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Do you think it was filmed the day it was released?
Yeah, misspelling your school's name on it's front door is a 'nice touch'.
So what are you claiming? You seem to just be swatting lazily enough to not have to think any harder about it. Come on out with a prediction here. Of course Nick Shirly, a 23 year old youtuber isn't going to be a button up investigator, which makes it all the more damning if he's the one to whistle blow massive fraud.
So massive fraud or not?
There's probably massive fraud involved, but a twenty three year old man knocking on the door of a daycare asking to see the children will have the police called on him, and not see any kids(they will be locked down). This video doesn't show anything at all.
The kids of course are being stored in a bunker far below sea level, handled by elite security personel.
I've done a lot of childcare tours/pickups if one is even somewhat active you'll be able to hear it. Even if these are all a unique form of windowless secure child storage the lack of even stroller parking is pretty indicative.
I don't know what stroller parking is, but in this video you can clearly see kids get dropped off at one of the locations: https://x.com/i/status/2005779133947650471
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They will be kept in their classrooms with the doors locked and the windowshades drawn.
They don't lock down the entire place, with the kids huddling in such utter silence that no one can tell they exist, every time a car pulls up. What emotional need are people fulfilling by posting this kind of thing?
It does feel like Occam’s Butterknife.
To me the best explanation as to why no children were seen or heard is because there were no children present.
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Perhaps its true; it would certainly partially explain falling fertility rates. Who would want to have kids when it's necessary to expose them to that?
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At all times? Have you ever been near a child?
I'd agree if it were an active shooter drill but you're saying the random childcare workers are immediately going on DEFCON7 every time somebody pulls up in the driveway?
At bare minimum a functional childcare would have some sort of outdoor play area as is literally state-mandated, generally I'd expect to see stroller parking and the building being noisy and active.
The higher the defcon, the less the concern (or defcon 1 is the highest risk; defcon 5 the least).
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And the red tribe/blue tribe split shows itself again.
When I lived among the blues... honestly some childcare institutions were this paranoid, deranged as it seems. Loudoun County Schools called the police on a father who showed up to collect his raped daughter because he was a little too upset that his daughter was raped. I believe they didn't even allow him in the building, locked down classrooms, and sent out an email that a parent had caused a disturbance.
I don't live among the blues anymore. That level of neuroticism and inverted priorities is just too cruel for me to live under. But though you may scoff and think he's exaggerating, depressingly he may be describing how childcare institutions actually behave around him.
They really are completely different from us.
I live in a low population red-tribe town surrounded by farms and our elementary school and preschool are locked and no unauthorized adults are allowed in. If one tried to force their way in it would be treated seriously.
Let me clarify.
The allegation is that, when this amateur reporter comes to the door of a supposedly not at all fake daycare, the children are placed on lockdown such that they cannot be heard or seen at all. As if he were an active shooter. Right out the gate, just as soon as he shows up, because they don't know him.
I'm not saying red tribe daycares/schools let any random person have free reign of the place. If they aren't an obvious threat though, at least into the lobby to have a discussion about why they are here. You'll be able to hear kids around at least. Maybe see one bring a note up on some errand from a teacher.
In a preschool? No, preschoolers are not given independence to go about the halls.
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I am surprised that everyone assumes that we would be able to hear kids from outside a preschool/daycare. I cannot hear the kids in my sons' daycare when they are inside the building. We have insulated buildings here on account of the cold winters. When they are all lined up in front of the main doors for drop off I can't hear them. When I come early to pick up a kid for a doctor's appointment I can't hear them.
If there's a part of the video where he actually gets inside for a few minutes, then that would be better evidence. But most of the examples are him standing out in front of a door, trying to open the door and then suggestively saying "This door is locked" as if that isn't the most normal thing in the world.
The one time he actually did get his eyes inside for a brief moment he saw a kid. Just one kid, but we don't know why that is. Is that kid being seen in the office and the other kids are in a classroom? We don't know - the camera doesn't follow him so we have little in the way of evidence.
