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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   2689 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 27, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Not exactly fun, but a personal experience of interest: I have an unfortunate/fortunate combination of technical knowledge and fear of 'chemicals'.

So, I'm not afraid of getting a vaccine but I go through 10 pairs of gloves and a 72 hours of paranoia whenever I touch coolants of any sort, I don't care about red E120 but I get mad whenever I see something that's too luminescent white through the whole substance.

I remember someone talking on here about the "you do not belong here" comic, but can't find it (or the comic). Anybody know what I'm talking about?

I was thinking about this comic earlier and it occurred to me that it's sort of a neat encapsulation of why Israel exists.

you do not fit in here?

Fun image-format-conversion shenanigans:

Four-panel edit:

Thanks, correcting the quote (unusual for me to get it wrong) let me find the post (note that the comic linked there has a fourth panel added - I didn't know it was an edit until now).

You know what? Neither did I!

What are your best War podcasts? I'm looking to Monitor the Situation, but all the podcasts I normally listen to are entirely too biased, either engaging in TDS, engaging in performative anti-TDS, or Israel blaming/defending to degrees I find distasteful. I want real conflict examination.

I like war nerd and ACOUP's content but I'm not going to pay for the Patreon to get a podcast, for context. I like the modern war institute podcast, but they don't release enough.

Don't know how it's evolved with the most recent conflict but Popular Front by Jake Hanrahan has been quite good in the past. May be worth checking out.

Parts of Hardcore History. Not strictly war or a podcast but always liked Historia Civilis. Again not really a podcast but Shawn Ryan or Jocko Willink. You could also check out IRGC affiliated X accounts. The selfies they take just before launching missiles at Israel are pretty funny. Or check Telegram channels to see Russian’s war footage on the Ukrainian front lines.

I’m not really a war guy.

Ugh. Historia Civilis is so frustrating! He makes great videos, well animated, well narrated, but takes increasingly long breaks between them (now up to 6 months!), and has become increasingly ideological across the lifetime of his channel.

Used to be that he just had a forgivable historian's bias for a few things here and there. (admires Agrippa, dislikes Octavian) Now, he puts out ahistorical propaganda pieces like Work, and his progressive/lib bias overshadows the history in videos like Reform or Revolution? 1830 to 1832.

I used to think about subscribing to his Patreon to support his content because I enjoyed it but he takes far too long of a recess in making videos. I agree with you. I’ve also see what I thought were insertions of his own personal opinions in his playlist about Caesar that I didn’t like very much, and struck me as somewhat political. Granted they were lowkey, but I still noticed them immediately. I would probably agree with him however in his opinions about Agrippa, as I’m favorable to him as well. I’m ambivalent about Octavian.

and his progressive/lib bias overshadows the history in videos like Reform or Revolution? 1830 to 1832.

I honestly found the last part of that video particularly funny, as it's his side (progressive/the current Establishment) that has been standing in the way and blocking elections from being won/any reform from occurring.

I doubt he'd've condemned it if he understood the full implication, but most progressives are invested in not understanding that, which is why they still call themselves "liberals".

Could be worse, could be Mike Duncan.

The History of Rome guy? I didn't sense any egregious shitlibbery from him when I listened to that podcast.

He claims to have been "radicalized" during the Revolutions podcast researching the Haitian revolution, though I suspect it was a long slow metamorphosis into being a boomerlib (the sections of the Revolutions pod on Indians and slavery in the American Revolution are also extremely cringe). His tweets today are something about how there's no ethical consumption under capitalism but it's particularly unjustifiable to be a Yankees fan, and then as you scroll down it's the worst redditshit you can imagine ("You'll be shocked to learn the guy who popped up to defend Pete Rose's honor and scold me for being insensitive spends his time on twitter harassing transwomen and spewing invective against Muslims").

I suspect his 'radicalized' story is false. I've listened to the Haitian story of the podcast, including the end where he narrates the history of Haiti, and he's not exactly a Haiti apologist. He doesn't sanitize or downplay the crimes either the biracial population or slave population committed, and he never particularly emphasizes foreign depredations in Haiti's history either. If anything, once the French are kicked out he seems more sympathetic to the biracial leaders than the pure black leaders. He didn't present a sob story for Latin American independence either.

I would second Perun (https://youtube.com/@PerunAU). His analyses tend to be quite objective, and he will usually wait at least a week after a major event happens before he covers it, to let the dust settle and get the worst misinformation out of the way. He is also quite transparent regarding where he gets his information from, and is good at mentioning when the it is incomplete or likely to be biased (which is very often the case given the fog of war).

What are your best War podcasts?

Historical or current?

It's dry and mostly concerned with defense economics, but PERUN podcast has had a really excellent hit rate over the years. One of the only ones to have correctly triangulated between "10 days special military operation" and "Ukrainian flag over perfidious muscovy".

You mean the youtube channel? I can't find an audio podcast.

Yup. There was a podcast at some point, but I don't think anyone bothered not just listing to the youtube video with the screen off.

Do you know what are his most accurate and least accurate areas of focus?

Recently saw Hail Mary and enjoyed it a bunch. Sped through the book and came to the conclusion that, just like The Martian, the film is a far better film than the book is a book (joining the likes of Jurassic Park and The Godfather, also arguably Silence of the Lambs); the author's writing style is very positive and optimistic but also very IAmVerySmart and I Fucking Love Science and generally gave me Reddit vibes.

So, because I apparently love checking in on the progress of cancer like I'm some kind of internet oncologist, I go to Reddit and poke around. The stuff at the top is mainly resentment that the author is "conservative" and a misogynist and did an interview with noted elite misogynist The Critical Drinker. And some grumbling that the author/viewpoint character used "He" pronouns for the hermaphroditic alien and assumed they's mate was female by calling thim "Adrian." (Because Rock Alien=Rocky, so Rock Alien's mate = Adrian). Such oppressive heteronormativity is proof that the author is a bad person. Also something something mediocre white man.

So yeah, reddit gonna reddit. It gave me a chuckle when years ago I would be disappointed and annoyed.

I'm surprised actually arrrr slash movies generally seemed to love the movie from what I saw.

