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Oct. 29, 2021 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #252

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	Music Good afternoon and welcome to episode 252 of the podcast of the Lotus Eaters I'm your host today, Harry, joined by my friend Tom.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	So you're getting a double dose of newbies today.
	Hope you all enjoy.
	Today we're going to be talking about Biden's great leap forward.
	We're also going to be taking a look at how Kathleen Stock has been turfed out of the Sussex University.
	And finally, we're going to be looking at how Mark Zuckerberg wants us all to enter the matrix.
	But before we get into any of that...
	We just have some announcements to make, just want to chill out for Hugo's recent article again from the other day, why there are shortages everywhere, in wherein he goes into why you might notice a few empty shelves in your local supermarkets or shops.
	Then we've also got, if we move along, we've got a new article from Helen Dale, who, as you may know, has appeared on the podcast before a few times.
	she's an Australian journalist she's fantastic where she's got a new article called The War on Whimsy I'm not exactly sure what it's about as you can tell by the image it might be probably about vaccination somehow I don't know what gives it away and then if we move along again she does fantastic articles so check that one out we've also got a new premium video which is a critical theory and student activism which we talked about yesterday and that's you and Carl it is indeed yes
	Yes, so if you want to know more about how student activism in its current form actually started and what its political purpose is, tune in, because you'll leave with a lot of things to think about.
	Yeah, I'll probably give that a listen over the weekend, I will, because it sounds quite illuminating.
	And finally, just as a reminder as well, that 4 o'clock today, UK time, we have the Gold Tier Zoom call for all of our Gold Tier members.
	So if you're interested in coming and having a chat, and I think, given Calum's still off, that's going to be me and Carl later on at 4 o'clock that you can have a chat with.
	Tune in.
	It'll be fun.
	We'll have a great time talking to you all.
	So, without any further ado, let's get into the news.
	So, let's talk about how Biden is pushing his great leap forward with his new infrastructure bill.
	So, many of you may have known that last night Biden was putting forward his new infrastructure bill, which he states is going to cost the American taxpayer, well, nothing, but is going to cost $1.75 trillion dollars.
	So here on CNBC, we can see them talking about it.
	President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he had reached a deal with Senate Democrat holdouts on the outlines of a $1.75 trillion social spending and climate bill.
	The product of months of tense negotiations between moderate and progressive lawmakers in his party, the new framework contains more details than anything else the White House has released thus far.
	But it still may not be enough to win over key congressional holdouts.
	I know we have an historic economic framework, Biden said in his remarks at the White House, but he added, I'll have more to say after I return from the critical meetings in Europe this week.
	I believe I've not seen the clip myself, but in the in the screenshots that I've seen of it and people discussing this, he just sort of came out, made the speech and then said, I'll be in, I think, Italy and other parts of Europe and then just walked off without taking any questions.
	How convenient.
	That's a recurring theme throughout Biden's presidency so far, a reticence to answer for anything that he's talking about, or be held responsible for any of the absolute cock-ups.
	Come on, Brandon, let's go.
	Yeah, let's go, Brandon, etc.
	Senior administration officials said early Thursday morning that Biden was confident this framework will win the vote of every Democratic senator.
	And honestly, I won't be surprised if it does.
	They all seem to be in lockstep.
	I think there was that thing recently where they were all agreeing to give more money to Israel, where even AOC was forced to vote present rather than no, because she was desperately wanting to vote against it, and there was those images of her crying and weeping.
	But yeah, so essentially this bill, as far as you can tell, is ridiculously huge.
	It's been actually cut down from the previous draft of the bill, which I believe Carl and Callum went over a few weeks ago, which was over 2,500 pages long and cost $3.5 trillion.
	So you can see they've halved it, and when you are just throwing around numbers in the trillions, you've got to consider how much of a grip of reality...
	Do these people have that they can just go about throwing those sorts of amounts of money around?
	So it not only just costs 1.75 trillion now, which is quite reserved of them, to be perfectly honest, it is hard to tell what is in the bill because it is still, having been cut down, still almost 1,500 pages long.
	So if you're wanting to know what's actually in there, if you want to know if they've potentially, in a bill that large, snuck anything in that could be disastrous for people, It's going to take you quite a long time.
	Yeah, well maybe that's the point.
	Don't look at it.
	You can hide anything you want in there.
	I mean, it's incredibly obtuse on purpose.
	But there is a little bit of a hint from some things that we've heard on what's in the bill.
	So, this Yahoo article talks about the plan would provide free preschool for more than 6 million children, expand Medicare coverage to cover hearing and raise Pell grants to help offset college tuition.
	Framework would also impose a minimum 15% tax on corporations, new levies on high-earning Americans, so there you've got the why we need wealthy people to just pay more in tax, even though they already pay plenty in tax, $100 billion on immigration reform and enhancements to the asylum process, such as expanding legal representation for individuals and addressing processing backlogs.
	Biden's framework also proposes $150 billion for affordable housing and $320 billion to expand tax credits over the next decade for utility and residential clean energy, clean passenger and commercial vehicles, and clean energy manufacturing.
	So it sounds an awful lot like what I was talking about yesterday with the conservative bill, which is the plan is just spend more.
	More, more, more.
	And it'll all be coming from your tax money, everyone in America, so that they can spend it on these...
	I would call kooky, potentially misapplied ideas, where they just think, if we just keep encroaching the government into your day-to-day lives, it will make things better, probably, maybe, somehow.
	All in virtue of build back better.
	Yes, exactly.
	I mean, Biden ran on the Build Back Better platform.
	I believe this infrastructure bill is being called the Build Back Better infrastructure bill.
	So it all seems very coordinated at this point, as far as I can tell.
	And so far, as far as I can tell, the Build Back Better ideal seems to just be spend people's money, which is not entirely ideal if you're the people whose money they're spending.
	So, there's a bit more that we can see about what the bill might entail for people because they released, the US government released this press release, well this pamphlet perhaps, these slides discussing an ideal scenario of what might be going on once the Build Back Better has been passed, what they expect to be the ideal.
	So if you just click on some of those images and go through some of them, so here you can see, Linda is a working mother in Perior, I don't, it's American, Peoria, Illinois.
	She works at a local manufacturing facility as a production worker and earns $40,000 a year.
	She's pregnant with her son.
	Now, straight away, that image, in Biden's ideal America, why is a woman that heavily pregnant working in a presumably heavy-duty production manufacturing job?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's pretty messed up, isn't it?
	I mean, should you be working on a production line when you're that heavily pregnant?
	Is there no one who can potentially take off some of the load for her, perhaps in a family dynamic, maybe?
	Well, I guess we'll just have to find out if we go through a bit more of this.
	So once Leo is born, Linda begins receiving child tax credits of $300 per month, totaling $3,600 annually to help cover essential costs like groceries, rent, and medicine.
	So you see, the second the child is born, the government is helping them, maybe, just giving the mother more money, presumably money that she would have otherwise if it weren't being taxed from her.
	And there's also the question, once again, can she not get support from somebody else in a family dynamic to be able to support her in these situations and help contribute money to the household?
	And if we go again, John?
	As Leo grows up, the government helps cover the costs for his daycare, guaranteeing that Linda doesn't need to pay more than 7% of her income on childcare.
	Once again, I think you'll probably, people watching, you'll probably notice a recurring theme throughout this, which is there is no mention whatsoever of a father in this entire dynamic.
	No point whatsoever where the government is not involved.
	Yes, I mean, I personally wouldn't want to hand over my kids to daycare if there was an option for the father to work and the mother to potentially stay home.
	I know that's a bit of a, perhaps a conservative idea, perhaps a bit of a traditional idea of a family dynamic, but once again, in those early phases of a child's life, it is very important that at least one parent is there on the regular, and having a father in the household...
	Is very beneficial, but it doesn't seem that they have planned for that, potentially.
	And if we carry on...
	Yeah, when Leo turns three, he attends a high-quality pre-K program for free.
	So once again, the government is just handing you out things.
	And then further on, it goes on to...
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	Leo's job is one of 4 million new jobs a year that is supported by President Biden's economic plan.
	Now, you know, I would prefer it if it said something along the lines of lands a good-paying job as a technician at a nuclear firm, potentially.
	I mean, they are always banging on, especially with the Build Back Better folk, the Build Back Better cartel, that it's all about climate and we need to focus on climate and address climate change and all these other things, but they always go for the winter, and they go for the ones that look nice.
	They go for the ones that look sleek.
	Well, I mean, people have complained about wind turbines since they've been introduced.
	Yes.
	But they never, never, ever address nuclear power because they're scared of it.
	And it does also read like fan fiction.
	And then the last part here is that it says, Later in life, Linda needs home and hearing care.
	Thanks to President Biden's plan, Linda can access affordable hearing care through Medicare, and Leo is able to afford at-home elder care for his mom.
	Now, there's a repeating motif throughout this as well, which is thanks to President Biden.
	Thanks to President Biden.
	Sounds a little bit cultish, like they're encanting his name.
	But there's also just the idea of from birth till death, the government does not want to take a step away from your life.
	It does not want to take its hands off of you.
	As soon as you're born, you are getting childcare, you are getting free tax credits and all these sorts of things.
	There is no element of responsibility that is put purely on you as the individual.
	We have come over to the point where the government in America seems to be positioning themselves as the overbearing mother rather than a potentially stern and restrained father figure who would allow you to go out and make your own decisions and make your own choices.
