Ask A Genius 1515: Space Dread, Crypto Skepticism, and Political Math

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/22

Does space-horror setup mirror our Earthbound chaos in finance and politics?

In episode five, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner trade notes: slow-burn sabotage aboard Alien’s ship, a tagline homage, and brutal deaths. Rosner pivots to crypto skepticism—pump-and-dumps, a small Bitcoin gain—and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein demanding files. Politics intrude: Donald Trump blasted on jobs and unions, Kim Jong-un cozy with Vladimir Putin, India’s tilt questioned. Rosner recalls adolescent mental math, praises Srinivasa Ramanujan, and lauds puzzle work by Dean Inada and Chris Cole. Timeline lore surfaces around SB Wire. Pop-Tarts, and a tick-egg horror beat punctuate. ICE raids and an Eswatini deportation plan round out the grim news.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Alien at Birth, episode five. I watched another eight minutes. Nothing happened. They’re just setting up mayhem on the ship. Moro is trying to figure out who’s sabotaging it. Do we know who? No.

Rick Rosner: A janitor eats half a Pop-Tart. That’s it. He planned to eat part of it now and save the rest for later.

Jacobsen: Someone turned off the navigation system. Probably the same person—a mysterious stowaway, which is odd since the ship’s been gone 65 years—also blew a hole in the hull. The episode title, In Space, Nobody Can Hear You,references the original tagline: “In space no one can hear you scream.” It’s an homage. Beyond that, everyone dies. Brutally.

Jacobsen: Have you seen any clips of the aliens?

Rosner: Not the part you mentioned. You’ve seen more than I have. I’ve been digging into homework. Interviews about Bitcoin and digital currencies keep coming up. Some tie to silver or gold. Many look like pump-and-dump schemes—get in early, get out early, profit. Everyone else loses.

Not Bitcoin. Dogecoin still exists, but it’s speculative. If you’re not manipulating the value, you’re the sucker. Beyond that, I don’t know much. Suppose I were young and needed to take significant financial risks to build a nest egg, perhaps. But I’m older, I don’t. I bought $100 of Bitcoin after hearing bullish takes. Now it’s worth about $170.

Not infinity, but close. A group of Epstein survivors spoke on Capitol Hill, demanding the release of files. Estimates put the number of victims over 1,000. Epstein ran a rape and molestation operation for decades. Survivors said if Congress won’t release the files, they’ll publish their own list.

Trump—a scumbag—still has hundreds of scumbag supporters in Congress.

Jacobsen: North Korea’s Kim has backed Russia and discussed a partnership with Putin.

Rosner: Not everything is Trump’s fault, but he failed to exert leverage on Putin. Putin’s now cozy with Kim Jong-un. Trump contributed to dictators teaming up. They don’t fear U.S. consequences. 

Jacobsen: Thoughts on Trump and India?

Rosner: Between what and what?

Jacobsen: Trump and India.

Rosner: I don’t know. Trump threatened India. Now India leans toward China and Russia, aligning with the other side. More ineptitude and bluster from Trump. He is not only the dumbest person ever to be president, but he is also the least concerned about America of all 45 presidents. A terrible man in almost every way. 

Jacobsen: What else should we talk about? What’s the most sophisticated mental math you can do?

Rosner: Mental math just in my head?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: I’ve told this story before. I struggled with P.E. in eighth grade. I was always sent to the bleachers while the other kids played basketball. I was okay with that, but instead of watching the boys play, I looked across the gym at the girls in their uniforms.

At 13, it’s normal to notice girls your own age, but sometimes I’d get an erection. To fight that, I distracted myself by doing powers of two in my head—doubling numbers. Eventually, I got up to at least 2³⁰, a little over a billion, and maybe even 2⁴⁰ for a 13-year-old, not terrible. Not great either—probably millions of kids in China could do the same with ease.

