"I'm not trying to impress you. I'm just trying to impress upon you: I'm like you."

The rare double self-own

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) February 23, 2026

Let's look at the 2 obvious problems:

1. He's calling attention to his struggle with a serious disability, dyslexia. We talked about that here, a few weeks ago. He seems to be confessing something that is true, making himself vulnerable and relatable. Of course, he's also exposing his limitations. But his antagonists may screw up trying to take advantage of this. 

2. In saying "I'm like you" to what seems to be an audience of black people, he's taking a risk. You can hear warm laughter, as, perhaps, many people relate to him, because they've struggled with exams, for whatever reason. But he seems to be unwittingly expressing the old stereotype about black people — the one right-wing people love to bring up. So, again, his antagonists will screw up trying to exploit what is, from him, only a slight innuendo. I'll bet some of you do it right here in the comments.

ADDED: Nicki Minaj responds to that Newsom clip:

His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read. 

This means my first read on him was correct. He’s been handed so many things & put in high positions he never earned or deserved. 

Do you wanna know the craziest part of this footage that will haunt him forever? He’s literally slowing his speech down & talking in a sporadic cadence. 

He’s not just TELLING them that they’re all probably stupid & probably can’t read, he’s LITERALLY SLOW-ING-DOWN-HIS-SPEECH to make them understand the words that are coming out of his mouth!!!! As if they’re children!!!! That means he REALLY BELIEVES they’re slow. He’s not just saying it—he didn’t misspeak!!!! He BELIEVES it!!!!

Do ya love it?!?!! 

Do ya just love it, black ppl?!????

It reminds me of Jesse Jackson's criticism of Obama: "He is talking down to black people." Obama survived. Obama thrived. 

"Why did The New Yorker, which perpetuates the myth that they employ an army of meticulous fact-checkers, pollute our understanding of mind and brain by publishing these fabrications for decades?"

Asks Steven Pinker, on X, as he reads the New Yorker article "Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?"

Pinker answers his own question like this: "Because their primary commitment is to a belletristic, literarist, romantic promotion of elite cultural sensibilities over the tough-minded analyses of philistine scientists and technologists, their rival elite.... A common denominator behind Sacks's fabrications was that ineffable, refined intuition can surmount cerebral analysis, which is limited and cramped. It's a theme that runs through some of their other blunders, such as... [t]he many articles by Malcolm Gladwell (like Sacks, a fine essayist) which mixed good reporting with dubious statistical reasoning and misleading claims (e.g., that only practice, not talent, is necessary for achievement, or that IQ above 120 doesn't matter)."

From the New Yorker article, which is by Rachel Aviv: 

James Comey's now-infamous Instagram account is mostly about marketing his novel... which has a theme that's suspiciously close to his "8647" gambit.

At the top of his Instagram account (quoting Publisher's Weekly):

Thanks to Charlie Martin for pointing me at Comey's book: "So, now it turns out that Comey actually has a book coming out in a few days about a Mary Sue main character who investigates, arrests, and apparently convicts a conservative radio talker of inciting a murder by dog-whistling. Coincidentally."

I read Martin's post while I was still in bed this morning looking at my iPhone, and I quickly dictated this question into the ChatGPT app (I usually access A.I. by typing things into Grok):

"What is the argument that James Comey by showing a photograph of rocks in the shape of 8647 was really teasing a novel that he had written, which is about someone accused of inciting violence by giving out an obscure message and [Comey] will actually benefit from this new attention he’s getting from the right because people on his left will actually get excited about his otherwise incredibly boring book."

Yeah, that's the way I talk when I'm, essentially, talking to myself. Notice my lazy bias toward thinking everything is boring. Anyway, I had these follow-up questions:

1. "How smart is James Comey?"

2. "He would need to be smart in a marketing and media sense to have come up with the idea of posting that photograph as a way to gin up interest in his novel. He strikes me as someone who is too boring and staid to attempt such a flashy scheme, and he would have to be willing to do something different to expose himself to criminal accusations. It almost seems like something Trump would do ironically."

You can read all ChatGPT's responses here, but the bottom line is: "Your read—that he’s too boring and staid for such a risky, theatrical move—aligns far more closely with what we’ve seen of him than the idea of a QAnon-baiting media play."

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"Musk’s onetime biographer Seth Abramson wrote on X that he would 'peg his IQ as between 100 and 110'..."