	And they do think they are making the world a better place by this because they think you are a bunch of children and they think you should be treated like children.
	And Barack Obama had something to say on this as well.
	This is a bit less important, but it is illuminating in the way that they're approaching this.
	So this is the statement that he released.
	I can't believe he actually used that phrase.
	I know.
	I read that and I thought to myself, do you not understand the historical baggage that comes with certain leaps forward that were intended to progress infrastructure in a country?
	A large-scale country with a massive population that didn't particularly go well?
	No, not in the slightest.
	There appears to be no sort of reflection or evaluation of, hold up, how will this sound?
	But it also, once again, shows that every time that they don't get to take an extra step or extra leap into your life, they see it as a setback.
	They see every attempt to tax you more and put more government interference in your day-to-day life as a small victory.
	I mean, the whole lockdown from last year, I know obviously it was implemented by Trump originally, but that was a godsend for the Democrats as far as I can tell.
	But yeah, so if we move on as well, if that all wasn't enough, the government is planning on making every illegal immigrant potentially a millionaire.
	So here you can see that the US are in talks to pay hundreds of millions to families separated at the border.
	The Biden administration is in talks to offer immigrant families that were separated during the Trump administration around $450,000 a person in compensation, according to people familiar with the matter.
	As several agencies work to resolve lawsuits filled on behalf of parents and children who say that the government subjected them to lasting psychological trauma.
	US Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services are considering payments that could amount to close to $1 million per family.
	Though the final numbers could shift, the people familiar with the matter said.
	I don't know who these people they keep referring to in this Wall Street Journal article.
	It's not particularly well written up.
	But many families would likely to get smaller payouts depending on their circumstances.
	The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents families in one of the lawsuits, has identified about 5,500 children separated at the border over the course of the Trump administration, citing figures provided to it by the government.
	The number of families eligible under the potential settlement is expected to be smaller.
	Oh good, so it might be smaller.
	It's expected to be smaller.
	But we could still be paying, well, Americans could still be paying up to 5,500 illegal immigrants.
	Hundreds of thousands of dollars each for psychological trauma.
	I don't know how they're going to be identifying these cases of psychological trauma, but the number of, yeah, the people said as government officials aren't sure how many will come forward.
	Around 940 claims have so far been filled by the families.
	So I don't understand why people wouldn't come forward, whether they have suffered legitimate psychological trauma or not, given the fact that, I mean, they're offering half a million dollars per person.
	You could just round up a bunch of random people and just say, oh, we were all part of some family, give us each half a million dollars.
	And there seems to be a complete disconnect with the idea that the reason that these families are being separated at the border is because given that it's illegal crossing of the border, there is a huge problem in child trafficking.
	So they are separating these people from the adults that accompany them so that they can double-check To see if you are actually related to them, if you are actually a family member.
	That's as far as I'm aware at least.
	And it's not even like the Biden administration is doing any different from what Trump did.
	Here you can see the New York Post.
	This article I believe is back from February.
	Biden's kids in cages prove his hypocrisy on immigration.
	So, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in their nominational campaign savaged President Donald Trump for keeping kids in cages, but now they're doing the same thing and undoing the Trump policies that had mitigated the underlying problem.
	That is, the Biden administration is housing migrant teens in some of the very same facilities they decried.
	It's not really kids in cages or even kids in containers, as critics have often said of the pod-like structures in Texas, holding up 700 teams, the White House says, came to the country unaccompanied.
	But it's also not a solution.
	Biden and Harris are also reopening an overflow facility in Homestead, which Harris sought to protest in 2019.
	Hippocracies all round in regards to this.
	I don't know if at this point they have reopened them.
	I imagine they have.
	And the year before she called Trump's treatment of migrants a crime against humanity.
	We are now continuing on by all intents and means.
	And of course, many of the facilities opened under President Barack Obama, famously leading Trump to ask Biden in a debate, who built the cages, Joe?
	But the media blamed it all on Trump, who pursued similar policies to Obama's before finding a better way, namely working with Mexican and Central American governments to stem the tide of illegal immigration.
	Agreements Biden has unilaterally junked.
	So bring them in.
	Bring them in, we'll separate them, and then we'll just give them hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money.
	Sounds fair.
	What are they doing?
	And just to show the extent of this problem, in America, currently, you can see here on Statista, this is from 2017, there were 10.5 million unauthorised immigrants in the US. And it's probably gone up since then.
	And at the end of the day, what is this doing other than further incentivising people to try and get into the country legally or otherwise?
	And, I mean, just look at that.
	There's about 40% altogether across the border states of California and Texas.
	So this is just completely incentivising people to try and come in and further exacerbating a problem that the US has been suffering for years.
	It's absolutely insane, is what it is.
	Sorry about this.
	I've just got a bit of an itchy nose.
	No, it's alright, but it's...
	I can't understand how we think this is going to improve anything.
	Yeah.
	Let's come in, spend all of your money, tell you that we're doing a very good thing for you.
	We're not going to take a moment where you get to step out of our shadow as your overarching government.
	We are your overbearing mother.
	And then we'll invite all of the other kids in from the playground and give them all of your stuff.
	Maybe he thinks that because he promises handouts, no one's going to complain about the cages again and talk about it ever again.
	Well, it certainly seems that he hopes to.
	But yeah, that's all for that.
	But just for fun, just as a reminder for everybody, everybody may be aware of the Let's Go Brandon meme.
	I think it's a favourite of everyone.
	So four Let's Go Brandon songs in the iTunes Top 10, beating Adele.
	And as this tweet states, breaking less of its brains, if we just take a look at this, I don't think this is still accurate to today.
	But a few days ago, it was Let's Go!
	Brandon was in first place, second place, and third place.
	I mean, it's also in eighth place, but absolutely demolishing every other song out there.
	So at least people are enjoying themselves.
	People are trying to make the best of a bad situation, sadly.
	But yeah, the whole thing just is...
	Terribly, frighteningly familiar to everybody in the UK who's seen what the Conservatives have planned, and yeah, I just don't like it.
	I don't like it.
	It doesn't seem to bode well for the future.
	No, it's pretty worrying, but I would like to say that the success of Let's Go Brandon is actually incredible, given that, well, the biggest platform for it, YouTube, has banned it.
	So, here's to the little man.
	Yeah, well, we're rising up.
	We're rising up, yes.
	Right, so, it's a bad day for academia, and, well, for women, generally, I'm afraid.
	Kathleen Stock has been turfed out by the intersectionalists of Sussex University.
	So they've got their wish, after years and years of making her life hell.
	How long has this been going on for, actually?
	I can remember it going on as far back as 2018.
	Really, it's been going on for that long?
	Yeah, maybe even longer, yeah.
	She's had the views that she's had for far longer than that, of course, but...
	This has been at the centre of contemporary discussion since 2018.
	And needless to say, it's intensified ever since to the point where she's now had enough of it.
	She's had enough of the unceasing abuse that she's received from the lobby for years.
	For those who don't know about Kathleen Stock's academic contribution, she's long been an opponent of the idea of womanhood being a matter of pure self-identification.
	Her grounds for doing so have always been consistent.
	It's first that you can't separate the concept of biological sex from sexual orientation, which means in turn that biological sex must remain a permanent referential for gender identity.
	And second, that should self-identification be absolutely inscribed in law, as in not questioned on the say-so of the actors, there could be serious consequences for biological women, particularly those on the receiving end of domestic abuse.
	She's referring to all women's, what is it?
	All women's refuges, I think, in particular.
	Would it be fair for an all women's refuge of presumably horribly abused and beaten women to have a big, burly trans person come in and just occupy that same space as them?
	Well, the transgender community is basically inadvertently saying that they're bigots for being scared of someone who looks to them like a man.
	That's the inadvertent claim.
	And there are plenty of cisgender women who look like men.
	Oh, there are as well.
	But the point is that these are very psychologically and physically vulnerable women, and ultimately she's very, very concerned about the extent that these places could actually be encroached upon by those with bad intentions.
	Understandably.
	When you open up the floor to destroy any kind of definition, well, objective definition for what a woman is, and you just change it to the incredibly subjective and fluid idea of anybody who self-identifies, then as much as people hate to hear it, you are opening up the floor for real weirdos and dangerous people to just come in and go, I'm a woman.
	I mean, all you need to do is if you check out, obviously we can't talk about it on YouTube, if you check out our premium podcast on Loudoun County, you can find out more about the consequences.
	But here's a feature of Kathleen's talk on the BBC a few years ago, where she voiced her concerns about the potential of biological men encroaching on women's refugees.
	And it starts with a trans person who is playing down the issue entirely.
	For equality and human rights campaigner Sophie Cook, any fears are overblown.
	She believes that self-identification will simply allow transgender people wider acceptance in society.
	Trans people are disproportionately likely to be affected with mental health issues.
	That's not because they're trans, that's because of the bigotry and the prejudice that they face in everyday life.
	When you've got people that are already in a vulnerable position being asked to justify their identity, then it puts so much more pressure on them.
	No one else in society has to justify who they are.
	No one asks anyone else to prove who they are.
	And for me, that's the big issue.
	It's a big human rights issue.
	But this is a debate that's been marked by tension.
	Some academics claim they've been silenced on the issue of self-ID and they say vulnerable women are being ignored.
	The thing is, it's not just a safeguarding issue for women in hostels and refuges.
	It's an issue of their recovery.
	We're not taking their feelings seriously.
	We're not thinking about them.
	The government does not seem to be thinking about them.
