I was watching youtuber Tim Pool host leading members of new conservative media at his trailer (that’s not a joke, it really was his trailer, though maybe it’s an ironic trailer since he must have money).

As traditional media collapses, opinion makers are increasingly emerging in youtube and podcasts, with Joe Rogan and Tim Pool being two of the most successful examples. (Ok, Rogan’s not really a conservative but liberals don’t like him)

It was interesting to see so many of them in one room since they’re each used to monopolizing their own shows. Of course everyone has to kiss Joe Rogan’s ass since he’s the king of this new genre so they all want to be invited on his show. Alex Jones was the biggest Rogan ass kisser.

It was fun seeing the big husky robust Jones get verbally kicked around by the thin and short Ashkenazi Michael Malice. A good example of the negative correlation between IQ and weight/height ratio. It was also nice knowing that Pool, despite being a Trump supporter, is smart and unbiased enough to know Biden won the election.

But their thought process is so strange. On the one hand they keep complaining about the corporate media (who Malice calls the enemy of the people-did we learn nothing from the Holocaust?) but then say covid lockdowns are all part of this communist conspiracy to reduce income inequality by driving everyone into poverty. ThAtTH MAKkeS SEnTH. Nothing corporate elites want more than communism. Oh well, I guess we should be grateful they don’t believe in QAnon like their boomer counterparts.

You can watch the full episode below if you have two and a half hours to kill:

The great Gordon Lightfoot turned 83 today! Roughly the same age as the Wechsler IQ scales, especially the beloved ancient WBI. Which is fitting since it was the Wechsler scales that taught me who this Canadian treasure is. One should never discuss items on IQ tests but this item is no longer used, and was only ever used in Canada…

Immediately after taking the WISC-R at age 12, I became obsessed with owning these tests. But I was just a 12-year-old kid, and even if I had the huge amount of money needed to buy it, I didn’t have a graduate degree in psychology so it couldn’t be sold to me.

So I went to a payphone and just started phoning every psychologist, pretending to be a woman (I was too young to pretend to be a man) telling them they were under inspection to make sure they were following proper testing protocol and to pretend I was a patient they were administering the test to (so I could make sure they were doing it right). These poor psychologists would spend an hour on the phone administering the test to me in as I rapidly wrote down each item.

The problem was, my general knowledge has always been way below my overall IQ (I scored at the 75th percentile at age 12 among 12-year-olds when officially tested), but now I was pretending to be a grown-ass woman taking the ADULT Wechsler Information subtest. I flew through the first few questions without any difficulty, but then she asks “Who is Gordon Lightfoot?”

“A lumberjack,” I stupidly replied. And that was the beginning of my downward spiral on the WAIS-R Information subtest (I got a scaled score of 7 which was probably high for a 12-year-old but below average for the adult I was pretending to be). The country’s psychometric field is run by dimwits the psychologist must have thought.

It turns out the actual question concerned a famous jazz musician (who I did know) but since they were administering the test in Canada, they arbitrarily substituted Gordon Lightfoot.

That night I asked my mom if she knew who Gordon Lightfoot was: “OF COURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” she screamed.

A few years later I administered the entire WAIS-R to my 9th grade English teacher who I adored because she gave me the highest mark in the school’s history on my book report of George Orwell’s 1984 (despite me never reading the book). When I asked her “Who was Gordon Lightfoot?” her elderly smile lit up the room as she got out of the chair and danced, saying “Gordon Lightfoot is the most wonderful Canadian folk singer!” It was great to see that a woman with such a high opinion of my book report score so high on the WAIS-R.

Sadly, in 2019 I met a super scrawny short guy who told me Lightfoot was a POS. Normally I have the highest respect for scrawny people, but this guy just looked like he had AIDS (no offense). Apparently he was working as a cook when Lightfoot ordered some food and as a huge fan, the restaurant at which he worked approached the singer and said “a member of our staff is such a huge fan of yours and he would just be so honored to meet you” and outwalked this lowly young cook who looked like he had AIDS.

Apparently Lightfoot was nonplused and a bit annoyed, so the cook was obviously devastated. But then I’d be annoyed too if I were just trying to enjoy dinner and I was introduced to some freak whose only relevance was that he was a fan of my music, like everyone else in Canada!

And what great music it is!

