NullHypothesis
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User ID: 2718
NullHypothesis
8d ago
I don't either, which is why I took a few minutes to check, and I'm sure if I dig deep enough I can find more people on bluesky who at least has the ability to acknowledge this is not something to be celebrated. I think this just means your feed consists of Subreddits with higher quality users, which I would not be surprised for someone who has come to the motte.
I just went on Bluesky with a fresh new account and searched for Kirk and sorted by top and scrolled by around 30 posts before I found one saying the death of Charlie Kirk was wrong and it was still accompanied by "And Charlie Kirk was a horrible, hateful man who spent his life radicalizing young people to embrace their worst demons by targeting women, people of color, immigrants, and the marginalized."
Gavin Newsom did create a series of post trying to lower temperature and denouncing it. The top reply is calling this sympathy stupid because Gavin Newsome had something nice to say about Charlie Kirk. Most of the top replies are talking trash about Charlie Kirk.
We should expect politicians to denounce political violence, as they have skin in the game. The lack of top posts from non politicians showing any sympathy is pretty telling. I scrolled around 100 posts and found 4 sympathetic messages from top democrat leaders/politicians, 2 from people I don't know stating celebrating his death is wrong, like 7-8 news articles and the rest is a mix of gleeful, critical, or who cares messaging. " 80-90% of the top 100 posts celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk is about as close to all as you can in how the word "all" is used colloquially. Although yes I guess jarjarjedi could've been more precise in his speech I don't think it's far off from the truth.
NullHypothesis
8d ago
The absence of a discernable political motive is not proof of no political motive. I acknowledge it also isn't proof he did have a political motive, nor that such proof currently exists. But you aren't convincing me he didn't have a political motive without a stronger argument. The act of shooting a political figure in a political event is political in and of itself.
My point is about the reaction to the political violence. I don't doubt mental illness played a major role. However, you cannot deny the reaction and behavior of people to these events. One survey finds over 50% of people left of center say murdering Donald Trump or Elon Musk would be justified. Do you think I'm choosing to believe more people are okay with the use of violence for political purposes because I want to?
Who do you think I think "they" are? I stated the left engaged in burning, looting, and rioting after several high profile culture war events. Perhaps you believe this is an unfair assessment of the left, and you might have a point, but they certainly did not condemn such actions or downplayed it. How the right will react to this event, we shall see.
The world where nobody shoots politicians is a better, safe, happier one.
Tribes pick stories that suite their narrative all the time. This is not particularly insightful commentary. Furthermore, the comparison to the Democratic senators in Minnesota has key differences that need to be considered.
How popular was Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman? You didn't even mention their names. I couldn't recall it either. I had to look it them up. Are they effective targets for assassination to advance your cause? Suppose you're a radical planning to assassinate someone. Why would you target a non name senator over someone more high profile? There is some evidence indicating Vance Boelter's reason was due to a call from Tim Walz which to me sounds like he was just an insane person. Melissa Hortman has 14K followers on Twitter. Also, Hoffman who was the senator survived, Hortman who died was a legislator.
In contrast, Charlie Kirk was extremely popular. He has 5.5 million followers on Twitter. He was popular enough to be parodied on South Park. His appearance on Jubilee "debating 25 liberal college students" has 31 million views, making it one of their most popular videos. I'd argue Charlie Kirk was extremely effective in getting people behind the agenda he supported, and killing him is a huge blow to that movement. The guy was 31 and had decades ahead of him to accomplish whatever he wanted to accomplish in the political space. Even if you think he's just a mouthpiece for a machine pushing an agenda, killing serves the purpose of warning anyone else who wants to spread ideas through popular open dialogue. If you're a political-motivated assassin, he seems like a good target. I bet if some random Republican senator got killed, there also wouldn't as big of an uproar.
Actually, there is a case similar to that of the democratic senator and legislator being attacked. The closest equivalent would be Steve Scalise a Republican politician, who like Hoffman, also survived an assassination attempt in 2017. I'm gonna do some lazy research here so bear with me, but I don't think the Scalise shooting even got half as much traction as the Hortman shooting. Looking at the most viewed videos from a news channel on YouTube, the most popular news channel video on Scalise is around 330k, while John Hoffman is at 771K views.
Where did the assassination attempt take place? Charlie Kirk was shot in a public event with hundreds of university students attending. Hortman and Hoffman were attacked in their homes at night. The context of their assassinations are vastly different. The irony of the situation is that Charlie Kirk was actually discussing mass shootings right before getting shot. Some people are trying to spin this as evidence that the assassination was staged or a psyop, personally I think it was just a coincidence considering how many violent stories this week have gone viral but what a darkly poetic scenario to be killed literally as you are talking about political violence.
How did the "other" side react to their deaths? Are there endless examples of people celebrating their deaths? Even in fairly nonpolitical spaces and discords I'm in, there are people celebrating and making fun of the death of Charlie Kirk. These are people I play games with and outside of politics I would consider fairly normal people. You don't need to search hard on Twitter or TikTok to found people gleefully posting themselves expressing enthusiasm of Charlie Kirk. Who was celebrating the death of Hortman? Do you have friends and know people celebrating the deaths of people on the other side of the political spectrum?