	No women's groups were consulted in the original trans inquiry, and that's absolutely scandalous, because there's two sets of interests here, not just one.
	Does she seem like an unreasonable person to you?
	No, she seems like she's got some fair ideas about it.
	Whenever people discuss this sort of thing, I think whenever they say that it's not a big deal, I mean, it would be less of a big deal if they weren't trying to force the idea of self-identification onto people, because it's asking people to disbelieve what they see in front of their own eyes.
	I mean, I think they forget that, on a certain level, every kind of identity that you can assign yourself comes with responsibilities.
	If I identify myself as a doctor, you're going to want some kind of proof of such before you let me operate on you, for instance.
	And the thing is that if you identify yourself as a woman, I think Leo says, if I'm having to do more to support your transition than you've done...
	Then it doesn't entirely seem fair to me.
	Yeah, and I think the one-sidedness is expressed in the fact that we have to reconfigure our own minds as regards to what gender identity is to allow for them to be recognised.
	And that expresses that there's actually something...
	Kind of egregious on their side, given that...
	It speaks to a certain inauthenticity that we can innately recognise.
	When we see somebody who has all of the physical characteristics of a genetic male, and they're telling you to just disregard all of that.
	It shows that ultimately it's not identity that they care about, it's their identity.
	They couldn't give a monkey's about yours.
	But if we take a look at the Sky News article, which broke, She's a professor at the Centre of Trans Rights War, leaves University of Sussex after horrible time.
	And needless to say, she has had a horrible time.
	Sky Report stock have been the targets of an anonymous group for years, who have been creating placards, reading stock out, and other posters being put up demanding her dismissal.
	I've got experience of the resistance that she had at my own university when she came to do a talk.
	And that was in 2019.
	And the Department of Philosophy was absolutely hounded on social media merely for inviting her.
	Really?
	The language was so inflammatory, in fact.
	And I mean, violence was genuinely inciting to the point that we had to employ security to search all of our bags and place the bags in a separate room.
	Just in case anybody brought anything?
	Just in case someone brought in a bomb.
	I have no idea whether this was a precautionary measure, I must point that out, or whether this was based on a real threat.
	I genuinely do not know.
	But that just expresses how hostile this has got.
	If we get out Stock's announcement on Twitter, she said, sad to announce I'm leaving Sussex University, here's the university statement.
	This has been a very difficult few years, but the leadership's approach more recently has been admirable and decent.
	I hope that other institutions in similar situations can learn from this.
	Now, she does go on, but I think it would be more beneficial to take a look at this statement by the university, which was written by Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickle, and it reads, I know you will be aware of the situation reported in the media this month regarding our professor, Kathleen Stock, I know you will be aware of the situation reported in the media this month regarding our professor, Kathleen Stock, and how the University of Sussex has vigorously and unequivocally defended her right to exercise her academic freedom and lawful freedom
	These freedoms and protections apply to and benefit us all, and we will defend them today and in the future.
	Rather than conflicting with our progress on equality, diversity and inclusion, these freedoms and protections are in place to support those with protected characteristics, particularly those who are underrepresented or disadvantaged.
	Universities must remain places where everyone, staff or student has the right to and benefits from lawful freedom of speech.
	The university has been consistent and clear that everyone in our community has the right to work and learn free from bullying and harassment of any kind, which has not been the case for Professor Stock.
	We had hoped that Professor Stock would feel able to return to work and we would have supported her to do so.
	She has decided that recent events have meant that this will not be possible and we respect and understand that decision.
	We will miss her many...
	Many contributions from which the university has benefited during her time here.
	And if we move on a little bit, it says, This work will be led by David Rubin and our I would like to thank Professor Stock for her service during her time at Sussex,
	in which she has made so many vital contributions to the field of philosophy and to the university.
	Well, I'm just going to say, a shocking display of integrity from the university.
	You don't expect to see that from many universities nowadays.
	That all sounds completely fair to me.
	It appeals to my liberal instincts when it comes to freedom of speech, of that, yes, I can say that there is such a thing as biological women.
	You are free to say that, no, you don't believe there's such a thing as biological women.
	We can both disagree on that.
	We don't have to force one another, and we certainly aren't allowed to physically threaten people.
	Or imply violence to change each other's beliefs.
	Yeah, that's it.
	The University of Sussex have, to their credit, done exactly what a university should do.
	Defend their employer's right to academic freedom, which she's employed to do anyway.
	And I think more importantly, for upholding a consistently ethical position on her right to do so, without being discriminated because of the conclusions that she draws from it.
	So, many naturally have come out in support of Professor Stock.
	One being Douglas Murray.
	So sorry to hear this.
	Sussex Uni is a second-rate university that has just lost a first-rate academic.
	Maybe slightly harsh from Douglas there, given that they have been, I think, one of the universities that actually had a bit of a spine on this matter.
	Yes, it appears so.
	But Douglas can be a bit spicy on Twitter, I've found.
	Yeah, but yeah, he hopes she goes on to do better things, she deserves them, and she most certainly does.
	She's done a great service to academia.
	I respect that.
	I mean, you can support the rights for people to transition as adults, if that's what you want, without having to threaten people who disagree that that makes them a full biological woman or man of the opposite gender from what they started as.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I mean, she deserves far more than to be castigated, to drawing attention to what is, without a shadow of a doubt.
	The intersection, this constant self-denial about how everything they advocate will eventually come to the detriment of women themselves, because they just refuse to define what it is.
	And as I said in my article about hashtag reclaim the streets politicisation of Sarah Everett's murder, they actually make feminism more plausible by the day by showing how the patriarchy may actually be borfing through the back door of feminism itself.
	I mean, I have seen that argument made by a number of women.
	Are they TERFs?
	Yes, of course, they're classified as TERFs, and I'm not saying YouTube, I'm not saying that this is what I believe, but there has been an argument made that this appears to be men encroaching on women's rights to a certain extent.
	But Michelle Donnerland, the Minister of State for Universities, a position she's had since 2020, has backed up Kathleen Stock as well, saying it's a sad day for freedom of speech, which it is.
	Given the toxic environment at Sussex Uni has made it untenable for Dr Stock to maintain her position there, no academic should ever have to fear for their personal safety.
	And needless to say, they absolutely should not.
	And the very idea that they should have their personal safety almost put on the table because of what they believe is utterly disgusting.
	I mean, a university is an environment that should promote and encourage a plurality of thought so that the best ideas can rise to the top.
	It should be the marketplace of ideas.
	Absolutely.
	And when you start to threaten people physically, all of a sudden some ideas are getting suppressed.
	Yeah.
	Whether on one side or the other.
	Yeah, and I think the University of Sussex really deserves credit for doing its...
	I think it has failed Dr Stock to a point, but at least it has been brave enough to defend academic freedom.
	Yes.
	But anyway, as you can probably imagine, there are some who are very happy about Dr Stock's departure.
	The first being Pink News, who have celebrated this as a triumphant victory.
	Honestly, I would think that they were like the Babylon Bee if I didn't know that they were being serious all the time.
	This is what they've said.
	Stock denies that she's transphobic and has previously said that she asserts the rights of trans people to live their lives free from fear, violence, harassment or any discrimination.
	That's her quote.
	She literally said that.
	I imagine that she stands by that and I imagine that's truthful.
	Yeah, and the majority of people would find that uncontroversial.
	However, she has called many trans women still males with male genitalia and argued against their inclusion in single-sex spaces, something protected by the Equality Act 2010, which it isn't, but anyway.
	She has also argued that Self-ID threatens a secure understanding of the concept of lesbian, rooting her rhetoric in a belief of immutable biological sex, which it does.
	"Massive win for Sussex LGBTQ+/- whatever students today," said an account on Instagram claiming to represent trans and non-binary students at Sussex.
	Let's take a minute to appreciate this.
	And the group added, "Queer and Trans Students United: Never to be defeated." And this all just plays into exactly what Carl was going on about yesterday when we were examining that remarkable BBC article.
	Remarkable because we're surprised it even got onto the platform in the first place.
	Where it is becoming increasingly more and more obvious that there is a certain contingency, not saying that it's all of them, in fact I would probably argue that it is a minority of them, but there is a certain contingency of trans women who are trying to...
	Not force themselves physically, but trying to sneak their way into the pants of lesbians by asserting that they are being transphobic, by name-calling, by saying that you're a TERF and all sorts of...
	Let's just call it what it is.
	It's the Harvey Weinstein tactic.
	Come into my room, see if you You like it.
	You're not trying hard enough.
	Let's be perfectly honest, it's relatively a feminine tactic because it's reputation destruction, but it's still very much in the sense of, you may be a lesbian, but you have to like my penis because it is a female penis.
	I must touch upon the Equality Act 2010.
	If I'm wrong, please correct me.
	Gender identity is indeed one of the protected characteristics, but it doesn't specify or extend that to use of single-sex spaces.
	Otherwise, the intersectional movement wouldn't have anything to complain about.
	At least that's how, well, Pink News obviously want that to be the case.
	Belief is also one of those protected characteristics, as in the belief to not actually believe that...
	So it doesn't just extend onto religious beliefs, it also extends onto philosophical beliefs.
	Yes, so the point, Pink News in short, have taken the gender equality to a destination that I don't think is quite right.
	But I've completely forgotten the belief part of it, or the religion part of it.
	Yeah, I don't think this is where anybody thought that this whole scenario would be going when it first started to come about ten or so years ago in the mainstream.
	No, no, exactly.
