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Dec. 30, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:31:27

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #557

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of Lotus Eaters This is episode 557.
	I'm your host Harry, joined today by Josh.
	Hello there.
	A rare appearance from me.
	I know, it's a pleasure to have you as always.
	Today we're going to be talking about the arrest of one infamous Andrew Tate following his flirtatious actions with one Greta Thunberg on Twitter.
	I'm also going to be talking about the CIA and NATO pipeline all the way to TikTok.
	And then we're going to be talking about the Witcher spin-off and how Josh wouldn't even hate watch it.
	With that all out of the way, let's get into the news.
	But first, check out our merch store.
	Always check out the merch store.
	We have the merch store.
	If I had any of the merch on me right now, I would go into advertising mode.
	But generally, there's some really good stuff on there.
	It's really good, high quality.
	If you want to walk around like the rest of us do with a big L emblazed on your chest, then you go right ahead and go for it.
	But anyway...
	Moving on to Mr Tate.
	So, Andrew Tate's time seemingly has been going quite well up until recently.
	He has been reinstated on Twitter.
	He had been invited on Piers Morgan, where he was actually received somewhat sympathetically.
	You'd think, well, he's finally being rehabilitated.
	well.
	That's where you're wrong, unfortunately.
	And this Telegraph article, I had to go to an archive to find it because they changed it after the fact.
	And we'll look at the changed version afterwards.
	But this is the original and it's titled Andrew Tate reportedly arrested in Romania following a human trafficking probe.
	And this version reads as follows.
	It says, Romanian prosecutors said on Thursday, which coincidentally is yesterday, they have detained divisive internet personality and former professional kickboxer Andrew Tate on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized crime group, which seems a little rape and forming an organized crime group, which seems a little bit extreme, doesn't I mean, you'd think that someone with that kind of profile would have enough sense to avoid these things.
	It's almost like maybe there's an additional reason why they might be doing this.
	Well, perhaps, but at the same time, he's been very open and clear about him and his brother running an eThot webcam business.
	I think, was it from Romania that they were running that as well?
	It was, yeah.
	So those are the sorts of industries that, whether you intend to do it or not, is going to probably...
	It's certainly going to attract some artists, isn't it?
	It's going to attract some eyes.
	It's also going to attract the sorts of people who can get you in touch with willing girls, let's say, who are maybe the victims of human trafficking.
	So I'm unsure of how to cover this right now, just because it's so early days.
	It is a difficult thing to cover.
	He's been arrested, but we don't know if there's going to be a conviction off the back of this.
	We don't know how accurate the information that they've got is.
	So I'm going to be quite careful on this one.
	What I will say is that Andrew Tate is somebody who has said some things I agree with.
	He's also said some things I disagree with.
	And I wish that he didn't have that background in enabling e-thottery, because then it would make it much easier to support some of the more based tastes that he has had.
	I suppose it's a good moment to talk about my opinion of him, because it's going to shape my coverage of this.
	But I think that it's good that he pushes back on wokeness and on feminism, and I think he's right to do so.
	but some of his prescriptions for what masculinity entails i disagree with he seems to think that you need to be some sort of playboy womanizer i think that actually it's far better for you to be upstanding and being a family man i think that's my vision of what a masculine man should be a man who's there i want With a wife who he is faithful to and he raises children who he cares about.
	That's what I think a masculine man should be.
	I definitely do not support his recent conversion to Islam which he has then said that the rest of the West should follow in his wake because apparently converting to Islam is what's going to remove the degeneracy from Western society.
	I highly doubt that.
	Hasn't he moved to the UAE as well?
	I believe so.
	Dubai in particular is known for...
	He's got one place there.
	He's probably got a penthouse there.
	He's got houses and other places elsewhere.
	He's not doing badly for himself, is he?
	So he probably does have multiple houses, right?
	But yes, he's moved to basically a hive of scum and villainy.
	To paraphrase...
	If you want, just look into TikTok and Instagram thoughts going to Dubai, invited on special invitation by Saudis and such, and just see what they're asked to do.
	It's not nice.
	Be warned, it's not nice.
	No, this is not...
	It's pretty graphic.
	This is not the prescription that we need for a wholesome future.
	No, but carrying on with the article, Tate36 banned from many social media platforms for misogynistic comments, says The Telegraph.
	Um...
	And hate speech, again, says the Telegraph, and his brother Tristan will be detained for 24 hours alongside two Romanian suspects, prosecutors from the Anti-Organised Crime Unit said in a statement after raiding their properties in Bucharest.
	The Tate brothers have been under criminal investigation since April, and they declined to comment, but their lawyer confirmed they had been detained.
