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Did you know that there is a mayoral campaign going on in the nation's largest city? I didn't, and I live there!

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Disappointed but not surprised to find my submission in the runner up pile. C'est la vie, the three we got so far have been of immensely high quality and I can't gainsay nothing.

Still gonna vote for myself though, lol.

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It froze up google docs on my phone. I’ll try on my work pc tomorrow

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Hi All,

I'm sure this has been covered before, but it seems like something this community, and our host, would know quite a bit about.

The "opiod crisis"

Has anybody else noticed that nownere in the discussion of the "opiod crisis", nowhere and I mean nowhere, is one particular group of people ever mentioned? We are supposed to believe that evil pharma companies used their huge financial muscle and deceptive evil advertizing to force these pills on poor stupid trusting yokels.

Who is not involved here?

DOCTORS

The AMA seems to have done an incredible job of whitewashing the entire discussion so that no MD will ever be held accountable for overprescribing pills. I mean this is a Roger Goodell NFL level Jedi Mind Trick.

Has anybody else noticed this? Anybody pointed this out? Or is it all down the dissapeared memory hole, and Doctors are still supposed to be the heroic self-sacrificing demigods that the AMA pays Hollywood to portray them as?

Just asking.

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What's the status of the 50-50 debate in prediction calibration? Is there a community consensus at this point? I have a resolution in mind, but am curious about what's been arrived at.

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Scott, do you think you could upload those review docs in PDF form? I'm trying to download them in PDF form from Docs, but it's lagging like hell.

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Tyler Cower, Derek Lowe, and others have claimed that (our evidence supports that) vaccination offers superior protection than natural infection. But I can't find any actual evidence for this: Tyler doesn't give any, and Derek cites this article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-01180-x), which doesn’t provide support for that claim at all. It's just a letter to the editor, the conclusion of which is “Overall, we are optimistic, given the number of platforms being investigated and the huge ongoing efforts, that a vaccine (or vaccines) against COVID-19 with immune responses and protection superior to that achieved through natural infection is an achievable goal.”

In fact, my impression was that the evidence pointed in the other direction: there are *very* few confirmed cases of reinfection after natural infection, and few but still many more confirmed cases of infection after vaccination. It's hard to confirm reinfections after natural infection, but even going to suspected cases doesn't get us to a very big number (using even that number, the percentage of people who’ve been reinfected is minuscule): https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/

This study looked at the protection from natural infection and it looks at least as good as that from vaccination “Incidence rate of reinfection versus month of follow-up did not show any evidence of waning of immunity for over seven months of follow-up...Efficacy of natural infection against reinfection was estimated at 95.2% (95% CI: 94.1-96.0%)”: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.21249731v2

Anyhow, the level of protection that comes from natural infection is a pretty important question, and I don't like disagreeing with Cowen and Lowe. Does anyone know of evidence that supports their position?

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I'd suggest that you take the median of the ratings you have for each book, rather than the average. Medians are more robust against partisanship and extreme opinions (not that I expect too much partisanship about these book reviews, but you never know...).

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What are you doing to prepare for the inevitable US-China war over Taiwan in the next decade? This is just kind of an open-ended question, whether you're preparing financially, career-wise, or more traditional 'prepping'. Regardless of whether an actual apocalyptic nuclear scenario happens- even a sub-nuclear war between the world's two largest economies would seem to harbor a global second Great Depression. To my understanding, even if the US did not react at all to an invasion of Taiwan (unlikely), there would be a run on the dollar & Treasuries- all that financial dominance is heavily intertwined with military dominance. The US being displaced as the world's economic & military superpower would have some pretty tremendous consequences for everyone, regardless of where you live or what you do.

Also, with the US having 30k+ troops in South Korea, it would be tough for the war not to escalate. No reason for China to not strike them if they lose a few ships or a few cities get bombed! Even worse, I would assume that Russia would use the chaos to engage in mischief in Eastern Europe, North Korea could get frisky with South Korea, and it's not tough to see how India & Pakistan could somehow get dragged into a shooting war from there.

