Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
Huh? I think this is entirely consistent with what Yarvin lays out. The owner of the LA Times was unable to make the paper print what he wants. He was only able to prevent it from printing what he doesn’t want. This can always be trivially accomplished by firing everyone and closing the paper, which Yarvin readily concedes that Bezos would be able to do with the Washington Post. Indeed, the editorial chief of the LA Times did in fact, “laugh at him and quit.”
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
Quantumfreakonomics
9mo ago
The only way I can see something like that working is if congress repealed the Administrative Procedure Act, putting Trump and his immediate appointees in direct control of federal regulations.
Curtis Yarvin talks a lot about how no president has been truly in charge of the government since FDR. The reason for this is the Administrative Procedure Act.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Mcdonalds should represent the opposite of what the right stands for. It is the antithesis of tradition, beauty, culture, small business and family.
On the contrary, McDonald’s represents the true culture of the American proletariat. You may never have worked at McDonald’s, but you know someone who worked at McDonald’s. The elitist liberal media says that McDonald’s is unhealthy slop, but deep down, you know the truth. every blue-collar worker in America has done great things fueled by a quick stop at McDonald’s.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Just say you don't talk about politics and/or that it's none of their buisiness. It is socially acceptable to berate people for not voting, and it is socially acceptable to berate people for voting Republican, but it is not (yet) socially acceptable to berate people into telling who they voted for.
The surprising bit is that the Harris campaign isn't targeting men with this but women, as indicated by ad targeting spend. My theory here is that Kamala is not offering a threat here, but selling a power fantasy. If you're a woman, vote for Harris, and you'll have a parade of men approaching you, who you can reject at will.
No no no no no. This is the Order of the White Feather strategy. The target audience for the ad is young women who are already committed to Kamala. The intended outcome is not to get the target audience to vote (they already intend to vote), but to get the target audience to pressure the men in their life to vote for Kamala.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
The Zapruer Film of the 21st century. Obama had just given the order to kill Bin Laden. Seal Team Six was making final preparations as he spoke. The newly-released long-form birth certificate listed the time as 7:24PM, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
My guess is that they have some sort of internal polling to try to figure out what the common factors are amongst black men who support Trump, and they came up with buisiness ownership and cryptocurrency investments.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Do you believe that Times Opinion only interviewed pro-Hamas doctors?
If they interviewed doctors in Gaza, they interviewed pro-Hamas doctors. No one would voluntarily put themselves under the jurisdiction of Hamas unless they were okay with what that implied. If someone from a foreign country volunteered to work in German hospitals during WWII, one would assume that they were a Nazi sympathizer.
The Kennedy electors from Hawaii were illegally chosen and illegally counted. Article II Section 1 of the Constitution:
The "time of chusing the electors" ended with the safe harbor deadline on December 13, 1960, at which point only the Nixon electors were certified. Thus, they were the only electors constitutionally chosen. It was Nixon's mistake to side with the spirit of the law (who won the popular vote) instead of the letter of the law (who the constitutionally appointed electors were) and count the Kennedy electors.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Twitter has recently updated its monetization scheme. Here are some Tweets by mid-level accounts celebrating their pay raise: Tiffany Fong, Richard Hanania, Kyle Mann, Crémieux, i/o, Austen Allred
Notice anything? All of these accounts are followed by @elonmusk. I did some additional digging. This looks to be the official announcement.
Content quality, not ad impressions: Our algorithms evaluate viewer engagement by analyzing interactions such as replies, likes, bookmarks, and the time spent viewing your content. These factors directly contribute to your payout. Only genuine interactions from Premium users will be counted toward your earnings.
Higher signal engagements: Certain engagements are worth more than others. Engagements from users on higher premium tiers are also worth more.
Audience analysis: We also consider the characteristics of your audience, including who they follow and who follows them. This holistic approach can influence your monetization scores and payout weights.
It flew a bit under the radar at the time, but with checks going out today we have a much better idea of how the scheme works in practice. It sure looks to be a patronage system for tech-adjacent influencers and intellectuals crossed with a pyramid scheme.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
I think if elections were rigged then we wouldn’t see different parties win in different years. Also, if it was rigged against Trump, wouldn’t one expect him to underperform the polls? In reality, he overperformed the polls in both of his elections. (You can try to account for this by supposing that pollsters are in on the game, but now we’re just adding epicycles.)
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Isn’t the obvious use case for election prediction markets to hedge agains unfavorable election outcomes? Why do we assume that people betting on Trump are Trump supporters? Shouldn’t, for example, Israeli settlers be betting big on Kamala to win so that they have money to relocate if Trump loses and they get kicked out of the West Bank? DEI consultants betting on Trump so they have insurance against losing their cushy jobs?
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
The thing about building new nuclear power is that you have to be willing to literally run over protesters. If you aren’t willing to literally run people over, they will physically block you from brining equipment to the site.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Look at a map. Think logistically. There is absolutely no reason to be flying fixed-wing aircraft from Greenville to Asheville. Fixed-wing aircraft have longer ranges than helicopters. Those supplies can be flown in from further away locations. However, there are a limited number of airports within helicopter range of the affected area. Greenville is one of them. It is the correct move to dedicate the Greenville airport to helicopter missions.
If this hadn't happened, would FEMA have an extra $300 million to use on other things, or would they simply be appropriated $300 million less?
Same question for the illegal migrants program that everyone on Twitter seems to be talking about.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
One of the themes of Patrick McKenzie's legendary essay The Story of VaccinateCA is that the government is perfectly willing to let private citizens assist with emergency relief efforts if the government is allowed to take credit for it. Tweets like this are a declaration of war in that context. If you go into a disaster area with the intention of undermining the legitimacy of the official response, you are going to have a bad time.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
I’m going to classify both of these stories as “technically true”.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
It would be very Seeing Like a State for government agencies to dump a shitload of assets and supplies in the major regional cities with no real plan to get aid to the isolated residents in the mountains whose roads have been washed out.
FEMA in Asheville doesn't nessesarily mean FEMA in wherever the hell this is.
I think we need subject-mater expertise here. How is airspace usually regulated? What would happen if all restrictions were lifted? How hard is it to operate in the mountains (especially takeoff and landing)?
I'm sure FEMA considers Starlink to be low-priority compared to food, water, gas, etc. It's plausible that SpaceX flying wildcat deliveries of Starlink is net-negative to the relief efforts, but I would like to know why specifically they think that.
EDIT: Per CNN's Pete Muntean, "an unprecedented number of airplanes, helicopters, and drones swooping in to help with Hurricane Helene recovery efforts are now posing a safety hazard. There were 30 near-mid-air collisions last Saturday, a federal source tells me." I guess that's the official line. No idea if it's accurate or not.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
How many people are too stupid to read and follow the directions?
Hundreds of people OD on Tylenol every year in the US. I cannot imagine the carnage that would result from OTC fentanyl.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
I have to assume that the glow is from compressive heating during atmospheric reentry.
Pretty cool tbh. I hope Hollywood was watching. This is some Avengers shit.
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Why does Iran care about Israel so much? I get why the Arab states hated them, but what has Israel ever done to Persia? Palestinians are Sunni, not Shia, so there’s no obvious alliance there. Is it all about Jerusalem? Why don’t Pakistan or Bangladesh or Indonesia fund resistance groups? Is it just a cynical power play?
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Is there any pro-Hezbollah content in English that I can read? I’m not talking about standard anti-colonial junk from “leftist religious-studies activist #17354”, I mean legit Shia Islamist propaganda, the kind of stuff they feed their own people.
The Washington Post weighs in:
"The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake." - The Washington Post.
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