This was an aside, but:

the film is a far better film than the book is a book (joining the likes of Jurassic Park

I wouldn't call the Jurassic Park movie much better than the book. They are pretty different (the movie has a much stronger sensawunda and plays like a typical summer blockbuster, while the book is more cynical and reads like a technothriller), but each is good in its own way. My 10th grade English teacher made us read the novel as a compare and contrast to Frankenstein, and I loved it. The little fractals at the start of each chapter were a nice touch, and I still remember Ian Malcolm's excellent introduction:

Shortly before midnight, be stepped on the plane at the Dallas airport, a tall, thin, balding man of thirty-five, dressed entirely in black: black shirt, black trousers, black socks, black sneakers.

...

Humid Dallas air drifted through the open door. Ellie said, "Isn't it a little warm for black?"

"You're extremely pretty, Dr. Sattler," he said. "I could look at your legs all day. But no, as a matter of fact, black is an excellent color for heat. If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation. In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray."

Ellie was staring at him, her mouth open. "These colors are appropriate for any occasion," Malcolm continued, and they go well together, should I mistakenly put on a pair of gray socks with my black trousers."

"But don't you find it boring to wear only two colors?"

"Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing," Malcolm said. "I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports."

"Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions."

"And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully.

If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation.

I'm not the right type of engineer for this, but isn't this statement wrong? It's not as simple as "black is higher emissivity", and it's a combination of solar absorption (black absorbs a lot) and emissivity. IIRC some of the best two options for space (radiation!) applications happen to be white or black.

ETA this reminds me that while the story is fantastic overall, chaos theory does not work that way.

I don't know. On the one hand, the argument from biological evolution suggests that black is best, because equatorial races have dark skin. On the other than, the argument from cultural evolution suggests that white is best, because Arabs wear light robes.

Well if it's shortly before midnight, presumably absorption is minimal. He would be wrong during the day though.

Seconding this. I enjoyed the book more than the movie (but might have gone the other way if I had been old enough to catch the movie in a theater).

That list should start with A Clockwork Orange.

Im soured on technothrillers in general and michael chritchton in particular, and Jurassic Park as a film is way more influential and significant, and way more of a human achievement, than a sour old man pontificating via a self-indulgent sockpuppet. I think the 10th-grade part is key for your enjoyment, it's a mind-blower when you're 16. Ian Malcolm as an adult reads a lot stronger as IAmVerySmart. I guess back then shitting on sports as a concept was far more stunning and brave.

I successfully avoided any spoilers for the book and saw it last night.

Was not expecting that. At all.

  • What I thought it would be - Saving the world with the power of science: The Martian crossed with Seveneves.
  • What it actually was - Saving the world with the power of friendship: E.T. crossed with Sunshine and The Iron Giant

A few stunning visual sequences that I'm still thinking about. Soundtrack worked well - fit with the "Hail Mary" theme. Also, character's name is "Grace".

Maybe I'm too reddit-brained, but I kind of wanted a bit more explanation of the science. There's a a critical moment in the film that is the core emotional climax the entire plot has been building toward, and the logistics of it are not even handwaved. They're just not explained. I was just like "okay, that's great. nailed the emotional beat, but .. how tf??". A minor gripe. Still liked it.

There's much much more "power of science" stuff in the book, which they (tragically but wisely IMHO) cut from the film (or at best alluded to in the film, in five second bits showing the solutions to problems that took minutes to hours of thinking or days to weeks of trial-and-error), to make room in an otherwise-too-long-for-a-movie story for the more emotionally central themes related to your spoilered point.

The book is still not as good in that respect as The Martian, but it's way closer than the movies were.

Haven't seen the movie yet, but I just finished the book. I had the same thought- the writing style is positive enough to be enjoyable, but it's also very cringe. It's the sort of thing that would have absolutely dominated Reddit upvotes 10 years ago but would now get mass downvotes for being insufficiently woke (even though it's still quite woke and internationalist). Definitely some cool ideas though, so great fodder for the professional screenwriters to work with. It also seems to be written for a very specific audience of sci-fi fans- like, it glosses over relativity because it can assume they already know all the important stuff about that since it shows up in sci fi all the time, but painstakingly explains the physics of pendulums in case they forgot that from high school physics class.

Didn't the movie gloss over much of the science from the book?

Not to the point that, without explaining it, I was objecting to the science presented as nonsense. But I do have a degree in zoology, so I may be a bad sample.

Same. I bought The Martian back in the day, so I bought Artemis and Hail Mary shortly after release. Never imagined either one could be adapted to a movie. Andy Weir definitely likes his protagonists to be a bit Reddit, but I dig his methodical, well-researched but creative plots and the characters are at least not one-dimensional. I watched that interview with Critical Drinker and it was actually quite interesting. He was pretty candid about his writing process and how the industry works.

ETA: Best-looking space movie since Interstellar at least, and more relatable characters. I really like a sci fi story where the moral is not about the hubris of man or the cruelty of the xenos.

I thought Artemis was noticeably worse than the other 2, curious if others agree

It was not a science procedural, it was more of a techno-thriller set on the Moon. It's my least favorite but I chalk that up more to taste than quality. Andy Weir conceded in that CD interview that he probably made the main character a bit too much of an asshole.

Just bothered me that she was a man in a woman suit.

Andy Weir definitely likes his protagonists to be a bit Reddit, but I dig his methodical, well-researched but creative plots and the characters are at least not one-dimensional.

His protagonists are all the same; Jazz is Mark Watney with tits, and Ryland Grace is Mark Watney as a teacher. But I like Mark Watney, and characters have always been a secondary concern in hard science fiction, so it's alright. It's no different from Heinlein self-inserting as Lazarus Long/Jubal Harshaw/Hugh Farnham.

RTA, perhaps this is a type of genre as an analogue to the police procedural, the science procedural, and I enjoy both.

Saw it Monday and also enjoyed it. Read th book beforehand, and had a positive opinion of it as well.

This may be a small question, but it's about something fun and it can't wait till Sunday: I've bought my family tickets to a big soccer game, and the team we're watching sent us an email demanding that I prove by Tuesday that I'm a fan, or they'll cancel our tickets (flights, hotels, etc. already booked). Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of their team, we just want to watch the match. As such, I need someone to make an AI/filtered/etc. image of me wearing their shirt or scarf in a bar. It needs to look real enough to deceive someone looking to spot photoshopped images (but probably not super familiar with AI). If the image works, I'll donate $100 to a charity of your choice - or, if you happen to be interested, I can get you a World Cup ticket at face value minus the $100.

Please DM if interested. Why to trust I won't welsh on you: I have close IRL friends who are users and a couple powerusers on this forum who know who I am, so a callout post would hit my real-life reputation.

