Tootfinder

I recently researched the etymology of two interesting German words:
- "nonchalant" (informal, relaxed, casual, carefree, easy-going): I found that interesting because it's obviously a negation and I never read the non-negated form "chalant". Turns out that the non-negated form goes back to latin "calēre" (warm, to be hot, to be alarmed, to be fired up)
- "verschollen" (lost, missing, nothing has been known about the whereabouts of sth. or sb. for a long time). I found it weird because I couldn't make any sense of "schollen". This might be related to "verschallen" (stop making noise) and might go back to old high German "skellan" (which is also related to German "Schelle", a small bell). So, "verschollen" can be seen as a euphemistic expression because stop making noise is used to refer to being lost (and maybe dead).
#etymology #linguistics #German

Detroit announces the return of trains at their central station (or at least very near it) bus station a potential extension of the Wolverine Amtrak train from Chicago all the way to Windsor/Toronto
Canadian extension would require some Canadian funds, in the current political climate I have my doubts. But glad to see Detroit re-investing into better transport infrastructure.

"In truth, no Number fully insulates anyone from life’s vicissitudes. Markets crash, health fails, taxes rise, wars and pestilence break out...."
So, pay your taxes and invest in a welfare safety net, is the unspoken part.
The absurdity of bankers’ retirement fund targets - https://on.ft.com/4o2NNbV

Maximizing social welfare among EF1 allocations at the presence of two types of agents
Jiaxuan Ma, Yong Chen, Guangting Chen, Mingyang Gong, Guohui Lin, An Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09641

Maximizing social welfare among EF1 allocations at the presence of two types of agents
We study the fair allocation of indivisible items to $n$ agents to maximize the utilitarian social welfare, where the fairness criterion is envy-free up to one item and there are only two different utility functions shared by the agents. We present a $2$-approximation algorithm when the two utility functions are normalized, improving the previous best ratio of $16 \sqrt{n}$ shown for general normalized utility functions; thus this constant ratio approximation algorithm confirms the APX-complete…

Regulating Ride-Sourcing Markets: Can Minimum Wage Regulation Protect Drivers Without Disrupting the Market?
Farnoud Ghasemi, Arjan de Ruijter, Rafal Kucharski, Oded Cats
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11845

Regulating Ride-Sourcing Markets: Can Minimum Wage Regulation Protect Drivers Without Disrupting the Market?
Ride-sourcing platforms such as Uber and Lyft are prime examples of the gig economy, recruiting drivers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding legal and fiscal obligations. Although platforms offer flexibility in choosing work shifts and areas, many drivers experience low income and poor working conditions, leading to widespread strikes and protests. Minimum wage regulation is adopted to improve drivers welfare. However, the impacts of this regulation on drivers as well as on travelers an…

Okay, that explains a LOT. Our poor Wolverine coaches were turning yellow 😭
https://www.trains.com/pro/passenger/intercity/amtraks-chicago-train-wash-open-for-business-other-locations-to-follow/

Risk-Adjusted Policy Learning and the Social Cost of Uncertainty: Theory and Evidence from CAP evaluation
Giovanni Cerulli, Francesco Caracciolo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05007

Risk-Adjusted Policy Learning and the Social Cost of Uncertainty: Theory and Evidence from CAP evaluation
This paper develops a risk-adjusted alternative to standard optimal policy learning (OPL) for observational data by importing Roy's (1952) safety-first principle into the treatment assignment problem. We formalize a welfare functional that maximizes the probability that outcomes exceed a socially required threshold and show that the associated pointwise optimal rule ranks treatments by the ratio of conditional means to conditional standard deviations. We implement the framework using microdata …

Replaced article(s) found for econ.TH. https://arxiv.org/list/econ.TH/new
[1/1]:
- Optimal risk sharing, equilibria, and welfare with empirically realistic risk attitudes
Jean-Gabriel Lauzier, Liyuan Lin, Peter Wakker, Ruodu Wang

Der Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung sagt – auch wenn ich dagegen bin, hätte man mich gefragt – dass bei Einschüben "nach dem zweiten Gedankenstrich ein Komma [steht], wenn es auch ohne den eingeschobenen Zusatz stehen müsste". (§ 77 E2 des Amtlichen Regelwerks des Rats für deutsche Rechtschreibung)