	I think that the act needs to be revised anyway, as I'm sure you'd agree with me too.
	To be revised.
	Anything that, I mean, it was the 2010, was that in the dying days of Labour?
	I believe so.
	Yeah, well, just anything Blair and Gordon Brown's Labour did, just cut it.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, let's move on to Fiona Robinson's response.
	I'm glad for Sussex students and staff that they no longer have to work with her, but that she left rather than her employers holding her to account for their conduct means that the institution is still not safe because there is nothing to stop the next trans-hostile authority figure.
	So yes, that's Fiona Robertson of the SNP.
	So her just saying, actually I think women are a thing, is somehow trans-hostile and means that she...
	Well, of course, it always comes down to violence.
	It means that she's putting the trans students in danger in some way.
	Yes, that's quite literally what she means.
	But unfortunately, it's not quite as bad as the next one, which is, what was it, Anti-Turfs of Sussex.
	How embarrassing.
	The group, I imagine, were primarily responsible for Stok's constant harassment and they've celebrated by tastefully reposting the song Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead. .
	Didn't people do that after Margaret Thatcher died as well?
	Yes, they did.
	How incredibly disrespectful.
	Yeah.
	There is, unfortunately, someone even more insufferable.
	There always is.
	There's a line of insufferable people, each more insufferable than the last.
	I've ordered this for very good reason, and I'm afraid to say it's Grace Lavery, an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, who seems to be in cope mode despite the fact that she's got what she wanted.
	Yeah, surely this is a win for these people.
	Yeah, and what's being claimed by Grace, basically, is that Stock has always had a habit of abusing her position to silence students and has included this quote in a Twitter post, almost as if it's a slam dunk.
	So if we can click on the picture on the right, this is what she's quoting Stock to have said.
	What would make a philosophy department unsafe is if his academics weren't allowed to challenge currently popular beliefs or ideologies for fear of offending.
	Deliberately plotting to have my department lose students or to have me dismissed through covert means is surprising behaviour from a fellow academic.
	Both professors raised the support they had received from their universities.
	So, what's...
	So violent!
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, grey slavery called this a juicy response.
	What's juicy about this?
	We're just pointing out the responsibility of a philosophical academic.
	I mean, philosophy is all about challenging current popular beliefs and all sorts.
	And you could describe the intersectional ideals as a philosophical belief, given the origins that you can trace it back to.
	And people are just as able to deny and disagree with either of these sorts of belief systems.
	What this concerns is actually another trans activist named Kennedy.
	What's her first name?
	Kennedy, is it?
	I don't know.
	Yes.
	Basically, someone founded TransRates UK for the specific purpose of deplatforming and naming and shaming gender-critical feminists.
	So this is what Kathleen Stock was ultimately referring to and responding to.
	She was merely saying that, look, I think it's a little bit of a low blow for an academic to be doing this to another.
	And Grace Kennedy has basically said, well, how dare she do that?
	How dare she?
	Yes.
	There's absolutely nothing juicy about the response.
	She's merely pointing at the fact that it's a little bit cheap from fellow academics to essentially engage in council culture.
	And needless to say, she's absolutely right.
	But I'm afraid to say, the cope actually goes on.
	And if we can get the next clip up, which is of somebody called Nathan, who I believe was a student of Professor Stocks.
	And he says...
	Again, Lavery has used this to explain just how much Jot Stock students were suffering.
	You know what makes the philosophy department unsafe?
	Publicly advocating bigotry and intolerance, complaining to deny others their legal rights.
	Hate directed at your students or other members of faculty demonstrably makes philosophy departments unsafe.
	Doesn't this encapsulate just everything wrong with the LGBT lobby?
	Where did she do any of those things?
	I've only seen her saying, like, hey, I have some ideas and maybe you shouldn't be threatening me physically.
	Yeah, the fact that we are hurt is proof that you are making philosophy departments unsafe.
	And it's all part of the intersectional thought that if you are disagreeing to a certain extent, you're denying people their existence.
	Or the validity of their existence.
	It's this standpoint epistemology, really, that we are a holier-than-foul class of people who have the intrinsic right to never be offended by anything or anyone, and in turn we should have the right to offend anyone from ever speaking, just in case they happen to say something we don't like.
	Yeah.
	Well, you're oppressing me by putting me into what is the normative society, by forcing the oppressive normative society upon me and making me fit into the expectations of that society, which is just nonsense.
	There are all sorts of expectations thrust onto every single one of us, every day.
	And if we don't want to go along with those, And people say, hey, maybe you should.
	That's not them saying that you should die.
	No, it's not.
	And to be quite frank, the very fact that they resort to such accusations just exposes them for the petulant children that they are.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, well, that's not great.
	I'm sorry that Kathleen Stock decided that she had to leave the university that she was a part of.
	Good luck to her in the future with whatever it is that she decides to do.
	We all wish you well.
	Yes, we all hope that you do alright, and hopefully you don't have to put up with that sort of stuff wherever you go next, but we'll just have to see there.
	So, let's talk about how Mark Zuckerberg wants us all to enter the Matrix.
	Many of you may have seen that yesterday, Facebook seems to be rebranding their organisation as Meta instead of being Facebook, and they seem to be...
	Coalescing a lot of different elements of their organization into one overarching brand, because I'm aware that I think Facebook owned the Oculus Rift VR headsets, which will be relevant to what we're going to be talking about in a moment.
	So this is their announcement that they put out on their website at Connect.
	2021 CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta, which brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand.
	Meta's focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.
	The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world.
	It will let you share immersive experiences with other people, even when you can't be together and do things together you couldn't do in the physical world.
	It's the next evolution in a long line of social technologies, and it's ushering in a new chapter for our company.
	Mark shared more about his vision in a founder's letter, blah, blah.
	It goes on as such.
	It sounds like marketing speech.
	Pie-in-the-sky kind of idealist thinking.
	But you can see there that they have some interesting ideas of what they want to do to bring people together.
	And just to look into the word meta, for those who aren't aware or may not be as familiar with pop culture as someone like that, I am meta can generally mean self-referential, but when used as a prefix for something, it can mean something, I would say, outside of the concept that it's attached to.
	For instance, a meta-narrative, as I'm sure you're familiar with, Tom.
	A narrative is something small and fixed like the narrative you could find in a book.
	A meta-narrative would be a narrative that expands itself to all of society.
	For instance, Marxism could be considered a meta-narrative, as you've said a number of times.
	But yes, it seems that the key to one of the new exciting keys to his rebranding is this metaverse that was mentioned here, if we skip over to the next article.
	So Mark Zickelberg has laid out his...
	I know, he's embarrassing, isn't he?
	Oh, actually, no, no, no, not this yet, not just yet.
	Mark Zuckerberg has laid out his vision to transform Facebook from a social media network into a metaverse company.
	In the next five years, a metaverse is an online world where people can game, work, and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.
	The Facebook CEO described it as an embodied internet where instead of just viewing content, you are in it.
	Sorry, John, I think this was all in a BBC article.
	I must have forgotten to put it in there.
	Apologies.
	He told The Verge that people shouldn't live through small, glowing rectangles.
	That's not really how people are made to interact, he said, speaking of reliance on mobile phones.
	A lot of meetings that we have today, you're either looking at a grid of faces on a screen, or you're looking at a grid of faces on a screen.
	That's not how we process things either.
	One application of the metaverse he gave was to be able to jump virtually into a 3D concert after initially watching on a mobile phone screen.
	You feel present with other people as if they were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn't necessarily do on a 2D app or web page, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness, he said.
	Facebook is also working on an infinite office that lets users create their ideal workplace through VR.
	In the future, instead of just doing this over a phone call, you'll be able to sit as a hologram on my couch, or I'll be able to sit as a hologram on your couch, and it'll actually feel like we're in the same place, Even if we're in different states or hundreds of miles apart, he said.
	I think that's really powerful.
	So, as you can see, this sounds, to me, like that he's ignoring a certain benefit of a phone screen, which is, as much as it does drag people in, and as much as people can be damaged by addictions to social media websites and other such things, the fact that it is all contained on a phone, where you have a distinct physical separation between what's on the phone and reality...
	There's a reason that people say that some people are terminally online or think Twitter is real life is because it shows you this is not real life.
	Whereas this is seeming to attempt to cut that distinction down and eliminate that distinction by providing you a place where you don't have to ever leave your virtual space.
	You could be sat on a puddle on the side of the road with your headset on pretending that you're at the Bahamas.
	It's a bit creepy and dystopian sounding to me.
	And yeah, if we go over to the...
	This is what I was laughing at.
	Yeah, if we go over to the clip now, John, if you just play this, you'll get a look at what it seems to be the vision for the metaverse is, if you just play that clip for us.
	Imagine, you put on your glasses or headset and you're instantly in your home space.
	It has parts of your physical home recreated virtually, it has things that are only possible virtually, and it has an incredibly inspiring view of whatever you find most beautiful.
	Hey, are you coming?
	Yeah, just gotta find something to wear.
	All right, perfect.
	Of course, that's what you would choose.
	Whoa, we're floating in space.
	Who made this place?
	It's awesome.
	Right?
	It's from the crater.
	I met in LA. This place is amazing.
	Boz, is that you?
	Of course it's me.
	You know I had to be the robot, man.
	I thought I was supposed to be the robot.
	Yeah, and that was just a little clip that John shared on his Twitter earlier on today that gives you a taste of what they envision it to be.
	Now, obviously, I think the word that could describe it the most is lame.