What was the general political and cultural climate where these assassinations took place? People on the extreme left openly call for violence all the time with little chastise and repercussion. I dare you to openly call for the death and killing of all leftists on reddit or X or Facebook and see how long it takes before your post gets deleted and you get banned. One side consistently says speech is violence and that the other side are nazi fascists. Extreme leftism is openly supported or at the very least quietly ignored by the moderate left. The demand to be a victim is so high that time and time again people have to make up fake racist hoaxes to create the supply that simply doesn't exist.
Meanwhile, extreme rightists have little place to call home. Even a place like 4chan, which is considered the cesspool of the internet, has plenty of people on both sides now. Last time I went to pol there were just as many pols supporting extreme left wing views as there were right. Simply holding a moderate right wing view makes you an extreme rightist white Christian nationalist in many circles.
We're at a point where people are afraid to openly state their beliefs. From 2023 to 2025 88% of the 1452 interviewed students pretended to hold more progressive views than they believe to succeed social and academically. 78% said they self censor about gender identity, and 72% of students stated they self censor politics. People are self censoring because they are afraid of the repercussions of stating what was once normal, everyday beliefs. The majority is afraid to speak up because a loud minority keeps attacking and harassing people with little repercussion. And I can speak from experience, because it hasn't even been 10 years since I graduated from university and I too self-censored most of my views and beliefs. I engaged in dialogue with my peers who got angry and passionate about women's rights and trans rights. I doubt they were self censoring. Charlie Kirk was a driving force giving university students a place and a chance to not pretend to be more progressive than they actually are.
I actually think a better comparison is George Floyd, on grounds of what event creates "hysteria" as you call it. Police were defunded, cities burned and looted, statues and murals and paintings created to martyr a guy who could be argued to have died to fentanyl. Floyd was also by no accounts a good person. He had been jailed eight times for numerous crimes including armed robbery. So many modern martyrs of the left consistently happen to be individuals with extreme criminal history. The left also reacted in "hysteria" around the Rittenhouse case, which was decided to have been done in self-defense. And here, again, is an example where the victims are people with a history of child molestation and other criminal behavior. The misinformation was so bad, people thought Rittenhouse killed an unarmed black man. Or what about the shooting of Michael Brown, known for "hands up don't shoot". Except that was a lie. That didn't stop the left from engaging in "hysteria". So far the red tribe "hysteria" is just a lot of words; granted it hasn't been a day so we shall see what the future holds but something tells me we won't be seeing mass riots and burning and looting from the red tribe.
I keep thinking back to idea of a scissor statement, a statement so divisive it tears people apart. But I don't think you can provide example of stories that server as scissor statements that only occur if one side willfully ignores relevant facts in the case. When both sides agree something is bad the story doesn't go viral because there is no anger to fuel the algorithmic machine. You can't keep arguing with someone that agrees with you. But if you're engaging in dialogue with someone that has no intention of good faith discussion, who openly dismisses facts and pushes what you believe are outright lies, your only options are to eventually walk away or get mad. You cannot reason with someone that does not use reasoning. If this was just a debate on the internet then whatever, you can walk away easily. But when these stories are used to push policy changes, make excuses for bad behavior, and make people feel guilty of things they should have no guilt for, it's hard to not be filled with rage.
(As a side note, perhaps I too am blind of the facts of the cases of outrage of events from the right, and maybe trying to use the concept of a scissor statement here is inappropriate. If I had to pick something that could be considered a scissor statement where I might biased or the right is the side that deliberately ignores facts, it might be in the area of gun control and the 2nd amendment, abortion, or climate change.)
Even if one were to think Charlie Kirk as a faggot, nazi facist, (terms I have heard people refer to him very recently) who only debates unprepared college students and an intellectual hack, he wasn't a wife beater, thief, murderer, or a felon. He also wasn't a politician, or a CEO, or a billionaire, anyone in position of real power. He didn't hold any radical extremist ideas that so many on the left think he did. He engaged in open discussion and wanted to pursue change through dialogue. And now he's dead.
You're right that we don't know who the killer is or what the motive is. But you have to deliberately ignorant to not think an assassination at an open political event is not political motivated. This is not a passion killing. This is pre-meditated and cold and deliberate. If it was something like a personal grudge, wouldn't you rather shoot someone in a quiet place, such as at night? Why would you choose to assassinate someone in a place where there are thousands of people that could potentially spot you and stop you, unless there was some kind of goal in making a statement?
This event is tragic because now it serves as yet another example of how trying to engage in open dialogue with people who have no willingness and desire to do so is a bad idea. I'm here in the motte because I want to believe in the pursuit of truth through open dialogue and debate. But what do you do when people refuse to engage in open honest dialogue? Is it even worth holding a principled stance with people that spit all over it and only use it against you? Enough stories like this and you start to get people wondering if they should become the monsters they keep being accused of. We take so many of the concepts that hold up our modern society for granted, ideas about human rights, human decency, free speech, democracy, equality, these are all espoused as univeral truths and moral goods (at least in America)... and in doing so allowed a poison to come into the public consciousness that continues to threaten and erode all of these values.