If you don't think war will happen in the next decade- why, exactly? Conquering Taiwan appears to be China's number one priority, they view the US as a declining power, and they have little to no actual warfighting experience so it's easy for them to be overconfident. History is littered with nations who thought 'oh we can fight a short little war over here', and that it metastasizes into something much larger. The USSR back in the day at least knew exactly what extended war was like and were not eager to start WW3. In general as a Westerner I am fairly pessimistic about what the next few decades will bring

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SpaceX actually got the sole source human landing system contract for NASA's Project Artemis! Maybe that will get Congress to push for some more funding for NASA, so the most politically connected proposal (the "National Team" of Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin) will get the Option B. In any case, good for SpaceX.

On a downer note, it seems like part of the UK's major soccer teams effectively immunized themselves from Promotion and Relegation. Good for their owners' profits, not so much for the game itself. They'd probably love to have a fully "closed" league where joining requires paying a major upfront payment that the existing owners get to pocket, like with US major sports leagues (there was even an accusation a few years back that MLS was basically a ponzi scheme of getting new teams to use their upfront payments to pay off the pre-existing investors/owners).

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So I was trying to pick runners-up properly at random and created a numbered list of them. It's here, in case anyone else would find it useful:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jlAvS9tgmvWDBVXJoXvOJ2k17arqeMDJyGLGIJ8hbcU/edit?usp=sharing

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A micromort is a one-in-a-million chance of death. Wikipedia has some interesting examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

I'm somewhat surprised that there's no xkcd comic for micromorts, like there is for radiation and money. What would be a decent substitute? If I attempted to do this myself, what would be a good way to research it and get some solid numbers?

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Brazilianists (scholars who specializes in studying, researching, teaching and publishing about Brazil) have been puzzling endlessly over the military overhaul going on in traditionally peaceful Brazil, a country historically aligned to America (actually the only South American country to fight alongside us in WW I and WW II) which has taken lately a strangely aggressive stance. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37151/brazils-upgraded-tiger-iis-might-be-the-most-capable-f-5s-in-the-world

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN27R2AA

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_submarine_%C3%81lvaro_Alberto

Is it possible the Brazil's ostensibly anti-gay ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1S300L ) small r-Republican government's highest echelons have been taken over by a heretofore secret cabal of powerful homosexual monarchists, who are using the beloved South American as a springboard to attack America's interests and exact revenge on it for having inspired the country's 1889 Republican Revolution, which ovethrew and exiled the Imperial Family, which was banned from ever returning to Brazil until its banishment was lifted in the 1920s?

https://mobile.twitter.com/BrazilianReport/status/1194673711774867456

Is it a coincidence "The Prince", a member from Brazil's former Imperial Family, has said he expects Brazil's current leader, President Captain Bolsonaro, to be Brazil's last president? Is it a coincidence Congressman Frota, whose vouching for The Prince was sought, is himself a former gay movies porn star? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Frota What are the odds?

If this cabal's plans are left unchecked, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

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I take a low daily dose of Venlafaxine, and I've noticed that several different things can give me the disconnected, distracted feeling that presages and underlies "brain zaps":

1) Missing a dose, or even delaying it until evening;

2) Mild to moderate sleep deprivation;

3) Having a fever; and

4) Eating too much dark chocolate.

Is there some simple connection between those? Sleep deprivation might work by just having more waking hours, shifting my next dose until later according to my metabolism. A fever... maybe burns through the medicine or the chemicals in some related pathway faster, by *waves hands* increasing my metabolism? But I have no idea what the deal is with the dark chocolate.

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Has anyone had any success in deprogramming a vaccine conspiracy theorist? Is it even possible? I have a relative who I assume is too far gone and I don’t know if there is any point in engaging.

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Veblen goods: do they really exist?

A Veblen good is defined as a good for which demand increases as the price increases. Supposed examples, according to investopedia, include designer jewelry, yachts, and luxury cars.

While it's obviously true that signalling "Look at me, I'm rich enough to afford this good" is part of the appeal of many goods, I am skeptical that true Veblen goods actually exist; if they did, then surely sellers of these goods would simply keep raising their prices off to infinity.

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Yeah, but look how Altria has done since 2015 - 2015 was a terrible time to buy it. That said, really interesting point, and Altria is on the rise again.

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I'm hanging a shingle as a crypto coach: hire me to help you understand the crypto economy, DeFi, yield farming, the future of financial technology, get onboarded onto crypto and special projects I've sourced by dint of being irl friends with many 8 and 9-figure crypto rich "whales". My most recent client said of the money he spent on my services: "the best money I've spent."