In the second and final chapter of this series, we review evidence that commenter Tez has high IQ. From his email:

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1. My mother and I are the only obese people in our extended family, and we both used to be quite thin. The general trend of genetic stock is fairly promising on my mother’s side of the family tree, where almost everyone is thin, or at least was thin prior to middle age. My father’s family history is mysterious but he was rail thin and very tall, suggesting high IQ. Also, I was in great shape for most of my life. I gained 50 lb in the past 6 years during a prolonged depressive spell, then gained another 20 lb during lockdown.
2. My childhood IQ was 139. I don’t know what the intelligence scale of the test was. I suspect it was Wechsler but 139 is high by any standard, particularly for an underclass kid. Incidentally, I was forced to take an IQ test by my kindergarten teacher. She assumed I was retarded after I failed a simple busy work assignment to draw a mode of transportation (airplane, bike, car, etc.) Possessing a creative spark, I drew an enormous catapult with a passenger seat for a parachute equipped traveler. Tangentially, I tend to agree with your theory that childhood IQ scores are more reliable, although I am obviously biased by my own high score.
3. I learned to speak at a very young age and was speaking in complete sentences before my second birthday. At the age of one, I apparently told my mother I intended to learn how to potty train myself as it would spare her the trouble of teaching me. I have no memory of this conversation but see no reason for my mother to lie about it.
4. I am 6’5″. That is tall for any ethnic group but extremely tall for someone who is part Japanese. My mother is tall for a half Scottish, half Japanese woman at 5’8″ and my father was a 6’2″ French Canadian. Interestingly, everyone on both sides of my family has scoliosis, including my mother who has double scoliosis, meaning her spine is shaped like the letter S. Even in her 70s, I suspect she’d be well over 6’0″ if she could straighten herself out. I would probably be 6’8″ or so if I could straighten out my back but I’m already too tall for comfort.
5. I have an enormous skull, with a head circumference of 25.5″ or 64.77cm. Whether or not this evinces a superior brain is up for debate.
6. I am extremely pale, even adjusting for ethnic background. People have always made comments about my paleness, which I find insulting and inappropriate. In any case, my great paleness suggests to me that my ancestors all lived in very selective environments.
7. My maternal (Japanese) grandfather was highly intelligent, long lived and the direct descendant of nobility. My mother’s father was an MIT educated electrical engineer who worked alongside Albert Einstein on various projects for the Department of Defense. My grandfather definitely knew Einstein as evidenced by his photo of them working together in a lab. What I am less sure of is my grandfather’s claim to have corrected several of Einstein’s equations. After leaving the DoD, my grandfather worked for NASA monitoring sounds from outer space. He eventually died at the age of 95. The cause of death was pneumonia, which he could have treated but instead he simply chose to die. He seemed to follow Einstein’s sentiment that it was inelegant to fight the inevitable. For all I know, Einstein picked up that sentiment from my grandfather. The Japanese are fairly stoic about facing death, particularly those descended from samurai stock. In any case, although he was 95 at the time of his death, he could have lived even longer and that suggests excellent genes.
8. My great grandmother was said to be one of the tallest women in Japan. She wasn’t tall by contemporary western standards but as a woman in the 19th century, standing 5’6″ made her a veritable giantess. She was also the daughter of samurai.
9. My maternal grandmother was supposedly highly intelligent. Personally, she always struck me as a first class idiot and religious fanatic. She also appeared to be an untreated schizophrenic but her measured IQ score was 150. She died at the age of 84 from heart failure. I suspect she could have lived another ten years had she spent less time praying and more time exercising. She was rail thin but that seemed to be more from living on a low calorie diet.
10. My mother’s childhood IQ score was 158. I don’t know what test she took, however, and in general, am not convinced my mother is all that bright. I suspect the lion’s share of intelligence related genes went to her younger sister, who got two masters degrees, climbed the corporate ladder and married a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet.
11. Even though he was eventually expelled, my father was smart enough to attend Harvard. Simply getting accepted is fairly impressive in light of his white trash upbringing. It’s interesting to note that when he attended, the acceptance rate was closer to twenty percent than its current rate of three percent despite the student body remaining the same size. This is because Harvard spends millions of dollars annually tricking high school seniors with no chance of admission into applying simply so Harvard can sate its elitist need for exclusivity by denying more applicants. Thus Harvard, with its ultra low acceptance rate, can maintain its spot among the ranks of US News’ top colleges in America. Elitism for the sake of elitism; how typical of the ivy league caste system.
12. Despite putting no effort into it, my SAT score was a respectable 1220 out of a possible 1600. I can’t stress enough how little I actually cared about school growing up. I certainly had no intentions of attending college. My plan as a teenager was to become a comic book artist, possibly after attending cartooning course at a trade school like the Kubert School in New Jersey. My teachers and guidance counselor kept hounding me to take the SAT, so I took it to get them off my back. I treated it like an eye exam, walking in off the street with zero prep and going through the motions. It literally never occurred to me to study given that I had never studied for a test in my life. In spite of this haphazard approach and a piecemeal education, I did quite well. Also, family income correlates perfectly with SAT score and adjusted for my family income bracket–less than 20k a year–I scored off the charts.
13. People frequently comment that they are impressed if not astonished by my intelligence. Personally, I take this as something of a back handed compliment as I believe it evinces a prejudice against hulking giants. I look like a 6’5″ Ron Livingston with the physique of James Gandolfini–broad shouldered with a block shaped torso. People expect you to be dumb when you’re built like an NFL lineman. Conversely, people online who have no idea what I look like frequently compliment my intelligence. Of course, in so doing, they are merely comparing me to the average internet pleb, which isn’t saying much. Still, it is worth noting that my college classmates revered me as a literary demigod and constantly requested my guidance overseeing their term papers.
14. I suspect I have fairly high emotional intelligence, if that is truly a thing. Despite constantly moving around from school to school, I was always very popular and in some cases had what can only be described as a cult like following of adoring vassals. People tended to hang on my every word when I would hold court on various subjects of interest. I completely took this for granted when I was younger. Only recently have I appreciated this was remarkable adjusted for circumstances. My third grade teacher kept telling my mother, “Your son has such amazing charisma for his age. He could be president one day.” I don’t entirely agree but politics don’t interest me in any case.
15. I have a borderline eidetic memory, for whatever that is worth. I didn’t realize this was a gift until I was in my early 20s. Naively, I assumed everyone remembers things with near crystal clarity. How wrong I was.
16. I am a fairly talented artist, particularly by the standards of an autodidact. I am also a competent video editor, photoshop enthusiast, essayist and writer of short stories. Currently I am working on a novel set in Afghanistan.