Mods, please delete if you don't like this. As I see it, this is legal and normal to do in the UK, though most people don't go as far as I'm trying. Plus what they're doing is kind of a dick move, the stadium isn't even sold out so it's not like the locals need the tickets.

Update for those following: after seeing some of the comments, I realized that I wasn't thinking enough like a hustler. I happen to be in New York right now, and the England football team were playing an international friendly today. I hared down to Chinatown, found a place that was selling old football shirts/bootlegs of old football shirts, bought one, checked the club's website to see where their NYC fans go for games, reached that bar while England was still playing, got some guys to take photos with me. A lot more fun than messing around with ChatGPT. Thanks all for your kind advice and offers.

This may be a small question, but it's about something fun and it can't wait till Sunday: I've bought my family tickets to a big soccer game, and the team we're watching sent us an email demanding that I prove by Tuesday that I'm a fan, or they'll cancel our tickets (flights, hotels, etc. already booked).

What the hell? Which club is this? Do they demand a blood oath if you're a new fan?

Consider telling them that you're an American tourist and therefore cannot provide the requested photograph, but if the team is willing to send your family complimentary apparel and other merchandise you will gladly wear it and root for them. I have Photoshop and like to think that I'm fairly good at it, though who knows if it will be enough to fool anyone looking for it. DM me if interested. That being said, I think being straight with them would be better, up to the point that it might be worth making an international phone call to get it sorted out.

Bartender is British I believe.

It's pretty rare for Brits to call football soccer. Rarer still for them to be concerned about the availability of team gear in the states.

I am in America and say "soccer" for Americans' convenience, but I'm from... well, from what used to be called the British Empire.

This is trivial to do, in all honesty, and I'd do it for free if someone asked me to. Unusually, I do not usually accept offers to donate to charity, but I suppose Lightcone could use $100. It would take me all of a minute.

Note that the most popular (and most powerful) AI image tools are invisibly or visibly watermarked. This is unlikely to be an issue, because I doubt the people demanding proof are technically sophisticated enough to check. But caveat emptor. DM me if you wish, I'll do it, and I'm awake for a few hours.

Thanks for the offer - I did end up finding an analogue solution (see edit). Suppose that saves me from compromising my Landian principles... The reason I was asking for help is that, while I have a lot of experience with ChatGPT and Claude image gen, it just isn't good enough for true photorealism imo (that or I'm a promptlet), idk what the current cutting-edge tools are to get true photorealism, and right now I'm too busy to research into it.

BTW, speaking of football, if you are ever in London and want to catch an Arsenal game, there's a good chance I have a free season ticket that would otherwise go to a rando. You'd be very welcome to it.

You're far too kind. I'm an absolute poser when it comes to football, but I might well take you up on it!

It's quite an experience, fan or no.

I don't want your money and I have a subscription to both Gemini and GPT, so can drop an image to be edited into either. I also don't have an artistic bone in my body and don't have any special talent with prompting imageGen AIs.

I know this isn't a very impressive sales pitch, but this will take me 30 seconds so it's basically a free action.

I also think you'd be much better off buying a cheap jersey or something.

Alternatively, or simultaneously, this sounds like something you could (threaten to) take up under the consumer rights act and equivalent protections.

They are incurring real losses for you by effectively changing the standards of the contract post buy. That is a very very shaky place to stand, it doesn’t matter what weasel words they put in the terms and conditions.

I find that doubtful. This was almost certainly part of the original contract and the purchase was flagged for review due to purchase history.

Here's the relevant terms and conditions:

Home Match Tickets are for the use of supporters of the Club only. By applying for the Home Match Ticket and/ or using the same you hereby warrant and represent that you are a supporter of the Club and/or that you are not a supporter of the Visiting Club.

and/or that you are not a supporter of the Visiting Club.

Presumably OP will be watching as a neutral. Is, "I am from a different country and just want to watch the game," not enough proof that he won't be supporting the other team?

The purchaser specifically has to be, not just a non-scalper, but a fan? That's just unreasonable, IMO. But I guess there's no recourse.

There's evidently an issue where the home club expects a lot of away fans to show up for this particular game, and they don't want them dominating the home side of the stadium. I can understand why they don't want their stadium full of away fans, but it seems to me that warranting that you are a supporter of the team is one thing, but requiring proof before you enter is another. This isn't reasonable. I'm a long time fan of the Steelers, at least to the extent that I don't care about other teams, but I don't have any photos of me in Steelers gear. I own a ballcap I rarely wear, and a t-shirt that I do where but it's an obvious bootleg with the Grateful Dead skull and roses logo modified into a Steelers logo. I don't attend Steelers games or "events", unless you count watching games in a bar, and at that, it's not like people take pictures of my while I'm there. The only such photos I can think of are ones taken after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup, and that was in 2017. Hell, I went to Charlotte to watch Pitt in the ACC championship a few years ago (twice, actually), and I don't have any pictures from either trip. I don't know why they would expect their fans to have these pictures. It essentially means that buying the ticket isn't enough, and that there's an expectation that you buy their merchandise as well.

Yeah this is completely new. My brother has gone to many, many away games in the home end and has never seen this. I suspect it's because the club in question has a big reputation for violent fans and they don't want any of that to happen - and, let's be honest, they're not a club that really has to worry about tons of casual foreign fans or random tourists showing up.

Glancing at a random team's terms, it looks like you can buy a home ticket only if you are a fan (§ 1.2) and you can buy an away ticket only if you are a fan (§ 5.1)—so a person who is a fan of neither team in a game just isn't allowed to buy tickets at all. Maybe @Bartender_Venator can point out this problem, assert that he is a fan of neither team, and beg to be let in on that basis.

The way this works in practice is that nobody ever checks anything - every big team's games have a bunch of international tourists who don't care about the teams but want to see a game while they're in England - but if you have any items from the wrong team on you (even wearing their colours), or if you celebrate the wrong team's goal, you get kicked out and maybe kicked a bit on your way out. I could potentially argue this, but I doubt it would fly given that this is a case of the club choosing to enforce a never-enforced policy.

And what is their policy towards Mr/Ms "I Just Hope Both Teams Have Fun!"?

Doesn’t matter. If it’s not very clearly flagged in advance, such that he couldn’t have bought it without reasonably expecting this turn of events, then it’s not appropriate under UK law.

