Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
What is the appeal of sushi? Specifically the raw fish. I decided to try a big bowl of raw fish at my local sushi bar, and like, it was fine. I ate it, but all I could think about was how much better it would be thrown on the grill with some MSG.
Quantumfreakonomics
6mo ago
If the United States invaded Canada out of the blue one day what would happen? Would they even shoot back? If Canada invoked Article V would the UK or France threaten nuclear war?
I don’t really have a model for this, and yet it could easily happen.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Breakdancing (or "breaking" as they call it) is new to the Olympics this year. The Australian contestant is Rachell Gunn, AKA Raygun, a communications professor who specializes in "the cultural politics of breaking". Lets see how she does.
How the hell did this happen?
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
It is a very important job. Somebody has to tell doctors and patients no. That said, I sure wouldn’t want to do it.
I think it is hypothetically possible for a health insurance CEO to be so cartoonishly evil that murdering him on the street becomes ethically justified. I haven’t seen the evidence yet. I assume if it existed it would be plastered all over the internet.
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
3mo ago
Let’s say you’re walking down the street and a black guy steals your phone. Later that day, this same black guy is minding his own business when he is attacked, arrested, and beaten within an inch of his life by an unabashedly racist police officer who is an open member of the KKK. The police officer notices the cell phone, which he finds out later was reported missing by you, and returns it to you. Further investigation reveals that the police officer had no probable cause, and simply assaulted the man because he was black. Do you have to give him your cell phone back?
The answer is obviously no, right? Just because the black man has a clearly justified claim against the government, doesn’t mean that we have to recommit all of the crimes that the unlawful state action righted. Compensation should be made in a different way.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
I get what Trump wants from Mexico. I'm not sure what he wants from Canada. Is fentanyl coming in from Canada? I thought it was coming from Mexico.
I mean, He's said that he wants Canada to become part of the US, but that can't be his motivation here, can it?
Quantumfreakonomics
10mo ago
Fixing the budget is quite easy conceptually. Just cut Social Security. Old people have had their whole lives to get their affairs in order. The “fat” is the fact that we pay people simply for being alive once they reach a certain age. Maybe you need someone with basic math skills to structure the phase-out so that people who have already paid in don’t get completely screwed, but this is a fundamentally simple problem from an operations standpoint.
I would say to cut Medicare too, but I worry that many families would literally bankrupt themselves pouring money into the pit that is the US healthcare system in order to save granny. It is quite hard to evaluate costs and benefits in a dispassionately economic manner in these areas, which is probably why we’re in this mess.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
I know that the county conceded that they would allow an opt-out for a Muslim student to not look at an image of Muhammad, but is that constitutionally required? I can imagine a hypothetical school district (backed by state law) deciding to use a picture book to teach kids about the Arab conquests. If Muslim parents complain? Tough shit. This is the kind of thing that makes school administration a nightmare.
It may be worth pointing out that coverage from outlets like NPR didn't include the name of the case or a description of the plaintiffs that brought it.
I don’t think this is because they are trying to hide who is suing here. News editing just sucks. I think the idea is that nobody wants to read a news article with a bunch of legal citations, so we end up with headlines like “Elon Musk’s DOGE Delt Legal Blow by Federal Judge”, when the substantive legal issue is that their motion to change venue was denied.
Quantumfreakonomics
3mo ago
Three possibilities stand out:
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Actually, there are no Epstein files. We already know everything that there is to know (or at least everything that it is possible at this point to know). This is the null hypothesis.
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Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset, and thus releasing the files would damage US-Israeli relations (I’m sure some of our less-plilosemitic users will gladly explain how exactly this translates into leverage over the Trump Administration).
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The contents of the Epstein files personally implicate Donald Trump.
Quantumfreakonomics
1mo ago
A lot of people wonder why Curtis Yarvin is taken seriously. There’s been a lot of drama lately about whether Moldbug Sold Out, or whether there is any reason to take him seriously. A lot of this comes from an overfocusing on his monarchy prescriptions, but this really misses a lot of the deeper intellectual content. Social justice came from American Mainline Protestantism. They are the same thing.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
Is community drama Friday Fun?
Rationalist-adjacent blogger Dinomight is accusing rationalist-adjacent Twitter poaster Cremieux of plaigerizing his post on aspertame into a popular Twitter thread. This has now escalated to wall-of-text denounciations, involving characters such as LessWrong admins and our old friend TracingWoodgrains.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
I am not going to die on the hill that COVID vaccine mandates were a good idea, but I am absolutely going to die on the hill that Pfizer deserved to make shitloads of money for developing and manufacturing the product that effectively ended the COVID pandemic as a going concern.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Reports are he’s lost Barrack. It is now officially Joever.