I can also do physics in my head, which is better than math. Nothing close to Ramanujan. Ramanujan could perform remarkable calculations in his head. The taxi-cab number is 1729. He knew it was the smallest number expressible as the sum of two different pairs of cubes. One is 1³ + 12³.

That knowledge came out in a story—possibly apocryphal—where Hardy visited him in a taxi numbered 1729. Hardy said it was a dull number. Ramanujan immediately replied that it was interesting. Sounds almost like a setup, but it shows his brilliance. Some people have an intuitive sense for the mathematical landscape.

I’ve had a few proud moments. I solved some of the most challenging number-series problems from the world’s toughest IQ tests while standing naked in front of an art class.

Jacobsen: Which problem are you most proud of solving?

Rosner: The most famous was the maximum number of volumes from three interpenetrating cubes. I got the same answer as everyone else. Nobody has proved it mathematically 100 percent, but it’s widely accepted. Have you ever interviewed Dean Inada?

Jacobsen: We talked. I asked, but he was hesitant. He’s pretty shy.

Rosner: Dean not only reached the same conclusion about maximum volumes, but he also discovered an entire class of solutions. He realized there’s one highly symmetrical solution, but if you nudge the cubes slightly out of symmetry, you can still preserve relationships and get the same number of volumes. Incredibly clever. Dean has superb spatial ability.

Jacobsen: Who are other Mega Society members who’ve impressed you in problem-solving?

Rosner: Dean is the most impressive. I haven’t interacted with enough others to say much about it. They’re mostly men—I don’t think I’ve ever interacted with a Mega woman. Not that there aren’t any, but the society is very nerdy and male-dominated.

The Mega Society member who might be most impressive is Chris Cole, because he’s been successful in the real world, not just on IQ tests.

Jacobsen: I’ll add one quick note. The press release by SB Wire went out on October 29, 2014. The title was Eccentric Genius Rick Rosner Disputes Big Bang Theory. And our first publication went live on October 8, 2014, three weeks earlier. We were working together on that first part, developing it. That’s strong circumstantial evidence you didn’t find me via a press release. Our interaction may have been the impetus. We were releasing installments weekly. If part one went up on the 8th, then part two was the 15th, part three the 22nd, and part four around the 29th. Somewhere between parts three and five, something probably clicked. Now my head’s sweaty from that red-light cap. That was a tough interview. We both put in effort. We produced approximately 100,000 words in 11 weeks. Great work.

Rosner: Does SB Wire still exist, or has it been replaced?

Jacobsen: It still exists, and the press release is still live. What else?

Rosner: We could have talked about RFK today, but what a piece of work. Let’s do it quickly now.

Jacobsen: What about him?

Rosner: He sounds and looks crazy. And still the MAGA crowd rallies behind him. On Twitter, I saw MAGA folks praising him, saying he “took them to school,” even though he was being yelled at and interrupted. A big chunk of America is loud, ignorant, and broken. 

Carole and I watched a Spike Lee movie instead. It was long—two hours—so I didn’t have time for more Alien except what I caught now.

Jacobsen: What did you see?

Rosner: The movie was called Highest to Lowest with A$AP Rocky and Denzel Washington. It was frustrating. Goofy, with significant shifts in tone. We like things that move fast, but this took two hours to tell a story that wasn’t very interesting.

Jacobsen: How was A$AP Rocky’s acting?

Rosner: He was good. Better than some of the other cast. Pretty charming.

Jacobsen: Is he a good-looking guy?

Rosner: Yeah. Isn’t he with Rihanna?

Jacobsen: Really?

Rosner: Yes. They’ve had three kids together.

Jacobsen: What did you see of Alien?

Rosner: The replacement captain gathered everyone in the mess hall to deliver a lecture. He told them to stay on alert because things had gotten loose on the ship. One woman’s water bottle had a tick in it that laid eggs. All these creatures are more intelligent than they should be. That tick figured out how to escape its container, lay tadpoles in her water, then sneak back in.

