Japanese people are offended, so don’t do it there. People in other places tend to be flattered, so you can, occasionally. But the idea that you should pay your employees a living wage has been a well established principle since the 19th century.
I've found that when I go to restaurants outside the U.S. without speaking their native tongue they often ask where I'm from. Answering that you are from the U.S. will make the servers overly friendly and then they will ask for a tip.
> a pandering move to the mostly financially-illiterate populace
I immediately assumed it was a clear overture to people who are very financially literate and who were expecting within minutes an email from their tax lawyer to explain how payment for their activity happen to quality for a very loose definition of tips. At least the part that wasn’t already tax-free thanks to international montages, blind trusts and creative reporting.
He was very civil and gave people the opportunity to express themselves. But it often had the result of giving them enough rope to hang themselves with.
You may have seen some of the many "own the libs" style edits of him out there, some of which he/his team created and promoted. There are many examples like the one below, which is absolutely a constructive discussion.
The whole thing is aggressively imbalanced: he’s sat, protected by guards, on a stage over the other person; the people asking questions are standing, their back to a large vocal crowd that may of may not be armed.
He’s cherry-picking one interaction, has all the editing controls, and even with all that, he literally interrupted the guy less than a minute in.
This is exactly what I meant: the appearance of a debate, with a heavy anvil on the scale.
Why in the world would he be protected by guards I wonder? Save me the hand wringing about the "power imbalance" and focus on the substance of the conversation.
The comment I was responding to claimed that he did not engage in constructive conversations. This video is ABSOLUTELY an example of a constructive conversation.
Constructive conversation would be you asking why we didn’t think this was, learning from our perspective. It’s when you use questions marks for something else than snark.
You don’t seem to know what that looks like, so you telling me WITH BIG SHOUTY LETTERS that ABSOLUTELY it is… That feels a bit self-defeating to stay polite.
You are the one using him as a reference. Neither of you care to understand what the other person is saying and grow from others’ experience; you only care to pretend to debate with people who already agree with you, and find witty quips if not.
Otherwise, you would have stopped your reply at the first line. That could have been a great question if you cared enough to read to the answer before dismissing it.
He got smoked at the UK Cambridge Union student debate club ("the oldest debating society in the world, as well as the largest student society in Cambridge.").
Bad faith arguments and cheap rhetorical trickery didn't wash.
The only excerpts from those debates on the Charlie Kirk channel are edited to show him in a good light - the original full videos tell a different tale.
This is a link to a full 12 minute video. You can't watch it and claim that he's not interested in having a constructive discussion.
I don't doubt he lost debates. I don't doubt that there were instances where he took cheap rhetorical shots. I've done that, you've done that, and he did that.
Watch the video and you will undoubtedly understand OP's point
There were multiple Cambridge Union debates, 1 hour forty minutes in total. He did poorly on all of them .. almost as if he'd never encountered a proper formal debate with rules and procedures before.
Cambridge debating is a microcosm of parliamentary debates in the UK, AU and elsewhere that I'm not entirely sure the US has in government anymore, if ever - the CSPAN footage I've seen largely features lone people showboating unchallenged, often with props.
Your 12 minute video shows a back and forth near Q&A exchange between Kirk and another not entirely opposed with Kirk taking various interpretations of well regulated militia as he saw them with little push back.
It has edits and has been self selected and post produced by Kirk to post on his channel to highlight how "good" he is.
I reacted to the context of that video. You ignoring that and telling me that I didn’t do it is a nice illustrations of the problem I have with pretend debate.
There are many examples of exchanges of ideas. You can hide from them if you want, but they are numerous, well documented, and widely available.
Regardless of how offensive you may find the arguments he made, or the fact that he promoted them and was paid for them, there are tens of millions of Americans who agree with him. What do you propose to do about them? Delete them? Send them to re-education camps? Strip their voting rights? Of course not. Shaming and ostracizing them as “deplorable” has now reached its 10th year as a failed strategy.