Also, is there any event or series of event that could convince you we've passed some sort of threshold? We've already had multiple public assassination attempts on the president with one nearly succeeding. Now a public figure who isn't even a politician is assassinated in daylight. Touching grass doesn't change that, and trying to normalize assassinations as things that always just happened that we are only just now noticing due to the algorithm doesn't make things better. It doesn't matter if political assassinations had been a part of human history, or if they are common in other places. They had become rarer in the USA in recent times and we ought to try to keep it that way.
NullHypothesis
18d ago
There are multiple studies indicating that swearing can lead to increased pain tolerance.
Similarly, it's possible that grunting can give some people that extra edge to be able to lift heavier weights. Could also just be placebo or attention seeking performance.
That being said, grunting obnoxiously loud in a public gym is pretty rude and I imagine if you're a powerlifter that needs to grunt to get that extra edge you likely could go to a gym more catered towards powerlifters where such behavior maybe more tolerated.
NullHypothesis
1mo ago
If you haven't watched it yet, I suggest give Code Geass a try. Although people often say Code Geass is actually not a real or true Mecha anime. I hate the art style and character design and I still watched the whole thing and don't regret it. It's widely considered to have one of the best endings in anime and I have to agree. Also the OST is great.
NullHypothesis
1mo ago
I agree with the general sentiment, yet I'm not sure how much room for nuance your argument with the other party had, since you haven't mentioned it.
Are all tattoos the same? Is a full body tattoo equivalent to a tiny flower on a wrist you could barely see? Perhaps you would consider all tattoos to be negative, but surely there would be varying levels of how much of a negative impact a tattoo could have on your perception of a person based on what that tattoo is and/or how large it is.
I find both sides taken to the extreme a bit absurd. If one were to think all tattoos are bad and/or reflect poorly on the person and all tattoos are superficial fashion choices - I would think someone defending either position would have to start granting exceptions or resorting to logical fallacies to maintain their position. It's possible neither side actually has this black and white position, but the post certainly gives off that impression.
Perhaps in your personal experience, every person you met with tattoos gives off the quality of the type of individual you don't want to associate with. While on the other hand, the person you were arguing with might have a lot of friends that have tattoos (or even have tattoos themselves), so they don't associate negativity with tattoos as much, if at all.
Personally, I think both sides of the argument you presented are pretty weak.
First and foremost, they're ugly and I don't like them
This does technically support your position of you personally finding tattoos distasteful but will do nothing to convince others of why they should find tattoos distasteful. Also, beauty is subjective. Is there not a single tattoo you could find any artistic quality in? If someone drew something that wasn't ugly on a piece of paper, what is it that makes it ugly once it's put on the human skin? You need to expand on this point.
Anyone who gets a tattoo is comfortable with associating themselves in this way
It's likely many younger people with tattoos aren't even considering that. Tattoos are becoming more common in the United States. This Pew survey from 2023 found 32% of Americans have a tattoo. That's 1/3 of Americans. 41% of people aged 18-29 and 46% of people aged 30-49 have at least one tattoo. That's a lot of people, and I highly doubt most of them are making the conscious decision that they are associating themselves with criminals or other undesirable groups. While there is still a social stigma with tattoos, it's largely gone now, at least amongst the newer generation.
Tattoos are expensive and painful to get and permanent
This doesn't seem to really support your argument in any way. Also, you can pay money to get tattoos removed. It's going to cost money and time but tattoos aren't as "permanent" as they used to be. You need to expand on this point more.
To me, it seems only your first two points seem to support why you dislike tattoos and only the 2nd point seems to support why tattoos should be considered distasteful.
Meanwhile, assuming you have summarized your opponent's position accurately and fairly, it does not address your points at all and takes on an easily disproven absurd position. Superficial fashion statement? As you pointed out, tattoos are expensive and time-consuming to get. Referring back to the Pew study from before, 69% of people who have a tattoo stated its purpose was to remember or honor someone or something and 47% to make a statement about something they believe in. That doesn't seem like superficial to me. Only 32% of people stated their tattoo was to improve their personal appearance, which would qualify as a superficial fashion statement. At best, your opponent's position would need to be mended to "some tattoos are superficial fashion statements."
Also, even if I did grant your opponent's position that tattoos are superficial fashion statements, there aren't any reasons provided to argue why it's wrong to judge people for superficial fashion statements. People make judgments based on superficial fashion statements all the time. Of course, your opponent isn't here and would likely be able to provide some reasons as to why that is wrong, but considering you didn't flesh out their argument, I'm just going to assume your conversation with them didn't progress much further.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to make on the spot judgments based on characteristics because you can't perform any actions without judgments, otherwise you're no different from a random number generating machine. At the same time, acknowledging that your judgments could be wrong, or being open to the possibility that your judgments are based on falsehoods, will make you a better person. I tend to find the "you can never judge someone based on x factor" crowd to usually be hypocrites that want to feel morally superior, but it doesn't mean their points are always without merit either.