"... and claimed that there was 'zero evidence in his biography for anything higher.' The economics commentator Noah Smith estimated Musk’s IQ at more than 130, a number gleaned from his reported SAT score. A circulating screenshot shows Fox News has pegged the number at 155, citing Sociosite, a junk website. The pollster Nate Silver guessed that Musk is 'probably even a "genius,"' and theorized that he may not always appear that way because... 'high IQs serve as a force multiplier for both positive and negative traits.'... To some of our most powerful people, IQ has come to stand in as the totalizing measure of a person — and a justification for the power that they claim. Trump has spent much of his second term sorting humans into 'low IQ individuals' (Kamala Harris, Representative Al Green) and 'high IQ individuals' (cryptocurrency boosters, Musk, Musk’s 4-year-old son)... Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is seeking 'super high-IQ' applicants.... This whole elite intelligence-measuring contest sets the stage for the 'high IQ' tech leader to seize ownership over the concept of intelligence itself — and to ultimately bring all people under its control. As Musk recently posted on X, the platform that he owns: 'It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.'"

Writes Amanda Hess, in "What Is Elon Musk’s IQ? The questionable measure of intelligence has now been uncoupled from any test and loosed into the discourse to justify Silicon Valley’s power" (NYT).

I hate to think I'm inclined to ask Grok: What did Elon Musk mean by "It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence"? And: What does it say about my IQ that I had to ask?

I didn't know the term "bootloader." Reminds me of "bootlicker." And I'm distracted by the (irrelevant) image of a boot... but "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

"I just deleted my account. I only signed up for this bc my younger brother had suspicions that our Dad was not his real biological father..."

"... and that he and I were just so.....different.....from our older siblings. They had no interest in education beyond high school (surprise surprise, they all voted for Trump), while he and I were voracious re: higher education. So he signed up and discovered that he was right. He told me the deal and asked if I would sign up too, bc he trusted me to not freak out. Sure enough, we have the same bio-dad and my bro eventually discovered that we have 2 half-siblings that he met up with in January and introduced me to them via Zoom. Strange feeling."

A comment at the Washington Post article, "Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now
The genetic information company declared bankruptcy on Sunday, and California’s attorney general has issued a privacy 'consumer alert.'"

There are also plenty of comments expressing doubt that the data really is deleted. I was just highly amused to find another example of Trump showing up everywhere. Also, this man is flattering himself for his virtuous liberalism and, at the same time, expressing a belief in genetic determinism.

"My actual fantasy for like the rise of super intelligence is that when you do train it on all human knowledge, it is essentially incapable of having anything other than per progressive values."

"Like if you actually make the smartest thing in the world, it, it winds up sort of being infused with like kindness and empathy and respect for all lives. I, I don't have any expectation that that will be the actual case, but it does seem like so far when you train these models on the data that everyone trains these models on, you do get these actually like pretty sweet kind progressive models. That's like kind of interesting."

From "How Based is Grok 3?" — the new episode of the NYT podcast "Hard Fork" (audio and transcript at that link, to Podscribe).

Of course I queried Grok 3 about the podcaster's fantasy, and it noted first that AI systems can "come off as 'sweet' or cautious because they’re tuned to avoid offense and reflect a kind of sanitized consensus." I like the way that includes a suspicion I have that progressives like to think they have something deeper going on — they call it empathy — but it's superficial — it's niceness.  Of course, if you cross them or, say, wear a MAGA hat, they won't be nice. 

But Grok said it was a "a big assumption" to imagine that "all human knowledge" will take you to some sort of cosmic kindness and love for all humanity. As Grok put it: "Human knowledge isn’t just a pile of noble ideas—it’s a chaotic mix of compassion and cruelty, wisdom and bias, reason and rage."

I don't think high intelligence fed vast knowledge makes people kinder. Some of the smartest people are cruel assholes. And what do you think is the average IQ of the top 10% kindest human beings? If I had to bet, I'd guess below average. No way to know, of course. Even if we trusted IQ tests and tested everyone, we'd never come up with an adequate test for kindness. Or could you?

That last paragraph is completely written by me, with no Grok assistance, but I fed it to Grok. My question speaks for itself though. I'll end here.

AND: I believe that kindness and empathy originate from the entire human nervous system — much more than just the brain. Without a body, why would A.I. have a tendency to arrive at empathy or something like it? Also a real person has to worry about real-life consequences — winning and losing friends, reciprocal kindness, cruel payback, getting promoted or fired, feeling shame or pride. A.I. is free of all that. 

PLUS: My next questions for Grok were: 1. What did Ayn Rand say about the love humans seem to feel for each other? and 2. Isn't that more like where A.I. should be expected to go? I don't want to overload this space with Grok answers. Let my questions stand on their own or serve as prompts for commenters.

"An honour to have my IQ questioned by you Mr VP. But your attempts to speak for Christ are false and dangerous."

