Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
21hr ago
This is a seductive argument, but some people would argue that the norm against lynching black people is load-bearing for a multiracial integrated society. Then anyone posting crime statistics in response to a white guy killing a black guy is cancelled for defending lynchings. Suddenly speech doesn't feel all that free anymore. Is it even okay to call for the expedited execution of suspected black murderers of white girls?
Let people speak. Bluesky is collapsing under the weight of their own speech codes.
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
I was just reading a bunch of threads of people screenshotting Kirk shooting social media posts and sending them to the subject's employers. Legitimately fascinating to hear of the back-end effects so soon.
Objectively, I think the left's reaction to the Charlie Kirk shooting is less extreme than the left's reaction to the Trump assasination attempt or the Brian Thompson shooting, but the backlash to the reaction to the shooting seems a lot more intense this time. I wondered why, then reading your post it hit me; "Trump is president now." Right-wing cancel culture is now backed up by the implicit threat of government sanction. Employers don't inherently care about their employees' personal lives. For better or for worse, they are being made to care.
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
how and when you communicate is as important as the literal words.
Is there a better time to talk about Charlie Kirk than right now? He has never been, and never again will be, more relevant than he is right now. He is the topic of the national conversation.
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
No it doesn't. Conversation begats conversation. If someone posts, "RIP Charlie Kirk. He was a great conservative mind." It is perfectly okay to reply with, "actually he was a hack who believed whatever Trump told him to believe," without that being commentary on the acceptability of political violence.
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
when a Hindu (Kash Patel) tells a Protestant (Charlie Kirk) "I’ll see you in Valhalla" it is somehow even more incoherent.
Is modern Hinduism syncretic? It would not be out of place in pagan Europe to think that different ethnicities have different gods. It might be coherent in Hinduism to think, "well obviously this Jesus stuff doesn't make any sense, but maybe white people were right about Thor and Odin?"
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
It is Okay to Think That Charlie Kirk was not Literally Jesus.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to get shot in the jugular for expressing controversial political opinions. I actually agreed with many of Charlie Kirk's controversial political opinions. The thing about controversial political opinions though, is that lots of people don't like them. If you are a person who does not like Charlie Kirk's political opinions, here are some things that would be perfectly understandable for you to think or feel upon hearing the news that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed:
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"Charlie Kirk once said gun rights are worth the cost of a few shooting deaths. Kinda funny now huh? I wonder if he's changed his mind."
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"Sucks he died like that, but I'm kinda glad I don't have to see his tiny face spouting talking points anymore."
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"Charlie Kirk was a massive hack. I think we should care about the kids shot at that school in Colorado more than him."
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"Charlie Kirk wanted me kicked out of the country because of my political opinions. It's hard for me to feel bad for him."
To be clear, all of these are tasteless and (in my opinion) poorly thought-out, but they are well within the bounds of civil discourse. None of these are beyond the pale. None of these should get one fired from one's unrelated job. None of these are even close to inciting or advocating for violence.
I was shocked today when I saw a Republican Congressman announce a woke-era pressure campaign againt people who "belittled" the assasination. Apparently I have a much longer memory than many people. I still remember 2020. I still remember George Floyd. It wasn't just the riots, it wasn't just the demonization of physical policing tactics, it was the Orwellian psycholigical tyranny of not being able to express nuanced or contrary feelings about a tragic event. Never again. In a free society, people should be able to express their thoughts and feelings on major events, even if they aren't entirely thought-out or sanitized.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
I’ve seen like a dozen tweets from people whose opinions I normally respect which are some variation of, “I used to think cancel culture was bad, but then I saw these absolutely despicable comments from leftists and of course they need to lose their irrelevant-to-politics service-sector job.” And then I look at the screenshots and it’s just some lady who didn’t like Charlie Kirk pointing out the irony of his positions on gun control.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
I guess I believe them? The cheers sound more like a group of people watching a movie than it does people reacting to news being spread by word of mouth. Is there any collaborating evidence that there was a car chase going on at the time?
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
By the way, this isn't old news. This is the second time today this has happened. Things appear to be going swimmingly.
When was the last time a major public terrorist like this got away? Seems like they always end up either killed or captured.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Politically active young people want blood. They celebrated a health insurance CEO they never heard of getting gunned down on the streets of New York. Of course they’ll be happy Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck while defending the 2nd amendment.
There might be a majority that say the backlash wasn’t worth it, but they’ll definitely be glad the guy is dead.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Kirk is (was) far more dangerous to the people who disagree with him than Fuentes is
No. Charlie Kirk’s value over replacement commentator is essentially zero. He will be replaced tomorrow. Fuentes has actual talent and social capital. Things which the groypers would be hard-pressed to find if Fuentes were to disappear.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
If I see a disheveled black man on the Metro, I am vastly more worried he's about to regale me with an obviously made up sob story and ask for money.
To be fair, this is also a negative outcome.
