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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2699 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 26, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Don't you find it amusing that some people are trying to stop Mamdani with the same toolset that hilariously failed to stop trump for 10 years straight and are surprised at their failure.

There are extremely long think and hit pieces and lots of snark, refutals and zingers. And none of them are in format or place that are engaging to the people that will vote for him.

The hectoring boomer "you're not allowed to vote for him" tone is so incredibly bad it makes one doubt the supposed competence of the billionaire bloc that forms the anti Zohran forces. If they're this stupid, he might be right that they don't deserve all that money.

Also the failure to find a replacement level candidate to run against him. The best the anti-Mamdani forces could come up with were a granny-murdering sexual-harassing unpopular ex-Governor, a paid Turkish agent, and a Republican. None of them are people you run if you actually want to win a NYC mayoral election.

replacement level candidate

Help a foreigner out; what does "replacement level" mean in this context?

The term originates from sabrmetrics (Society of American Baseball Research), which is a set of derived baseball statistics developed starting in the 1980s or 1990s. In baseball terms, 'replacement level' refers to the average player that you could get at a certain position from the next league below - basically the default freely available player if you had no other options. Then the associated term 'value over replacement player' (VORP) would be how much better a specific player is than that freely available guy from the lower league. It is possible to have negative VORP if you are worse than a random guy from the lower league, which does happen (less frequently in modern times) due to contracts/non-performance factors.

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