In general if a consumer would reasonably expect X, and not-X isn’t both clearly flagged and legally appropriate, and he has accumulated financial damage as a result, then the seller is up shit creek without a paddle. Doesn’t matter what the terms and conditions say. You can’t sign away your rights as a consumer in the UK, especially not three paragraphs into the small text.

@MadMonzer, do you have any thoughts? The above is true as far as I’m aware, and AI agrees.

This is a business-to-consumer contract, so the law on unfair terms in consumer contracts applies. This is a hugely complex area of law (the official government guidance runs to 144 pages) where the statute and regulations were re-written in 2015 to bring British law in line with EU law (and not updated since Brexit) but most of the cases predate the new law.

But the key point is that Arsenham FC can enforce the term if it is "fair" and not if it is "unfair". Hidden terms are on the "greylist" of terms that will usually be unfair, but even if the rule "we can cancel your tickets without notice if you turn out not to be a fan" was clearly state, it would be invalid if substantially unfair.

The relevant section in the guidance is 5.16.3 on unequal cancellation rights

This applies particularly to terms which explicitly say that the trader can cancel at will, without having any valid reason. But it also applies to terms which permit cancellation for vaguely defined reasons, or in response to any breach of contract (however trivial) by the consumer. Such terms may be intended to allow the business to do no more than protect itself legitimately from problems beyond its control, or from serious misconduct by the consumer. But the potential effect as well as the purpose of terms is relevant to fairness, and if wording is loosely drafted and open to abuse it is liable to be seen as unbalancing the contract.

Cancelling a contract because the customer is not a fan would be a vaguely defined reason, meaning that the term is greylisted and therefore probably unfair. It might be fair under the circumstances if @Bartender_Venator had e.g. taken advantage of a discount specifically marketed at fans.

There is a separate point that the contract isn't formed until the business accepts the customer's offer. If you booked the flights and accommodation before getting a confirmation e-mail saying "your tickets are booked" and then unfortunately got a non-confirmation e-mail saying "please prove you are a fan before we will release your tickets" then you never had a contract and are SOL.

Admirably detailed. I take my hat off to you, sir!

I'm saying that it likely was clearly marked in advance. This isn't a new thing or something they're trying to trick people about.

People don't read disclaimers even when they're clear and require active consent.

Sorry, now I see what you mean.

That would make it more complex, certainly, though personally I doubt they did this. It seems a weird way of doing things in general and you’d expect them to demand this proof at buying time to prevent exactly this scenario.

The government is also aware that people don’t read disclaimers, and as a non-lawyer I would say that buying plane and hotel tickets signalled fairly clearly that Bartender expected to be able to get in. So I think even in that scenario he’d still have a decent chance.

What kind of a weird challenge is this? How is this real?

It is standard practice in European soccer to segregate the home and away fans in different sections of the stadium. I never knew how they enforced it until now.

I tried getting into soccer a while back, but the culture difference between European and American sports fandom was a much larger barrier than anything happening on the field pitch.

I remember when I went to see a game in Milan, I was able to buy a ticket as a foreigner, but I needed to show ID... the scalpers were there, selling tickets along with IDs? Somehow? It was weird, but presumably the whole setup was to ensure that the local fans of each team were kept separated.

I've never heard of this happening before, but I guess since it's an important game they expect lots of away fans to be buying home end tickets (again, a totally normal thing to do).

Many economically illiterate people hate scalpers. Presumably, when Bartender_Venator bought the tickets, the terms of service said something like "resale is forbidden and scalped tickets may be canceled", and this challenge is a roundabout method of checking whether he is a reseller.

The challenge is slightly overinclusive, since it catches not just scalpers but also those few purchasers who are neither fans nor scalpers. As a different commenter points out, Bartender_Venator presumably could try using that argument to invalidate the challenge—though I don't know how much success he can expect if he does so.

Or an away fan who might start a fight, that's a bigger concern.

Scalpers are smart enough to be able to provide the team with dozens of pictures of happy families at the ball game.

They are also asking for a photo ID scan tbf.

Wouldn't it be cheaper just to buy a team shirt or scarf and get a photo of yourself taken with it?

So I need to send the photo by Tuesday, and this is the exact wording of the email: "Therefore, could you please provide photographic evidence that you are a [Club] supporter which can be from a party, event or fixture wearing merchandise or [Club] related evidence (Please note any merchandise will need to be purchased PRIOR TO January 2026)." Even if I could find a jersey at short notice in the US (not enough time to ship one), I'd need to try to go to some bar and make it look like I'm at an event - there are no Premier League games this weekend, so I can't go watch one of their games. If it wasn't for that I'd just go down to a soccer bar and ask to borrow someone's scarf.

Emil Kirkegaard has a new test, a "Multifactor General Knowledge Test". Link here: https://taketest.xyz/mfgkt

It's short and takes maybe 5 minutes. The percentile rankings are fun. Surely The Motte can drag the distribution rightward.

My results. (Foiled again by my working class upbringing.)

293

Borderline unreadable on my phone, which was awesome. Probably should've read the rules about 5 correct answers to each one and not had a random employee interrupt me to yak endlessly about something.

Good thing you have many excuses for 'only' getting an excellent score.

I could come up with more.

My results.

Interestingly, the IQ estimate it gives is only a point off my actual IQ, or at least the score I got in the only test I ever took.

IQ estimate it gives? I didn't see any.

I've just realised the link I gave didn't actually show my results, but my 'real' IQ score is 128 and it estimated 127.

Oh, but I didn't see an IQ estimate in my own results when I took the test. Just some percentile graphs but that was about the test score, not anything else.

290, kinda feel like I should’ve gotten a few that I missed, but I also was pretty even across all categories, no major gaps. So I’ll take that!

283: 55/60 Computational, 49/50 International, 68/80 Cultural, 40/50 Aesthetic, 22/30 Literary, 39/40 Technical. Not surprised that I'm low relative to the average Motte poster, nor surprised that I'm weak in the humanities.

90th percentile. But effectively zero on culture.

Also - semtex is painkiller. Even trivial quantities of it are enough to make all the pain go away. Forever.

"Are you planning to help me?"

"YES."

"When, exactly?"

"ER. WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO GREAT TO BEAR."

"..."

"I REALISE THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER YOU WERE HOPING FOR."

RIP Terry Pratchett.

287, performed oddly well in cultural knowledge and most poorly in literary knowledge (The latter isn't surprising.).

