Ask A Genius 1532: AI Slop, MLB Chaos, and Trump-Era Shocks

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/02

How do AI slop, MLB playoff design, and Trump-era shutdowns and tariffs reshape culture, markets, and institutional trust?

A lively dialogue between Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner explores AI slop economics, the probability-heavy chaos of MLB playoffs, and the political weather under Trump: shutdown brinkmanship, tariffs, and their impact on farmers. The conversation flags weak Hatch Act enforcement and a heavy-handed higher-ed memo, then pivots to culture with Nirvana’s Nevermind lawsuit. Security-state instincts surface via Pentagon polygraphs and NDAs, before a reality check on military promotions and expertise. Across topics, the throughline is randomness meeting power: how small samples, blunt policies, and culture-war theatrics distort outcomes while institutions struggle to identify, reward, and protect genuine competence. The stakes are public trust, policy, and fairness.

AI Slop Proliferation

Rick Rosner: AI slop is proliferating, and the people making it—now that it includes video—are earning thousands of dollars a month while doing very little. So what I’m asking is: should we become AI slopsters? Do you want to team up and make some AI slop?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You and me? Is this your AI slop proposal? Are we going to send sloppy children out into the world? 

Rosner: Most AI slop is about cats having adventures or cats as serial killers. You’ve seen a lot of it. I’ve probably seen as much or more. We could create some higher-quality slop.

Jacobsen: Something more inventive than the half-baked stuff out there. Are you interested? It’s really a matter of drafting prompts, picking the right AI engine, and locking in the key concepts.

You try ten different orientations; one or two will probably turn out really well. Then you monetize it on YouTube or TikTok and hope it catches on.

Rosner: I’d do it, but not with my real name. Too much of a gamble. No, we wouldn’t use our names. We’d call it Jeff and Betty’s AI Slop House. 

Jacobsen: I’d be open to that. Let’s just Google the most popular YouTube themes—that’ll give us a direction. Do a little research, see what we find. 

Rosner: Let me complain about something—maybe I’ve said this before. Sports are arbitrary because you have to invent rules to make them work; by nature, that can be a little ridiculous. But baseball’s playoff system really piles it on.

You play 162 games in a regular season—that’s been the standard since the early 1960s. The World Series used to match the American League champion against the National League champion; those leagues have existed since 1901 and 1876, respectively. The Series has almost always been best-of-seven—except in 1903 and from 1919–1921, when it was best-of-nine.

Now the postseason is a 12-team bracket: three division winners and three Wild Cards in each league. The top two division winners in each league get byes to the Division Series. The other four teams in each league play a best-of-three Wild Card Series, all at the higher seed’s park. Then the Division Series is best-of-five, and the League Championship Series and World Series are best-of-seven.

Baseball also has a lot of randomness game to game, which is why short playoff series are controversial. Analyses generally find MLB (and the NHL) among the “luckier” major leagues in short samples—more upsets relative to, say, the NBA.

Baseball is very subject to randomness, meaning the best team has a fair chance of being defeated just by variance. Then they play two seven-game series, and the end result is that the best team in baseball wins the World Series less than 25 percent of the time. That’s exciting because anything can happen, but it’s also nonsense—shouldn’t the best team in your sport be the champion? It’s goofy.

Current Politics at the White House

Jacobsen: Politics now, the White House is freezing funding for Democratic-leaning states in a shutdown standoff. Targeted programs include $18 billion for transit projects in New York and $8 billion for green energy projects across 16 Democratic-run states, including California and Illinois. 

Rosner: Trump is going to do whatever he wants.

He’s got about 39 months left as president, and he’ll be an asshole the whole time. The only way to stop him is through the courts, which is difficult because so many of his judges are on the bench, and the Supreme Court has six conservatives out of nine—including two who will support almost anything he wants. You can’t rely on the courts. The only chance is for Democrats to gain control of one of the houses of Congress in the midterms. That would mean Trump has just two years to do whatever he wants before there’s legislative resistance.

Democrats have been accused of being weak and not standing up to him, though in fairness it’s hard when Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the judiciary leans conservative. But they can stand up on budget issues, since major spending bills require 60 Senate votes. Republicans don’t have that, so if the government shuts down, Democrats hope most of the blame falls on Trump and the GOP.

The last shutdown, in 2018–2019, lasted 35 days. Trump’s approval rating dipped slightly during that time. Still, the White House and federal departments pushed propaganda blaming Democrats, which is a violation of the Hatch Act. The law forbids government agencies from engaging in partisan political activity. No one has seriously enforced it, though. For example, Trump had the Republican National Convention stage part of its program on the White House lawn, which was blatantly illegal, but no one acted on it.

Democrats know Trump will do a lot of damage with another shutdown, but they’re betting most of the political fallout will land on him. His approval is currently at the lowest point of his term.

The economy is also looking shaky. I don’t know if it’ll crash into a full-blown recession where stocks lose 20 percent, but for the first time in years the U.S. has lost jobs. More losses are likely, since Trump is shutting down departments and firing staff. Unemployment will rise—from 4.3 percent to maybe 4.6 or 4.7 in the next three months. It could hit 5 percent by February. Inflation is another concern.

Inflation might rise further as Trump’s tariffs kick in more fully. There’s going to be a lot of bad outcomes for the country. Democrats hate watching government get wrecked, but they also realize the government is being wrecked whether it’s officially shut down or not, because Trump undermines it either way. They’re hoping this new trouble just adds to the list of his failures.