Other relevant info:

Miscellaneous labels I identify with: Atheist, secularist, transhumanist, INTJ, politically liberal (voted Green Party in past two elections), unmarried, no kids, night owl, teetotaler, art and music lover.

Hobbies: I hate sports with the intensity of a thousand suns. I love strategy games like chess and Magic: The Gathering, both of which I have played at a ranked competitive level. I play poker semi-professionally and have done well for myself. My musical taste is eclectic; I like almost everything but hate country and most rap music. I love film and was dumb enough to major in it back when I still fantasized about a career as a director. Sam Harris is my favorite living non-fiction writer, though I also have a lot of respect for conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell who challenge liberal conventions. I was a fan of Chomsky in my early 20s but now cringe at his overly simplistic world view, which appears to be motivated in part by ethnic genetic interests. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I love Bill Maher and occasionally enjoy Rachel Maddow. Norm MacDonald was my favorite comedian and I’m heartbroken by his passing.

One other random fact: I am only attracted to women with brown skin, dark hair and brown eyes. I seem to be attracted to my total opposite given that I am pale skinned, green eyed and prematurely white haired (I dye it black). I don’t know if this attraction towards brown skinned women says anything about my IQ. I interpret it as nature attempting to give my unborn offspring a chance at enduring the unforgiving summers global warming has thrust upon us.

Well, hopefully you are still awake after reading all of that, generously assuming you read any of it.

If you have any follow up questions, let me know.

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Tez has provided an enormous amount of information so I’m just going to simplify by focusing on the most salient.

BIODEMOGRAPHICS

As I mentioned in part 1, the average IQ of a chronically American is 81 (U.S. white norms). Average IQ of a 6’5″ quarter Japanese White American Millennial man is 111. Average IQ of a white American Millennial man with a 25.5″ head circumference is 116.