There’s only 1 option — we have to talk to each other. Are the conversations imperfect? Yes. Are they often performative yelling where no one will change their mind? Sure. Does it allow people whose views are heinous to articulate those in front of an audience? You bet. Did Charlie Kirk build a business around it with clickbait titles about "owning the libs?" Yep. And does this country need more engagement and dialogue? Unquestionably. There is no alternative.
There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.). Given the segments of society that are armed to the teeth, you’d think the left would be the side that is eager for dialogue over violence, but instead many on the left are celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk. Even those who wouldn’t embrace the “violence > dialogue” rhetoric can often be influenced by it, as can be seen in the “He didn’t deserve murder, BUT…” statements.
You may have seen clips of Kirk answering the question of “why are you doing this?” I’m seeing it shared frequently in the aftermath of his death, because it was asked of him a lot. He says it quite plainly: “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.” He’s correct on this point, and I believe his legacy will be for being someone gunned down for and in the act of trying to address issues via dialogue. I encourage you to consider that, as I suspect my rant above about the importance of dialogue over violence is actually very much aligned with your own values.
yes, the conversations need to be honest and on equal footing. Not rage/click-bait to further divide society, which is exactly what Kirk did. His "conversations" were not about exchanging ideas but "owning the libs".
> There’s a deeply concerning, common pattern of radicalized rhetoric on the left rejecting dialogue in favor of “action” (read: violence.).
Qanon, January sixth, Pizzagate, Plandemic, Birther and other conspiracy theories, the attacks on democrat politicians, the rhetoric around George Floyds murder and BLM, the rage against black athletes doing something as simple as taking a knee. See a pattern? Hell Trump's own words and those of his cabinet are radicalized rhetoric, so I really don't know what to tell you when you say "the left rejects dialogue and is violent". "The left" has tried for years to explain the world via fact checking and educational content, lots of good that has done!
> “If we don’t work out our disagreements with conversations, there’s only violence left.”
Charlie Kirk never planned to be swayed by a better opinion. His whole career was based on "prove me wrong", an obvious challenge to prove that he is right, and nothing can sway him. Give me one time where he changed his mind through dialogue. Even when shown a dolphin foetus and mistook it for human, he did not accept that he was wrong.
So yea, excuse me if I don't think you are arguing in good faith, just like i don't think Charlie Kirk ever was.
It seems like no one can disagree with you in good faith. This is a convenient scapegoat for you to ignore strong counterarguments, since all it takes to dismiss the speaker is their "lack of good faith." With your brilliant reasoning, after all, how could anyone of good faith disagree?
> His "conversations" were not about exchanging ideas but "owning the libs".
There are many counterexamples to this. If you're arguing in such good faith, you should explore those.
> lots of good that has done!
Even this is a good example of what I'm talking about. It sounds like you're giving up on dialogue, which is precisely my point. Don't give up on it. Commend those who seek it.
> fact checking
Get out of your bubble. The many failures of anything-but-neutral fact checking are patently obvious, if you have the good faith to look.
> Charlie Kirk never planned to be swayed by a better opinion
You may be correct, but that doesn't even matter. The proposition that no one was swayed by his dialogue would be outrageous, and I doubt you would make such an argument. So even if he would never change his mind, he's still contributing to dialogue.
I asked you before -- What is it that you propose be done about the tens of millions of Americans that agree with Charlie Kirk?
> It seems like no one can disagree with you in good faith.
I gave you about 10 examples of "the right" being unhinged, violent and espousing radical rhetoric. You conveniently ignored all of them and continue claiming it's "the left" that does not want dialogue. That is bad faith.
> There are many counterexamples to this.
I am really not about to waste my time going through that dreck. If you have examples i'll have a look.
> Get out of your bubble. The many failures of anything-but-neutral fact checking are patently obvious,
Again, going to need sources. Is "get out of your bubble" the constructive discourse you were mentioning earlier?
> What is it that you propose be done about the tens of millions of Americans that agree with Charlie Kirk?
That I do not know, people have been radicalized by insane conspiracy theories over the last 10 - 15 years that I don't think much can be done to help them at this point.