Another time a woman answered the door and held it open for a while, and we heard nothing. Suspicious right! Except she readily admitted there were no kids there at the time, because all the kids were expected at 2 PM. It's an after-school care facility! Or maybe they were on a field trip, that can happen. The point is, there are many explanations before jumping straight to fraud.
If you go in with different assumptions, this video is simply evidence of anti-white racism. An ethnic conclave refusing their services to a white dad because they only want to look after Somali kids.
Shirley states, "No footprints in the snow outside" as evidence that there are no kids playing there. Well guess what? My kids aren't allowed to play outside at their preschool either for a while due to the cold. On days when it looks like the temps are above 25 degrees F, we get a text that we can send in snow pants. But if it's below 25 with wind chill, they aren't allowed to send the kids outside.
There are just so many things that make me roll my eyes. It's entirely possible that these places are committing fraud! But people jumping on this video as the one true proof just makes us all look foolish.
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Exactly. I'm not against the daycare operators barring the strange men from the premises, but young children are noisy and leave a lot of traces that should be immediately apparent from just approaching the childcare. I've got a 2 year old and she's very hard to miss if you're on the same block as her.
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I'm not saying people can't lockdown a childcare center, my point is more that an active childcare center tends to be quite obvious on account of the accoutrements and noise of children. Unless the presupposition is that they immediately shuffled everybody into the bunker as soon as these guys got out of the car.
I have never seen a school, preschool or day care in which it was not painfully obvious if there were kids around.
Relatedly, I know for a fact that one of the ones my kids went to had a ton of fraud going on. Employees paid partially under the table to maximize government benefits. There was a system where some of the parents got this card from the state where they were supposed to swipe in to prove they dropped the kid off, but most of them just left it with the employees to bill the government for extra days. Owners were a pair of rich Indian women who bought the place as a net-loss vanity project - and still ran it as a scammy money laundering front.
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Yes, massive fraud. No, this video isn't proof of it. This video is just outrage bait.
Was this filmed the day it was released? No, could have been filmed... December 25th? December 24th? It clearly wasn't filmed in the Summer. It's not like this was a culmination of years of investigation.
There's enough CONFIRMED fraud going on in the Somali community that your priors that this sort of business is fraudulent, at least to some large degree, should be high enough to make an educated guess rather than outright dismissal.
Plus, the Boomer guy straight up says he's been paying attention to this for years.
So in a sense, yes, yes it is a culmination of years of investigation.
See my comment here: https://www.themotte.org/post/3430/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/395401?context=8#context
There's a pretty simple argument to suggest that fraud, if it can be proven to exist at all, is probably pretty rampant in Somali communities.
Premises:
The Somali community in Minnesota is probably tight-knit and interconnected, moreso than most other groups in the state. Lots of communication channels amongst them and between different circles of them.
The Somali community would thus likely be aware that there's a bunch of sketchy daycare business operated in their area, and these receive federal/state funds.
Nobody notable in the Somali community has raised an alarm as to this practice, and I've not heard a single word of condemnation from any of them. Quite the opposite.
What might we conclude about the Somali community?
Do we conclude that they are harsh and intolerant of fraudulent behavior in their midst? That they are quite honest and rule-following on average?
Or is the obvious implication the precise opposite, that the majority of them are probably cool with fraud going on (maybe they don't even see it as immoral) even if they're not participating, and good many of them are participating?
Or which premise do you take issue with?
Are Somalis NOT tight knit in this area? Do they somehow NOT know that their family and neighbors run these sketchy daycares? Or are they actually coming forward and reporting on fraud all the time, but they're ignored?
Which premise fails?
Your analogy falls apart the second you notice that Christians are constantly calling each other out and even condemning each other for preaching falsehoods (as they see it) and are not prone to covering for each other merely because of shared theological beliefs.
Famously, individual denominations take massive issue of tiny disagreements in interpretation and are quite happy to make their disagreements known, and distance themselves from 'heretical' street preachers and the like.
What exactly do you think I am saying here. I take issue with 0 of the premises. I also hate this video. What is being misunderstood?