What you should judge people by are the factors that are relevant for what you are judging them for.
NullHypothesis
2mo ago
That's actually a good point and yea you're right that anecdotes are pretty weak in the grand scheme of things.
I dont' think there's any disagreement that the percentage of people with college or higher tend to vote democrat especially in the last 20 years, but Turok's point was specifically that conservatism is increasingly becoming the party of the uneducated, yet if we look at the data for the last 3 election cycles the lead democrats had amongst people that voted with college or higher has actually been decreasing:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
Percentage of people that voted for republican in 2016, 2020, and 2024 Post grads 29 > 32 > 33 Grads 41 > 42 > 46 Some college 49 > 50 > 54
It's increased for each group.
Granted, just because you voted for Trump doesn't mean you are conservative. Possibly other factors such as people not voting that could impact the numbers. I guess Turok is technically correct since High school or less also increased from 51 to 59.
Maybe you're right and mods are unfairly applying mod posts to Turok. Personally I don't think Turok should have been modded for that statement specifically but looking at Amadan's post it seems to come off as a mod post about his behavior across multiple posts and not specifically the post he made that got the modded comment.
Anyways it looks like the virulent post that modded and I see some mod comments as well so hey seems like you are making an impact.
NullHypothesis
2mo ago
I looked at the three examples you provided as bad posts and they don't seem to be the same level of bad as some of Turok's post. Obviously I am biased so I may be blind to the stake in my eye but I'm going to give it some effort.
If making a statement about a group that could be considered negative is mean then you can never have any discussions about anything. The difference is the negative statements about the groups in the three posts are about specific behaviors and aren't just calling the groups names. It's part of an argument that could be challenged. And then you have to consider how people response to criticisms/challenges of an argument. I don't think I've ever seen Turok acknowledge someone made a good point and he usually only responds to direct questions. It is infuriating to have a conversation with someone that never engages or acknowledges your strongest points and only nitpicks your weakest points. Which is an effective tactic in a debate, but then it's not really a proper conversation in good faith. It's even more infuriating when the same line of reasoning that was never addressed is then repeated in future posts.
I actually didn't see anything in 2rafa's post that could be considered a generic mean statement about a group. The worst thing I could see is this statement.
An America after mass Hispanic migration (now occurring) is a poorer, more corrupt, more violent, more dysfunctional America
But that's actually a conclusion in an argument, something that can be challenged and dismantled if one provides evidence otherwise. It's not a statement like "hispanics are trash", even if you think it is implied that's not what is stated. If the implication is bad dismantle the argument.
Sohois says the African "immigrants are much lower quality" but this is followed by a list of characteristics that could be challenged. If the Africans in Europe aren't lower quality to hispanics in America, they must be the same or higher quality. If you take issue with that statement, can you provide evidence proving otherwise?
Worst thing I could see in Sloot's comment is this initial statement
The modal chick’s interests and hobbies consist of consooming, painting her face, taking selfies, and teeheeing around in skimpy outfits, but she will complain men are BORING with no sense of irony. Men have the burden of performance.
This is a statement about a group's actions and behaviors. You can challenge this statement. Is Sloot wrong? It could be implied sloot thinks the modal chick is dumb but sloot doesn't actually make that statement.
Meanwhile Turok's post:
The issue I see here is that conservatism is increasingly the ideology of uneducated people and those who went to third-rate universities. Instead of thinking about how to acquire power, or attract EHC who have power, they're smoking copium about how noble manual labor is.
I consider myself leaning more conservative, I went to a top tier university and I have a degree. I know many people who have gone to high tier universities. An increasing amount of them are leaning more conservative as time goes on. So from my experience his statement is incorrect. Perhaps if we really want to be technical, I'm being uncharitable here and my point doesn't actually address his claim, but he hasn't provided any evidence for his point. Are higher percentages of people with no college degrees becoming conservative? What exactly are third-rate colleges and are they producing more conservative leaders than before? He might be correct that conservatives have been losing in institutional powers like academia but that's not the claim he made here.
Also, there's something about this line of thinking that I have issue with. It's as if I said bananas are the food of poor people. Poor people do eat bananas so it's technically true. But what if I made this statement to a group of rich people using bananas as part of their morning smoothie? What was the purpose of making that statement? What's the implication here?
His statement on how conservatives are smoking copium about how noble manual labor is - this seems like making a mountain of a molehill. I see no concerted effort from conservatives in trying to push summer jobs to kids. Until conservative right adjacent sphere tiktok and social media is full of influencers bemoaning how the youth should be getting a summer job because it's going to teach them the value of hard labor one article from one conservative leaning site doesn't really mean much. I haven't seen this talking point in like years until I saw this post.
I have never heard of the group CommonPlace until yesterday. Their twitter has less than 5k followers. Linked in around 100. Facebook under 100. This is very weak evidence for conservatives as a group smoking copium. They might be a conservative think tank and maybe the people they actually reach have more influence, but until I see the messaging reach the intended audience this is nothing to me.