306 - feeling pretty good though I was (relatively) destroyed on the culture section. A near-total lack of wine knowledge is once again my undoing

Damn you! I was about to come back and brag about getting the top score, but you tied me. If @Lewis2 is correct about the grading in his (nicely spoiler-protected!) point 1, though, I missed a point that way, and I was robbed!

Aesthetic knowledge killed me. 44/50, 79th percentile, and I think I guessed once or twice there so even the 44 might include some dumb luck.

268, unlike most in the thread I was strongest in literary, second in aesthetics, and 37th percentile in technical. Very low in cultural.

Some complaints about the quiz, several of which have already been mentioned by others:

  1. Kwanzaa is listed as a religious holiday, but it’s not.

  2. 420 is, at least in my experience, used to refer to the consumption of marijuana, not to the drug itself.

  3. France also had colonies in India. Anyone who knows that probably also knows the five correct answers, but the quiz still shouldn’t include ambiguous false answers.

  4. Even though everyone is pretty sure Israel has nukes, it has never been officially confirmed.

  5. A craftsman may use an awl, bevel, calipers, chisel, saw, or whisket (a specialized lathe).

  6. Many printings of Cryptonomicon put it at over 1,000 pages, but not all, and in fact, the first edition was only 918 pages.

  7. The quiz includes “cushy” as a synonym of “fancy,” but I can’t find any online dictionary that includes that definition. They only list “very easy” and “comfortable,” which are if anything antonyms.

I respect the complaints, but disagree on 2,4, and 7. 3 is a big question mark for me, since I felt like I knew what you mentioned but went off of "vibes".

Link doesn't seem to be working for me

98th percentile, weakest on aesthetics (as I expect many of us are).

I got 294, weakest on the Aesthetic Knowledge part, which seems reasonable to me.

It does help a lot to actually read the rules on the first page and consider them when answering - knowing that exactly 5 are correct on every one and that it mostly works against you to guess randomly since not picking wrong choices wins you a point too.

I completely whiffed on that bit, probably should be in slightly more visible text.

Funny, there's lots of people on that Twitter thread saying things like "how am I supposed to know x book is 1000+ pages" or "but I don't read poetry". I don't read poetry either but I could recognise at least 3 of them as poets. The reason I know War & Peace is 1000+ pages despite never reading it is because I've seen it on a bookshelf and been forever put off picking it up and reading it because until I saw it I didn't know people could write books that wide. I've never used make-up but I know the Maybelline jingle. I don't read a lot of history but I remember that Mexico has pyramids from reading stuff like Tintin or watching the Simpsons episode where Homer gets launched into the mushroom dimension by Chief Wiggum's chilli. I hate restaurants but I reckon I could pick 4/5 classic French dishes if that was a question. Meanwhile I've got more than a dozen art history books and I read classics for fun but aesthetics/literary was my lowest score.

It makes me wonder if some people, particularly younger people and Twitter users, are in an information environment where not only do they not often see how physically big certain books can be, or have to skim past the poetry section to find the graphic novels, or sit through a television advert that isn't algorithmically tuned to their specific micro-demographic, but also the dependence on apps means for example instead of seeing http error codes in a browser when they visit a badly configured website all they know is the endless and mutely spinning circle icon they see when any one part of the entire chain isn't working perfectly. Why would you know about SATA cables if everything is cloud storage for phone apps?

I'm sure if there was a Gen Z section with questions like "which of these are Instagram features" or "which of these people are famous streamers" I'd be down in the 5th percentile.

294, had no idea there were always 5, I know I left 4 on a few thinking there was a maybe and may have picked 6 on a few, too.

262 🥲

Very low in literature and “aesthetics”. Computer science is my specialty, so I got 58/60 in computational knowledge.

293 - the pyramids question, makeup, and poetry were my main misses. Also I didn't realize it was supposed to be exactly five until most of the way through...

You need to listen to more Joe Rogan of course for the pyramids. I’m not sure how to help with makeup and poetry.

Satisfactory 294, but I got absolutely wrecked by the aesthetics section: https://i.imgur.com/565DOyw.png

Currently making my girlfriend do it to see if there's a difference as she likely knows all the fabric patterns and makeup brands.

Edit: She knows about makeup but apparently not that HDD isn't a type of connection.

That's a solid trick option, though. If someone used the phrase "HDD cable", today I'd mentally translate that to "SATA" without thinking it was weird; decades ago "IDE" likewise (unless they were talking about a third party's high-end computer and I might need to check that they knew about SCSI).

299 - Got really stumped on the pyramids.

286, with the technology/computer stuff predictably clobbering me.

Edit: I overlooked the instruction about there always being 5 correct answers the first time I took it. After learning that I retook it and got 299.

287, which is apparently terrible for the self-reports here.

/images/17746559335861886.webp

I got 276, which is the best score if we are going by golf rules.

Nah. I got 275, and have been amused by the "oh no, I got 290, I suck so bad!" posts. 😂

271

Go me, so fucking go me!

Hang on, how do you have an IQ score listed at the top of yours?

Yesterday the author mentioned that he planned to add an IQ calculation the next day.

Thanks. I was surprised since I didn’t see one when I took the test, nor did any of the other screenshots include that info. Also, I don’t see how anyone could claim to test IQ from a general knowledge quiz.

You dropped this, king: 👑

You have bested me, but just barely. Next online quiz I will be seeking you out.

I got both of you beat but was discouraged enough by the other scores not to post.

If your score on that test makes you feel bad, try taking the Figure Reasoning test on the same site. I’ve never done so poorly on an intelligence test in my life.

It was all going so well until not even halfway through. Sod that.

Got 295.

Most points lost on cultural knowledge ;_;

Also did not read the instructions and it took a couple before I realized it was supposed to be 5.

I made the same mistake on my first attempt.

It is a fun test that shows how little I know about makeup and classical literature. I have a couple problems with it though. A few words appear to have spelling mistakes (the cancer is called is "leukemia" not "lukemia", for instance) so I am not exactly sure how those are counted. Am I supposed to notice them, or are they genuine mistakes by the author?

Some questions have a lot ambiguity to them. Like, one could use angstrom to measure distance, but is that a correct answer? And is a disease sexually transmitted if it can be transmitted through sex, but is not commonly thought of as such (would the common cold count as sexually transmitted)? Measuring book length in terms of pages is also weird, since it depends on the edition you got. Page and font size can be different, even if the content stays the same.

With that in mind, I can't take the test super seriously, but at least the categories are interesting, and legitimately span a wide array of topics.

