Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
I have to admit that if the numbers are correct then I am surprised it's not worse. Listening to some of the comments at the town hall it certainly sounds unpleasant, but there wasn't much in the way of actual crimes and shit (no, no one actually cares about the sanctity of the migratory bird treaty act). Lots of "get your government hands off my medicaid" type stuff regarding lines at the welfare office.
Violence will only make it worse in the current political situation. Bearing through it might be the right move.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
I think if Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of congress they could withdraw from global refugee treaties and totally reform immigration law.
They won't, because they're cowards/idiots/grifters, but the problem is solvable in principle.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Who are these nameless faceless NGOs carving up the ethnic map of middle America like post-war European diplomats? What is their motivation? Who is funding them? Why does nobody care? Is right-wing media too incompetent to weave a narrative more complicated than "Democrats open-borders bad"?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
What is going on in Springfield, Ohio? 20,000 Haitian arrivals into a town of 60,000 seems insane, but the New York Times seems to back it up. I definitely don’t trust the NYT to give an honest portrayal of what the situation is like on the ground, but I don’t really trust a lot of the rumors going around Twitter either. I am seeing reports of Haitians killing the ducks at the park and eating them. There are even secondhand reports of Haitians eating pet cats.
What I am not seeing however is geolocated footage or images. How hard can it be to send a guy to the park to see if there are any ducks left? I am legitimately confused. None of this seems to make sense.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Why is Haiti so much worse than other overwhelmingly-African Caribbean countries? Is the difference between 80% African DNA and 90% African DNA the difference between a functional and non-functional society? Is it because the other countries have residual institutions left over from colonialism, while Haiti blew everything up in the revolution and started from zero?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Things are looking up for the Texans, which is always when shit goes South and we completely capsize.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Maybe its 4D decision theory chess?
Now that people know that it is Russian policy to throw large amounts of money to vaguely pro-Russian influencers with no-strings attached, people with large platforms will be more willing to sprinkle in anti-interventionist rhetoric in the hopes of getting that sweet sweet kremlin money.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
My first thought was that the funding probably didn't have that much influence on the content produced (certainly it resulted in more videos and podcasts, but this doesn't nessesarily imply coercive editorial influence), but this clip from Tim Pool seems well beyond typical America-first isolationism. Does anyone know if there is context I am missing?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
I guess this hinges on whether the Chinese got to those positions through merit by being legitimately better at them, or through corruption (there is a lot of gray area in between of course, but my point should be obvious).
If it turns out that the world’s greatest physicists, philosophers, writers, comedians, investors, and entrepreneurs were languishing in poverty for a century as a result of imperial subjugation, that would in fact be one of the pivotal events in world history!
It would be especially weird if the people most upset about this had some weird historical hangup like, “the Opium Wars were actually about tea, no one was trying to smuggle drugs into China.”
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
The tunnels?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
The theological differences run quite deep. The Catholic Church requires that there be a cross-with-corpus on or near the altar in full view of the congregation for the celebration of mass. This is as a reminder that the sacrifice of the mass is the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the cross, and that the bread and the wine presented on the altar are the real and substantial body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ.
The protestant view is to deny the physical presence of Christ in the church, and so the crucifix is disfavored over a symbolic cross.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Well for one thing, those sorts of edgy outbursts don't really count as apologetics, whereas his long-form work often does feel apologetic in nature.
I also feel a jarring disconnect between the two Darryls. Surely the long thought-out works are more representative of his true beliefs? I would like to know what drives him to Tweet like he does. Impulse control? Whatever Jordan Peterson has?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
When, if ever, is it appropriate to provide an apologetic defense of Nazi Germany?
Darryl Cooper, host of the widely acclaimed Martyr Made podcast, recently did a 2+ hour interview with Tucker Carlson. Darryl Cooper is known for two things. One: being meticulously empathetic with regards to the plight of the disaffected groups that are the subject of his 30-hour long history podcasts, bringing out the vivid details that form the background milieu for poorly-understood events like Jonestown. And two: his unhinged Twitter takes.
As one can imagine, jimmies were rustled. The most common line of attack was “Tucker Carlson platforms Nazi apologetics.” In a literal sense this is true. Cooper gives the German perspective on Winston Churchill. One might make the obvious point that Germany started the war by invading Poland, but the Soviet Union also invaded Poland. Yet the Western allies did not declare war on Stalin. This AskHistorians thread (no haven for Nazi apologetics!) is enlightening. What masqueraded as a mutual defense treaty was actually an anti-German treaty. Britain really was out to get them.
Once we dig deep enough, the real reason World War II started was to preserve Anglo hegemony over Europe, the exact same reason that Britain joined World War I. Post-hoc rationalizations are just that, post-hoc. It certainly isn’t irrelevant when studying World War II that the holocaust happened, but that isn’t part of the causal chain of events the way many seem to believe.
