Eat That Chickweed Growing in Your Yard

Scott BuchananLeave a comment

A number of weeds growing around your house are edible. Chickweed (Stellaria media) is found in lawns and random areas in cooler climates. It pops out ahead of most other plants in the spring, though it also grows year-round.

Source: Supersod.com

It can grow low, hiding in the grass, but it is easier to harvest as a taller standalone clump. Here is a clump from my yard, with the roots and tougher lower parts cut off:

People eat it raw, but I prefer to blanch it first to reduce any bitterness and to get rid of any critters or contaminants.  To do that, I got two cups of water boiling in a Pyrex measuring cup, then dropped the chickweed in and stirred it around for a minute, followed by a cool water quench in a colander. The chickweed was then in a wilted state, but still green and crunchy and (as I understand) retaining nearly all its nutrients.

For me, chickweed functions like arugula or cilantro or Italian parsley, as an interesting and worthwhile addition to a salad or sandwich. I would not relish a whole plate of it.

Speaking of nutrients, in folk medicine chickweed is credited with amazing powers. Eat The Planet tells us that:

Chickweed is full of vitamins A, B1, B2, and C as well as fiber and protein. Due to its nutritional contents and numerous medicinal properties, this cold-weather herb has been used in folk medicine for hundreds of years. It can treat many different conditions, such as constipation, bowel problems, iron-deficiency anemia, asthma, bronchitis, joint pains, and blood disorders. It can also aid weight loss by making you feel fuller for longer.

You can also apply the herb directly onto the skin to treat itchiness, bruises, boils, ulcers, and psoriasis. To do this, you can either bruise the leaves or steep the stems in hot water before applying them directly onto the affected areas.

Wow, sign me up.

Drugs.com, however rains on this parade with:

There is no indication that any of the plant’s constituents possess therapeutic activity. Its vitamin content is too low to be of therapeutic value.

Verywellhealth stakes out a middle ground, noting that chickweed has demonstrated significant anti-inflammatory and anti-viral activity in lab experiments with animals, but also noting that these results may or may not translate to efficacy in humans:

Juice or extracts made from chickweed have been studied in test tubes or mice models for the following conditions:

Hepatitis B. Chickweed was shown to have anti-hepatitis B virus activity in a test tube study.

Obesity. Chickweed extract given to overweight mice decreased the amount of food they consumed and their absorption of fats.

Diabetes. Chickweed leaf extract demonstrated antidiabetic effects, such as lowering blood sugar and hemoglobin A1c in mouse models.

Heart problems in people with diabetes. Chickweed tea given to diabetic rats did not improve their blood sugar levels but did seem to protect against cardiomyopathy.

Anxiety. Chickweed given to mice showed similar activity as diazepam, a classic anxiety medication in the benzodiazepine family.

Whatever. It’s crunchy, tasty, and free.

The Rule of Law

mdmakowsky2 Comments

“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a sellsword. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. Who lives and who dies?”

…“Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”
“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”
“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”
“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”
“Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, why do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”
“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”
“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or… another?”
Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”
Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”
“So power is a mummer’s trick?”
“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
Tyrion smiled. “Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I’d feel sad about it.”

GRR Martin, Song of Ice and Fire, Vol 2

Reaction to Rux on Fertility

Joy BuchananLeave a comment

Blog reading types might have already seen “Fertility on demand” by Ruxandra Teslo.

My first reaction is that, at the current state of technology, I feel like wishing for more IVF on women is cruel. If someone you love has gone through it, you wouldn’t wish it on more people. Supporting the careers of women who want to have children while they are young seems preferable and lower cost to society. The problem is that supporting mothers is a tricky collective action problem, so we seem stuck with this.

“The egg freezing process is also expensive, costing between $8,000 to $15,000 per cycle. Fortunately, more and more women are being covered by insurance plans that offer free egg freezing. According to a 2021 survey, 20 percent of American companies with over 20,000 employees and 11 percent of smaller companies offer such benefits – an increase from six and five percent respectively in 2015. But most women still have to pay out of pocket.” $15,000 is sort of a lot. It’s cheaper than a year of paid maternity leave for a PhD student, but the total cost of a “medical baby to an older couple” is pretty high.

Some of the technology Rux described was new to me and encouraging. If babies and birth becomes much more medicalized (and civilization doesn’t end), then I could imagine a world where most couples look like Simone and Malcolm Collins by choice with designer babies on demand after having a carefree childfree decade.