What is the average IQ of someone with all three characteristics? To answer that question, we do not simply average the three averages because the traits are imperfectly correlated. The actual expected IQ of such a person is 92 (U.S. white norms). The reason it’s so low is chronic unemployment is a much more powerful IQ predictor than physical traits like height and head size, especially since the latter are substantially correlated and thus add little information independent of one another.

With his slight Mongoloid tilt, colossal physique, and chronic unemployment I am picturing a dim-witted giant, like Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I find it fascinating that Tez wrote “People expect you to be dumb when you’re built like an NFL lineman” but I’m wondering if his height adds, or subtracts from the impression of stupidity.

PSYCHOMETRICS

And yet Tez scored 1220 on the re-centered SAT which at the time he likely took it (early 2000s), equated to an IQ of 123 (U.S. norms); about 121 (U.S. white norms). And if anything this is an underestimate given Tez’s poor schooling (although quality of schooling tends to correlate with genetic quality).

So bio-demographics underestimated Tez’s IQ by roughly 2 standard deviations! I guess this is expected given the huge standard error on predictions based on IQ correlates as crude as employment, height and head size, but error might be especially large for someone like Tez, who has come from such an unusual background. It may also have been a mistake to use chronic unemployment as a predictor when he admits to working “under the table” especially if he makes a lot of money doing so.

Until more in-depth testing occurs, I will adopt 121 as the best measure of Tez’s IQ.

Recently commenter Tez asked me to comment on his IQ. The email was very long so today I only have time to comment on the first half, where he lists all the evidence of low IQ (in part 2 he lists all the evidence of high IQ). Below is from his email.

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Hello, Pumpkin Person.

I hope this correspondence finds you well. I don’t want to bore you with unnecessary details, so I’ll merely skim the surface of what I think is relevant biographical data.

Low IQ stuff:

1. I am currently obese. According to Jayman’s great article on the subject, obesity is more heritable than most people think and in my estimation, is indicative of inferior genes. Not so much metabolic genes that make someone directly obese so much as genes that lead to habits resulting in obesity. Personally, I have long observed a correlation between obesity and low IQ, even before I discovered the HBD sphere. With that said, my clinical depression is what drives my overeating and there are times when it wanes and so too does my weight. I have been in absolutely fantastic shape in the past, which suggests I am not simply a walking mound of genetic waste. However, I currently need to lose 70 lb.
2. My paternal grandmother was a mildly autistic thirteen year old girl who was raped by a pedophile while working the front desk at the family business, a brothel. She thus became pregnant with my father, who inherited his father’s genetic predilection towards antisocial behavior. My father was a violent psychopath who took great joy in in beating my pregnant mother and raping my brother and sister. I tend to think empathy and IQ are correlated, though I also suspect my father was a high IQ outlier. After being expelled from Harvard for destroying a science exhibit while high on acid, he went on to study at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and had perfect grades before either dropping out or being expelled. His plan was to become a priest, probably because it would have afforded him unlimited access to altar boys. I suspect he only began dating my mother because he saw she was a single mom and realized he could rape her son. Once he knocked her up with the pregnancy that became my sister, my father pursued higher paying work as a photographer. Following my parents’ separation, he spent the final 27 years of his life successfully evading child support collectors and was apparently working as an elementary school teacher at the time of his death (again, for obvious reasons).
3. My family was homeless for six months after my mother finally took the kids and ran. Following this, we spent fifteen years on welfare. Obviously this says nothing great about my genetic stock. I have observed first hand that members of the underclass generally deserve every negative stereotype surrounding them. They–or should I say we–are on average genetically inferior to members of higher socioeconomic classes. With that said, the majority of the middle to upper-middle class do not impress me and I tend to think my achievements would outstrip theirs had I been born into a similarly comfortable setting.
4. I have large gaps in my primary education. As a consequence of having whatever slum we inhabited condemned by the board of health every two years, my family moved from town to town constantly. Thus I attended two elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools. Some of these schools were okay, most were awful. My ninth grade math teacher, for instance, was a heroin addict who would pass out twenty minutes into the typical class after handing out busy work assignment. Consequently, I learned nothing from her and was always an entire year behind my grade level on math, which really hurt when I was strong-armed into AP math classes I was ill equipped for. Eventually I simply gave up on math, and from there, school as a whole.
5. I was raised by a single mother who was an eighth grade drop out. My mother had a rift with her abusive overachiever father and, it seems to me, basically wasted her life to spite him. Being raised by someone with borderline contempt for academic achievement may have rubbed off on me. On that note:
6. I was an extremely unmotivated high school student. I hated school and unsuccessfully attempted to drop out. After being court ordered to attend a residential school for problem kids, I did the absolute minimum amount of work to squeak by. I never studied and rarely did homework. I somehow ended up in AP classes despite my vehement protests; I greatly would have preferred staying in low tier classes alongside my slacker friends. I refused to waste a single moment of my free time in high school studying for tests; I have no idea how I managed passing grades, let alone a 4.0 GPA senior year. I was a terrible student who didn’t deserve his high marks–lazy, undisciplined and intellectually aloof. This might sound like a humble-brag but I see it as the opposite. Whatever latent intellectual potential I possessed went to waste due to coming from an underclass family that didn’t prioritize education, whether through culture, genetic inferiority, or both.
7. I am a college drop out. Following high school, I spent an aimless year as a NEET before applying to several colleges—after missing the application deadlines. I was completely clueless about how to apply to college; deadlines, financial aid, all of that. Stupidly, I checked the ethnic background boxes for both white and Asian, not realizing the anti-Asian prejudice of admission committees. Eventually I attended the only school that accepted me, a non-prestigious state university (CSULA, 47.8% acceptance rate) that was not legally allowed to factor in the race of applicants. I majored in Film before dropping out after sophomore year with a 3.9 GPA, having spent all semesters on the dean’s list. High grades are nice but it was dumb of me to major in something as frivolous as film and being a college drop out also correlates with low IQ. After leaving school in my early 20s, I gave up on college for a while. Now I am in my mid 30s and determined to finish my undergraduate degree in a STEM field within the next five years. My long term goal is to get into an Applied Physics PhD program and do scientific research exploring my ideas for alternative energy sources.
8. I am the third and youngest child. I have long associated birth order with IQ. The limited research into the subject seems to support my anecdotal observation. My mother was also 38 years old when she had me, which increases my odds of having some kind of autism greatly. Despite this, I score quite low for both autistic and schizophrenic traits.
9. My mother suffered eleven miscarriages in her life, which her doctor insisted was nature’s way of telling her she came from inferior genetic stock and that she should not attempt to reproduce. It seems a fairly heartless thing to say to a grieving woman but I don’t entirely disagree with the logic.
10. I am unemployed, and have been for more than fifteen years. If you want to get technical, I am more aptly described as a welfare cheat. I receive SSI disability payments monthly and live in government subsidized housing while supplementing my income by illegally playing poker on the internet. I stay on SSI because it grants me free housing in an extremely nice neighborhood (Mitt Romney used to live here), free money and unlimited free healthcare. I do plan on getting off of SSI soon, maybe if I can get my novel published. This is certainly a mixed bag of variables. I believe gaming the system shows the ability to adapt to your circumstances and thrive but it also doesn’t in any way show the ability to swim against the tide, i.e. rise through Nietzschean force of will through the traditional ivy league caste system associated with western excellence (something my father almost managed to do despite beginning in poverty).
11. I am fairly callous at times. Given my premise that IQ corresponds with empathy, I don’t think it says anything great about me that I am bored to tears by people whining about first world problems. I do feel empathy for people suffering in third world conditions and occasionally donate to charitywater.orgHelp bring clean and safe water to every person on the planet | charity: watercharity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries. 100% of public donations go to water projects.charitywater.org. I’m also not sure if I am callous so much as callused. Having survived homelessness, extreme poverty and familial dysfunction, I am not terribly moved by people kvetching about minor problems.

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I don’t pay too much attention to all the family background stuff. There’s enough error in trying to guess one’s IQ from one’s own traits and biography. Trying to do so from one’s ancestors life story is more trouble than it’s worth.

Perhaps the most important thing he said here is that he’s been unemployed for 15 years. In the book The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray claim that 57% of chronic welfare recipients were in the bottom 20% of intelligence. This obviously means that (as of 1994), the 57th percentile of the chronic welfare distribution was IQ 87 (U.S. norms), compared to IQ 103 (the 57th percentile of general U.S. population). Assuming similar variance, this implies the entire distribution of chronically unemployed folks is 16 points to the left, suggesting the average IQ of this group is 84 (U.S. norms) (IQ 81 U.S. white norms) which is also what I’ve seen for homeless people.

