Some institutions have been tracking general intelligence for ages (like the army) it’s been going down since the 1960s

I mean, if you’re talking about IQ, you’re misreading those statistics. It’s not the Intelligence that’s been going down. It’s the Quotient that’s been going up. The baseline (ie, IQ = 100) for intelligence is significantly higher today than it was sixty years ago. That’s in part due to improvements in health and nutrition, but also the end result of people running these tests so regularly that you can effectively study for them in advance.

how can you not think that the ruling elites want to have dumb heards of cattle which they can control?

I don’t think the “ruling elites” have any kind of consensus on what they want, as evidenced by the perpetual infighting culminating in outright violence aimed at one another. I don’t think these economic elites really have a grasp of what they’re trying to do. Half of them thought Jeffery Epstein was a genius based on an email correspondence that suggests he was barely literate. If Musk, Zuck, Bezos, Thiel, and Trump are any indication of how the average Ruling Elite operates, they’re thinking with their dicks half the time and with a nostril full of coke the other half.

That this fractious conglomerate of idiots, assholes, and fuckbois have a plan more sophisticated than “Steal Everything Not Nailed Down and trade it for Pedo-Coins” is not in evidence. A look into their (routinely poorly managed) interpersonal communications suggest that some of them think they’re doing EugenicsPlus super-intelligence breeding programs by getting THOTs on Twitter pregnant. Others want to put their brains on the computer to live forever. Still others think they can achieve world conquest by running a strat from HOI4 set on Medium difficulty.

If there’s an intelligence gap in this country, I would argue that it’s top down. The so-called Elites are the ones getting dumber faster than the rest of us.

They want to fuck and exploit you

So did the Cave Man. But we’re so far off from the 11-D Chess of Allen Dulles and Henry Kissinger, when it comes to socio-economic machinations. This is Charles VI / Henry VI territory. These people are drooling their way into the 21st century and we’re just getting dragged along behind them.

Without context for the numbers or their significance, this seems like another “AAH! Education Panic!” bit of discourse.

Pretty obvious the big hit happened during COVID and now we’re in a long hangover period. But absent more meat on the bone than “Number was 500 and now it’s 460”. What’s the useful takeaway from this information? Other than to just express more generic Doomerist sentiments in the comments? Hard to say.

Also might be worth asking, if the numbers had gone up instead of down, would anyone here be celebrating? Would it have even been posted? Case in point:

The Test-Optional Paradox: Why Published SAT Scores Keep Rising Even as Fewer Students Submit Them

Is this something we should be happy about or sad about?

blasts

I prefer clean shaved

We still have monuments to Confederate Generals scattered all over the country. Some of them weren’t even built until the 20th century.

Trump will be retconned and rehabilitated in the same way Bush and Reagan were. Republicans will spend the next ten years looking for the New Trump to replace him when he’s gone.

He’ll be celebrated. He’ll be worshipped. In another fifty years, you’re going to have evangelical ministers canonizing him as the first Protestant Saint.

Presidents have been raping kids since the Jefferson Administration. I would consider it horrible, but not unique to this president

“I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in a social media post this week, calling on Mr. Trump to replace Mr. Hegseth.

…

Mr. Tillis was among the senators who voted to confirm Mr. Hegseth for the role in early 2025, despite having voiced concerns about his nomination.

Susan Collins ass response

Waiting until after the primaries so they don’t have to answer to their progressive constituents.

Cool cool cool

It’s so fucking funny to see corporate Dems tied up in knots because they’re just as unpopular as MAGA Republicans.

It’s not a great sign when Republicans are outparticipating Dems 2:1 in the primary.

And, of all the states with a thumb on the scale for the GOP, only Texas and Ohio compete with Florida. The sheer volume of dirty tricks and sleezy tactics can’t be overstated, from bulk voter disenfranchisement to party officials rioting during vote counting to MAGA teens threatening voters with machettes.

Until a national majority comes in there with a truck full of inspector detectors and a DOJ fire hose, that state is never going to be clean.

The extent of this man’s hustle is legendary.

It’s only suicidal when the funds are chronically mismanaged.

Also, steadily rising property values have been a de facto tax increase for decades.

Mr. Masoud Pezeshkian, I am a nine year old girl Sophie Smith suffering tyranny under pedophile administration. I have only 15 minutes a day of running water and two hot pocket rations for my daily meal. Please send HESA Shahed 136 long distance kamakazi drone to Andrews Air Force Base. My nation yearns for freedom.

Al Green lost his primary, so no.

No cuts to alfalfa.

No regulation of golf course water use.

No limit to how much State Farm Stadium can use on it’s chronically over watered turf.

No effort to fix municipal pipe leaks.

No conservation requirements for high rises or new builds

But you can guarantee the cost of a toilet’s worth of pee will be 3x by the end of next year.

Accuracy, for starters.

Rate of fire is another big one.

Killing someone with a single sling stone is significantly more impressive than with a pistol.

Re: @[email protected]

The lesson I think is less ‘the weak can defeat the strong’ in general and ‘don’t engage your enemy on his terms, engage him where you are strongest’.

David wasn’t the only Jewish soldier with access to sling stone technology.

I think the moral of David v Goliath is supposed to be “corporal strength is no match for divine providence”

If David had missed, nobody would be talking about him - except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale about hubris.

There are a few differences

I wouldn’t buy it either, if it had a 50% tariff slapped on it

In fairness, David in this metaphor is probably the guy in the Levant knocking out predator drones with a slingshot.

Baby boomers are collecting 265% of what they paid into Social Security

A median-wage worker retiring in 2027 can expect about $730,000 in lifetime Social Security benefits, compared with less than $200,000 paid in taxes by that worker and their employer combined

Adjusting the $200k for inflation, that’s around $800k.

If anything, SS recipients should be getting back more than $730k. That’s deferred consumption which was recycled through public spending into increased domestic growth. Growth that the vast majority of these workers never got to see, as their salaries fell behind the inflation rate.

But ask the editors of Fortune Magazine what they think of uncapping the Social Security tax, so it applies to people making more than $180k/year. Ask them how they feel about paying for SS directly out of the General Fund, rather than getting a special Poor Tax that can’t be exempted through deductions and credits. Ask them how they feel about paying for SS out of an Equities Transaction Tax, such that trillionaires issuing the next round of IPOs take responsibility for the millions of senior citizens who they are brain-fucking with AI slop on a daily basis.

Social Security is the promise this country (kinda-sorta) makes to its elderly. If you worked your whole life, you won’t be impoverished the day your employer doesn’t consider you a value-add anymore. The taxation scheme for SS is fucked, but only because it taxes labor income rather than labor value. We’ve seen the gross wealth in this country rise from $2.2T to $167T between 1960 and 2027. And you’re telling me we’re running out of money to pay our retirees?

Fuck off. Anyone should be able to see through this bullshit.