I'm happy to provide a free consultation!

https://calendly.com/maxim-efremov/15min?month=2021-04

Some more about me: https://maxefremov.com/

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Can someone explain to me why the stock market is useful to society?

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Figured I’d put it here, since it’s too late for the Henry George review.

I think the main flaw with Henry George’s argument is that it assumes any gains in productivity will be eaten up by rent. However, what it fails to take note of is that, if all the gains in productivity are eaten up by rent, then no one would invest in improving productivity. It is profitable, for landlords to give up profit - and thus, we figure out how and why people’s incomes have improved.

I do think the land value tax is a fine idea, it’s just rather like Malthus’ idea, in that there’s some reason he overlooked why things can improve.

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Lot of good stuff in the book review slush pile. I read about 10 of them and put down some votes. There was the normal variation in quality you'd expect from that many entries, but I found a couple of easy 10's to nominate for finalist status.

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I just watched Collective (Oscar nominated Romanian documentary). Apparently in 2015 Romania had its entire government replaced with unelected technocrats, and the film portrays Vlad Voiculescu in particular as being just an absolute perfect Health Minister. Watching this documentary made me want to replace democracy with whatever process Romania used in 2015.

I was reminded of the recent discourse about [just putting Zvi in charge of everything](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/webmd-and-the-tragedy-of-legible). Is this a real-world example of a similar idea working pretty well?

Apparently Voiculescu was recently (like in the last few weeks) fired for mishandling the Covid Pandemic, I don't understand the details but I'm told by a Romanian friend that he still comes out looking pretty good. Also he's become more of a politician by now than he was in 2015, so I'm not sure how to think about his career after the film ends.

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I'm sure some people whose profile pictures are not self-explanatory would love to explain them!

So here is a thread for anyone who would like to tell us about their profile picture.

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I’m a professional game designer and consultant who in a former life worked in educational game design and that was also the subject of a my masters thesis - (google “super energy apocalypse” if you’re curious. )

RE: the review on Progress & Poverty, I recall it once inspired Elizabeth Maggie to make “The Landlord’s Game”, which was a piece of early procedural rhetoric advocating for the LVT. Through a series of convoluted events, that game gave rise to the game we now know as “Monopoly.”

I have zero free time, but I’ve always wanted to take a whack at doing a modern take on the Landlords game. Any suggestions for how to approach it? And what’s the better route - physical, digital, or Nicky Case-style interactive web essay?

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Atlas Shrugged is reviewed twice. How do we know which is which on the ranking form?

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founding

People are notoriously bad at picking things randomly. To help mix things up, I've made the following link that will automatically take you directly to a randomly selected review for you to review...

https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbwaWnDZdrjaHPm1Vj8SOOutKSYvlDy2gtpHcPZ7K3aKRVg-gQgATiroLR-11CWdkLJS/exec

Note that it can take many seconds to load the document and jump to your assigned review - especially if you get one near the end. Please wait for it!

If people want it and SA approves, I can also break out the reviews into individual web pages that would load much faster. We could even potentially put a voting widget at the bottom of each page to make things easier. Heck, we could even track how many people started a review and did not vote, which is an interesting proxy for negative reviews (which kind people like us might not leave).

Note that my script collected a total of 97 reviews from the two documents. The list with titles and links is available as JSON here...

http://josh.com/ly/BookReviews.JSON

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I talked to this Marxist on Twitter who, not only said that "marginalism" and "subjective value" isn't the correct value theory, but he was even convinced that marginalism was a fad that died out 12 years ago in neo-classical circles. He also said stuff like most of the world is Marxist and the West is the last hold-out, where China is leading the way.

Does anybody know what's going on here? I know Marxism has always been kind of an apocalyptic ideology, where they all believe the revolution is "right around the corner", but I've never seen a level of delusion where they say stuff like "Labor Theory of Value and Law of Value is now the prevailing view among economists". And it's extra weird because I'm an econ major (and he wasn't) who graduated five years ago, but that didn't dissuade his views. Instead, he was convinced that someone had been messing with my head.