Just for context, here some constructive statements from Charlie Kirk:
- If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.
- Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.
- Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.
- The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.
- The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.
- There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.
The right does not have a monopoly on hateful, violent people/rhetoric. The idea that they do is a soothing story people on the left like to tell themselves.
I don’t defend those things he said, or those things hateful rightwing things you cited. The fact that you think of them as a response to “look at this bad thing on the left” is very telling. The existence of bad things on the right have no bearing on the observation that there are bad things on the left.
You should think more deeply about what to do about all those Americans who agree with Charlie Kirk. “Force them to change their minds” is not an option available to you.
I encourage you to read the thread you jumped in on, which begins with the example you asked for. The first comment you responded to, which perhaps you stopped reading partially through, explains my position, and it’s not “Charlie Kirk is the good guy here.” You don’t have to like him, you can disagree with everything he thinks, but he was doing politics the right way: through debate and discussion. Classifying that as somehow invalid is an attempt to insulate yourself from challenges to your worldview.
Multiple people not simply one, all still students (given it was May 2025), but headed for careers as professional orators in law, politics, business, and able to debate with structural rules, yes.
I was more thinking that girl who is now signed up to a talent mgmt company. The real debate fanatics doing it for the love of the game all do it in proper clubs in london and so on.
> we would not be better off without such extremist language poisoning people's minds
I genuinely can’t tell if you realize that this is a description of the victim, and your comment could easily be construed as a justification for what happened, or if you condemn the action so heartily you missed that.
Which leads to my point: there are discourses around this that completely miss each other. That’s a huge problem because so many people will loudly express strongly held emotions and two people will read completely opposite view points. US public discourse is at a point where language, without copying context, is failing.
Saying “both sides miss each other” isn’t true either: I’m convinced one side is perfectly capable of quoting leaders of the other, even if they find it absurd, but the reciprocal isn’t true. Many people can’t today say what was the point of one of the largest presidential campaign. They’ll mention points that were never raised by any surrogate or leaders. But they can’t tell that because the relationship is complete severed.
I don’t think there’s a balanced argument around violence, either: one side has leaders who vocally and daily argue for illegal acts violence, demand widespread gun possession vs. another where some commentators occasionally mention that violent revolution is an option, but leaders are always respectful. The vast majority of people who commit gun violence support one particular political movement, even the violence against the leaders of that same movement. If that’s not obvious to you, I can assure you that you are out off from a large part of the political discourse about the US, not just around you, but internationally.
I want to like Black (or rather, uv format), but the mandatory trailing commas weird me out, especially in function definitions. It always looks like an error to me.
I've seen the reason, I just don't find it convincing. I would like to omit these commas, but also use the formatter sometimes, but that's not really an option. It's frustrating since 'uv format' will omit them for older python versions, so the logic is there.
Something between "everything fits on one short line" and "every argument gets its own line" would be nice too. Spreading a function definition or call across ten lines when it would fit on two or three doesn't feel like an automatic win.
This rings incredibly true, with one major exception: Google Translate can’t handle Finnish to a point that’s both confusing and hilarious. If the output explains how asyncio works, I’m guessing the original discussion was about opening portal for demons, or waiting in line to board the ferry to Estonia.
Curious to hear about how they feel about many key StatSig people walking away, and Vijaye going to lead a different product. OpenAI bought it for internal use. They plan to put the public-facing product into more of a maintenance mode.
I sell Saas software that’s easily six figures per month. I think there’s a confusion between professional prices are “Pro“ as the upper tier of individual service.
That summarizes a common pattern where chat bots are not fixing the cost of having humans handle your problems, but the fact that either the app or the human process doesn’t have the permission it needs, and chatbots have not been optimized against those yet.
It’s an indictment of how decisions are made at those companies, not a vote for the relevance of chatbots.
Japanese people are offended, so don’t do it there. People in other places tend to be flattered, so you can, occasionally. But the idea that you should pay your employees a living wage has been a well established principle since the 19th century.