If you look at the parent post, his analysis is contradicted by evidence in the article itself, which I quote in my reply to him. I didn't bother touching on his 2nd paragraph earlier but I might as well expand on why I have an issue with his analysis. He makes this argument:
Doing so will help shape a happier generation of young people. A Harvard study that ran from the 1930s to the 1970s tracked the lives of more than a thousand teenage boys in the Boston area. It found that "industriousness in childhood—as indicated by such things as whether boys had part-time jobs, took on chores, or joined school clubs or sports teams—predicted adult mental health better than any other factor."
This is the same kind of error Leftists make when they see that kids whose parents took them to art museums have higher incomes than kids whose parents didn't and conclude that it means we need to subsidize art museums. In both cases, genetic confounding is ignored. But while the left fetishizes education and high-class culture, the right fetishizes hauling boxes and cleaning pools.
The causal link between higher income and going to art museums is very weak, while one can come up with a causal link between industriousness and adulthood happiness (work hard > more purpose in life > more likely to have material goods to have a higher quality of life). I don't disagree with him that genetics is a factor, but the two positions are not equivalent in their erroneousness. For them to be equally flawed statements would suggest a human being can never learn to become more industrious, and that industriousness has no effect on mental health. Yet surely we can find examples in our own lives that would suggest otherwise. Think of people that after being put into a sports team learned to work hard with a team, or even all the statement made here in the motte of people talking about how working a job helped them appreciate hard work or motivated them to work even harder to get more lucrative jobs. There is also psychological literature supporting the idea that it's possible to increase conscientiousness. I have just made an argument for why increasing industriousness can increase adult mental health. I would struggle to make a coherent argument for why subsidizing art museums would increase income.
To be honest, I should probably ask Turok to expand on his points rather than typing out why I think his argument is flawed in a post not even responding to him directly, but based on his previous interactions with others and to my post I can't say I have much interest right now in actually talking to him specifically.
If there are issues with those bad right wing posts, surely someone could put in the same level of effort I just did here to break down why they think it is bad. Perhaps my analysis is flawed, but at least I put in the effort. Where's the effort to show why these right wing posts are bad or flawed? Even if there is some level of group consensus, truth should prevail and if an argument has no flaws at that point the only option would be to ignore it or to resort to bad faith tactics and logical fallacies, and at that point it's breaking the rules and should be moderated. Upstream, there are some people making an effort to argue with that "virulent invasive species" metaphor is flawed, and I'd like to see more of those conversations than people complaining that the statement is mean. I do agree with you that people on the other side complaining about left leaning posts should also be better and try to address the argument instead of getting mad.
NullHypothesis
2mo ago
Depending on the summer job it could be considered as one of the extracurriculars in your college application.
The competition Asian applicants have for top-tier colleges are other Asian applicants. If all they have are high academics, their chances of getting in are low. If they had all the extracurriculars on top of academics, well they likely didn't need the summer job to stand out and have likely built their soft skills in stuff like sports/debate/etc. When you consider the students that only have their academic scores to stand on, it is likely their soft skills are not as developed as peers that have more than the academic scores. It's this group that could potentially benefit.
A lot of colleges claim their goal is to create a diverse student body group. Whether or not you agree with this, it's true that a lot of colleges and universities after reaching a certain number of the "smart Asian student" archetype will stop accepting more Asian students. Hence, why colleges that didn't have affirmative action like UCLA have significantly higher Asian student populations. There are probably smart, well-spoken Asian students that got rejected from colleges because there are Asians. But there are also smart, awkward Asians who got rejected because they didn't look the interviewer in the eye and stumbled over their words. Yes, Asians have a higher hurdle to enter the top level colleges. Some people would call it bullshit, but your goal should be to minimize the potential checks that could weed you out.
I don't have any stats at the moment so I'll speak from personal experience. I'm Asian and I had a lot of Asian friends, and literally none of us spent the entire summer studying. Sure, some of did stuff like SAT prep school, but that didn't exactly take up the whole summer... it was like a once or twice a week thing. Basically a few hours a week. If you have to spend the entire summer studying just to keep up to the point you don't have the time to hold down a summer job then you'll probably struggle in college relative to your peers that just fucked around and got similar scores to you. Of all of us that got 1500 or higher on the SAT, the ones that got into the top tier schools like Harvard/Stanford/CalTech also just happened to be the most social and well-spoken of the bunch. Personality might be difficult, perhaps impossible, to objectively measure, but it's not like it doesn't matter either.
That being said, my experience might be less and less relevant. From I last remember Harvard lost the case on affirmative action and checking the class of 2028 numbers it seems the number of accepted Asian students have gone up (37% same as previous year, but class of 2026 says 27% which is a significant jump). https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/09/harvard-releases-race-data-for-class-of-2028/
I wasn't able to find the percentage of Asian applicants that got admitted, only the percentage of accepted applicants that were Asian. It's possible more Asians are applying to Harvard after the supreme court decision.
Also found this chart which is pretty interesting:
It's a graph of the "personal" rating applicants to Harvard received, split between Harvard Staff members versus Harvard Alumni.