My sense is that these communities mostly hang out at r/Marxism and r/Communism, their one-sided information flow creates positive feedback loops of reinforced biases, and they end up with what can really only be described as a parallel universe.

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Hiring Generalists?

Do firms find it hard to find talented generalists? It seems when firms offer job openings they mostly look for specialists who excel at certain tasks, but in actuality firms generally want flexible people who can fill many roles and take on a more diverse set of responsibilities. So how do firms find generalist talent? And if you're a generalist, how do you advertise yourself in a world where firms seemingly only ask for specialists?

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(1) The book reviews? Aw, brilliant! I am going to dive into this but, um, not right away because I do have to do housework and then that pesky "earning a living" thing. But definitely when I have some free time!

(2) It was our president's 80th birthday yesterday, here's a clip for a TV chat show episode for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3aOlfXKXm8

One of his two Bernese mountain dogs died a little while back, but he has a replacement dog now: Misneach https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/president-releases-photos-of-new-dog-misneach-1.4503401

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How do you actually go about regularly measuring the value of each parcel of land in a built up area?

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My review was of The No Breakfast Fallacy. I'm extremely confidant it won't be added to the finalists list, but would welcome any feedback at all.

It's less of a review than it is an extreme polemic hitching a ride on someone elses book. So - not very SSC at all, and I apologise for polluting this vicinity's atmosphere of open intellectual enquiry.

If I haven't yet put you off reading it, you might also think of it as the spirit of Julian Simon channeled and set free upon the topic of resource depletion. Cornucopian, even.

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Is there a problem with discussing some of the book reviews? I can't immediately see why not, other than nobody else seems to be doing so. Tell me pronto if it's problematic..

I re

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re: Book Review Contest, in rating the book reviews are we more rating the books themselves or the reviews? It's hard to separate. If I think Book A is wonderful but the review is overly wordy and mediocre how does that compare to Book B which I thought was "meh" but the review is clear and fun to read and makes good points?

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Something that seems surprisingly unnoticed is the explosion of Covid cases in India. Of all the ups and downs of graphs, and msm claims of exponential increases (at various times over the last year) what's happening in India right now is the thing that has shocked me the most. It threatens to be worse than occurred in Northern Italy last year, but in a country 25 times bigger.

And I say that as someone who has generally seen the pandemic as less serious than most people I know.

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Prenatal folic acid and autism risk:

I was talking with a friend about autism risk of their potential child, given that one of the potential parents has a family history of autism. (Caveat that we both know many lovely people who aren't neurotypical, but the prospect of parenting a child with "never learns to talk" type autism is something that gives them pause.)

The main reason folic acid is recommended as a supplement during pregnancy is preventing neural tube defects like spina bifida, where the spine doesn't form properly. Starting in 1998 in the US, folic acid is also added to foods like breakfast cereal because many pregnancies are unplanned, and for preventing neural tube defects the most important time to get folic acid is just before conceiving and in early pregnancy. This seems to have worked nicely for neural tube defects. https://images.app.goo.gl/A2nEn2U1mFGAUovz7

I had a vague impression that prenatal folic acid supplementation reduced autism risk. Looking into it more closely, it seems like either too little OR too much folic acid might increase autism risk. https://motheriskinternational.com/high-dose-gestational-folic-acid-and-the-risk-for-autism-the-birth-order-effect/

I suspected the hidden variable here was "more scientifically literate women are more careful about following medical advice, and are also more likely to have autistic traits" but one study says they controlled for "maternal prenatal healthcare-seeking behavior" which I assume means going to prenatal appointments and probably correlates strongly with taking your vitamins. I also feel like taking a prenatal vitamin is a very normal thing to do among educated women and not very correlated with working in STEM or something.

So how much folic acid are pregnant women getting? Looking at both the prenatal vitamins I've taken, they both include 222% of the recommended daily value of folic acid. I have no idea why so much. And that's on top of fortified breads, pastas, and cereals, plus natural folate in green vegetables and beans.

I am not a medical expert but would be interested in hearing more informed opinions here. My impression is that taking folic acid supplements during early pregnancy when the neural tube is forming is a good idea. After that, when the neural tube is already done forming but the brain is still doing lots of development, it might be important not to get too much. Which might mean seeking out a vitamin that contains 100% or less of the RDA of folic acid. (Most women's multivitamins have around 80% or 100% of the folic acid recommended during pregnancy.)