My analogy to a Christian street preacher does not fall apart because the whole point is that it's not all that weird to call out arguments you hate that are on your side! I am against fraud and against Somalis that don't assimilate remaining in America. I also hate that the video is what got people interested in the problem. Just like I would be alarmed if a video of a street preacher acting crazy was getting attention as the one true proof of Christ's divinity.
This is complete "Who gives a shit?" territory and the only reason people are responding is because they think you're making a larger point than you are. Nobody thinks there isn't fraud, including you apparently, and nobody is going to stop noticing because some youtuber didn't follow your preferred protocols.
I hoped we'd all care about not looking like fools, but apparently that's concern trolling or something.
If you're not looking a fool at least some of the time, you're not doing anything of consequence.
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Guess I misunderstood the thrust of your point.
Me, I have accepted that you don't get to choose how certain issues make it to mainstream prominence.
(I've been aware of the Epstein situation for like twenty years, and I'm just happy that people at least notice it now)
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Of course it’s not proof. It’s a spotlight, and a question begger about what’s going on and why it took him to highlight it
“well of course there’s fraud, a this guy is pointing to it, but see he’s pointing wrong, so can be dismissed or agreed with where convenient”
It’s just cake-eat-having commentary.
It's like being a Christian and suddenly a street preacher video is blowing up online. The preacher's argumentation isn't sound and he's weirdly confrontational towards a handful of people just going about their day (and yeah, those people are sinners, but it's still confrontational.)
Wouldn't it be kind of frustrating for this to be the thing that takes off as proof of Christianity, and not all the actual scholarship? If I were to say I wasn't a fan, but I still was a Christian, would that be having and eating cake?
The video's author could personally come to my dwelling and fart loudly in my face, cheeks spread wide open and splattering me with the fecal remnants of his last shit and his observation would still be valid: the daycares that don't admit new children and conspiciously don't have any sounds of children (they are not quiet, let me tell you) are frauds and you should be ashamed that you are even defending this position.
Anyone who goes 'he's right, but he didn't say it in GOOD FAITH' should be shot by a firing squad.
I don't know where you get the idea that a daycare center can't sound quiet from the outside? If the kids aren't out in the playground I don't hear them. Our preschool is actually insulated on account of the very cold winters here.
My argument is not, "he's right, but he didn't say it in Good Faith." My argument is the evidence in the video is not sufficient to support his claims. He didn't systematically eliminate other possibilities. It's going to backfire, because it's easy to just show children getting dropped off in these places and Voila! debunked.
Dropping children off in these places after a major expose doesn't debunk. The lack of children despite parents being in on it was the easily visible indicator of fraud that- having been explicitly identified- is easily rectified afterwards to obfuscate follow-on attention and allow motivated individuals to claim that children were always there.
The sort of motivated people who believe this sort of video 'debunks' are also the sort of people who wouldn't be persuaded by 'systematically eliminating other possibilities,' since motivated reason is under no obligation to conceed that other possibilities were properly eliminated based on whatever trivial grounds they have. They could even invent their own grounds of dismissal, like claiming that the videos were made on holidays or weekends where there would be no children.
It's not like such motivated reasoning against anti-progressive activist exposes are unknown. I'm sure you remember when the planned parenthood videos were dismissed as bad faith and misleading for editing techniques that many of the media organizations critiquing it were using, even as the activists posted the full videos which the media organizations rarely do and went out of their way to ignore in order to insinuate deception without, you know, showing the deception.
I don't believe that showing kids being dropped off debunks but it has equal weight as the Shirley video. That's the whole point.
I will say that I was surprised that the kids being dropped off knew where they were going. They weren't dragged in by their mothers. They walked calmly to the door as if they've done it before. First day drop off of all the daycare/preschools Ive seen were no where near as calm.
That's another example of the sort of motivated reasoning will let people accept and spread as a counter-veiling evidence and a basis to dismiss earlier information, yes. Appeals to personal credulity / experience are easy ways to implicitly dismiss something without having to formally make a claim- it's just another form of 'just asking questions' to raise skepticism, except without the quesitons.
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