I want to emphasize that I personally like Anglo-American hegemony. Churchill’s aggressive stance towards Germany is good for me and for the vast majority of the people reading this, but in order to understand history (or current events for that matter) one has to understand the people who do not like Anglo-American hegemony. I do not know where on the doll Anglo imperialism touched him, but I do not believe that Darryl Cooper says the things that he does out of hate for his fellow man.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Why don't we just give parents a direct financial claim on a portion of their children's income? Obviously there will be some details that need to be ironed out (maybe this portion goes to the state when one's parents die, to prevent perverse dynamics), but this seems straightforwardly incentive-aligned.
It seems almost too obvious. Do any countries anywhere do anything like this, surely this is a cultural custom somewhere?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
What is going on with the church fires in France? The noticer accounts are not-so-subtly implying that they are due to arson. Is this the old Chinese Robber falacy, an artifact of France having lots of old highly-flammable churches wired with 220 volts, or actual arson?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
This is a tale as old as environmental law. In the 1970's, the discovery of the endangered snail darter blocked completion of the almost-finished Tellico Dam by the Tennessee Valey Authority. Congress had to pass a specific exemption to complete the project.
We later found out that the snail darter also lived in other rivers in the area, and the completion of the dam did not drive it to extinction.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Here is an interesting development: Kamala Harris is now demanding unmuted microphones for her debate with Donald Trump.
It's been memory holed, but I seem to remember the general opinion being that allowing Trump to interrupt his opponent during debates gave him an unfair advantage since he would interrupt more often. This appears to be a complete 180. It's tempting to model this as a reflexive reaction to Trump's dominance in the June debate with Biden (which muted the candidates' microphones when it wasn't their turn to speak), but I get the sense that there are deeper strategic considerations at play. A few possibilities:
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The Harris Campaign wants Trump to come off as unhinged by giving him the oppurtunity to make a complete ass of himself. This didn't work for Jeb, Rubio, Cruz, or Hillary, but maybe it will work for Harris? (I am pressing X to doubt)
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Kamala wants to unleash her inner prosecutor and roll around in the mud with Trump. This could work, but it strikes me as the kind of thing that sounds better in the shower than it does in real life.
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This is just mind games. The Harris Campaign is using meaningless nitpicks to bait Trump into doing something stupid. I think this is an underrated strategy in general. It would be very bullish for Harris if the people in charge are this smart.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
the dumpster was there illegally already - the company ended up being fined (a trivial amount, but still it was illegal)
Ok, so the dumpster was brought to the site by the construction company? This makes more sense given what I see in the picture. Looks like they needed to get a street occupation permit.
My opinion on who is in the wrong here depends both on the details of the nature and urgency of the construction work being done, and on whether to permitting authority is capable of processing applications in a timely and reasonable manner.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
I'm sure top men are scouring through out treaty obligations with Brazil as we speak to see if there's something to pin him on.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Last month a woman was killed while cycling in one of these lanes when she was forced to merge out of it because a construction company had illegally put a dumpster in the middle of it
Is there a diagram of the incident somewhere? Why was stopping, walking the bike around the dumpster, and then getting back on not an option?
Less rhetorically, I can’t tell from the information provided whether this is a reasonable law, or if it’s just entitled “not-in-my-bike-lane”ism that would jack the cost of construction and services to astronomical levels if strongly enforced. Where would you have put the dumpster?
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Since 1948, the tomb guards, a special platoon within the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), work on a team rotation of 24 hours on, 24 hours off, for five days, taking the following four days off. A guard takes an average of six hours to prepare his uniform—heavy wool, regardless of the time of year—for the next day's work. In addition to preparing the uniform, guards also conduct physical training, tomb guard training, participate in field exercises, cut their hair before the next workday, and at times are involved in regimental functions as well. Tomb guards are required to memorize 35 pages of information about Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, including the locations of nearly 300 graves and who is buried in each one.
When I was in Arlington many years back, I couldn't understand what the big deal was about the tomb of the unknown soldier, until I went. Pictures and video don't do it justice. There is an aura there. The way everyone is dead silent. The framing. The location. You have to walk through a quarter mile of perfectly-maintained memorial graves to get there.
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
The solution that comes to my mind is using the North runways for departures and the South runways for arrivals (or vice-versa). Would this cause taxi times to be unreasonabe? Aerodynamic turbulence issues?
Quantumfreakonomics
1yr ago
Amazing that we now have a machine that will answer arbitrarily-worded questions about any commonly-taught topic, and the only education implications people talk about are fake assignment submittions.
Like no, the whole structure of the industry is now obsolete.
The guy who did that was sentenced to 9 years in prison.. You would expect one or two traffic fatalities a year from a population of 20,000.
You would not go to prison for driving without a license or without plates either. These are minor offenses.
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