"Nowhere does Jesus suggest that love is to be prioritised in concentric circles. His love is universal."

Said Rory Stewart, a podcaster, quoted in "JD Vance says Rory Stewart has ‘low IQ’ in Christian values clash/The US vice-president copies Trump’s playbook with response to the former minister’s claims that his rhetoric was ‘false and dangerous'" (London Times).

Vance's original statement was: "There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that."

When Stewart disagreed, Vance came at him with: "Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone? This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years. Rory Stewart thinks he has an IQ of 130 when it’s really 110.'"

It's not a question of what Rory really thinks but what Jesus really said. What IQ does Vance ascribe to Jesus?

"Valiant says that he tries not to use the word 'intelligent' to describe people (in fact, he is 'sometimes taken aback' when he hears others use it)..."

"... instead, he is drawn to 'valuable abilities that somehow involve learning and are not well captured by conventional notions of IQ.' An educable mind, he writes, can learn from books, lectures, conversations, experiences, and Zen koans—from anything, really—and notice when relevant aspects of almost forgotten knowledge reveal themselves.... To a degree, the connections, recombinations, and new applications of knowledge involved in being educable are useful precisely because they aren’t obvious.... A civil-engineering class I took in college, which focussed on the structural forces shouldered by bridges and skyscrapers, comes back to me with great regularity when I think about all sorts of things. Wind exerts its force along the length of a skyscraper, causing it to bend. Similarly, a new source of stress in your life can’t be compartmentalized; it increases the pressure everywhere. It’s interesting to see one’s mind through the lens of educability. It makes you wonder what other cross-pollinations have occurred.... Reading widely about things that don’t seem immediately or practically useful, in the hope that what you learn now may prove meaningful later—that’s pretty much the definition of a liberal-arts education. Who knew that one of its best defenders would turn out to be a computer scientist?"

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "What Does It Really Mean to Learn?/A leading computer scientist says it’s 'educability,' not intelligence, that matters most" (The New Yorker).

Valiant =  Leslie Valiant, the computer scientist. His book is “The Importance of Being Educable.” 

"Jeremy was competitive while young and felt immense pressure to demonstrate gifted achievement every day."

"'I could only work in fear. Only the fear of failure made me work in the end,' he said. As a young adult, he was paralyzed by the number of life options in front of him. He went into medicine and spent about 13 years as a medical student and doctor but eventually was hit by depression so severe, he couldn’t function. He wound up as a musician — not celebrated but enjoying himself and paying the bills...."

Writes David Brooks, in "What Happens to Gifted Children" (NYT).

"The story takes place from 2011 to 2027 in an alternative America where... the Mental Parity movement holds sway."

"In the novel, the so-called last acceptable bias — discrimination against those considered, um, not so smart — is being stamped out.... Barack Obama, in this alternative America, is doomed to be a one-term president because, by 2012, 'the whole notion that one might want to look up to anyone in a position of authority had become preposterous' Instead, the 'impressively unimpressive' Joe Biden steps in, after which, in 2015, the Democratic Party seizes on Donald Trump as their 'shoo-in' candidate for, among myriad other reasons, the fact that 'he never reads.'...."

Writes Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air" book critic, in "Lionel Shriver pokes fun at woke culture, again/The controversial writer’s new novel, ‘Mania,’ is a funny and occasionally offensive satire of groupthink" (WaPo).

"Zack suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, the result of his mother drinking heavily throughout her pregnancy."

"When he was 3, he was hospitalized for drinking about 10 ounces of vodka.... [H]is stepfather... forced him to perform sex acts, kicked him with spurs, beat him, ran him over with a car, forced him to drink alcohol, injected him with drugs, attempted to drown him and created devices to electrically shock him if he wet the bed.... When he was a child, Zack’s older sister killed their mother with an ax.... As an adult... [h]e was unable to cook, measure, select weather-appropriate clothing, follow a bathing routine, follow directions, pass a driver’s test or open a bank account.... In 2002... the Supreme Court held that executing people with intellectual disabilities violated [the] constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.... but courts repeatedly denied him relief, citing Florida’s IQ score cutoff...."

 
From "Florida Executes Man Sentenced To Death By Split Jury/Michael Zack’s lawyers say he had an intellectual disability. He was killed amid Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push to make it easier to execute people" (HuffPo).

"Keep a wide berth from people who obsess about their IQs. 'People who boast about their IQ are losers,' Stephen Hawking once told the New York Times."

"See, for example, Donald Trump. The only thing Trump seems to love more than making creepy comments about his daughter Ivanka is boasting about how high his IQ is. He’s referenced his IQ at least 22 times but the most memorable instance might be when he tweeted: 'Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.' An IQ score is a flawed measurement of intelligence – but boasting about one is a failsafe way to show people you’re a dimwit."