Regarding whether he steps down from office or not, I doubt it. That would be a very dishonorable way to go out, but I do think there are conversations going on about whether Kamala has a better shot if she gets to run as an incumbent.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
As a thought experiment, what do you guys think it would take for Republicans in congress to impeach and convict Trump?
Like, suppose all those Reddit comments are right, and Elon really is looting billions of dollars from the treasury for his personal benefit. If Trump turns a blind eye, or even worse, pardons Elon, surely that would be enough right?
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
Why isn’t Tesla stock crashing? The intersection between the set of people who care enough about the environment to buy an electric car, and the set of people who don’t hate Elon’s guts doesn’t provide much room for growth.
Quantumfreakonomics
11mo ago
Cancel culture is BACK baby.
Just today we had a perfectly normal Walmart-American harassed and fired after exercising her constitutionally-protected right to post a shitty hot take on her own Facebook page. Of course, it's not enough for human resources to quietly take her out back. She had to be publicly defenestrated.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
That at least one person who is alive at the time Jesus made that statement will still be alive when the second coming happens.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
What do you guys make of the Elon - Ashley St. Claire babymama drama?
For context, Ashley St. Claire is a conservative Twitter personality who announced on Valentine's Day that Elon Musk has fathered a child with her. This was followed-up with a vaguely threatening statement from Ashley's lawyer. There are screenshots going around that suggest a less-than-cordial relationship between Ashley and Elon, though I can't verify these. There are also potential inconsistencies.
Quantumfreakonomics
2mo ago
The crux of the Abrego Garcia controversy is a dispute about who "morally" counts as an American citizen.
I’m not so sure that fits this particular case (it’s a better match for Mahmoud Khalil IMO). I think the deeper controversy is about what level of process is necessary to permanently remove someone from US jurisdiction.
Trump has dropped plenty of hints that he is thinking about sending American citizens to El Salvador prisons.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
The bad thing about the Nazis was that they started WWII. Everything they did before the start of WWII was within the envelope of typical right-wing authoritarian governments. Most people would cite the Holocaust as the bad thing about the Nazis, and yeah, it was bad, but the over-emphasis of it ironically plays right into the Nazi Propaganda that WWII was a war launched against Germany for the benefit of the Jews.
Quantumfreakonomics
7mo ago
AOC is gearing up early for a 2028 run. It’s obvious how the Democratic Party can increase its appeal to young men. Stop trying to overthink it.
What is there to say? Trumpism is being exposed. Beyond that, democracy itself is being exposed. Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.
Quantumfreakonomics
5mo ago
After Trump University, Trump Coins (physical), Trump Trading Cards, Trump Media Stock, and whatever the hell this is, I would have expected Trump scam market saturation. At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.
Oceania was not after all at war with Eric Adams. Oceania was at war with The Federalist Society. Eric Adams was an ally.
A few days ago, news broke that the DOJ ordered the federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams dismissed. As of this writing, the charges have still not been formally dismissed. Apparently, the Attorney General's office can't find anyone willing to sign their name on the dismissal paperwork. The acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned yesterday after refusing to carry out the order. If the name sounds familiar, she was the lead prosecuter in the SBF case. She must be some typical big-city liberal lawyer right? Well, apparently not.
The gorgeous Miss Sassoon wasn't the only casualty. Reports are at least six people have resigned rather than sign-off on this.
It's worth taking a step back here. Six months ago, anyone would have expected that a big-city Democrat mayor getting indicted on federal corruption charges would have been the reddest of red meat to the online right. How did we get to the point that right-wing law influencers are denouncing the Federalist Society for prosecuting Democrats for corruption? The monkey wrench thrown in the gears is Trump's decision to use the charges as leverage to extract concessions on immigration. A few offhand comments by Adams critical of mass immigration are retroactively cast as the Casus Belli for the initial investigation by Biden's DOJ. Am I missing something here? Why is this not an obvious quid pro quo? I can't tell whether the MAGA claim is that, "yes, this is a quid pro quo, and that's fine", or if the claim is that, "no, actually the corruption charges were themselves corruption. Dismissing the corruption charges is actually fighting corruption".
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