“Trump’s psychology is its own weather system—symbolic victories ‘count’ to him, even when they mean nothing in reality.”
Category: Ask A Genius
Ask A Genius 1605: Dog Death, Greenland Threats, and Meaning at Scale
“We might beat biology and then be crushed by technology. From the largest scale, we do not matter much; locally, we matter for a while. The trick is holding grief, politics, and cosmic time in the same frame without losing moral clarity.”
Ask A Genius 1604: ICE Tactics in Minnesota, DOJ Stonewalling, and Media Literacy
Rick Rosner: “People should be educated to be suspicious—but not stupidly suspicious. That is part of civic education. Another part should be learning how to tell the difference between a legitimate scientific paper or expert and a charlatan… Someone with even a bit of training can usually tell fairly quickly why a paper is bullshit.”
Ask A Genius 1603: Aging, Intelligence, and Romance
The easiest way to become handsome is to become recognizable. Fame normalizes faces, intelligence tempts reinvention, and marriage demands endurance. Consistency may not feel romantic, but decades of work are. Sometimes the smartest move is not optimization, but following rules billions survived by, quietly, imperfectly, and together over time historically.
Ask A Genius 1602: Trump, Nobel Symbolism, and Ethical Conflict
Rick Rosner: Invoking the Insurrection Act could expand domestic deployment authority, but it does not allow a president to cancel federal elections. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That leads to ethics: two narratives, one faith-based and transcendental, the other humanist and empirical. Who is winning, and at what cost in the U.S.?
Ask A Genius 1601: Rosie, ICE Controversies, Iran Crackdown, and America’s Political Stress Test
“We’re trying to keep her going as long as she allows. Then you look outward and everything feels more extreme—enforcement surges, outrage, and a culture that records everything. The American system has levers, but soft power is eroding. Some movements do not vanish; they age out.”
Ask A Genius 1600: Renée Nicole Good Shooting, Millionaire Lawsuit, and a Robot-Fitness Future
On a multiple-choice quiz show, the correct answer should exist among the choices. The situation was especially absurd because I am meticulous about this sort of thing. I reviewed approximately 110,000 Millionaire questions from versions of the show across more than thirty countries to confirm that my interpretation was correct.
Ask A Genius 1599: Bodies, Injustice, and the Senses Over Time
“Aging isn’t just physical decline; it’s a narrowing and sharpening of attention. You lose people, you lose illusions, and some drives blunt themselves. But memory—especially smell—sticks around because it once kept us alive. What changes isn’t meaning itself, but how selectively we carry it.”
Ask A Genius 1598: Design, Desire, and Evolutionary Reality
“Evolution shaped bodies for survival, not aesthetics. A penis isn’t sleek; it’s hydraulics. Context and consent matter more than anatomy. Humans aren’t the strongest primates, but we’re clever, cooperative, and adaptable—and a lot of our bravado is just beetle-level posturing with better vocabulary.”
Ask A Genius 1597: ICE Use of Force, Video Evidence, and Minneapolis Protests
“In use-of-force analysis, each shot must be justified independently. The only shot that might plausibly be argued as justified would be the first one, when the officer was closer to the front of the vehicle and could claim he felt in danger. The later shots followed after the vehicle passed.”
Rick Rosner 