John Devlin

In the 18th century America created the blueprint for the modern world… …fought a war to end slavery in the 19th …then harnessed the power that fuels the sun, saved the world, and journeyed to a new one in the 20th… …and then went and created the 21st… …America is the greatest country that’s ever existed…

@DangerousThinkg Great little book…they tried during Nam…those low IQ folks died at 4x the rate of other troops…could barely tie their shoes…

The US Armed forces will not induct anyone with an IQ below 82 Pay close attention

Review infinite jest A book who's rating has see-sawed more than any other. Does it have brilliance and bravissimo coupled with indulgence and logorrhea - Yes. Wallace does what writers like Mailer and Elroy have done by showing other writers a new way to write. Essentially opening up stylistic or thematic or POV choices that felt either to strange, unique, or unremittingly solipsistic. Even though I rate the novel as only 2 stars I feel real sadness over the man's suicide and the loss of what was a uniquely talented writer. Jest is a grandiose, sprawling work that follows many characters, almost all strange and tortured, through about a year of the life in a northern town held in the grip of a dystopian, farcical future. The plot is more a meta construct of witnessing the first 300 pages of batty characters and getting the slight twinge that this author means to wind these disparate threads together. The plot therefore is more about the writer fulfilling that idea than what goes on in the actual story. I will save anyone the recitation of the many characters and their various human failings, which are many, dark, sordid, and sometimes movingly real, phantasmagoric, and gaspingly funny. I would like to say that if an editor cut this book down to 500 pages and tossed out the endnotes the novel would be far better for the excision, but there's something definitely Wallace in his granular, microscopic examination of feelings and scenes that needs to be read. Jest is a book that screams don't look at the story so much as look at me the writer. Narcissistic as that is I don't believe Wallace was doing this out of egoism but simply writing in the only way he knew how -- erudite to painful lengths and focused like a boy lensing an ant on any ripple in the emotional landscape of his characters. Someone said an unexamined life is not worth living. I'm sure Wallace would agree, but moreover, I don't think Wallace could imagine writing a life that wasn't so omphalos(that's for Wallace) oriented. Most if they're honest will read this book to say they read this book: Ulysses, War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged come to mind as well. To them I say you will not be disappointed and to the rest - the neophyte, the dilettante, the wannabe I would say, you won't finish.

Infinite Jest is probably responsible for saving more lives than it is for being a signifier of an annoying and largely imaginary lit bro. Infinite Jest as a cultural phenomenon 1) made literature feel both cool and a personal challenge and 2) decreased loneliness.

Review:infinite jest A book whose rating has see-sawed more than any other. Does it have brilliance and bravissimo coupled with indulgence and logorrhea - Yes. Wallace does what writers like Mailer and Elroy have done by showing other writers a new way to write. Essentially opening up stylistic or thematic or POV choices that felt either to strange, unique, or unremittingly solipsistic. Even though I rate the novel as only 2 stars I feel real sadness over the man's suicide and the loss of what was a uniquely talented writer. Jest is a grandiose, sprawling work that follows many characters, almost all strange and tortured, through about a year of the life in a northern town held in the grip of a dystopian, farcical future. The plot is more a meta construct of witnessing the first 300 pages of batty characters and getting the slight twinge that this author means to wind these disparate threads together. The plot therefore is more about the writer fulfilling that idea then what goes on the actual story. I will save anyone the recitation of the many characters and their various human failings, which are many, dark, sordid, and sometimes movingly real, phantasmagoric, and gaspingly funny. I would like to say that if an editor cut this book down to 500 pages and tossed out the endnotes the novel would be far better for the excision, but there's something definitely Wallace in his granular, microscopic examination of feeling s and scenes that needs to be read. Jest is a book that screams don't look at the story so much as look at me the writer. Narcissistic as that is I don't believe Wallace was doing this out of egoism but simply writing in the only way he knew how -- erudite to painful lengths and focused like a boy lensing an ant on any ripple in the emotional landscape of his characters. Someone said an unexamined life is not worth living. I'm sure Wallace would agree, but moreover, I don't think Wallace could imagine writing a life that wasn't so omphalos(that's for Wallace) oriented. Most if they're honest will read this book to say they read this book: Ulysses, War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged come to mind as well. To them I say you will not be disappointed and to the rest - the neophyte, the dilettante, the wannabe I would say, you won't finish.

Did you know Cormac McCarthy stopped reading new novels after Infinite Jest and referred to @JoyceCarolOates as "the goggle lady?" My definitive takedown of Jest, MFAs, and the coinage of a new term "publishing-inudstrial complex" to explain it all :) unherd.com/2026/03/why-co…

@CynicalPublius @XFreeze Books and movies ftw

@XFreeze Any fans of "The Expanse" out there?

An absolutely excruciating moment at the Georgia Supreme Court this week. Justice Peterson pressed state attorney Deborah Leslie over her citations to cases that apparently don’t exist.

Milton Friedman discusses five enduring myths: 1) The Robber Baron myth 2) The Great Depression myth 3) The Big Government myth 4) The Free Lunch myth 5) The Robin Hood myth

@S___Elliott Jaws

Movies are that are better than the book: No Country For Old Men Goodfellas The Godfather Strangers On A Train

In honor of Chuck Norris's passing, here's some great jokes made from the past decade 😃 Which one is your favorite?!