	It looks immensely lame, but it is also very ambitious, and I very much doubt that it will look anywhere near that functional or smooth when it does get implemented.
	But the point is that they are trying to introduce a virtual space where you do not have to connect with others on a physical basis any longer.
	You can choose what you look like, you can choose what avatar that you will take, you can make the ideal version of yourself.
	So this is the post-lockdown world?
	Yes, this is the post-lockdown one.
	I do find it very convenient that after a year, well, almost two years at this point of a lot of people being locked down, especially if you're out in Australia, I apologise that your government is treating you so poorly still, that this has come about after people have been so used, have been...
	Made to be so used to be at home alone.
	This seems like it's been kind of positioning itself as an escape almost from this.
	There's absolutely no question that at the back of his mind, or even at the front of his mind, he knows that there are people who are almost finding solitude in being in a state of isolation.
	Yeah, there are some people who absolutely love the fact that they do not have any responsibility to go out and interact anymore.
	And he's realised you can actually make a business out of people staying indoors.
	Yeah, and you've also got to understand as well, I mean, there have been a number of attempts to do other such things in the past, probably not as ambitious as this, and certainly not with the sort of money that Facebook, well, Meta, can provide to it, but they do tend to get, and the only thing that I can hope is it will get infested by trolls as they...
	As they always do.
	I mean, VRChat gave us such classics as the Ugandan Knuckles memes, and I'm sure there have been many people who have been reduced to tears in these sorts of environments.
	But there's also the question of, do you want to live your life or interact with other people in that kind of environment?
	Will you be able to have a natural and unfiltered conversation with somebody?
	How could you ever think that something like that is homely in the slightest?
	That sort of thing seems to me to be ideal for anybody looking to monitor every interaction a human being has with one another.
	Facebook, Twitter, all of the Silicon Valley giants already have enough of a monopoly on discussion and technology and discourse throughout society as it is.
	So introducing a situation where...
	Everything you say and everything that you do will be probably kept and monitored and kept in a backlog where they can refer back to it.
	And we already see what's happening with the censorship of discussions.
	I mean, Carl and I were discussing the other day how it's come out to light recently that it appears that there is a lot of incest between the big Silicon Valley tech giants and governments who are looking to push what they want.
	I mean, Nick Clegg, I believe, is vice president of some department of Facebook.
	How did he get that?
	I don't know.
	He managed to position himself in that.
	So do we want these sorts of people presenting us with the Matrix?
	There's also the image of that It reminds me a little bit, speaking to, which is why I titled it The Matrix, it reminds me a little bit of, you've seen the film, right?
	Oh yeah.
	Everybody loves The Matrix.
	It reminds me of that part of The Matrix where Agent Smith is talking to Morpheus and he describes how they created the perfect utopia for human society to experience while they were in The Matrix and people rejected it.
	It looks like that kind of utopian dystopia that human beings know is inauthentic to their experience.
	But yeah, moving on, this all goes alongside, this is a dispatch that Hugo put out recently that George Soros is currently backing an anti-disinformation firm that's launching in the US called Good Information Inc., Could you get any more suspicious than a title declaring themselves as good information?
	You might as well have called it Evil Corp.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, so Rory's got it written down here.
	So a new civic incubator committed to investing in immediate solutions that counter disinformation and increase the flow of good information online has launched in the US. Great.
	I mean, we're just going to decide what's true now.
	Nobody's elected us.
	We've just got lots and lots of money, so we can just decide what's true.
	They're probably...
	And media plurality.
	Yeah, I imagine that these people are going to be heavily involved in Facebook, heavily involved in Twitter, and Google as a tech giant that it is.
	But backed by billionaire Democrat megadonor George Soros and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, as well as Silicon Valley investment tycoons Ken and Jen Duda, Good Information Inc.
	aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information.
	I'll believe that when I see it.
	led by Tara McGowan, a former Democrat strategist who headed the nonprofit investment firm Acronym that provides financial assistance to companies involved in progressive causes.
	Excellent.
	So right there, you can see this is already going to have an incredible bent towards progressive ideas.
	And everyone involved in this is a Democrat, so you can also imagine what kind of information that they're going to explain is true and not true to you, and on that basis what they will say, probably recommend to be censored for people.
	So it says here, under, Rory continues, under McGowan's leadership acronym ran one of the largest digital campaigns against former President Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
	The organisation which delegated $100 million to the anti-Trump cause was also a major investor in Shadow Inc., The company which produced the smartphone app that compromised the legitimacy of the results of Iowa's 2020 caucus election.
	So, these people have all been heavily involved in the fortification of last year's election, not making any particular comments on that.
	YouTube went one way or the other.
	I honestly don't have the information to make a...
	I have declarative statements on that personally, but they all seem to be pushing a particular agenda, and I would imagine that if the information falls on one side of the political aisle or the other, you can tell immediately whether it's going to be true or false, sadly.
	So, taking to Twitter to celebrate the launch of Good Information Inc., McGowan hailed the venture as something that would address the all-hands-on-deck challenge for American democracy and fix the broken, divisive information ecosystem which we find ourselves in today.
	I still believe that winning elections is necessary to preserving our democracy, but the information crisis is bigger than politics and requires solutions beyond them.
	So...
	They're phrasing it, they're framing it as if the Republicans were to get into office in America again, that they would immediately abolish American Republic democracy, which...
	I don't think is one of their campaign promises.
	I've never seen it pushed by Donald Trump or anyone.
	And I'm sure that fixing the information crisis will help them win plenty of elections.
	And I've just also made a note here that these people, I hate the way that they throw out the word democracy.
	Constantly, they just use it as a big buzzword.
	I think what it actually means is, we get what we want.
	And they position themselves as the ambassadors of democracy.
	It's the way they use divisive as well.
	All that amounts to is, we don't like the conclusions of yours.
	If you disagree with us, you're a reactionary.
	You're divisive.
	We are the arbiters of progress.
	We are the ambassadors of truth.
	And everybody who is not on our side is against truth.
	Is George Soros actually trying to make him his own stereotype?
	he doesn't help himself, does he?
	Like, just another example of Alex Jones having the right ideas by the sounds of it.
	And just to put a pin on this, if people were to get too involved in the metaverse, if it does turn out to be a rousing success that functions perfectly and looks even better than what Mark Zuckerberg was putting forward there, even in that situation, it will not help people's social media addictions.
	People already have enough of a problem disconnecting from society.
	So I just got this up.
	So to point out, the social media addiction is a growing phenomenon, not just in the United States, but worldwide.
	The average person spends nearly two hours a day using social media, which amounts to five years and four months of his or her lifetime.
	In that time, a person could run more than 10,000 marathons or travel to the moon and back on 32 separate occasions.
	Obviously, this article is not necessarily saying that that's what they will do.
	It's just an example of what you could do with that time for scale.
	For teens, social media time spent could be up to nine hours every day.
	And following on from that, a 2018 study found that teens who spend five hours or more per day using their phones were almost twice as likely to exhibit depressive symptoms than counterparts who dedicated only one hour on their phones.
	That's not surprising at all, is it?
	Even just one hour if you are just on social media scrolling through it is probably not great for you, but the fact that five hours will increase your depression and then all of a sudden they're introducing a...
	Immersive virtual world where you get to spend all of your life in it, potentially.
	It's almost as if they want us to be depressed, isn't it?
	I don't know.
	It's almost like they're trying to demoralise us, perhaps.
	Hmm.
	I wonder if anybody had any ideas about that.
	There is potentially something positive in this very, very...
	What word am I looking for?
	Dysphoric story here.
	And that is perhaps if Facebook or Meta, as we shall now call it, the US government mobilising around this, and George Soros, who of course, is going to have pretty much all of the power of information in this platform.
	If you combine all of those things, you could actually see potentially a class divide between those who identify as progressive and those who just don't, who actually just want to continue living in the real world.
	So maybe the progressives will put themselves out of existence.
	I think if how you're discussing it might go forwards, you'd be able to tell just by who goes outside and who doesn't.
	I am stretching very, very far to try to find some good news in this.
	That's pretty much all I've got.
	Yeah, I mean, once again, at the very least, if this did happen, then at least all of the progressive weirdos would just stay inside and we can all go out and enjoy ourselves.
	Yeah, well, if anything, we could actually have the society we had before, that we had before, kind of restored.
	Sadly, I don't see it going that way.
	No.
	This does all sound dystopian.
	The only hope that I can have, as I've said, is that given the functionality of these kinds of projects that they've put forward in the past, I think there's examples like Second Life and other such things, is they all tend to crash and burn because to a certain extent Like other things that we've discussed, people recognize a certain inauthenticity about it.
	People would much rather be out in person with their friends.
	That's why issues with mental health have been so prevalent over the lockdown because people being locked away from their friends, nothing's ever stopped anybody over the past two years from being able to just go on their phone and have a conversation with people and just FaceTime with all of their friends, do a Zoom call or whatever, but it's just not the same.
	And I think we all recognise that.
	No, but then again, over lockdown, people have veered more towards the other way, given that the right to actually go outside was taken away from them, and they were forced into the matrix.
	Yes, the government decided to take away all our rights to go outside.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's that, sadly.
	We'll move on to the video comments now.
	You guys ask a very valid question when you ask, why would I ever want to move to Chaz, knowing what kind of people are there and what kind of things go on in that city?
	Enlighten me.
	And the short version is, well, the girl I love and want to marry wants to go back to school, and the school that offers the program she wants to go into is only there.
