Ican’t do better than James Fallows’s assessment of Curtis Yarvin, the Caesarist Internet crank who has a grip on many members of the techno-Right including the vice president of the United States of America, J. Divan Vance, and who also seems to be a dumb person’s idea of a smart person, if the dumb person is playing Dungeons & Dragons while watching Gladiator on mushrooms. Yarvin is the subject of a fine profile by Ava Kofman in the current issue of The New Yorker . In a thread on Bluesky, Fallows calls Yarvin a “barroom savant.” Fallows

If you’ve lived in a small town, you know the character of the “barroom savant.” Knows the inside story on everything. Knows what “they” are covering up. Tells you that he (always “he”) tested into Mensa. But never went mainstream. Feels sorry f

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