Living in DC I've done this on hundreds of occasions and I've only been stabbed twice.
I’m assuming this is a joke?!?!? I like not being stabbed.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
In 2016, a tourist family from Nebraska visiting Disney World allowed their toddler to wander around the edge of a small lake near their hotel without close supervision. The young boy was attacked and killed by an alligator. Anyone who grew up in the Southern United States knows not to let small children wander around bodies of water unattended. Nobody explicitly tells you this, but there is a general cultural understanding of alligators, how they work, and where they live.
I know it’s controversial even here to refer to the homeless urban underclass as vermin or wild animals, but I can’t think of a better metaphor.
Everyone who grew up in a major American metropolitan area knows that certain environments around the city are the natural habitat for a certain kind of predator. You don’t have to know these locations by heart. You can identify them simply by looking around at the ambient population. The (small-n) native American knows that these environments are significantly more dangerous than other areas of the city, and thus require a heightened level of vigilance when one is unable to avoid these areas in the normal course of city life. You cannot expose yourself by putting earbuds in and spacing-out on public transportation directly in front of a disheveled black man wearing a hoodie, especially if you are a small and vulnerable young girl who sticks out.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
Why couldn't they make all those workers legal?
Work visas (H-1B and H-2B) are capped. They would be competing with every other company in the country that wants to bring in foreign workers.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
ICE has conducted its largest ever raid targeting... Korean automotive workers at a Georgia Hyundai factory?
ICE has released a video of its raid on Hyundai–LG's Georgia battery plant site, showing Korean workers chained up and led away. South Korea's foreign ministry has confirmed over 300 of the 457 taken into custody are Korean nationals.
We don't have all the details, but from what I can glean most of the Koreans were in the country on B1 buisiness visas, which allows the visa holder to attend business meetings and conduct training, but does not allow for "labor". The factory involved is brand new, having opened less than a year ago, which would explain why they needed so many Koreans (Hyundai is a Korean company) to get operations off the ground.
One defense of these kind of raids is that it doesn't do America any good to have foreign companies build factories in the US if they are going to staff those factories with an imported workforce instead of Americans, but it is far from clear that was happening here. I don't doubt that many of these B1 visaholders were "working the line" and as such technically violating the terms of their visas, but that's how foreign investment works. If you build a brand new specialized factory in an area that doesn't have factories of that kind, the local workforce will inherently be inexperienced and unsuitable for the facility. You can't teach people how to run the factory without, well, running the factory.
The big question is what this means for foreign investment in the United States. If you were in charge of a foreign manufacturing corporarion, would you want to build a facility in the United States if there is a good chance your own employees would be arrested for running the company's facilities?
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it
This is a very 2018 opinion. We live in a different world now. The problem is that the legal "check" against the president using executive authority to consolidate power is impeachment and removal. This would require support for Trump to collapse from among the Republican base itself. In 2025, what red line exists that would cause Trump's Republican support to collapse? Maybe if he gave a speach from the oval office announcing his personal surrender to Soros and the indefinite suspension of all border and ICE enforcement. I don't think there's much on the right-wing authoritarian side Trump could do to get impeached. Stringing prominent Democrats from lampposts might even turn out to be surprisingly popular.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
From what I can tell, the main factor in Netanyahu's persistence is the failure of the Oslo peace process. Nobody really believed in peace via negotiated settlement after that. At that point they're just arguing over how hard to stomp the boot.
Quantumfreakonomics
14d ago
Remember the time /r/fatpeoplehate got banned for posting images of imgur employees? (I think the implication was that they were fat, but this was 10 years ago)
Quantumfreakonomics
15d ago
There is a little Patio11 in my head screaming at me, "when you make a large payment to a sex services company, there is a special light that goes off in your bank's inteligence analysis department telling them to stop whatever they are doing and investigate you specifically"
Quantumfreakonomics
16d ago
You can't just blast out nudes and collect rent, you have to engage with the audience. This, to me, seems like an actually defensible moat vis-a-vis AI OF alternatives.
The messages are AI. Lots of times the bots aren’t even LLM quality. The thread mentions how concentrated revenue is for the top creators. You think they’re the ones responding to messages?
Quantumfreakonomics
16d ago
I think a lot of people are in denial about how much damage The Dark Knight movie did. Heath Ledger’s joker inspired an entire generation of social outcasts to become jaded antisocial nihilists. Are we really supposed to believe that this guy who shot up the sequel on opening night wasn’t inspired by The Joker? And now we have this:
”I’m the woker baby.
”Why so queerious?”
Quantumfreakonomics
16d ago
It seems pretty clear from the video that the girl was in fact threatening somebody. The only question is whether he deserved it or not.
Quantumfreakonomics
17d ago
I'm the kind of sicko that wants to see stuff like this when I travel.
Political violence is such a tiny fraction of total violence in this country that any signal in the data will be absolutely swamped by the noise of how you determine whether an incident is political or not.
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