	The University of Washington's main campus is in the middle of the city of Seattle.
	I was looking for apartments nearby, and I noticed that one of the areas was called Capitol Hill and sounded familiar.
	And so yeah, that's potentially happening.
	Well, that is a more wholesome answer than I was expecting.
	I can't really fault you for following your heart, can you?
	You can't really fault someone for following their heart.
	I would ask, can your girlfriend not find a similar course or perhaps a better course elsewhere?
	But I suppose if you have to go with whatever options are presented to you, then that's what you've got to do.
	Yeah, I mean, it's...
	It's a very difficult thing, isn't it, when you have two ambitious people who both treasure what they have amongst themselves and nonetheless have that thing they still want to achieve in their own...
	Ambitions can often find themselves clashing against one another, but that's why one of the main points of a good relationship that anybody who's in a good relationship will tell you is compromise.
	Yes.
	If you're willing to compromise, fantastic.
	If she's willing to compromise, also fantastic.
	As long as you can find a way to make it work, wonderful.
	So, yeah, let's move on.
	Remember, my darlings, the night of Halloween is the night where the veil between the human world and the world of the dead is at its thinnest.
	Which is exactly why we need to make lanterns to scare away the ghosts and the demons to keep our children and our families safe.
	This has been another Tales from the Pines, I guess.
	Do you have any books I can buy?
	Do we have any books?
	Not yet.
	Not yet.
	I mean, who knows?
	Carl might come out with something at some point, you know?
	I don't know what I would write about, personally.
	I have my dissertation that you can download if you want.
	Yeah, you can download Thomas's dissertation, people, and let him know what you think of it.
	Was it good?
	Was it great?
	Please don't read it.
	It's shocking.
	But I think you should give it...
	I think that's a ringing endorsement.
	Oh, darn this.
	I should never have mentioned this.
	There you go.
	Have you got any links that you could give us for that?
	I've forgotten.
	Oh, he's conveniently forgotten, folks.
	Have you got any plans for Halloween, by the way, given that that is the subject of the video call?
	I'm heading back up home, so I'm planning on watching a bunch of scary movies with my friends.
	I might pick up a copy of Scream later, because I've never watched that before.
	And that's about it.
	I don't drink.
	I don't do anything like that, so...
	If I do get invited to a party, I would be the Wojak meme of the guy standing in the corner.
	None of them know I'm a podcast host for the Lotus Eaters.
	Darn it, I thought that was my meme.
	I want to think of another one now.
	I'm the Doomer.
	I'll be the Doomer.
	Oh, you're just the Doomer with the beanie.
	Fair play.
	Alright, let's move on to the next video comment.
	I look forward to Baystate's remix of that.
	One minute, 37 seconds later.
	Looking forward to Baystate's remix of that.
	Yes?
	I'm gonna fight for my right.
	This is vi- And that's why we don't upload this part to YouTube.
	Now, if you want to talk about meta, now this is getting extremely meta, but Bass Tape, wonderful.
	Wonderful work as always.
	I look forward to your remake of this also.
	I wonder if we can get any more Tom soundbites to throw in there on top.
	No, that was outstanding.
	I loved it.
	Yeah, that was great.
	Alright, let's move on to the next one.
	Well, you know, this is about red states or blue states.
	It's about you, your family, the people of the United States of America.
	You know, with the Build Back Better agenda, we're going to fix America, and it's going to cost zero dollars because rich people, they don't pay.
	They pay zero dollars.
	You know, and if you want to be able to ride a pigeon, God, I'm getting sleepy.
	I need a bump of that good stuff.
	Burp Burp Oh no!
	Sigh Sigh Sigh That was excellent.
	I didn't know who it was at first, but then it became exceedingly obvious who that was supposed to be.
	So, nice Biden impression.
	I like that.
	Don't start sniffing people's hair for real, though.
	Just in case.
	That was an excellent impression.
	Just don't go method.
	A lot of people are very sensitive to hair sniffing these days.
	Have you experienced it personally?
	No.
	Tom, whose hair have you been sniffing?
	I'll leave it there.
	Let's hear another tale from the Pines.
	Tony D and Little Joan with another legend of the Pines from Weird New Jersey Magazine.
	It's Berry's Chapel in Quinton, New Jersey.
	Built in the 19th century, this was a stop on the Underground Railroad.
	It was attacked by the KKK several times.
	The church eventually fell into disrepair and burned down, but the cemetery was saved as a historical landmark.
	However, they say you can go to the spot and see the ghost of the chapel burning with its congregation standing in the shadows in front of it.
	Wow, that's really cool.
	Yeah, I'll save that for Isaiah.
	Well, if I had someone to share my Halloween with, I would have saved that story for it, but I'm the Doomer, so I'm spending Halloween on my own.
	Oh, you're just spending it on your own?
	Yes.
	Fair play.
	Well, that was a really cool story, and if you're interested in ghosts and other such things, you might want to check out, I think, is it tomorrow it's coming out?
	Yes, yes it is.
	Tomorrow it's coming out.
	Tom's got a Contemplations with Josh, where they discussed ghosts, ghouls, and all things spooky.
	Yeah, all sorts of spooky things involved in there.
	I'm looking forward to that one coming out.
	I think that'll be a good listen that well.
	Hello there, I'm Alec Baldwin, comedian and actor.
	Today we'll be learning gun safety.
	First, grab your gun.
	What the hell happened here?
	Can you fix this?
	Now that we have our gun, the first thing that you're going to want to do is keep your finger on the trigger at all times.
	Just keep it there so you will never accidentally fire it.
	Why is this gun not loaded?
	I asked for a loaded gun.
	You know I don't know how to load guns.
	Now that the gun is loaded, we're going to prime it.
	So Kodak on the cock.
	Where's the cock?
	For those of you wondering, in this movie, I play a rootin' shootin' shootin' cowboy who accidentally kills someone.
	Couldn't you imagine me ever doing that?
	Live footage there from the set of Rust, it appears.
	Yes, and I have a reason why this segment should not go on YouTube, because they will take it off.
	Once again, Democrats try to understand guns challenge.
	Impossible.
	Hey, guys, just wanted to respond to a comment that was made yesterday.
	Somebody asking how they can protect themselves from inflation.
	Kyle rightly said that you can invest in property, but also it was noted that for a lot of people they don't have that kind of money sitting around to buy a property or manage a property.
	So one thing you can do is invest in real estate investment trusts.
	This is basically a group of people that get together and invest in property as a group.
	That way you don't have to manage property, you don't have to worry about renters, you just put some money up front and get some money back.
	But, of course, your capital is always at risk, which applies to the advice that Carl gave as well, so we must clarify that.
	Risk-taking is always a part of, well, I mean, if you want to make money, you've got to spend money, so it's always a risk.
	Yeah, just to reaffirm that we are not financial advisors, I certainly do not know much about what he just said, but it sounded like good financial advice to me, so if you trust him, go for it, but just don't blame us if it backfires on you.
	So, yep, let's move on to the viewer comments right now.
	So Chad Kowala says, Financially rewarding foreign nationals illegally crossing the border.
	The American taxpaying citizen is now expected to fund its own disenfranchisement on pain of being called a bigot.
	Let's see how that arrangement...
	Well, that's quite literally what it is, isn't it?
	Yeah, it's literally, it's saying, we weren't punishing you for coming over our borders illegally anyway, but now if you do, it's not that we're not punishing you, we're actively rewarding you and we're actively incentivising you.
	So I don't understand, well, I suppose to a certain extent I understand the logic because the democratic, well, the democrat tactic for a long time seems to have been import voters.
	Yeah.
	Now they've basically decided that a more effective strategy is quite literally to pay them for their votes.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's a good point, actually.
	Yeah, they are just paying for votes, and it's electioneering at its absolute worst.
	So we'll have to see how that goes.
	It does not seem to be great for the American taxpayer.
	What's interesting, though, is there's still a chance it might not work.
	Because if you look at the new Labour government, and the idea circulating around their circle, that I suppose, or at least this is what they suspect was the logic, that opening up the borders to mass immigration will make those immigrants more sympathetic to voting for the Labour Party, turned out not to be the case.
	Because, needless to say, the Conservative Party has the largest majority that any government has had for how long?
	For a very long time.
	Since Thatcher...
	Yeah.
	I think, well, actually, is that correct?
	Maybe not.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	They have had a very long majority in the UK. But I do think that, yeah, I think the Indian population tends to vote conservative.
	It's more the Muslim population that sticks strictly to Labour, and that's primarily because Labour seems to just virtually...
	Yeah, but what's in...
	Yeah.
	Anyway, moving on.
	Student of History says, fun fact, the Bryson Gray version of Let's Go Brandon got yeeted for medical disinformation.
	Yes, it did.
	Of course it did.
	Despite the fact that no medical misinformation of any kind was actually included.
	I mean, I don't know anybody who takes their medical information from a song in the first place, so why you would classify that as such, you know?
	I listen to lots of grunge music, and a lot of that's about heroin, and I've never been tempted to take heroin.
	Nope.
	Would you like to know the only part of it that mentions the vaccine?
	In the beginning, when it's an audio clip of Jojo and his demented adventure saying, if you get the vaccine, you won't get sick.
	Is that the misinforming part?
	I mean, I suppose on a purely factual basis, that is absolutely medical misinformation.
	I think it might have been yesterday.
	Well, you get temporarily sick from the side effects of it.
	Well, you can get temporarily sick.
