Millennium

I'd argue that this is a matter of wisdom, not intelligence per se. Lots of smart people think others are stupid, especially when they're young. Most smart people grow out of this over time, as they gain experience. Some don't, but that's not because they get stupider. Sometimes it's due to lack of real-world experience. Other times it's inappropriate devotion to certain fictional tropes that people always seem to forget are usually villain-coded: the heroic smart guy sometimes gets frustrated but rarely complains about the intelligence of their comrades, but the villainous smart guy complains about it all the time.

Most nerds became collateral damage from society's attempts to contain something much darker: something we mostly forgot even existed, and only fought through outdated traditions. We meant well when we tore out those countermeasures, and we did end that collateral damage. But we no longer remembered what we were keeping at bay, and so we also set the darkness free. The monsters at the top are only part of the problem, and might not even be the biggest: they have plenty of counterparts at the bottom who are in some ways even worse.

Now we have to figure out a new way forward. We need a way to put what needs chaining up back in its chains without harming the innocent weirdos. I don't have an answer. There might not be one. But it is the challenge.

Most nerds became collateral damage from society's attempts to contain something much darker: something we mostly forgot even existed, and only fought through outdated traditions. We meant well when we tore out those countermeasures, and we did end that collateral damage. But we no longer remembered what we were keeping at bay, and so we also set the darkness free. The monsters at the top are only part of the problem, and might not even be the biggest: they have plenty of counterparts below who are in some ways even worse.

Now we have to figure out a new way forward. We need a way to put what needs chaining up back in its chains without harming the innocent weirdos. I don't have an answer. There might not be one. But it is the challenge.

This is true, but there's an extra nuance: mogging isn't just dominance, but effortless dominance (or at least seemingly effortless). Incels use this to justify their aversion to putting effort of any sort into anything: if other people don't have to try, why should they?

Excessive ChatGPT usage is cringe, yes, but I feel like this may be taking things just a little on the far side.

Yeah, after the appropriate layers of VPN/Incognito/Tor/muted phone/etc I braved the link, and it turns out it's actually real, but that is still not a hostname I want connected to me in anyone's access logs more than once.

Yes, we already know techbros are trying to normalize workaholism within the general populace.

Humanity is having to learn all over again that you cannot expect good results from people who do not understand the work that they are doing. But instead of expecting these things from people, now we're expecting it from next-token prediction algorithms. I suspect that a lot of very stupid things will have to happen before we figure this out.

No.

In this case I'd say it's more like 99/1, only even more so, to the point where using numbers doesn't even make sense. Spies are way more trouble than they're worth, except when they're not. But when they are not, they're worth literally everything.

Mostly the same places they always did. Inertia is strong like that. Most of them miss a simpler time, just like you do, but hey, so it goes.

This is true as far as it goes, and yet, there are people in this world who will not grow up and function except in the face of overwhelming social pressure. They will not be taught, nor learn on their own -they must be broken- and if they are not, well, this kind of thing is what happens. The answer isn't to stop excluding them, but to strip away the new enablers.

True, but honestly, with so many people clearly after him, I'm not sure we can assume any of them got him. His psyche had clearly been cracking for many weeks now: I got as much sadistic pleasure as anyone else out of watching him basically flat-out break down and beg the judge for a chance to flee. We already know he'd tried to kill himself once before any of his long list of enemies could get their hands on him. If he was indeed "found dead", then yeah, it's fun to joke that he was clearly hanged 37 times by the CIA, the Clintons, Hollywood, MI6, MIT, the Russians, Trump, and at least two alien species, but I don't think we can discount the possibility that he simply siezed on the next opportunity to beat any of them to the punch.

He should have gotten that horrible 24-hour naked suicide watch thing that Manning got, all the way until trial. Certainly he demonstrated better need for it.

What a waste. May none mourn this creature's passing, but his particular case represented too many valuable opportunities for him to be allowed to die before trial.

Whoever allowed enough of a lapse in his suicide watch that the concept of him being "found" at all even makes sense should be fired and sued for gross malfeasance.