ThrustVectoring (u/ThrustVectoring)

ThrustVectoring commented on Adding iodine to salt played a role in cognitive improvements: research (2013) discovermagazine.com/heal... · Posted by u/1970-01-01

gopalv · a year ago

Burger King continued to use iodized salt consistently, while McDonalds, Wendys etc have switched to flakier salts for their fries which cuts total sodium overall by being flatter instead of grainy, but without any iodine added to it.

The downward trend in fast food began in the 70s, once sodium was seen as bad, so more salty tasting thin crystals were preferred.

[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20634172/ (on researchgate)

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

Saltier tasting salt is likely counterproductive, IMO. People aren't born knowing how much salt taste corresponds to how much salt consumption, so that gets tuned by persistent salt deficits causing upregulation of salty food desire. In other words, homeostatic feedback causes salt consumption to stay about the same by increased consumption of salty-tasting processed food.

ThrustVectoring commented on Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion nytimes.com/2024/12/10/bu... · Posted by u/jbegley

wakawaka28 · a year ago

>This is fine, people are allowed to act against their own financial interests. That's one thing that having ownership means is that you can ruin the thing you own for any or no reason. The court has zero reason to intervene if a majority creditor is giving up their own share of the proceeds for any or no reason.

You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth $500M, I can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the asset. The only fair way is to sell it for $500M in actual cash. Then it gets divied up accordingly.

>This is a non-issue, the trustee was given wide latitude to dispose of the assets in any way he deems fit.

Isn't it telling that the same judge said it was done improperly? Trustees have an obligation to follow standard practices which maximize cash flow or at least don't give the appearance of impropriety.

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

> You're oversimplifying this. If someone owes you $1B and they owe me $2B, and they've got an asset worth $500M, I can't just pledge $2B of bad debt to buy the asset.

You actually can, so long as it's the best offer for the other creditors. So long as you can come up with sufficient cash for the minority creditors you're entitled to dispose of the asset in any way you see fit. The Pennsylvania families came up with the cash (via The Onion's cash offer and structuring the payout).

ThrustVectoring commented on Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion nytimes.com/2024/12/10/bu... · Posted by u/jbegley

wakawaka28 · a year ago

The Onion didn't have the cash. It was basically an IOU from one of the families, which is like saying "the very same guy going bankrupt is going to pay us money to buy this business from him" and that makes zero sense. There was also no transparency in the bidding. It should have been a simple auction, to get the maximum amount of money.

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

> The Onion didn't have the cash.

Correct, it was given up by the majority creditors in exchange for non-monetary considerations (specifically, the moral victory of having The Onion own Infowars).

> It was basically an IOU from one of the families

This is fine, people are allowed to act against their own financial interests. That's one thing that having ownership means is that you can ruin the thing you own for any or no reason. The court has zero reason to intervene if a majority creditor is giving up their own share of the proceeds for any or no reason.

> There was also no transparency in the bidding. It should have been a simple auction, to get the maximum amount of money.

This is a non-issue, the trustee was given wide latitude to dispose of the assets in any way he deems fit.

ThrustVectoring commented on Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion nytimes.com/2024/12/10/bu... · Posted by u/jbegley

ipaddr · a year ago

They have a debt judgement not economic power. They can sell that debit judgement to a company who collects. They can take the money from the result of the court process and try to buy infowars after this is all over.

They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt. Then the rest is written off and he gets a black mark on his credit report.

There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.

Besides others are in line as well.

And killing the infowars brand means little in the short/long run. The real brand is Alex's name. It's not like his audience will suddenly not follow him to a new show with a new name.

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

> They don't have a judgement of ownership in infowars they have a debt and the court is forcing Alex to sell all assets to cover the debt.

It's a chapter 7 bankruptcy, the bankruptcy estate already owns the infowars assets.

> There are rules around this process for a reason. If you allowed someone who has a debt judgement to just take over a company what is it's true value. Alex could try to value infowars at a trillion. So they put it up for an auction to get the real value. That's the fairest way for all cases.

Specifically, the reason is protecting minority and junior creditors (including the debtor when assets are in excess of debts). If nobody offered up enough cash to pay off the debts in full and there is only one creditor who would rather have the business than the best cash offer, I don't think there'd be any reason for the courts to object. The big issue is, again, minority creditors getting less than their "fair share" of the assets, along with over-compensating senior claims with junior ones outstanding.