	In the case of the vaccines we have over here, it's not uncommon.
	It is not uncommon, that's correct.
	But yeah, I mean, I think he's been doubling down on that recently.
	I don't know if it was from the speech he made last night, or if it's from earlier today, or maybe a few days ago, but there was another clip of him saying, if you get the vaccine, then there's no chance of you getting sick.
	You won't have to worry about coronavirus.
	It's like, why?
	Why do you keep lying to me, Joe?
	I mean, he doesn't seem to really care that much.
	M1Ping says you can tell that pamphlet is propaganda because of all the full store shelves.
	Correct.
	Once again, read Hugo's article to find out why they're not fully stocked.
	Re-Sim, Biden's great leap forward seems like it'll go on about as well as Mao's.
	Hopefully this won't end up with Frank Dicotta having to write a book on Biden's great famine as prices are going up across America.
	However, let's hope this time it'll be stopped before a famine strikes across the whole of the United States.
	Let's hope.
	Let's absolutely hope.
	Also, I still need to get through to Dick Otter's, what is it, the Mao Trilogy?
	I forget exactly what it's called.
	But it looks pretty harrowing, so it's been one of those ones I've been putting off a little bit.
	So hopefully let's not have a repeat of that in America.
	Angel Brain says, All these government spending bills just remind me of two-book accounting.
	Money never vanishes, it just moves to another place.
	Are the buildings actually for affordable housing, or are they a way of transferring tax money into the portfolios of companies like Blackstone, who are currently buying houses at a crazy rate?
	Is it just a coincidence that the bill to help farmers was brought in, just as Bill Gates started buying up farmland?
	Two-book accounting.
	I can't really comment in depth on any of those, but it does all seem to be very coincidental.
	It's something to watch out for, isn't it?
	Yeah, I'm not that familiar with Blackstone.
	From what I'm aware, some of the houses that they may have bought up were originally built to be bought by large firms to be rented out in the first place.
	This has been happening a lot in the UK. We're building a lot of houses.
	Oh yeah, that was part of the UK. Yeah, but the overwhelming majority of the investors who have bought this affordable housing don't live in them.
	Well, they're probably good mates with the Conservatives, let's be perfectly honest.
	And we mentioned yesterday the Conservative new budget is what...
	I think 24 billion pounds for new and affordable housing for similarly 180,000 new affordable homes.
	It's like, well, who are they going to be housing, I wonder?
	Adam Clayton, another day, another Biden policy that looks like treason.
	Absolutely.
	I wouldn't be surprised.
	give them any more of an inch and they might actually try to torch the Constitution, so be careful there.
	"Student of history, thanks to big daddy government intervention you will be taken care of like a helpless child.
	Most dangerous words to hear.
	I'm from the government and I'm here to help." I would disagree with the framing.
	I do think this comes across more like coddling motherhood.
	Just take the hand of Father Biden and never let go.
	Oh, God.
	I'm sorry to have planted that in your general head.
	That sounds sinister.
	That was actually more sinister than I imagined it would sound.
	Tom's friend, the proletariat, says the government has been replacing fathers with itself since the war on poverty.
	Jack Posobiec posted a map the other day showing that the United States leads to the world in fatherness.
	Leads the world in fatherless households where nearly a quarter of children don't have a father at home.
	I would agree, from what I've read of Thomas Sowell, he's talked extensively on how measures like affirmative action dating back to the 1960s actively incentivised mothers to be single parents raising kids because they were able to get more money from that just being handed out to the government than a potentially deadbeat father would be able to give them.
	Stupidly thought out policy, isn't it?
	Absolutely.
	Alex Ogle, interesting that the US Homeland Departments are considering $450,000 per illegal immigrant and close to $1 million per family when the Liberal government in Canada is considering precisely the same payout.
	Well, I wonder if that's anything to do with their connection to Build Back Better and Klaus Schwab, albeit in Canadian dollars, to survivors of the residential school system.
	Seems to be the going rate, and I wonder who set that going rate.
	Ross Diggle, the Democratic Party in America is going to make everyone in the USA millionaires.
	The inflation they are creating is going to make the US dollar use figures like the Italian Lyra did.
	And yeah, that's true.
	I mean, you can say that, oh, I'm going to be a millionaire, but if a million dollars is worth like $50 is worth now, it's not going to make that much of a difference.
	You just have to look at Zimbabwe.
	I'm not familiar with Zimbabwe.
	Well, their inflation rate is basically insane.
	I think...
	The last time I spoke to my business studies teacher, he said that one pound amounted to 100 million Zimbabwe in dollars or something like that.
	Bloody hell.
	The exchange is insane.
	To tie it into something that many viewers might be familiar with at the moment, it does remind me...
	Just think of it like in the way it is in Squid Game, because I think most people have probably watched Squid Game, and one of the big confusing things for me...
	Watching it as a Westerner was the exchange rate in one over there.
	They were winning, what, like 45 billion won?
	And it amounts to, I think, like around 30 million pounds or something like that.
	So do you want worthless money?
	No, you don't.
	Do you want to go through your comments?
	Yes, so Based Ape says, how can normies not see that they have given carte blanche to a group of people to go around bullying and intimidating everyone around them, when they're obviously abusing the power they've been given on a massive powership just to turn around and cry victim whenever challenged?
	The sad thing is that they're basically scared.
	Yeah, and that is the overwhelmingly common tactic that you see all over the place now, you cry victim because people just don't understand how to, well, I don't necessarily know that they don't know how to back up their points with any sort of strong argumentation, which is that it's easier because we have created a society, as much as I hate to admit it, we've created a society of weaklings.
	Where people see somebody who looks upset and they immediately feel for that person whether or not it's legitimate.
	I do remember when George Floyd was killed.
	I do remember in the fallout of that Lewis Hamilton being extremely vocal.
	One of the figures who actually raised a crack of doubt over whether we should be taking this line, this critical race theory line, And how we understand racism from now on was Daniel Ricciardo.
	I don't know exactly what he said, but he was quickly almost turned back towards the critical race theory model because he came out in an interview with Sky and said, oh, there were so many things I never even considered and I was ignorant, all of this stuff.
	Never apologise.
	Yeah, he never gave any details as to what he was wrong about, but quite clearly he just got the sense, and this is what's important, that someone I race with is upset with me, and I don't want to rock the boat.
	I don't want to rock the boat.
	And I think we, as social beings, and I'm sure other people watching this can remember times when they've not said something entirely truthful for the sake of, I don't know, keeping a friend satisfied or keeping the flow of conversation going.
	That phenomenon is basically what has happened at this level with the intersectionalist debate, and they have basically weaponised it knowingly to basically silence the heretics, because they're afraid of being seen on the wrong side of history from their perspective.
	I hate that.
	I know, I know, I know.
	No, I know why you used it, but it's such a hateful phrase for me at this point.
	Anyway, Freewell2112 says that the hateful vitriol that they indulge in shows their real goal is power above all else, and they revel in their victories.
	They are not a kinder, gentler politics or anything else.
	That is absolutely right.
	This is why we always say never apologise to any of these people.
	Do not give them an inch.
	Do not cede any ground to these sorts of people because they are cry bullies.
	They will never accept your apology.
	It will never be enough.
	If you cede any ground, they will just push you further back.
	Yes, do not accept their model of history, which is that everything is just...
	Everything is power.
	Everything's a power.
	Everything's a matter of one social group imposing itself over another.
	No, it is not.
	The common law is quite literally the living embodiment of the fact that that is not how history moves.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Or at least not in every case.
	Yeah, it's just ridiculous.
	Yes, Free Will 2112 says again, In 1984, Winston Smith was forced to disavow what he knew to be objectively true.
	These people are in a war on reality so they can break down logic and biology in order to create a new biological reality to go with their new political reality and so cause the reduction of humanity to mindless drones responding like Pavlov's dogs to the overlord's diktats.
	I forgot about Pavlov's dogs.
	Actually, I've studied this in philosophy, but in short, that is absolutely right.
	Yeah, I mean, what is it in the new regime they can convince you that 2 plus 2 equals 5?
	Yes.
	I mean, a few years ago, if anybody remembers on Twitter, people were trying to make the argument that 2 plus 2 equals 5 under different ways of knowing.
	If you look at it from some kind of holistic African method, which I find incredibly insulting to Africans, who I assume can understand maths...
	That 2 plus 2 equals 5 somehow, even though if I... Oh, we've got some coasters here.
	If I pick up two coasters and two other coasters, they will not suddenly materialise a fifth coaster out of nowhere.
	Yes, but no, they are quite literally towing the line, or shall we say, working off of the position that they are the revolution...
	Yes.
	These people are the arbiters of truth in their own minds.
	The arbiters of progress and anything that pushes back against them is reactionary, which is why that has become, despite the fact that it does refer to a specific side of the political question.
	Their arbitrary claim to oppression is sacrosanct.
	Exactly.
	End of story.
	Omar Awad says, nobody other than trans individuals gets asked to justify who they are because nobody else is demanding you acquiesce to their worldview in opposition to objective facts.
	Quite right.
	Even if I don't have to put more work into their transition than they did, that doesn't mean they have the right to make me operate under that falsehood.
	They can wear all the wigs and take any hormones they like, but their genitals will never be able to perform the function of a fertile member of the opposite sex.
	That's exactly why.
	You can't simply remove biological sex as a reference on the subject's agenda.
	I know that people find it very affronting to their personal opinions and personal taste, but I think the point has been made over and over and over again that your biological sex comes down to every single cell in your body when it comes down to your chromosomes.