But Tez obviously does not have an IQ of 81. Just the fact that he could write such a long and organized email suggests he’s way off in the top 1% of chronic unemployeds, and indeed one would have to be, to correspond with the likes of me.

In part 2 we’ll review the evidence of high IQ.

Halloween V (1989) was the fourth sequel to John Carpenter’s original 1978 classic (not to be confused with Rob Zombies 21st century white trash remakes). I loved this film because it has some of the most intimate scenes between Dr. Loomis (played by the Oscar worthy Donald Pleasence) and Myers. The conversations are one-way of course because Myers doesn’t speak, but that makes them all the more haunting. Interestingly, Loomis makes repeated references to Myers’s rage, in sharp contrast to earlier films where Loomis described him as emotionless. Continuity was never the series’ strong suit.

But the best part comes after they capture Michael. So eerie to see Myers (the literally boogeyman) just sitting in a jail cell like any other common criminal with the police lights illuminating his masked head.

And then out of nowhere, a mysterious man in black enters the police station with a machine gun and blows him the hell out of there.

Who was the mysterious man in black? An obsessive Micheal Myers fan? A Mossad agent?

Nobody knew.

Not even the artsy French guy hired to direct the film knew. He just through it in at the last minute to add some mystery.

It was the first time I’d seen a horror film end with a cliff hanger.

Unfortunately Halloween 6 gave a really convoluted explanation for the Man in Black that ended up ruining the series and leading to reboots. I wish they had just left it to our imagination and ended the original timeline without us ever knowing.

Trump recently did an interview where he claimed that ten years ago Israel owned congress, “and rightfully so”. It’s actually kind of rare for Americans to realize how much influence Israel had over U.S. foreign policy so that alone implies a social understanding in the top 10%.

But then anyone with the social understanding to realize it, usually has the social understanding to keep silent about it, but then Trump can get away with saying things other politicians can’t and rather than condemning Trump for his comments as they would with most people, the media is shrewdly ignoring them, because calling out Trump would backfire by causing his base to rally around him.

However in psychometric testing there’s a thing called spoiling an answer, where a response that would normally get partial credit on the Wechsler, suddenly gets downgraded to zero when the subject elaborates.

For example when asked “what is ice cream?” the subject might get 1 point for saying “you put it in the freezer.” But when the examiner asks for elaboration, to help the subject get up to 2 points, he says “you know, to keep it warm!”. The elaboration has spoiled the answer and reduced him to zero.

This is kind of what happened to Trump. He was smart enough to know that a foreign country had enormous influence over U.S. foreign policy (something Chomsky expects even his fans to be too dumb to know), but rather than getting the full 2 points by understanding why this is problematic, he reduced his score on this item to 0 by saying “rightfully so”.

Or maybe Trump only added “rightfully so” to inoculate himself against charges of anti-Semitism or to pander to his Zionist base, but I don’t think so. I think Trump genuinely worships Israel, which would make sense if he were Jewish or if Jews were being persecuted, but being an unwitting Uncle Tom to a more powerful people (even one as impressive as the Jews) raises questions about Trump’s intelligence.

I love these therapy scenes from the director’s cut version of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II. Although no one can replace Jamie Lee Curtis as the original Laurie Strode, actress Scout Taylor-Compton really makes the part her own as she slowly descends into Marxist madness in Zombie’s remakes. Zombie felt that since Strode is the sister of Michael Myers, she should have a little psycho in her too which is a very valid assumption given what we know about regression to the mean.

Indeed if Myers was five standard deviations above the mean in criminal insanity (one in several million level), we’d expect his sister to be +5(0.5) = +2.5 SD (one in 200 level), even though his sister was raised in a much better home (in Zombie’s version).

Of course Rob Zombie probably can’t do a math equation to save his life, but his social intelligence tells him this intuitively. Similarly, an autistic might go their whole life never noticing that mental illness runs in families, but they can use math to achieve that understanding. Math is arguably the highest form of intelligence, because everything, even social dynamics, can be reduced to numbers.