The first spelling mistake (Cribbidge) fucked me up for a minute because I started second guessing if obvious-seeming answers were slightly misspelled as a trap (making it appear 6/10 are correct) until I realized they were just typos.

290, I'm sorta annoyed at the low literary score. For most of them I was really only guessing 4/5 answers every time. the 5th one was always really hard to get. Though I did perfect international knowledge, beating the stereotype of dumb self-centered americans I guess.

f37ac702-4bc1-4f26-a6e7-cde2080eaf75

300, apparently dragged down by my literary knowledge at the 78th percentile. 58/60 for technical knowledge though. I guess I really am a codecel.

Is 420 a slang term for marijuana?

Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes. I mean...

284, though I don't really know english/american litterature much, so my litterature score is (I hope) understandably affected. 91st percentile non-anglo western.

290. Does that make us general knowledge midwit eskimo brothers? I didn't follow the directions and guessed 5 answers on each section. I did not think I was firing wildly on 5th answers for any of the sets .

My lowest score was international knowledge which feels bad, stupid Nubians. I did feel like the test skewed Millennial male, especially the technical section, although I appreciated the effort for balance with sets like tools vs. make-up brands. Not what I was expecting from a Kirkegaard general knowledge test. Good fun thread post.

I got 290 which is about as I expected, there are a few of rare English words that I must have missed, and I also am pretty low on pop-culture knowledge.

You guys are stacked holy shit

I got 291, I actually thought I did terrible bc I'm so lost on the arts/literary stuff but tech autism + years of grinding MCQ in university saved me I guess.

I'm 97th percentile in the US but 90th percentile vs the site, explains why I like it here.

291, but why did it default me to the 50-69 age bracket? I assume scores would be positively correlated with age.

Failed at cultural knowledge, but I already knew that would be true.

All scores are compared to the 50-69 age bracket, even if you don't put in an age. I believe the test itself is a bit older than the usual internet quiz, since it's from Open Psychometrics.

It did that to me as well.

291, and I thought I was being overcautious and not guessing enough.

The test felt biased toward a particular urban, educated, cultured professional's "general" knowledge, and there were topics missing that I would consider more representative of general knowledge than makeup brands or HTTP codes.

294, which I’m pretty happy with. I didn’t guess and as per the guidance didn’t mark anything unless I was sure. I got one PC cable wrong/missed the right answer and realized it as soon as I skipped to the next question (it was SATA). My intuition was right about the poets but I didn’t trust myself.

92nd percentile for US. 96th for non-Western. 77th for the site. Raw score of 284.

If it helps, I managed to do even worse on aesthetic knowledge.

301/320
99th percentile for all demographics apart from "this site" (98th).

Worst: Literary (25/30)
Best: Cultural and technical (78/80 and 39/40 respectively)

I played it fairly conservatively by not blindly guessing just to use up all 5 chances.

Similar, 302. Also lowest on the literary (26), and missed only one between both technical and computational. I also only chose options I was reasonably confident in and did not guess at all.

I'm glad somebody here has a higher score than me, I'm a total retard.

Looks like a lot of people got stung by not reading the instructions or getting hung up on typos.

294 points, or 99th anglophone percentile.

My weakest category was aesthetic, at the 71st percentile.

Apparently I know stuff about things?

299/320.
Worst category: aesthetic, 42/50.
Fewest attempted: literary, 30/30. I guess I was less willing to guess.

That was fun!

/images/17746341642146423.webp

I got 280 points. 88th percentile. The overall score was tanked by my lack of aesthetic knowledge, where 37/50 was only enough to put me in the 25th centile. Surprisingly in that light, my cultural knowledge is superb.

71 percentile among anglophones. Naturally, carried by technical and computer knowledge, heavily tanked by aesthetic and literary domains.

The question about number of pages in the books seemed completely arbitrary, because books can be printed in different font and paper sizes?????

A couple of people have brought this up, but there is no reasonable way to make the 1000+ page books listed fit in under 1000 pages, nor to blow up the smaller books to fit that size. Imagine a 999-page Infinite Jest - printers just don't make books in that size (it would be too small to be a coffee table book, but too large to be a normal format or fit on a small bookshelf. The normal book is around 1100 pages in a large format with a small font, and even smaller for the long footnotes). It's meant to be a test of general knowledge, not trick questions.

You’re mostly right, but Cryptonomicon is right on the border, at 918 to 1,168 pages, depending on the edition.

Huh, I read it as an ebook and it flashed by. Books feel a lot shorter on Kindle, I guess.

I agree, that wasn't a fair one.

I've been banging this drum for a long time.

98th overall, but only in the 60s in technical.

Interesting test. Probably my weakest question was http errors.

75th percentile in US, 79th in Anglo, 50th percentile among test takers on that site (?).

Greater than 70th percentile in everything except cultural info where I'm 8th percentile. I'm not sure what kind of upbringing I had but I think the test is saying 'sheltered'.

Rip. I know you IRL so I find this surprising.

Thank you! Much appreciated.

I think this was the category with different names for weed, different brands of cosmetics, etc. so that’s how I’m preserving my dignity.

I lurk /r/Redscarepod for fun (and field anthropology), so that gives me an unfair advantage when it comes to feminine insight.

Hell, even I'm a bit miffed at "only" 77th percentile for the site, I want to believe I'm special :(

Another RSP patrician.

I'm sad Reddit broke all the fun APIs, because that "users of X sub also like Y" tool was really fun, and I'm pretty sure slatestarcodex and RSP had a decent overlap and I've always found that very amusing.

I've never once listened to RSP, but I love their sub.

You couldn't pay me money to listen to the actual podcast, but it's an interesting crowd. I used to see @2rafa active there on occasion, and it was weird. Akin to running into your pediatrician at a rave.

I loved the podcast but Anna got xanax’d out and the subreddit degenerated into a sad hybrid of ChapoTrapHouse and MDE that I didn’t enjoy.

Are you on the redscareforgirlsandgays subreddit? It's better than the main subreddit, though half the people on there seem like leftists which completely confuse me as to what they're getting out of the podcast (though most people on there also claim never to listen to it or to have stopped listening years ago.) I guess if you're not listening to the content of their points and just distracted by the aesthetic you can be convinced or deceived into thinking they're not right wing but it's bizarre to me that people still seem unsure at this point

I'm not surprised. Disliking the podcast but appreciating the community is... very common. Almost universal on the sub, in my experience.