So as soon as she drinks, something horrible is going to happen. I assume she’ll sip during the meeting, and she’ll swell up and pop. Nasty.

Jacobsen: That sounds grim.

Rosner: They shouldn’t even be handling these species. Their job was to collect them, then lock them in the most secure containment possible—layers of steel and glass. Each creature should be isolated, sealed off from the rest of the ship. Nobody should be “playing scientist.” But without that recklessness, there would be no movie.

And they shouldn’t bring these things back to Earth. Not even close. At most, study them beyond the Moon. Even that’s too close. The original alien was tough enough to survive extreme conditions. Who knows—maybe one could even launch itself from the Moon to Earth and survive reentry.

Jacobsen: So it’s all doomed.

Rosner: Everyone’s going to die. Want to switch to news?

Jacobsen: Okay.

Rosner: Do you want to keep it American?

Jacobsen: Not necessarily.

Rosner: If it’s not American, I might not know as much about it.

Jacobsen: The Trump administration has said that migrant Kilmer Abrego can be deported to Eswatini. Thoughts?

Rosner: To where?

Jacobsen: Eswatini.

Rosner: Never heard of it. I thought a judge said he wasn’t allowed to be deported anywhere. The Kingdom of Eswatini—formerly Swaziland?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: Is that part of South Africa? 

Jacobsen: Its capitals are Mbabane and Lobamba, and its GDP is about $5 billion. So a judge said he can’t be deported elsewhere, and now they’ve picked this tiny nation as a loophole. It’s ridiculous.

And his lawyers will get that quashed, too. Trump’s policies now rest squarely on racism and the desire to cause pain to immigrants, whether they deserve it or not. His supporters want to be cruel. Anyone defending those policies as beneficial to America is lying.

His tariffs have hurt the economy. For the first time since 2010, the U.S. has gained fewer than 100,000 jobs a month for four consecutive months. In his first term, Trump averaged about 206,000 jobs a month. In this term, there are approximately 91,000 jobs available each month for the first seven months. The last month was about 73,000. That is not good.

Under Biden, while recovering from COVID, job growth averaged between 300,000 and 400,000 jobs per month in the first two years.

Trump is good at one thing: getting investors and lenders, then siphoning money out through salary and compensation, while not caring if the business collapses. Most of his companies went bankrupt, and he didn’t care. That’s what he’s doing with America.

He and his family are tied to crypto schemes once valued at around $5 billion. Once they try to cash out, the value will collapse. They might pull a few hundred million before the coins crash to zero. He’s a terrible businessman, a terrible president, and a terrible person.

He’s convinced tens of millions of Americans he’s standing up for them, but in no way is he doing that. 

Jacobsen: Anything else?

Rosner: He managed to get an endorsement from the head of the Teamsters Union, which convinced some people he’s suitable for unions. But in reality, he stripped away more union protections than any other president.

He removed collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal employees—possibly close to two million. I’m not sure of the exact number, but it’s enormous. He’s done more damage to unions and workers than any of his predecessors. 

Jacobsen: U.S. immigration agents arrested hundreds at a Hyundai plant, mostly Korean workers.

Rosner: So ICE has taken many people into custody. They lag behind Biden in deportations and are way behind Obama, but most of those detained haven’t committed crimes. Overstaying a visa is a civil violation, not a criminal offence. About two-thirds of the people ICE detains are guilty of no crime.

The 450 workers at that Hyundai battery plant aren’t criminals; they’re auto workers. Yet ICE treats them as if they’re dangerous. Idiots run ICE. And Kristi Noem is horrible.

I saw MAGA people on Twitter saying, “Well, at least that’s 450 jobs that can go to Americans.” Maybe. Or maybe Hyundai cuts back production. Some of those taken into custody were South Korean managers visiting the plant. It’s all bullshit. And this is not a pro-business administration.

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