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Covid rant. It seems more likely than not, that CV19 came from one of the labs in Wuhan. We should demand they open their doors and books, tell all, or start paying some fine to the world.

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Re: Caesar. If anyone's interested, I've read pretty much all of classical Latin/Greek literature in the original Latin or Greek. (This is less than it sounds: it's about three bookshelves worth of books.) And I've read a fair number of commentaries. And, now that I think of it, a lot of primary sources from the Dark Ages and the like. Happy to answer questions or at least give comments on specific events or works.

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@Scott: if you change the URLs for the Google docs to end in /preview instead of /edit, they'll go to a read-only view which should be easier on people's machines/phones.

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Any other betting markets on the George Floyd case besides Polymarket?

https://polymarket.com/market/how-many-charges-will-derek-chauvin-be-convicted-of

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Is trying to trade options as an amateur incredibly stupid? Like, if I see GME go up to 300 again and I want to buy puts, should I just...not? Because, even if it does go down I'm still not going to know how to buy the right puts at the right strike over the right time frame to maximize profit? And if I do decide to go ahead and trade, what can I read that's short that might be of value?

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founding

For those who prefer to pick their own book review adventure, here is an easily clickable list of titles which is reshuffled each time the page is visited to help prevent alphabetical order bias....

https://josh.com/ly/BookReviewShuffle.html

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So, remember the Capitol riot, and its death toll? 5, right? Well, no, not really. Police officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes (two strokes), not caused by a fire extinguisher or pepper spray, as Glenn Greenwald notes.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer

Protestor Kevin Greeson died of cardiovascular disease.

Protestor Benhamin Phillips also died of cardiovascular disease

Protestor Rosanne Boyland, the woman reported trampled in the Capitol, died of amphetamine overdose.

Protestor Ashli Babbit was shot by a police officer.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/07/capitol-riot-deaths-cause-death-released-4-5-not-sicknick/7128040002/

So it turns out only one person was killed (as in homicide) in the Capitol riot, and she was shot by the police.

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A pun suitable for the sequel to the Unsong Book: Qlipot/(Paper)clips

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I'm reading the Trump prediction discussion, and I'm reminded of a prediction I got wrong-- I expected Trump's tariffs to be very bad for the economy. Now, they might have had a dampening effect and the economy would have been better or ill effects might take longer to show up, but there wasn't an obvious bad effect. Do tariffs matter less than I thought? Were they actually a good idea?

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Well, my prediction on the Chauvin trial didn't pan out, I thought a hung jury or acquittal was significantly more likely than a conviction. The main factors I didn't give enough weight to were:

1. The police witnesses testifying for the prosecution. Everyone knows about the Blue Wall of Silence, and to see multiple cops breaking it and unambiguously saying the restraint did not conform with accepted standards was a big deal. This helped convince the jury to not give Chauvin the deference most police get. I expected the cops to at least hedge a bit.

2. The weak defense. I wasn't impressed with the defense witnesses. They didn't sound convincing at all, and they didn't present a strong scientific case that other factors may have caused Floyd's death. I expected better from Chauvin's legal team.

3. The pressure on the jury. The short deliberation time makes me think that the jury was convinced with little dissent. I have to wonder if one or two jurors had silent and reasonable doubts, but didn't want to speak up for whatever reason. I expected for there to be extended discussions and vigorous debate, but.that didn't happen.

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What are people's thoughts on Armin Laschet, who has been chosen to succeed Merkel as CDU/CSU candidate?

I get the impression that the decision of who should replace Merkel is an unenviable one. Söder is too Bavarian, nobody outside Saarland likes AKK.

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I’m looking for reliable sources of information about high-functioning autism in girls and women. There’s a lot of information out there from diagnosed women, but I’m unsure how reliable they are. I’m also curious whether it is really important to have a named diagnosis for one’s peculiarities.

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The three reviews already posted here are not in the poll. Maybe that's intentional, but I thought one of them was really great.

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I made a dead-simple website that will show you a random review when you go to it (with a link to the rating form at the bottom): https://book-review-contest.firebaseapp.com/

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Thanks to all the contributors and the good soul who compiled it! Amazing content

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