And in the article linked: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/andrew-gelman-sharad-goel-daniel-e-ho-affirmative-action-isnt-problem/
Among the most competitive applicants, the graphs show that Harvard staff are still more likely than alumni to rate whites more favorably than Asian Americans. In the top academic decile of applicants, Harvard staff put 23 percent of Asian Americans and 31 percent of whites in the top two personality categories. In contrast, alumni interviewers gave this group of Asian and white applicants these top ratings at much closer rates (64 percent and 66 percent, respectively).
Like you said, Harvard staff members were harsher on Asians relative to how alumni did the scoring, but across the board both groups rated a lower percentage of Asians top scores for personal relative to other races. Harvard staff was also harsher on all races across the board relative to alumni scoring. There probably is bias, but there is probably also some truth to the personal rating, at least based on my personal experiences of academically gifted Asians. There were Asians that got top scores on personal and Asians that didn't - what was the difference maker? I don't think luck on who interviewed them is the full answer. Even if it was true Asians would have to do better to get the same "personal" score, it's not as if there is absolutely nothing you can do to become a better speaker or to be more charismatic.
Also interesting to note that the students that did the best academically also tend to do the best on personality. The bottom 25th percentile score at Harvard is 1500, so these are all top 1% students from the country. I'm curious if the people rating the personal score had any idea about the person's actual academic scores, but it's all speculation at this point.
NullHypothesis
2mo ago
From the same article:
Surprisingly, teens from high-income households are more likely to have summer jobs than those from low-income households. The Department of Labor found that in 2023 households earning $100,000 to $150,000 per year had teen summer employment rates of 46%. For households earning less than $60,000, it was below 30%.
This might seem counterintuitive. You’d think rich teens would have the luxury to spend their summers traveling or pursuing hobbies, while working-class teens have to work to save for college and other expenses. It turns out that teen jobs are actually the luxury.
Statistically speaking, the households in the middle to upper-middle class are more likely to have teen summer jobs than poor households. Maybe there is something to learn from the wealthiest group in America. Asian kids growing up in households where they have to study all day would probably benefit from having a summer job in a customer facing role since they would learn to interact with larger segments of the population, which would improve social and communication skills. Elite-tier colleges often reject Asian applicants with high academic scores due to a lack of "soft skills". In the case that this is true, perhaps those Asian teenagers would have been better served building skills in a summer job than studying to get 50 more points on the SAT.
Who cares if Asians take 25% of Ivy League seats and conservatives find themselves increasingly locked out of the American elite?
The reason conservatives are not dominating top tier colleges is not because their kids worked a summer job.
There is a significant reason for the drop in teenager summer jobs that the article does not address or mention, which is the increase in the minimum wage. It's simply more expensive to hire people now than in 1950. Wealthy neighborhoods are less impacted because businesses there have more money to be able to afford to hire temporary work. Meanwhile, most businesses in low income neighborhoods are operating on razor-thin margins. They might have been able to afford teenagers to work for $5 an hour, but at $15 or higher they simply cannot afford to anymore. Cheap labor is one of the main reasons to hire a teenager over any other demographic; make all labor more expensive and there is less of a reason to hire teenagers.
One factor is immigration. Many of the jobs formerly held by teens are now held by immigrants, especially in food service, by far the most popular industry for teen workers. High-immigration states have the lowest teen summer employment rates, including California (24%), New York (29%), Nevada (24%), and Texas (29%). The states with the highest teen summer employment rates, at 75% and 67%, are Maine and Vermont.
Factor in immigration, which increases the supply of labor, and it's obvious why teen summer jobs are on the decline. If you're a restaurant, why would you take the risk of hiring and training someone for only 2-3 months of labor, individuals that could be lazy or awkward or fickle or more risk oriented on account of them being teenagers, when you can hire older immigrants instead? It's not Maine and Vermont that's responsible for the drop in the nation-wide teenager employment rate.
NullHypothesis
5mo ago
I get your perspective and I agree with your assessment, but it doesn't really change how I view it, since I wasn't making any statements about criminal vs civil law to begin with, and if it does come off that way, that was not my intention.
This does jog some memory of the stuff I learned in a really basic law course back in my college days, so thanks for that.
NullHypothesis
5mo ago
Or it's both innumeracy and political bias, otherwise we wouldn't see significant differences in estimations between racial or political groups.
For example, people are liberal are more likely to overestimate police killings compared to people that lean conservative:
https://research.skeptic.com/content/files/2025/02/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf
It's important to note that those estimations are numbers on aggregate, and if you dissect the data you may see additional patterns. Of course, the pattern could also just be noise.
NullHypothesis
5mo ago
Okay, I see your point. So you are just clarifying that the act of revoking a visa or permanent residency status is not a matter of criminal law.
But if a non-citizen commits a crime, and as a result gets deported due to the crime, is that not in a way punishment for committing said crime? An additional punishment granted to a non-citizen that would not be granted to a citizen?
NullHypothesis
5mo ago
I'm not sure what your point is. By "this" are you referring to the quote or to Chung's situation? Does the justification for deportation not have any basis on law and crime, and if there isn't is there no attempt to make it so?
