“On my first day in Kyiv I heard a Shahed drone hovering above us—the closest comparison for a North American mind would be a lawnmower in the sky. They are not quiet; they are very loud.” — Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Tag: news
Ask A Genius 1622: Welcome to the Trump Show, Institutional Erosion, and the Overton Window
“The Overton window defines the range of ideas considered acceptable in public debate… Political actors on the far right actively work to shift that window.”
Ask A Genius 1614: Enshittification, Tech Decline, and Power
“Technology keeps getting more powerful, but our experience of it gets worse—because the business and cultural layer is about extraction, not improvement.”
Ask A Genius 1612: From a 1920s Report Card to Authoritarian Alarm: Found History, Memory, and Power in America
“People tuck things into books—and sometimes they tuck entire histories inside them.”
Ask A Genius 1609: FBI Resignation, ICE Shooting, and DOJ Stonewalling Claims
“In other words, it resembles stonewalling.”
Ask A Genius 1606: Symbolism, Strategy, and Second-Term Failures
“Trump’s psychology is its own weather system—symbolic victories ‘count’ to him, even when they mean nothing in reality.”
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 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.”
Ask A Genius 1590: Tron, Sports Money, Epstein Files, X, and Measles
“It is called papering the opposition.”
Ask A Genius 1555: Trump’s Sliding Polls and Shutdown Fallout
Scott Douglas Jacobsen presses Rick Rosner on why Donald Trump’s approval is deflating amid cost of living strain, tariffs, and a long federal shutdown. Rosner, who places tiny prediction bets, expects support to hover in the low forties. He argues Trump’s chaos distracts from policy failures, with inflation near three percent and looming insurance hikes hurting households. He criticizes ICE’s accountability and leadership, citing broader abuses of power. On Wole Soyinka’s visa, he decries political vindictiveness. Addressing elevated stillbirths, he points to COVID’s long tail, deferred care from affordability barriers, and persistent racial inequities in maternal and infant health outcomes.
Rick Rosner 