Neither are at issue here - The Onion's offer paid more cash to the minority creditors, the majority creditor opted into the deal, and the assets are clearly worth less than the debts.

ThrustVectoring commented on Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion nytimes.com/2024/12/10/bu... · Posted by u/jbegley

bastawhiz · a year ago

> First United American Companies

The second-highest bidder was....an insurance company? Am I misunderstanding?

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

It's a shell company made to have an acronym that sounds like "eff you AC".

ThrustVectoring commented on Bankruptcy judge rejects sale of Infowars to The Onion nytimes.com/2024/12/10/bu... · Posted by u/jbegley

pclmulqdq · a year ago

This is probably the correct decision. Alex Jones's vitamin company offered 2x more cash, and in the case of a bankruptcy, cash completely trumps any notion of "giving up debt." Especially when the debt being settled is astronomically large and you are giving up a very small portion of it ($7 million out of $1.5 billion). The other creditors are far better off getting more cash, and those $7 million of claims are worth way less than one cent per dollar.

Additionally, the auction here was run farcically, and basically seemed designed to create an outcome where the onion gets to buy this website for no money.

ThrustVectoring · a year ago

>The other creditors are far better off getting more cash

The other creditors get more cash from The Onion's offer. It was specifically structured to give better-than-next-offer remuneration to minority creditors.

ThrustVectoring commented on Gov. Polis Signs Bill Mandating That Consumers Have Options to Fix Electronics coloradotimesrecorder.com... · Posted by u/rmason

Y_Y · 2 years ago

Which law is that now? As I'm sure an expert like you knows, this will vary by jurisdiction.

The fact that somebody may take a replevin claim against me because the digitizer in my phone was removed from their stolen phone does not, imho, have any bearing on Apple's rights and responsibilities with regard to me as a customer.

ThrustVectoring · 2 years ago

Friend, you were the one who assumed "common law or similar". This is ancient common law precedent from England.

ThrustVectoring commented on Donating forks to the dining hall ben.page/forks... · Posted by u/kickofline

baggy_trough · 2 years ago

A "flood the zone" strategy similar to this works well for cheap items that continually vanish, such as pens, socks, charging cables, etc.

ThrustVectoring · 2 years ago

Did that for pens while employed as a pizza delivery driver nearly two decades ago. Customers would regularly sign for a credit card receipt with my pen, hand back the signed receipt, receive pizza, and somewhere in the object-management process wind up still holding the pen. The cheapest pens were like 8 cents each at Costco, so it literally wasn't worth my time to try to make sure my pen made it back to me.

ThrustVectoring commented on Gov. Polis Signs Bill Mandating That Consumers Have Options to Fix Electronics coloradotimesrecorder.com... · Posted by u/rmason

Y_Y · 2 years ago

Fine let me take my phone to the official store, do some authentication and let them give that configuration of components the stamp of approval. That way they know that I am aware of all the parts that comprise my phone and want them to work. If some component turns out to originate from a phone that was reported stolen then fine, it's not part of their remit to act on that and not my problem either, assuming I bought it fair and square. (Assuming common law or similar, ymmv)

ThrustVectoring · 2 years ago

Under the law, the rightful owner of stolen property can demand its return. If it's currently installed in your phone, that's your problem, even if you bought it "fair and square" - that just gives you a claim on the merchant who sold you stolen goods.

The exception to this is currency: if you're fairly paid with stolen money, you get to keep the money, regardless of whether the rightful owner is able to proof that it was originally theirs and stolen.

ThrustVectoring commented on Business Booms and Depressions Since 1775 (1943) fraser.stlouisfed.org/tit... · Posted by u/throw0101d

Etheryte · 2 years ago

This is an odd statement to make, in most contexts deflation is good for the economy. It is mostly when deflation is coupled with an asset bubble and large underlying debt that it's an issue and leads to a financial crisis. Why do you think deflation is bad?

ThrustVectoring · 2 years ago

People have a strong and well-founded attachment to nominal values in the economy. You pay your rent or mortgage with a fixed quantity of dollars, so as a salaried employee certain pay cuts are intolerable, so employers balance their falling nominal revenues with layoffs instead of pay cuts.

These nominal agreements are significantly less flexible than real-valued ones; people are much more able to buy fewer steak dinners when they're $20 instead of $15, and much less able to stay in their house when their paycheck is $1500 instead of $2000.