Same in what aspect? If I give Kid A a candy for acing his test but don't give Kid B anything because he failed it, is that punishing Kid B?
NullHypothesis
5mo ago
The Devil must be punished not for being the Devil, but for the crimes he's committed that break the law.
Note that illegal immigrants have already broken the law and are usually the group that is the target of deportation, not legal immigrants.
The quote doesn't really address the question of if the degree of punishment can or should differ between categorically different individuals. One could argue that the law should treat everyone equally, but in reality punishment for law is different depending on the individual e.g. children vs adults. Similarly, a citizen and a permanent resident are not equivalent, and a citizen and an illegal immigrant even less so.
NullHypothesis
6mo ago
There isn't much evidence to support the notion that the overall support for the president is falling precipitously.
https://www.reuters.com/data/trumps-approval-rating-2025-01-21/
Note that amongst polling outlets, Reuters/Ipsos tends to be have less favorable ratings for trump.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/
If we look at the trend from polling only from Reuters/Ipsos, Trump started at a high of 47% approval and has remained at 44% for the previous 3 polling cycles.
We can see a bigger shift in the number of people who disapprove, from 41% to 51%, but again the three most recent polls show disapproval rates at 51%, 50%, then now 51%.
All I can garner from the polling data is that Republicans like Trump and Democrats dislike Trump. The only thing on the most recent poll that interested me is the number of Republicans that agree with Trump that "Ukraine is more to blame for starting the war" which has 11% at agree and 62% at disagree, which goes to show that his voter base doesn't just always blindly agree with what he Trump has to say.
NullHypothesis
1yr ago
https://x.com/travishelwig/status/1817954718989390317
Considering the guy who helped produced it previously worked for Crooked Media, a liberal/progressive American political media company, as well as Adam Ruins Everything, I'd wager it's an actual ad from a group that's on the left.
https://x.com/wontpacdown/status/1817953646409286059
They're asking for donations to actually get this on air, some possible explanations:
- Wontpacdown is grifting to get money
- Wontpacdown has no ties to Kamala campaign and genuinely believes this will help the democrats win the campaign
- Wontpacdown is being funded/directed by actual Democrat campaign operators to determine if this kind of messaging will help or hurt Kamala's chances on the campaign
I'm curious what actual normies and independents/undecided voters would think if they watched that ad. Or even your everyday democrat that isn't chronically online.
NullHypothesis
1yr ago
Just put some numbers/stats and keywords that sound impressive, at a lot of companies HR department, which is where your resume gets initially parsed, won't even have the knowledge to understand technical jargon. Also, most companies put the resumes through a filter before human eyes ever look at it, which is why you should try to match keywords to job postings.
If you're lucky enough to talk to an actual human, if the person isn't technical you wouldn't be able to divulge "trade secrets" even accidentally, and if they are technical you should be able to prove your competence by just talking with them.
Honestly I wouldn't worry about it too much, I highly doubt what you've worked on would qualify as trade secrets that you absolutely cannot divulge, and on the chance that it actually is the case, well your company should've thought twice before assigning a junior engineer with that kind of work.
Just a guess, but I reckon there are two main categories of Asian-White couples:
Asian-white in heavy liberal/tech focused city e.g. San Francisco. This would likely bring the average IQ up.
Bride-By-Mail / Expat Asian-White couples probably brings the average down, since the average women from those places tend to be less educated.
What's also interesting is that if you exclude whites, interracial couples tend to have higher IQ on average. This holds true for Hispanic-Black relationships compared to Hispanic-Hispanic.
NullHypothesis
1yr ago
Did the doxxing reveal if he specifically dislikes black-white interracial dating or other kinds of interracial dating e.g. white-hispanic or white-asian?
NullHypothesis
1yr ago
Guess I don't really know the guy but didn't think I've ever see Madoka Magica in the same sentence with Yudkowsky and drone warfare. I think the issue with these longer works is you have to ask yourself would you be willing to reread the entire thing from the start when the next part is out? There's a lot of good ideas in these longer webnovels but the length is definitely an issue for a lot of people, which is why having a good editor is crucial if you ever want to get it to print. But then you get fans of the webnovel complaining how X and Y were edited and on and on it goes.
I've been binge-watching Roman history videos on YouTube and saw a comment that I should read Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series. It chronicles the last days of the Roman Republic. There's seven books in the series and approximately 568,230 words in total. Apparently the author collected and researched thousands of books and material on the history of Rome while writing the series so it should be fairly historically accurate, although since it is historic fiction there will be made up parts. I barely started the first book so I don't have much thoughts on it yet, but I'm excited to dive into the series.
NullHypothesis
1yr ago
Is GovTrack an actual reliable source? I saw an article about how six democrats voted with the GOP to condemn Kamala Harris as the Border Czar so I looked up these six democrats (and to no surprise ideologically they're in the middle). So I just clicked around, and their political stance becomes obvious with a page like this:
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/ted_cruz/412573
The "Elections must be decided by counting votes" specifically, that's apparent if you select the page for numerous Republican senators. Factor in the fact that they removed the scorecard page labeling her as the most liberal senator and their bias is clear, but I did find utility in their Ideology–Leadership Chart as well-being able to view their voting records and bills.