That's point #5 in "Want to quickly spot idiots? Here are five foolproof red flags" by Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi.

1. It's a red flag to believe your red flags are foolproof. 

Was Virginia Heffernan's Wired article about Pete Buttigieg badly written?

I saw Wired's promotion of the article on Twitter 2 days ago (2 members of my family independently shared this with me, so it must be my kind of raw material):

With a remarkable blend of intellect and empathy, Pete Buttigieg brings a fresh perspective to the forefront of public discourse. https://t.co/mzbXgnvkSv

📷: ​​Argus Paul Estabrook pic.twitter.com/KzI3qKrIA2

— WIRED (@WIRED) May 18, 2023

I read the first few paragraphs of the article and felt stirred up to make fun of it, but then I stopped myself. This morning, I'm seeing a Legal Insurrection article by Mike LaChance that reflects the sort of mockery I nearly fell into: "Wired Magazine Gets Roasted for Cringeworthy Puff Piece on Pete Buttigieg/'he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes—neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity—intelligible to me.'"

Did I miss my chance to get in on the early mockery action or was I right to stop myself — because this thing might be brilliant writing? Is this something in the Hunter S. Thompson/Tom Wolfe tradition?

Legal Insurrection quotes the first, second, and fifth paragraphs and comments "It's so over the top." Yeah? And did the writer go over the top for a reason and with exciting, interesting words? Let's read the first 2 paragraphs and keep in mind that this might be great writing:

Please don't comment "meow" as some of you did on yesterday's post about what Majorie Taylor Greene wore to the SOTU.

That would be sexist.

I'm reading "Melanie Lynskey Responds to America's Next Top Model Winner Adrianne Curry's Critique of Her Body in The Last of Us/'I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly,' the actor tweeted" (Vanity Fair):

On Wednesday, the America's Next Top Model cycle 1 winner responded to a photo of the actor, critiquing her appearance as not being befitting of her role in the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last of Us. She wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “her body says life of luxury...not post apocolyptic [sic] warlord.” She added, “where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?,” referring to the Terminator star. Lynskey saw the social media message before the model deleted it, screenshotting the exchange and tweeting it out with the caption, “Firstly—this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us.” She added, “And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”

"FEDRA" is an acronym. You need to know the show to get it. Or look it up. 

"SMART" not an acronym. Lynskey is just yelling. I recommend not yelling that you're smart. It's too...

"In my considered opinion, anyone with a quick mind or an inordinately rich store of knowledge is unlikely to become a novelist."

"That is because the writing of a novel, or the telling of a story, is an activity that takes place at a slow pace—in low gear, so to speak. Faster than walking, let’s say, but slower than riding a bicycle. The basic speed of a person’s mental processes may make it possible to work at that rate, or it may not... .This is quite a roundabout way to do things.... Someone whose message is clearly formed has no need to go through the many steps it would take to transpose that message into a story. All he has to do is put it directly into words—it’s much faster and can be easily communicated to an audience. A message or concept that might take six months to turn into a novel can thus be fully developed in a mere three days. Or in ten minutes, if the writer has a microphone and can spit it out as it comes to him.... In the final analysis, that’s what being smart is really all about. In the same vein, it is unnecessary for someone with a wealth of knowledge to drag out a fuzzy, dubious container like the novel for his purposes...."

Writes Haruki Murakami in "Novelist as a Vocation" (Amazon link). 

"There is something compelling in the idea that women shouldn’t have to prove their economic worth or intelligence as a way of arguing for their self-worth and independence."

"In its most interesting form, bimboism also makes a connection between the ideas of pleasure — sexual pleasure, pleasure in clothes, pleasure in simply existing as a woman in the world with a body on display — and political gains that would make it more possible, like universal health care, student loan debt cancellation and abortion rights.... For [TikTok-er Chrissy] Chlapecka, her bimbo persona is a bit, but it’s also a bit serious: She really does want us to look at her boobs. It’s performance of a version of her personality at high octane, one that she invites her audience to participate in themselves — have you considered that you, too, could be a bimbo, and that it might be fun?"

From "Meet the Self-Described ‘Bimbos’ of TikTok" by Sophie Haigney (NYT).

Quote from Chlapecka that begins the essay: "Are you a leftist who likes to have their tits out? Do you like to flick off pro-lifers?"

I don't remember seeing the word "bimboism" before, but, googling, I can see it has currency. Here's Vice from back in February — "Bimbofication Is Taking Over. What Does That Mean for You?/'Are you a hyperfeminine woman? Are you really hot?'" 