No answer key after the end? Aw.

Beat you by 1 point though.

Which of these countries possess nuclear weapons?
Israel

Lmao.

296, but I absolutely lol'd at that one and the 420 one, in exactly the same way as @sarker.

There's also US nuclear weapons in Germany. They're under a shared US-NATO command structure. German officers are nominally in charge of delivering these weapons in a time of war. Does that mean Germany "possesses" nuclear weapons? Only the test author knows :(

My impression is that there were lots of ambiguous questions like this where some answers could be reasonably argued either way.

There were. The one that got me was the French colonies. I'm guessing that they wouldn't count India, and that most educated people wouldn't guess India, but only because most people don't know about the colony at Pondicherry.

My results: 280/320.

/images/17746329662482057.webp

I only noticed afterwards that exactly five answers are correct and five false. Curious if I can improve my score armed with this knowledge.

Second attempt: 288/320.

/images/17746366354556532.webp

Congrats! Better than mine...

How do you upload an image?

When you post a comment, select the rightmost icon below the text window. It goes bold–italics–quote–link–image.

How do you upload an image?

There's a button underneath the text-entry field.

I just get an error when I use it. Thanks though.

He also mentions:

Of course, this test has massive cultural bias!

There also seem to be a lot of typos in the options.

KnowledgeScore (out of maximum possible)Percentile out of USAians of ages 50–69…out of Anglosphere* people
Computational58/609999
International47/509797
Cultural74/805576
Aesthetic41/504253
Literary24/307068
Technical39/409697
Total293/3209798

*US, CA, IE, UK, AU, and NZ. (Insert angry Éire noises?)

I think the typos are deliberate foil questions, under the assumption that a person genuinely familiar with the topic would notice that the word was misspelled.

If that's the case, that is dirty pool given he didn't say "misspellings don't count" up front. I chalked the misspellings up to test creator error, and picked them (except for one where there was a misspelling and the correct spelling both as options).

Same. Quatar is a major producer of oil!

That would be crazy not to tell you and just have it as a trick. Anyway, I picked the typoed options as if there were correct, and got 304 overall, broken down into:

Computational Knowledge

56 / 0–60 97th centile Site: 86th

International Knowledge

47 / 0–50 97th centile Site: 70th

Cultural Knowledge

78 / 0–80 97th centile Site: 97th

Aesthetic Knowledge

47 / 0–50 95th centile Site: 95th

Literary Knowledge

28 / 0–30 96th centile Site: 90th

Technical Knowledge

38 / 0–40 91st centile Site: 78th

So I don't think the typos can be traps or I'd have done worse. Embarrassing score on Literary for a wordcel like me though.

Met 19 year old girl - short, tiny waist but curvy. Into martial arts. Start talking about politics - from her side rant about Israel and she shows me the back of her phone - there is pink swastika there. The cutest antisemithism I have seen so far.

I definitely don't consider myself anything near a Nazi, but a hot right-wing girlfriend sounds like an absolute riot.

IRL Shiny Pokemon.

Don't let her get away!

What was it? purple haired British nationalist Emilia?

Was video game character at first, now just real versions with actual women.

I'd beware personally. She might have head trauma that makes her way less risk averse. Like a miley Cyrus or Roseanne

Just an ordinary Slavic girl. Due to historical reasons Nazi-s are not the bad guys here.

Where is here?

Eastern Europe, but not part of the territories where великая отечественая was waged. Communists/russians were quite worse than the Germans.

Where exactly is here and what bars/gyms/coffeeshops do the pink swastika girls go to there?

Yea wth I need to know a lot more !

I encourage you to date her just so I'm around for the debrief. Tag me.

Trying my best.

Now that’s confidence.

One Billion Jews

Recently, Gad Saad was on the Joe Rogan Experience and he asked the host how many Jews he thought there were. Rogan responded one billion, or 500 million minimum, conservative estimate. There are in fact about 20 million Jews. Rogan was off by a factor of 25.

Ha ha. But to be fair if you're not used to doing Fermi estimates you can get tripped up like this.

I asked Claude to challenge me on some that I might be similarly dumb about but I've spent enough time in this kind of community that all of the low hanging fruit, like murder rate in the US or percentage of federal budget that goes to foreign aid has been picked.

The ones that busted me hardest were estimating the age of Proto Indo European (less than 10,000 years old, I guessed 100k) and the number of spoken languages in the world (about 7000, I guessed 1000). I guess I don't feel too embarrassed about not knowing those. And I still wasn't 25x off.

I ask you, fellow Mottizens, do you have facts that we should all know that would probably punk us if we tried to estimate? Tip: you can make something a spoiler by surrounding it with two | characters on each side (check the preview).

That was like a decade ago no?

But yea it was mind blowing - until I asked all my friends.

People just don’t know things.

In fairness to Rogan, working in the entertainment industry his whole adult life would tend to lead to overestimation of the ratio of jewish people in the population at large.

Yeah but one in eight? Worldwide?

murder rate in the US

One of my biggest regrets in life is missing this site's "DESPITE" phase. I imagine the salt mines were bountiful.

That's a very common thing - people routinely vastly overestimate minorities and underestimate majorities: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/41556-americans-misestimate-small-subgroups-population

Though a billion Jews is obviously weird - like ok, there are a billion Jews - where do they actually live? There are only two billion-sized countries, and neither of them has any noticeable number of Jews.

Nothing about Rogan specifically - to your average Norm. N. Normie, big number is a big number. Million, billion, trillion - if it is above the magnitudes he uses regularly in his personal life, it is just lump of zeroes.

BTW, was Joe Rogan also asked how many people are there on Earth in total?

That's borderline braindead from Rogan. It's like a child's thoughtless, blurted out estimate.

On the other end of that topic's estimates, you had the Palestininans in a Gaza survey, most of whom were convinced that only 0.5 million Jews lived in Israel. Their ignorance may have played a part in their constant willingness to use violence against Israel. It also may have some root in what may be universal breeding grounds for genocidal thought (my own speculation): "they're super dangerous and evil, but they're super small at the same time, so we should just squash them!"

My q: How many professional, actively managed funds beat their benchmark index over the course of 15-20 years? Guess at a percentage/range.

How many professional, actively managed funds beat their benchmark index over the course of 15-20 years? Guess at a percentage/range.