Pain for Farmers

Jacobsen: More pain is coming for U.S. farmers. The shutdown halts federal payments to them. Producers are already facing low crop prices, record-high debts, and a trade war. Farming in the U.S. has been brutal since the 1980s. Suicide rates for farmers are three times higher than the general population. Farmers get squeezed, forced to sell out to corporate operations. Many go under. Trump already had to send subsidies during his first term to offset the damage from his trade war with China. Now tariffs are hitting them again.

Rosner: He’s promised subsidies for crops farmers can’t sell. He’s America’s worst businessman. Most of his economic ideas are foolish and harmful. Helping farmers he hurt isn’t a bad thing in itself, but the fact that he put them in that position in the first place— that’s the stupidity.

Jacobsen: There’s been a U.S. government memo directed at colleges. It proposed conditions tied to federal funding: ideological diversity requirements for students and staff, capping international undergraduate enrollment at 50 percent, banning the use of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freezing tuition for five years, requiring standardized testing like the SAT, and addressing grade inflation. 

Rosner: A couple of those ideas might be reasonable, but most are clumsy and bad policy. Trump doesn’t actually care about higher education. He just wants to hobble it.

Jacobsen: Nirvana again defeats a child pornography lawsuit over the Nevermind cover. The album came out in 1991. 

Rosner: The cover shows a naked baby underwater, swimming toward a dollar bill. You can see the baby’s penis. It’s an odd but iconic shot. I didn’t even know people were calling it child pornography. The image has been around for over 30 years. Nobody in their right mind sees it as sexual.

It’s really a relic of an earlier era. Parents back then regularly photographed their babies in the bath—nine months, one year, even toddlers—because nobody considered that a naked infant could be seen as sexually suggestive.

Even in 1994, nobody would have imagined someone ridiculous enough to claim that the Nevermind cover was pornographic. But apparently you said Nirvana won again in court? So that album has been the target of multiple lawsuits for “pornography.”

Spencer Elden

Jacobsen: Judge Fernando Olguin tossed out the lawsuit filed by plaintiff Spencer Elden for a second time, ruling that no reasonable jury could consider the image pornographic.

Rosner: So who is Spencer Elden?

Jacobsen: He’s the man who, as a baby in 1991, was photographed for the Nevermind cover. He’s known as the “Nirvana baby.”

Rosner: Well, that’s interesting. So what now? He’s embarrassed that at 34 he doesn’t want his baby picture out there? It’s not his baby penis anymore, but yes, it’s on the album cover. Maybe he just wants a payday. Nobody seriously considers an eight-month-old swimming underwater to be porn.

Jacobsen: Moving on. Trump says China’s Xi is using soybeans as a negotiation tactic ahead of trade talks. Trump posted on Truth Social that U.S. soybean farmers are being hurt because China hasn’t bought soybeans from the autumn harvest.

But the reality is Trump created the problem himself with his trade war. Farmers couldn’t sell soybeans, and USAID—shut down during the government standoff—also limited international markets for U.S. crops. Now he’s blaming China.

Rosner: Sure, China plays hardball too, but I’d put most of the blame on Trump.

Pete Hegseth

Jacobsen: According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is planning widespread random polygraph testing and requiring non-disclosure agreements for all military service members, employees, and contractors within the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Rosner: Right, they want to clamp down on leaks. But most leaks expose how ridiculous Pete Hegseth is.

We talked about him before—he got all the generals and admirals together and ranted about how the U.S. military “can’t be woke.” That’s absurd. The military is part of the real world, and an effective military acknowledges reality. He also went on about “no fat generals.” Looking at the crowd he scolded, I didn’t see any overweight generals.

Hegseth himself only served about nine years, never rose above major, and his service wasn’t continuous—he bounced in and out of the National Guard with gaps in between. Yet, he’s lecturing career generals and admirals. A bunch of mostly guys who’ve devoted their entire lives to the military.

Idon’t know if they’ve forced the women generals out, but in any case, he was yelling at people whose average military experience is about three times his own. And then there’s Trump—zero military experience. Now, you don’t need a military background to be Secretary of Defense, but you need some kind of qualification. Hegseth is underqualified, carries personal baggage, and believes the military just needs to be “gung-ho.”

If you look at shots of the audience—on Twitter I joked they looked like guys at a stand-up show who aren’t allowed to laugh. It was as if they were watching Emo Philips. The generals had these smirks, like, What the hell is this? They’re not stupid. Generals are smart, pragmatic, tough, and deeply embedded in the real world.

Do you know how the military system actually works at each rank? Let’s go through it. At each rank, you have about four years to study and demonstrate competence before moving up or being forced out. For example, if you’re promoted from captain to major, you’ve got roughly four years to prepare for lieutenant colonel. Around the two-year mark you’re considered for promotion, and if you don’t make it, you get a couple more chances. Fail consistently, and you’re done.

You’re constantly evaluated—physically, on leadership, and on knowledge. There’s required study at every step. You move from second lieutenant to first lieutenant, then captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and then into the five ranks of general.

Out of millions of soldiers, there are only about 400 generals and roughly 300–400 admirals. At the lower flag levels, you might have about 250 one-star generals, around 110 two-stars, and so on. Every single one of them has proven competence and dedication.

Yet, they were sitting there listening to Hegseth. An underqualified Fox News weekend host lecturing them about how the military should run. They looked bemused at best.

Jacobsen: All right, that’s the end.

Rosner: All right, thanks.

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