Compare the physiognomy of a Masai, a female hottentot, a tongan, a Tibetan, a Spaniard, and a Scandinavian…striking dissimilarities… But not the mind! The human mind…the apex of evolution on this planet has remained unchanged for the 300,000 years Homo sapiens started their wandering… Humans, the only species smart enough to figure out the game —evolution, and the only specifies dumb enough to think the game no longer applies to them…🙄🤪😂

One of the greatest mistakes the modern world ever made was to allow the Left to lock in place a race ideology that holds it as axiomatic that there are no average differences between racial groups. But there are, and nothing could be more evident. Just consider height. Compare Koreans and Kenyans on that index. I saw that expressing the view, almost certainly true, that different human populations also have different average IQs is punishable crime in Belgium. But it is self-evidently bad to criminalize the speaking of the truth.

🚨 The iconic Broken Nose scene from Walker, Texas Ranger is peak Chuck Norris He breaks the guy's nose, resets it, then breaks it again because "it looks better the other way." Absolute legend. Classic 90s action gold. RIP Chuck.

Deep thoughts by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

@newstart_2024 Low IQ is real and has great explanatory power

ADHD isn't an attention disorder—it's blindness to the future. Dr. Russell Barkley: "You are nearsighted in time." The future feels distant and unreal until it's imminent → 11th-hour panic, hap-dash fixes, crises that were avoidable. People see it as laziness, moral failing, or carelessness—but it's neurological: the brain can't organize to delayed consequences, only what's right in front of it. Barkley calls this temporal myopia—executive function deficit where time perception warps, making long-term planning feel abstract while immediate threats hijack focus. Hits hard when you realize it's not "just trying harder"—it's a different way the brain experiences time. If this resonates (for you or someone close), what's one moment the "future blindness" showed up—and how did you handle it? Real stories below 👇

BREAKING: Australian Prime Minister Albanese went to a Sydney mosque for Eid prayers to stand against Islamophobia, only to end up being threatened, with everyone screaming “Allahu Akbar” at him. He just sits there terrified, not knowing what to do.

Denmark keeps impeccable statistics on crime, immigration, and, as shown here, crime committed by immigrants. And that's very important because the Western intuition on these numbers is usually completely off. Only remedy is repeated exposure to the data and the facts.

In a study involving 155,191 students from 41 American colleges and universities, SAT scores predicted academic performance even after socioeconomic status (SES) was controlled. SES added negligible additional predictive power. files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562…

Imagine you’ve enraged your enemy by pretending to negotiate while you launch a sneak attack that kills 3,000 of your foe….then you wage a war where you never surrender fighting tooth and nail over tiny spits of islands…now you’re encircled, your suicide attacks flail uselessly, your largest city is firebombed, your navy and air force are gone, you’re down to giving women sticks to fight with… …and on a blue sky day one plane flies overhead and drops a bomb from a science fiction movie that wipes out a city…you have no defense and still you do not surrender…a few days pass and the Soviet Army freed from defeating the Nazis announces it has now joined the war against you… …and still you do not surrender…and a second bomb lights up another city…and still you do not surrender…finally only the capitulation of the emperor saves your country….and let’s understand something not considered…when you had no defense against these atom bombs and wanted to continue to fight…you had no idea how many of these weapons your adversary had…omg…the foe could have had a 1,000 and you utterly defenseless wanted a harikari immolation of Japan… The U.S. saved Japan from itself….

It's funny and horrifying. Dollars to donuts that nobody laughing now would find it funny if Japanese PM made a joke about not trusting a regime willing to use nukes against noncombatants. Tremendously unserious to see this as just funny

@wallischris10 @SteveStuWill IQ is the most clinically robust field in psychology…

@Devlinside123 @SteveStuWill As in lacking evidence? Most of it. Also, methodological robustness, falsifiability, and knowledge of evolutionary biology is generally lacking

Science denial: Not just a problem on the right. [Link below.]

Black violence against Whites is 41 to 42 times higher than white on black violence, adjusted for population size. Who is TEACHING blacks to hate whites?

The moment she discovers chocolate pudding

13 charged in connection with a wedding shooting that wounded two 16-year-old girls; 50–70 shell casings recovered Ohio police said nine adults were arrested in a joint operation with local, state, and federal authorities At least five firearms were seized, including a fully automatic handgun Court documents say that multiple masked individuals were in a parking lot near a wedding reception as the event was ending The group fired guns, first into the air and then at people and vehicles. Two 16-year-old girls were shot, and one was struck by a car during the chaos - Abdi Mohamed – 20- Carrying Concealed Weapons & Aggravated Riot - Abukar Mohamed –19 – Carrying Concealed Weapons & Aggravated Riot - Ali Mohamed – 21 – Carrying Concealed Weapons & Aggravated Riot - Faisal Abdi – 19 – Carrying Concealed Weapons & Aggravated Riot - Abdirahman Mohamed – 22 – Carrying Concealed Weapons & Aggravated Riot - Abdullahi Abdi – 24 – Possession of a Dangerous Ordinance - Abdikadir Abdi – 26 - Possession of a Dangerous Ordinance - Ali Kulmiye – 18 – Aggravated Riot - Mohamed Abdikadir Mohamed – 18 – Carrying Concealed Weapons & Aggravated Riot