Margot Kidder is great as the therapist and reminds me of my own (now retired) therapist who would also try to ease my anxiety with relaxation exercises I didn’t care for, but I would never have talked to my therapist the way Laurie talks to hers. I have too much respect for her.

I love the way Laurie starts talking about a guy dressed as Frankenstein and even though there was nothing crazy about what she was saying, the manic way in which she was saying it causes the psychiatrist to become alarmed. It’s such attention to social details that makes Zombie a great director.

I also love there being no trees on the leaves outside, thus looking like Halloween in the Midwest. Rob Zombie’s Halloween II is the most atmospheric film in the entire franchise, despite being the most polarizing.

A commenter on Quoara wrote:

Well they were collecting standardization data on it from 2016 through 2020, and expected to finish in 2020, but I don’t know if they did due to Covid, etc.

So if it was normed circa 2018 and looks like it wont be released until 2022 at the earliest by which time the norms will be four years old and from the pre-covid era. Flynn claimed WAIS norms became inflated by 0.3 points per year, but if anything people probably would score lower now than in 2018 because of closed schools and offices and long covid causing brain fog.

Are psychologists going to spend $1400 USD buying a test with potentially obsolete norms and risk getting covid by administering to the people who come to their office? The Psychological Corporation must be shaking in their boots that all the money they invested norming the test will not be made back, but by panicking they are making the problem worse, because every year they don’t release the test is another year more obsolete the norms get.

Maybe they are trying to create a zoom friendly version of the WAIS-V and collecting fresh norms for this new version. All the money they spent norming the pre-covid version could than be a tax write off.

Bad it’s sad to think of the WAIS-V being administered by zoom without the hands-on charm and physical puzzles of the traditional WAIS.

John Carpenter’s 1978 Halloween is arguably the best horror film of all time. What makes it such a great film? You start with a brilliantly simple concept by Irwin Yablans: A babysitter to be killed by the boogeyman on Halloween night. Then you add perhaps the greatest musical score in horror history by John Carpenter, outstanding cinematography by Dean Cundey, great dialogue and exquisite directing by John Carpenter, and excellent performances by Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence.

No better scene shows the genius of this movie than the final chase sequence. After noticing mysterious events at the house across the street where her friends are having sex, our virginal heroine Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis) enters the house and goes into the upstairs bedroom.

The scene where the heroine in the slasher film discovers the bodies has been ripped-off so many times that it’s easy to forget how brilliantly it’s done in Carpenter’s classic. First we get a ringing music as she sees her friend Annie lying on the bed with a grave stone behind her head. Then we get Carpenter’s haunting piano music as classmate Bob’s body pops out swinging upside down, and finally, friend Linda’s body in the closet. As Laurie screams and sobs, we see the killer’s masked face slowly emerge behind her.

The suspense is unbearable as Laurie falls over the railings hurting her knee and the killer rushes down the stairs. The suspense is again unbearable as Laurie locks herself in a room and tries to escape the house. Just as the killer punches through the door and enters, Laurie grabs a rake used to lock her in and moves it to open the door. The scene is beautifully lit in dark blue as the camera zooms in on her ass as she stumbles into the yard just in the nick of time, for the first time sexualizing the character.

Nobody in horror history screams better than Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode:

OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME!!!!!

SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!!

FEEL FREE TO HELP ME!!!!

OH GOD!!!!

OH JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

My favorite part is when she runs to a neighbor’s house screaming for help. They turn on the lights. She screams for help. They turn off the lights thinking it’s a Halloween prank.

Th irony of Laurie Strode, straight A student perfect girl next door virgin teacher’s pet, spent her whole life being good and wholesome, and yet in her time of need, dismissed as some juvenile delinquent.

She runs back to the house where she is babysitting only to discover the kids are too asleep to here her banging on the front door. But she cleverly adapts by throwing a potted plant to their bedroom window and we see the boy wake up and lazily walk downstairs to let her in. This creates unbearable suspense because the killer is briskly walking across the street towards her.

This is a great film to watch on Halloween, and it’s available on shudder. I saw at it as a kid after Roger Ebert gave it no stars. The 1980s was the golden age of horror. You can’t make movies like this anymore because people will think it’s a self-parody or you’ll have clueless people like commenter Pill saying “your films are so weird, are you an alien with no social intelligence?”. But in the 1980s normal people produced and consumed these gritty films with no sense of irony.