NullHypothesis
1yr ago
I was being a little cheeky there with the number quoted in the article, which was "Over 10,000 white men from all across the country are expected to join the effort this week and will be on hand to welcome Vice President Harris to the presidential race and pledge to help get her elected".
I see a few common types of criticism of Charlie Kirk floating around in response to his death. These appear to be gotchas that people are using to justify his assassination, or that he had it coming. I don't think these gotchas are as valid as some people think they are. It's a mixture of his own quotes and things he has said previously.
There are also some comparisons of Kirk's assassination to the assassination of two democrat Minnesota lawmakers, and how the right gave little care for the killing of the two democrat politicians. I go more into detail about why these are not comparable here: https://www.themotte.org/post/3128/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/364180?context=8#context
Here is the full context of the empathy quote:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-001900786.html
He also had this to say about empathy
So Kirk is criticizing the liberal use of empathy, and he directly states he prefers sympathy. Not a gotcha. Maybe one doesn't need to empathize with him, but at least show some sympathy since the stated reasoning is he said he doesn't like empathy, but he did not say the same about sympathy? Kirk's stance on the word empathy does not justify gleeful jubilation of his death.
Here is the full context of the second amendment quote:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-charlie-kirk-once-205500283.html
This is so clearly not a celebration of gun deaths from Charlie Kirk. It's part of a larger argument. He's not calling for or supporting the use of guns in senseless killings. I think this is a stronger "gotcha" and the irony is definitely there. I do think the argument that his stance of gun control directly contributed to an environment that made him being killed by guns more likely does have some element of truth to it. But Kirk's stance is not a gleeful condonation of deaths via guns. It's also a pretty standard pro 2nd amendment stance.
One could argue the rates of death to usage in auto accident deaths is much lower and the benefits much higher compared to the availability of guns in America. But then they would be making the same type of argument Kirk is making here. I don't think people would say someone that dies in an auto accident deserves it because they support driving cars. I do think at a certain point the statistics will shift my stance that the risk of guns outweigh the benfits procured by the second amendment. Most people using this quote are not even willing to have that conversation.
Also, we have to consider the usage of the tool. It would be extremely ironic if Kirk died via gunfire in the process of protecting god-given rights, as he claimed. We don't know the motive of the killer, but I highly doubt the intention was to protect any god-given rights. Going back to the car analogy, if someone were to argue we should allow unlimited speed on a highway but dies from drunk driving, there is some element of irony, but it's not as ironic as if that person were to die from driving high speeds on the highway. Neither did Kirk die from a random altercation on the street or a stray bullet, which I think would give more credence to the irony factor. Kirk was deliberately assassinated via gun for likely politically motivated reasons.
Here is the full context of the Paul Pelosi quote: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/charlie-kirk-bail-out-alleged-paul-pelosi-attacker-1234621493/
Not an exact comparison for a few reasons. Paul Pelosi is not dead. Furthermore, this statement is made in context of a world that many criminals from blue cities constantly get out on bail. See Karmelo Anthony or Decarlos Brown Jr. as recent high profile examples of criminals getting out on bail (In the case of Decarlos Brown, he is not out on bail for murder, but he was out on bail when he murdered the Ukrainian girl).
Kirk is not stating the attacker is a hero. He's saying we should bail him out to ask questions. He does come off a bit celebratory of the attack. But Paul Pelosi is not dead, and I'm fairly certain news was out by this point that he was recovering, which gives for more room to makes jokes about the other side than murder.
He also literally states that he thinks the attack was awful and it's not right.
The constant use of out of context quotes to push an agenda or to condone murder is frankly sickening and all so tiresome. Find me an example of Charlie Kirk being gleeful at the deaths of others, and I'll adjust my stances a bit. But so far, these are not it.
EDIT: Adding in this as one more example of a criticism I just saw from someone I consider a centrist.
This is followed up by a statement that Kirk has "abhorent" politics, he was perpetuating bad ideas to a wide audience, and that we're better off without him. He did express symapthy for his wife and kids. My benefit of the doubt is that all but 2 of the people he is talking to had been making fun of Charlie and criticising him, so he subconsciously adopts a more critical stance.
Source of that claim is around 18:20 in this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=aL1k2I1HtXE&t=1066
By the way this is really fucking painful to transcript becuase Charlie and the other person speaking keep talking over each other so I will put this AI transcript for now and clean up later. Just watch the video at the timestamp i gave if you want the full context.
I expect a better take or example from someone with a centrist view. The reason that claim might come off as shocking is because the imagery of a raped 11 year old being forced to give birth is sickening. But if your stance is that is that the fetus are human beings with rights and that abortion is murder, it is not an absurd position to hold that aborting the child in an 11 year old is wrong even if the circumstances of that pregnancy is horrifying and evil. This is a logical conclusion from his openly stated beliefs about abortion. Also this is an absurdly rare scenario that the other person, Maren, brought up to justify abortions. It's not like Kirk randomly made that statement to be edgy, it's in response to a hypothetical scenario made by his opponent.
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