[jlbang]

> Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did.

Having lived most of my life in the Midwest, and about six years in Silicon Valley, I had to agree with this. There are smart people everywhere, but I've found above-average intelligence is somehow common in the Twin Cities area. (I know that's mathematically problematic.) There are a lot of unusually smart people living in the Twin Cities. I didn't know that was weird until I lived elsewhere.

EDIT:

A source with some imperfect data: https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-by-state-mos...

And this, which puts Minnesota's average IQ at #5 and North Dakota at #3 among the 50 states: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/average-iq-...