My naive guess is approximately zero. Google says around 7%, but also "The Survival Factor: Over 15–20 years, a large percentage of active funds close or merge, often due to poor performance, meaning that the surviving pool of funds that actually beat the market is extremely small." So some number perhaps much smaller than 7% since we aren't counting all the failures and merged funds.

0 to1%

Was he high? He might have been literally baked out of his mind, he often is on the pod I think.

My q: How many professional, actively managed funds beat their benchmark index over the course of 15-20 years? Guess at a percentage/range.

My guess is 0.2% to 0.5%

It's a hyper-pareto thing, but it's not quite that bad. What's interesting is how many companies (in various sectors) also fail or lose their independence over the decades. Humans are bad at decision making when money is involved. It turns into something like a 95/5 pareto over a few decades. Some winners manage to stay consistently competent and end up taking a massive slice of the pie.

Wait I fucked up the percentage math. I thought "20-50 out of 1000, that feels like the right number. oh but he wanted a percent that's 0.2-0.5% right?"

I meant 2-5%

Bah!

I don't think it's brain dead, it just means he doesn't have a reference point to compare to. @Corvos mentioned that would be 1/8 of all people on earth, but if you don't know there are 8 billion people on earth (I certainly didn't), then that doesn't help you as a heuristic. If you don't happen to know any reference point on which to base an estimate, and if you're being asked in a setting where you have to answer off the cuff (which he was, since it was on his show), then your answer isn't going to really have any bearing on how smart (or not) you are.

Yeah. I'm sympathetic to this, but also, you should have some reference points. Surely, a person ought to know the population of their own country, their own country's relative size compared to the world, and then be able to roughly estimate the percentage of people who belong to some minority, and get a rough guess.

I'm not going to fault him for getting it wrong off the cuff. I might make the same mistake, and then feel stupid about it a second later as my brain catches up to my mouth.

But it is important, I think, if a person is going to have opinions about a topic in public, to actually have a handle on the statistics involved. It makes a huge difference if you're talking about 10+% of the world's population vs a fraction of 1%.

He's like 50-60 years old. How do you go through that many years (while not literally living in a cave) without ever hearing about the world's population? If you are off by a billion or two, that's understandable, but you gotta have some idea, especially when you've no doubt heard about the populations of India and China being what they are. You shouldn't miss by full orders of magnitude.

I'm 40 years old and I didn't know. It's not relevant to my life; why would I bother to retain that information?

I vaguely remember people making a big deal about China and India both having more than a billion people, and the US having less than half that, which seems at least a bit grounding, and I don't pay close attention to these things.

Yeah, reference points are hard. I once lost a general knowledge quiz for my team by getting us to the tiebreak and then being asked, “What is the distance between London and the closest point in Canada?”

I thought for a bit, tried to imagine them on a map relative to a journey in the UK I knew and thought, hmm, easily ten times that.

Said, “1200 miles”.

Teammates not best pleased.

How many professional, actively managed funds beat their benchmark index over the course of 15-20 years?

My first estimate would be close to none. 20 years is a really long time, especially for an actively managed fund. And the risk is asymmetric - if you get lucky and win, the investors will take the extra money out and spent it on cocaine and hookers charitable projects, and if you get unlucky once and lose, the fund goes bust and is no more. Well, maybe by pure luck there are some funds that survive that long and show positive returns above market, but I'd say excluding Madoff scenario, quite a small number.

How many professional, actively managed funds beat their benchmark index over the course of 15-20 years? Guess at a percentage/range.

Is that including their fees, or just straight fund vs. Index?

Pick whichever one you feel confident about giving a percentage/range on.

Ignoring fees, 10-20%. Accounting for fees, <5%.

I want to say that's pretty much my intuition too.

About 1% if even that, I believe.

1 billion Jews is ridiculous, though, it'd be one in eight humans on earth. Perhaps in certain parts of America it feels that way - Rogan likely has disproportional contact with intelligent, unusual people and maybe that skews his estimates. But Israel would have to be the size of China.

About 1% if even that, I believe.

I think you have over-corrected here. It's more like 5-15% before fees and 5-10% after fees. They (professional investors and fund managers) are largely, in Peter Lynch's words, 'oxymorons', but it's not quite as bad as you suspected. Funnily or appropriately enough, the percentage lines up almost exactly with the percentage of amateur traders who succeed consistently. Yet so-called professionals and those with credentials are consistently awarded more credibility and respect.

That isn’t quite true. “Amateur investors” includes everything from sensible people who manage their 401ks with a little panache and a slight preference in sector exposure to “day traders” of the WSB type who gamble on far out of the money options or who put their life savings into heavily leveraged short ETFs.

Among the latter, most data shows perhaps 1% make money consistently, far below professional active managers. In addition, their losses are far higher, while many active managers (loathe as I am to defend them) only marginally underperform the market.

That study regarding 1% of retail traders being profitable doesn't account for positive churn. if your account is profitable next thing you know it's shut down and either 1] run at a fund 2] done through a different entity 3] both. so you're only left w the weirdos w profitable accounts who don't go pro

I don’t think it’s very common for even the tiny minority of successful retail traders to join a professional fund, the approach to risk management alone would make that a compliance challenge at the best of times. It has happened, but far more common is what Jane Street, Two Sigma etc do (as far as I know) where they pay savants for trade ideas directly. There are quite a few basement dweller math geniuses who make a living that way.

I did not say amateur investors (the larger group). I said amateur traders, who attempt to take their activities quite seriously. Around 10% of them succeed consistently, afaik.

What separates a trader from an investor? You can discuss this professionally (traders execute to balance liquidity, market depth, optimize, PMs strategize, order etc), but its not relevant to amateur investing where the PM/trader distinction is definitionally irrelevant.

Rogan is a stand up comedian, 1/8 professional comedians are probably Jewish.

Best explanation!

In New York City, I think about a quarter of white people are Jewish. In LA it is much lower, though maybe 1/8th still makes sense.

YouGov says (link above) Americans think 30% of US people are Jewish. In reality, about 10% of New Yorkers and about 2% of Americans are Jewish (which would make it about 20% of whites in NY, though there are non-white Jews, but not too many of them in New York I presume). And this likely including people who have any Jewish genes, about half of them probably do not have any connection to Jewish culture or religion - though in New York due to large Orthodox population likely the distribution is a bit different.

That said, for comedians specifically I'd say 1/8 is probably low, could be as high as 20% if you count successful professional comedians, though I haven't seen any exact or well-supported figures anywhere.

Fair.


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