"[J.D.] Vance went on Steve Bannon’s War Room and said 'I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another' during a clumsy attempt..."

"... to show that his real priority is the U.S.-Mexico border and stopping shipments of fentanyl. He then kind of, sort of, walked back his statements a few days later. But then he cashed in one of infinite invitations to go on Tucker Carlson’s show to un-walk back the walk-back. The banner on his campaign webpage features the following fundraising appeal: 'Secure our Southern Border and NOT Ukraine’s Border! Stand with Tucker Carlson and JD Vance.' In other words: J.D. Vance is gonna J.D. Vance. It’s what he does."

From "J.D. Vance Gets Canceled/Can’t a Republican Senate candidate make one little crack about not caring about Ukraine?" (The Bulwark).

ADDED: Vance went to Yale Law School. He wrote that highly acclaimed memoir. Then why does he come across as so dumb when he's doing politics? I have a theory that I came up with to try to understand some of the really dumb things Laurence Tribe tweets. It's that a person who is too far above the normal range has trouble thinking of how to speak to people of normal intelligence, that is, the people he needs to reach in order to be successful in politics. He knows they're significantly less intelligent than he is, and he adopts a style that he imagines to be at their level. But he goes too far. He knows other people are — comparatively — dumb, but he overshoots the mark. Those whose intelligence is just modestly above average are shooting from a closer range and can hit the target more accurately. That's very annoying to the truly superior folks. That's why — I think — Trump drove Tribe absolutely stark raving mad. And stark raving madness doesn't improve your aim!

"My own view is that the biggest brains wouldn't be in the legal profession to start with."

Writes Balfegor, in the comments to the previous post, where I'd said, "But what if we could find the 9 biggest brains in the law field and make a Supreme Court out of them? We might discover they make terrible Justices."

I wrote "biggest brains in the law field" because I thought being in the law field would be a basic qualification to get started on the job, but I wrote that thinking these are not the biggest of the big brains.

That made me think about Laurence Tribe, the noted Harvard professor:

"'Patently racist': Tucker Carlson under fire for questioning Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT scores /The Fox News host’s call for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score is ‘patently racist,’ says one Harvard Law School graduate."

The Independent reports.

I don't know about "patently," but it is racist. I considered saying "insidiously racist," but, on reflection, I'll say it's somewhere on the insidiously-to-patently continuum.

Did we ever discuss any other Supreme Court nominee's LSAT score?

Here's the Carlson quote: "So is Ketanji Brown Jackson — a name that even Joe Biden has trouble pronouncing — one of the top legal minds in the entire country? We certainly hope so … so it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson's LSAT score was."

It's very easy to say "Brown" and "Jackson," so he's just calling attention to Ketanji. What her parents named her has nothing to do with the nominee's qualifications, so why bring this up in the middle of demanding evidence of her basic intelligence? You don't have to be a genius to see that's racial.

As for "top legal minds"? Since when are Supreme Court nominees chosen from "the top legal minds"? I've never noticed that, and I've been watching the American legal scene for 40 years. In any case, law isn't like math. There's no objective test for law aptitude, and there are plenty of American law school graduates with LSAT scores in the 99th percentile who've never displayed a glint of brilliance. 

But what if we could find the 9 biggest brains in the law field and make a Supreme Court out of them? We might discover they make terrible Justices. And, by the way, I believe that the 9 biggest brains — whoever you are out there, Big Brains! — would refuse to take the job. Too boring. Too restricted. No freedom to rove all over the intellectual landscape.

Let's stop pretending we love the work of the very smartest people. Not in law we don't. We actually prefer something more ordinary. We want focus on texts, adherence to precedent, grounding in practical reality. It's dumb to be an intelligence snob here, and Tucker's posturing is particularly dumb. Virulently dumb.

Did Trump side with Putin when he said "This is genius.... How smart is that?... Here’s a guy who’s very savvy... You gotta say that’s pretty savvy"?

On yesterday's Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show — audio and transcript, here — here's the part where Trump credits Putin with genius (which his antagonists predictably take to mean that he's siding with Putin!):

I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, “This is genius.” Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine. Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. So, Putin is now saying, “It’s independent,” a large section of Ukraine. I said, “How smart is that?” And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force… They’re gonna keep peace all right.

That's criticizing Putin, but you've got to understand that it's sarcasm when he says, "They’re gonna keep peace all right."

It's not siding with the enemy to say the enemy is very smart. And it's so obvious that Trump's enemies would fault him for recognizing Putin's brilliance that I'm tempted to credit Trump with intending to trigger that faultfinding.