“The main advantage of IVM is that it allows immature eggs to be collected instead of mature ones, which significantly reduces the burden of hormonal stimulation.” Exciting! Think of how far we’ve come with cancer treatments or treating AIDS. If enough research goes into this, then potentially the cutting, injecting, pill popping hell that women have to go through for IVF could become smaller and more focused on exactly what is near certain to work.

Someone’s going to come along and grumble and say nature is better, but recall from earlier: “Supporting the careers of women who want to have children while they are young seems preferable and lower cost to society. The problem is that… “

On an optimistic note, I am witnessing a beautiful success story of embryo adoption among my relatives. It worked. A wonderful couple has twins now, and those twins are experiencing love and contact from both their birth family and genetic parents. That technology only became available in the late ’90s. Expect more stories like this.

We might even be close to AI childcare that works. Imagine a daycare where robots do 100% of the food and cleaning work so that the humans in the room can focus exclusively on emotional and relational work with the kids. That could make daycare better or cheaper or both.

The simple technology of food and grocery delivery has already helped parents. The founder of Shipt, Bill Smith, got the idea for grocery delivery by experiencing how hard it is to do grocery shopping with his young children. Guess what? We don’t have to take toddlers to the grocery store anymore, unless we want to.

earlier thoughts: Awards for young talent are antinatalist

Optimal Protein Consumption in the 21st Century: A Model

Zachary Bartsch1 Comment

I’ve discussed complete proteins before. I’ve talked about the ubiquity of protein, animal protein prices, vegetable protein prices, and a little but about protein hedonics. My coblogger Jeremy also recently posted about egg prices over the past century. Charting the cost of eggs is great for identifying egg affordability. But a major attraction of eggs is that they are a ‘complete protein’. So how much of that can we afford?

Here I’ll outline a model of the optimal protein consumption bundle. What does this mean? This means consuming the quantities of protein sources that satisfy the recommended daily intake (RDI) of the essential amino acids and doing so at the lowest possible expenditure. Clearly, this post includes a mix of both nutrition and economics.  Since a comprehensive evaluation that includes all possible foods would be a heavy lift, here I’ll just outline the method with a small application.

Consider a list of prices for 100 grams of Beef, Eggs, and Pork.* We can also consider a list that identifies the quantity that we purchase in terms of hundreds of grams. Therefore, the product of the two yields the total that we spend on our proteins.

Of course, not all proteins are identical. We need some characteristics by which to compare beef, eggs, and pork. Here, I’ll use the grams of essential amino acids in 100 grams of each protein source. Because there are different RDIs for each amino acid, I express each amino acid content as a proportion of the RDI (represented by the standard molecular letter).

Then, we can describe how much of the RDI of each amino acid that a person consumes by multiplying the amino acid contents by the quantities of proteins consumed.

Our goal is to find the minimum expenditure, B, by varying the quantities consumed, Q, such that the minimum of C is equal to one. If the minimum element of C is greater than one, then a person could consume less and spend less while still satisfying their essential amino acid RDI. If the minimum element is less than one, then they aren’t getting the minimum RDI.

How do we find such a thing? Well, not algebraically, that’s for sure. I’ll use some linear programming (which is kind of like magic, there’s no process to show here).

The solution results in consuming only 116.28 grams of Pork and spending $1.093 per day. The optimal amino acid consumption is also below. Clearly, prices change. So, if eggs or beef became cheaper relative to pork, then we’d get different answers.

In fact, we have the price of these protein sources going back almost every month to 1998. While pork is exceptionally nutritious, it hasn’t always been most cost effective. Below are the prices for 1998-2025. See how the optimal consumption bundle has changed over time – after the jump.

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Are You A Business, Man? The Surprising Benefits Of A Sole Prop and IRA

James Bailey1 Comment

I never thought of myself as a businessman- until 2015 when the IRS told me I was, and that I therefore needed to pay them more money to cover the self-employment tax. Naturally I was confused and angry about this at first, but in the long run it turns out they were doing me a favor.

If you make a tiny amount of 1099-MISC or 1099-NEC income on occasion, the IRS is probably* fine with characterizing this as ordinary income from a hobby. But if you earn 1099 income at all regularly, they will likely want to characterize you as a business, and want you to pay a self-employment tax similar to the payroll tax that W2 employees pay (though it will look higher to you, since you will pay both the employee and employer halves of the tax). If you make an intermediate amount of 1099 income, you might have the choice of whether to call this hobby income or business income; I had thought it would be better to avoid the complications and extra taxes of being a business, but it turns out that being a business unlocks new opportunities for deductions than can far outweigh the self-employment tax.