	Yeah.
	Yes.
	George Windsor says, regarding male encroachment into women's spaces, isn't it odd that none of the trans women transition so that they can be housewives?
	I mean, if they were really women, wouldn't a large segment of them not be more interested in raising children and keeping house?
	That's actually a very good point.
	Well, I mean, there are some feminine traits.
	They're hysterical.
	They lack logic.
	Other such things.
	But yeah, I mean, for all I know, there might be a sect of trans women out there who are just wanting to be doting housewives.
	The problem is that, well, I suppose the good thing is that those are not the sorts of trans people who will be the trans activists.
	I know for a fact that there are trans people who identify as women and ask people politely to refer to them as such, but understand perfectly well that it's not a good idea to legally enforce that there are access to single-sex spaces.
	And once again, it's just another distinction that Douglas Murray can draw to, the same way that he said there are gay people and there are queer people, there are trans people, and then there are trans activists.
	don't let the LGBT lobby have or claim the idea that they are totally representative of the transgender community because they are not.
	They are not.
	They are not.
	Yes.
	Marcus Melville says, I bet those students are feeling so relieved that their worldviews will never be challenged and they never have to grow up as people.
	Yes, they're indulging in that, without a doubt.
	Justin B says, this is why freedom appears to be losing.
	When someone on the progressive side is censored, the anti-progressives protest alongside the progressives.
	When an anti-progressive is censored, the progressives all cheer.
	That is the sad fact of the matter, but I think I've seen this argument made a number of times Why are we supporting them when they are censored?
	I think the problem is that as principled people, we have to stick to our principles as painful as it is, or else we do become just as bad as them.
	And if we do ever regain any cultural ground, I don't want it to be on the precedent that we have succumbed to the same...
	Damaging ideas that they have.
	Exactly.
	It's not the whole thing with Novara Media, isn't it?
	We might find the content that they produce contemptible and wrong sometimes, but that's not to say they don't do something for media plurality.
	Yeah.
	And that's part of accepting freedom of expression, freedom of information.
	Yeah, they have the right to express themselves.
	I just do not have the right to believe a word out of their lying mouths.
	And the last comment from Bilbo Swaggin says all trans people have a mental illness as gender dysphoria is a mental illness.
	Yeah, uncontroversial.
	Yeah, that's...
	Well, I mean, they're trying to separate the idea that trans people do not need to have gender dysphoria anymore to classify as trans people, which is just absurd because if you're trying to get it under any form of insurance or national insurance in the UK, it kind of needs to be a mental illness or it's a...
	Or else it's an aesthetic choice.
	How can gender dysphoria even be a thing if you don't refer to the body that you feel that doesn't emancipate you in the social way you want?
	Yeah, if there's no such thing as biological sex that references gender, what ideal are you aiming for?
	And what's the source of your oppression?
	Yeah.
	On to the comments on the Matrix segment.
	Purple Tiger says, On the other hand, it's being made by Facebook, meaning it's going to be heavily centralized and managed by Facebook instead of being a web of decentralized spaces that users can hop between at will.
	So I'm not looking forward to a Facebook-controlled metaverse.
	Absolutely, I understand.
	I mean, it's something that when I was younger I used to think would be a really cool idea.
	But it is the fact that it's being controlled by such a large and globally centralised organisation rather than, say, a bunch of independent creators who don't have any agenda other than let's just provide people an interesting place to engage with one another.
	And once again, it's going to be the sort of place where probably Soros and all sorts of people are going to be heavily involved.
	Politicians are going to be able to have their say on what you're allowed to say.
	I'm just waiting until Skynet is announced.
	Don't give them any ideas.
	And then the comment cuts off, so if there was anything more to that...
	I don't know.
	Sorry.
	But yeah, pretty much.
	Absolutely agree.
	Aemon Anon Aimee.
	Metaverse is a society-type thing in cryptocurrencies.
	Imagine Second Life, I guess.
	There's quite a few around.
	One is decentralized, where people pay for digital land.
	That sounds pretty interesting.
	Facebook has been trying to have its own crypto for a while now.
	This is a move to make them have their own financial systems, Cyberpunk-style.
	Yes.
	And hopefully, like everything large, centralised organisations to do, it will embarrass them and end up an unmitigated disaster, I hope so, in the good way, where it just fails, rather than the bad way, where it does exactly what they want, but is an unmitigated disaster for society.
	Wouldn't it be great if this was the death of social media?
	I doubt it.
	Just imagine.
	As much as that's a good thing, social media does still have utility that I can't really deny, sadly.
	It's just dangerous when I put it into certain people's hands.
	It's just what it's proceeded to become.
	You have to ask, do the perks really outweigh...
	Those are...
	Those are questions.
	George Windsor, Zuckerberg seems to be determined to bring about all the worst possible elements of a very dystopian fiction from the last 30 years.
	Well, I mean, all the Silicon Valley giants seem to be very much on the train heading straight for that station, so we'll have to see where it goes.
	Jimbo G, I feel sorry for the children of today.
	Entertainment is way too addictive and I imagine many of them are going to have mental health issues beyond anything we've ever seen.
	Many of them.
	Already do, as we've covered today.
	Yeah, we've already covered.
	They will rule themselves out of society, but still feel empty and resentful.
	Absolutely, I think the resentment is probably one of those things that makes woke culture so appealing to some, because it gives them an excuse outside of themselves.
	And the incel culture.
	Yeah, and the incel culture as well.
	There's a lot of different sects of society trying to blame...
	Mm-hmm.
	Long talks on the Nietzsche metaverse, literally the internet as it exists, but intentionally engineered to exploit the rampant mental depression of millennials who are so desperate for human connection, they'll strap their phone to their face and pretend they're not just talking to pictures.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	David Shipton.
	So Soros, the Nazi sympathiser, is now part of creating the Ministry of Truth.
	Those who genuinely claim this is a good are either complicit or incapable of critical thinking.
	Now, as far as I'm aware on the Nazi sympathiser comment- I don't think he is.
	Isn't he Jewish?
	Yes, he is.
	I think he was Jewish and grew up in one of the countries subjugated by the Nazis.
	I think the sympathiser comment comes from the fact that apparently, I can't confirm this, so don't quote me on it, but apparently he was happy and eager to sell out other Jewish people so that he could maintain it.
	See, I had never heard that before.
	I've heard that, but I cannot confirm it, so do not necessarily take my word on that.
	Tobias Schmidt says, I think the metaverse thing may have some potential, but I'm inherently sceptical about anything that comes from the Zook.
	I think it will become a valuable skill to have a reliable sense of reality, don't you think?
	Absolutely.
	We're just being pushed to disconnect from reality more and more.
	Honourable mention comments here.
	We've got a beggar here.
	Correction, Harry.
	Not spending money, but spending other people's money.
	Important difference.
	You've got me.
	That's absolutely right.
	The government never spends any of its own money, apart from that it prints, which inherently devalues our money.
	So they're always making our money worthless in some way or another, I suppose.
	Richard Lewis.
	Okay, who evolved Callum to a second evolution?
	Harry, without asking me.
	We're all asking that.
	We are taking over.
	Well, I'm certainly not sad about it, but yeah.
	Edward of Woodstock, "Oh God, this doesn't look good.
	Having the government involved in every phase of someone's life is really daunting.
	I mean, it's not enough to make you want to up sticks and go to live in the woods." I think Josh will be right behind you there.
	Certainly I do.
	David Shipton, turns out Zuckerberg looks just as weird in VR. Yes, he does.
	I mean, he looks more and more like Data by the day, and he already looks like some kind of default setting NPC character from Wii Fit or something like that.
	Wii Fit, yeah, it's a good comparison.
	Yeah, he's got the right head shape for it.
	Soup can Harry.
	Mark Zuckerberg is no James Halliday.
	It's like putting the evil version of data...
	There you go.
	Everybody recognises the data comparison.
	I think it's partially the weird dead eyes.
	Yeah.
	From Star Trek, in charge of the Oasis from Ready Player One.
	I've not watched Ready Player One.
	I haven't either.
	I didn't hear amazing things about it.
	I've not really been interested in reading the book.
	I also didn't know there was an evil version of Data because I haven't watched Star Trek.
	There's an evil version of everyone in Star Trek and they tend to come with goatees, so perhaps I'm Evil Harry.
	You'll never know.
	Student of history, when the VR house and the VR clothing model looks more real than the Borg's face.
	Also speaking of meta, him know the bot mode, AI is improving.
	Can you decipher that?
	I don't know.
	I will say it's kind of embarrassing that he tries to make a reference to the people think I'm in a robot joke meme in the actual advertisement, because I think it's like, oh, I didn't know you were a robot.
	I thought I was supposed to be the robot.
	Look at how relatable we are.
	We're definitely not evil.
	Tom, why?
	There is a difference between finding solace and finding solitude, Harry.
	Yeah, I can understand that.
	That's fair.
	And it looks like we're coming up to about the time where we need to end this.
	So thank you very much for tuning in.
	Make sure to check everything out over the weekend.
	We have Tom's contemplations about ghosts and ghouls and spooky things going up that he did with Josh tomorrow.
	We've got loads of great new content coming out.
	And remember, if you're a Gold Tier member, join us at 4 o'clock for the Gold Tier membership call, where you can have some fun talking to me and Carl.
	Until then, we'll see you again on Monday at 1pm while we're broadcasting as usual.

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