Setting up long-standing prediction markets for scientific fields may offer a measure of research impact.

What Makes Phrases Memorable

0 implied HN points • 31 Mar 12
  1. Distinctiveness helps make phrases more memorable.
  2. Generality in phrases can aid in memorability.
  3. Complexity, like longer words and less conjunctions, can also contribute to phrase memorability.

Indexing Wikipedia Article Submissions On Pubmed

0 implied HN points • 30 Mar 12
  1. Academics are more likely to publish in reputable journals for academic recognition
  2. PLoS Computational Biology is publishing static versions of Wikipedia pages indexed on PubMed
  3. The goal is to make Wikipedia pages dynamic and updated by the community

Comp Exams For Each Course

0 implied HN points • 25 Mar 12
  1. Proposing comprehensive exams at the end of each course to objectively assess students on merit alone.
  2. Shifting the focus in the classroom from fighting for grades to cooperating with teachers to learn necessary material.
  3. Consideration of implementing such exams in subjects like math, science, and foreign languages, but challenges exist for subjects like history and english.

Linking genetic pathways with regional brain changes due to Alzheimer's

0 implied HN points • 22 Apr 12
  1. Researchers linked genetic pathways to brain changes in Alzheimer's using data from ADNI.
  2. Genotype filtering and mapping SNPs to genes helped in the analysis.
  3. Top pathways associated with brain changes in Alzheimer's are chemokine, jak-stat, and tight junction pathways.

Is It Possible, In Principle, To Do Methodologically Sound Research?

0 implied HN points • 14 Apr 12
  1. Research designs face trade-offs like being obtrusive vs unobstrusive and generalizable vs context-cognizant.
  2. Optimizing values like generalizability, precision, and context realism is crucial in research design.
  3. Trade-offs in research design may not be independent, making it challenging to achieve high levels in all aspects simultaneously.

The Psychosocial Costs Of Ambition

0 implied HN points • 09 Jul 12
  1. Ambition comes with a commitment to consistently deliver and not let others down
  2. It's important to be aware of the fluctuating nature of motivation and energy levels
  3. One needs to anticipate and correct for declining motivation when presenting oneself to the world

Beyond gross manipulation of corticostriatal circuits

0 implied HN points • 01 Jun 12
  1. The study discusses the manipulation of corticostriatal circuits in mice.
  2. Reviewers raised concerns about the novelty and depth of the study.
  3. Valuable contributions require understanding the effects of manipulations on circuits beyond the local area of manipulation.

Evaluating The Regret Heuristic, Part II

0 implied HN points • 26 May 12
  1. The theoretically best way to make decisions involves calculating costs and benefits, estimating outcomes, and using a valuation function.
  2. In situations with imperfect information, the regret heuristic can be a useful tool to simplify decision-making by considering which choice would lead to less regret.
  3. There are various ways to apply the regret heuristic, such as using reference classes, integrating regret over future states, extending regret over different choice classes, and adjusting for biases.

Tuesday Statisticz: Pick Your Poison At Starbucks

0 implied HN points • 22 Feb 12
  1. Healthy drinks are all the same, but unhealthy ones differ in their own way.
  2. Drinks with low sodium tend to have high sugar content, like lemonade and iced tea.
  3. To be a popular drink, it's important to offer consumers something enjoyable.

Vassar preparatory examinations in 1877

0 implied HN points • 10 Nov 08
  1. Vassar preparatory examinations in 1877 covered a range of subjects like Rhetoric, English Grammar, Geography, US History, Latin, Arithmetic, and optional languages.
  2. Some of the questions from the exams reflected the societal classism of the time.
  3. The difficulty of the exams challenges assumptions about the intelligence of past generations.

Visualizing the Golgi-stained mouse brain

0 implied HN points • 28 Jan 12
  1. Visualizing nervous systems is important for understanding how information flows in neuronal networks.
  2. The Golgi stain marks only a subset of neurons, making it a 'sparse' stain.
  3. Converting image stacks to structure calls from the Golgi-stained mouse brain data is a complex task.

The paradigm of differential network interactions

0 implied HN points • 27 Jan 12
  1. Researchers in biology use differential gene expression analysis to identify up- and down-regulated genes in different conditions.
  2. The approach of differential interaction network analysis has been applied in neuroscience to study interactions between nodes in networks.
  3. Studying differential interactions between neuronal nodes can reveal insights into the functioning of the nervous system.

A Separation

0 implied HN points • 21 Jan 12
  1. The post discusses a film that presents moral dilemmas within a family drama.
  2. External stressors play a significant role in damaging relationships.
  3. The author shares a humorous scientific paper they found interesting.

Are We Saving the World Yet?

0 implied HN points • 12 Oct 09
  1. Eliezer Yudkowsky believes that working on Friendly AI is crucial for saving the world.
  2. Not all experts agree on the importance of AI-driven singularity or Friendly AI research.
  3. Researchers should personally consider their topic to be the most important for maximum productivity.

Inspiration To Be Better

0 implied HN points • 07 Feb 12
  1. Find inspiration to be better from those who continue fighting despite challenges.
  2. Appreciate life and strive to improve oneself and relationships with others.
  3. Make the most of the fleeting time we have by being kinder and more forgiving.

Uncle Sam wants you!

0 implied HN points • 22 Jun 08
  1. Uncle Sam wants you!
  2. Consider becoming a mathematician if you have a normal American last name.
  3. Normal last name means short, easy to pronounce, and American.

"It Teaches You How To Think"

0 implied HN points • 28 Dec 11
  1. Many pursuits teach you how to think, like programming, economics, and philosophy.
  2. Investing time in activities that enhance thinking skills is important.
  3. Choosing which activities to prioritize for improving thinking skills can be a thoughtful process.

Clustering of primary hippocampal neurons in vitro

0 implied HN points • 05 Dec 11
  1. Neurons cluster together when adhering to a 2-d substrate.
  2. Stronger tensile force in a cell causes clustering of neurons.
  3. Low cell density leads to multiple clusters while high density results in a mega-cluster.