For example, a home office, business-related travel expenses, and advertising expenses can be deductible. For a writer, this could cover conferences, website expenses, computers, and much more. It also means you can start a SEP IRA– in addition to a personal IRA if you like. This alone could allow you to deduct thousands of dollars in income per year (technically up to $69k if you make at least $276,000 per year in business income, though if you make that much, you’re the one who should be giving me advice). The SEP IRA has the advantage over a personal IRA of a much higher income limit and, potentially a higher contribution limit, though again the beauty is that you don’t have to choose- you can just do both.

While this post is mainly about business, I also think regular IRAs might still be underrated. I didn’t start one until 2022, but I should have done it much earlier. First I thought I was too poor (low income, then higher income but with student loans to pay off first), then I thought I was too rich (above the income limits). It turns out though that you can still start a personal IRA even when you are above the income limits- it just means you only get one tax benefit instead of two, but that one tax benefit is still pretty good.

Every IRA has the benefit of investments growing tax-free; if you meet the income limits then IRAs get the additional benefit of avoiding income taxes either when you put the money in (for traditional) or when you pull it out (for Roth). But even if you “only” get the benefit of tax free growth, that can still be a huge monetary benefit depending on your investment strategy. It is also a big time benefit- every taxable brokerage account means at least one** extra tax form to deal with every year, while an IRA account avoids this.

Another great benefit to IRAs (SEP or regular) is that you can still start one now and make contributions for the 2024 tax year. I was just doing my taxes and kicking myself for not doing some things differently back in 2024 when it would have helped; but IRAs are like a form of time travel where you can still go back and fix things, at least until April 15th.

*Disclaimer- Not official tax advice, I’m not an accountant, I’m just a 37 year old guy with lifetime 1-1-1 record against the IRS. Three times they have told me I owed them more than I paid on a tax return. Once I won (I told them I owed nothing and explained why, and they agreed). Once I lost (I told them oh shit, you’re right and paid them). For the story I started this post with, I call it a draw (they told me I owed them X, I told them I owed nothing and explained why, then they told me I actually owed them 1/3X and I just paid it).

**More than one if like me you accidentally invest in a partnership and as a result get a K-1 on top of the usual 1099-DIV for that overall brokerage account

HT: Trinette McGoon

The Price of Eggs: Long-Run Perspective

Jeremy Horpedahl2 Comments

Everyone is talking about the price of eggs. Even the President. That’s despite the fact eggs, on average, constitute about 0.1% of consumer spending (according to the Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2023). Even so, economists always get excited when people talk about prices.

On prices at the current moment, I wrote a blog post for the Cato Institute looking at the relevant supply and demand factors, and trying to explain why wholesale egg prices are falling so quickly. When will these falling wholesale prices translate into lower retail prices? The NY Times asked this question, and I tried to answer it for them (answer: perhaps in a few weeks).

But let’s step back from the current moment and take a longer-term perspective on egg prices. This chart shows the long-run real price of eggs, measured in terms of how much time an average worker would need to work to afford 1 dozen eggs:

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Perspective: This Stock Correction Fear, Too, Will Pass

Scott Buchanan1 Comment

For what it’s worth, I will pass along a couple of points from an optimistic take on the current stock market pullback, by Seeking Alpha author Dividend Sensei. The article is “History Says Shut Up And Buy: 12 Hyper-Growth Blue Chips To Buy Right Now”. His thesis is that corrections come and go as specific fears come and go, but tech stocks only keep going up, so now is a good time to buy.

History seems to be on his side. Below is a 25-year plot of the NASDAQ 100 fund QQQ. It is true that on a really long scale, any significant dip would have been a good buying opportunity. And the run-up since 2016 has been astonishing.  $10,000 invested then would be about $50,000 now. I find it sobering, however, that (just going by eyeball) it took about fourteen years for QQQ to regain its 2000 peak. That might be longer than most investors want to wait. And in the shorter term, these tech stocks lost some 80% of their market value between 2000 and 2002, and revisited that low in 2008. We can look back now from decades later and call this a “dip”, but at the time it felt like an endless investment nightmare.

(I should add that the 2000 peak pricing was not supported by appreciable cash earnings, but by breathless hype about this new thing called the “internet” that was going to change EVERYTHING. This past year has seen similar hyperventilation over AI, but in contrast to 2000, now the big tech firms make ginormous gobs of money, and gobs more each year. So maybe it really is different this time…)

QQQ total return since March 1, 1999; % scale. From Seeking Alpha.

The Psychology of Market Corrections

The author pointed out that every correction is based on some deep fear, and eventually that fear dissipates. I thought this table he showed of the fear factors involved in the 30 or so stock market pullbacks since the March 2009 low was interesting and instructive:

The type here may be hard to read, so I will repeat here the two most recent “fears” listed, both from 2024:

March 28-Apr 19 (5.9% drop): “Stubborn Inflation, Fed Pushing Back Rate Cuts, Iran/Israel Conflict”

July 16-Aug 8 (9.7% drop): “Disappointing earnings results, Recession Fears, Fed Behind Curve”

These are recent enough that any market-engaged reader here will resonate with these concerns which loomed so large at the time. And yet, the collective market shrugged them all off to post a robust 21% gain for all of 2024.

Where do we go from here? I have no idea. As of writing this Tuesday morning, we seem to be bumping along at a level 2-3% higher in QQQ than the lows last week, but still 10-11 % lower than a month ago. This has brought it to levels of about late September, 2024. If I look at a five-year log plot and draw an eyeball-fit straight line through it all, it seems like prices went above that line for Nov-early Feb, in a burst of post-election enthusiasm, but have now come back to the trendline. Barring some macro or geopolitical disaster, therefore, one might expect QQQ to trend 10-15 % higher in the next twelve months (with a standard deviation of another 10% or so around the trendline). But as old-time Yankees catcher Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

Disclaimer: Nothing here should be considered advice to buy or sell any security.

Solve for the Equilibrium, as They Say

mdmakowskyLeave a comment

Will they be subpoenaed? If yes, will they comply? If they comply will they be arrested? If arrested will they be tried and convicted? If convicted will they be pardoned? If pardoned will he be impeached? If at any point your deductive reasoning concludes with a “no”, then you can reason backwards inductively to why this is happening.

Homan: "We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-17T15:05:29.721Z

Information Regarding Russian Voting

Joy BuchananLeave a comment

Grok 3 beta (paid version) says this:

The Reality

  • Opposition: Genuine opposition is stifled. Prominent critics like Alexei Navalny (who died in prison in 2024) are barred from running, imprisoned, or sidelined. Parties like the Communist Party or LDPR exist but are often seen as “systemic opposition”—allowed to operate but not to seriously challenge the regime.
  • Media and Campaigning: State-controlled media heavily favors United Russia and Putin. Independent outlets face censorship, shutdowns, or exile (e.g., Meduza, TV Rain). Campaigning for opposition is restricted, with candidates disqualified on technicalities or facing harassment.
  • Voting Process: Reports of irregularities are common—ballot stuffing, coerced voting (especially among public sector workers), and inflated turnout figures. The Central Election Commission oversees it all, but it’s widely viewed as Kremlin-aligned. Electronic voting, introduced in recent years, has raised further transparency concerns.
  • Turnout and Results: Official turnout often hovers around 50-70%, though skepticism about these numbers persists. Putin’s 2024 victory, with 87% of the vote, came amid the Ukraine war and suppression of dissent, with no credible challengers.

Public Perception

Many Russians see elections as a formality—Putin’s approval, while fluctuating (per Levada Center polls, it dipped to 59% in 2018 but spiked to 80%+ after Crimea’s annexation), reflects a mix of genuine support, apathy, and resignation. Critics argue the system prioritizes stability over democracy; supporters say it’s what Russia needs given its history and external pressures.

Recent Example

The 2024 presidential election (March 15-17) was a case study: held over three days, including in occupied Ukrainian territories, with Navalny’s death fresh in memory. Three token candidates ran against Putin, none polling above single digits. Protests like “Noon Against Putin” (voters showing up at noon to signal dissent) were symbolic but powerless against the machine.

In short, Russian elections are predictable, heavily managed spectacles—less about choice, more about reinforcing the status quo. If you want specifics on a particular election or X posts about it, I can dig deeper. What angle are you curious about?

Click Read More to see the answer to my follow-up question “Explain coerced voting for public sector employees?”

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A Forgotten Data Goldmine: Foreign Commerce and Navigation Reports

Zachary BartschLeave a comment

Economists rely on trade data. The historical Foreign Commerce and Navigation of the United States reports detailed monthly figures on imports, exports, and re-exports. This dataset spans decades, providing a crucial resource for researchers studying price movements, consumption patterns, and the effects of war on global trade.

The U.S. Department of Commerce compiled these reports to track the nation’s commercial activity. The data cover a vast range of commodities, including coffee, sugar, wheat, cotton, wool, and petroleum. Officials recorded trade flows at a granular level, enabling economists to analyze seasonal fluctuations, wartime distortions, and postwar recoveries. Their inclusion of re-export figures allows for precise estimates of domestic consumption. Researchers who ignore re-exports risk overstating demand by treating imports as goods consumed rather than goods in transit.

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