	Prosecutors claim they found six women who the suspects had sexually exploited.
	So that's outside of them potentially having hired victims of human trafficking and actively sexually exploited some women.
	Yes, and I'm quoting directly from the prosecutor here.
	The four suspects appear to have created an organised crime group with the purpose of recruiting, housing and exploiting women by forcing them to create pornographic content meant to be sent on specialised websites for a cost.
	They would have gained important sums of money, they say.
	Okay, so that's just explaining that they had the eThot website, and they're just saying that they may have exploited some women in the process of that, and I do think it's pretty hard.
	I think if you're running that kind of business, it probably would be very hard not to, whether you intend to or not, encounter people or even accidentally hire people who are involved in human trafficking.
	Well, it's one of the many reasons why you shouldn't be doing this sort of thing in the first place, really, isn't it?
	But it is worth mentioning as well, of course, that is the words of a prosecutor, so they're trying to give him as harsh a sentence as possible, right?
	So it's not necessarily a judge saying this, which might hold a bit more weight.
	Yeah, we'll see what happens when it eventually goes to court or gets settled.
	We'll see what happens.
	But the updated version of this article changed the title to Greta Thunberg claims credit for Andrew Tate's loverboy rape arrest.
	Which is an entirely different tone.
	So it seems like even the mainstream media are changing their tune depending on...
	This sounds a lot harsher, of course, but...
	It does, and it also brings Greta into it when, as far as I can tell, I know that there's been the meme going around that his response video to Greta, the pizza boxes, are what gave him away to the police, but that sounds highly unlikely.
	That sounds like an internet meme, whereas The Telegraph just sounds legit to me.
	Yeah, and I think that...
	They do mention in the article, by the way, just to clarify, that it's alleged that it's the pizza box.
	They don't actually say that it really was.
	But yes, they've changed it.
	And one thing that I noted in this article that was different is they say, So this seems to be a new development.
	I'm not entirely sure...
	Which Romanian authorities they've got this from, but I can imagine that this may well be why they detained him in the first place.
	So this seems to be the reason.
	I imagine it's a spokesperson for whatever department we're investigating him in the first place.
	They also linked to this tweet as well, which is Greta Thunberg saying, this is what happens when you don't recycle your pizza boxes.
	And we will be exploring the significance of the pizza box, don't worry.
	But first, it's worth looking at this video, well, listening to it mainly, of Andrew Tate claiming that the authorities are going to come for him.
	And this was before he'd been arrested.
	So he seemed to expect something to be happening.
	And lots of people have been speculating about whether...
	You know, there's some sort of grand conspiracy and the truth is we don't have enough information yet to really be able to tell of these sorts of things.
	But let's listen to what he has to say for himself.
	Listen, and I'm going to say this on this podcast now because I say it on every other one.
	I would never ever kill myself.
	I truly believe they're going to come and they're going to try and kill me on a long enough time frame because they tried to shut me up and I won't shut up.
	They're going to try and put me in jail.
	They're going to kill me and I would never kill myself under any circumstances ever.
	And the reason I say this and I say this to people and they go, but what can they put you in jail for?
	And I'm like, how ignorant are you in your ignorance to believe they need a reason?
	You believe it's fair.
	You believe I can get a lawyer and prove myself innocent.
	That's not how it works.
	They decide you're guilty long before and they find a reason why.
	And it doesn't matter what you do about it.
	You will pay the price.
	It's not fair.
	None of it is.
	Every single system is corrupt.
	It actually annoys me when people say it to me.
	Well, just get a lawyer.
	Why?
	They can't put you in jail if you're innocent.
	Yes, they can.
	And that's what people don't understand about the world.
	They can and they do and they will.
	And that's what's scary.
	And that's all just true.
	Yeah, I 100% agree with that, and I think that him coming out and explicitly saying, yeah, I'm not going to kill myself, people don't do that flippantly, do they?
	No.
	You look at someone like John McAfee, one of my personal heroes.
	And the man he's based his entire lifestyle off of.
	You should see some of the behind-the-scenes videos we've got around here.
	So, yeah, obviously John McAfee said, I'm definitely not going to kill myself, and then he turned up dead in a Spanish prison cell, so...
	Make of that what you will.
	People do end up dying after they say that, so it's possible.
	Although, you know, at the minute I think he has been detained for 24 hours and released, so...
	Yeah, he was also arrested for similar charges before.
	That's right, and in fact, that's what I'm going to talk about next, and that is this article here.
	This is from August, titled, Andrew Tate claims he was swatted with fake report of human trafficking.
	So this could just be the same thing again, right?
	Him being targeted...
	It's entirely possible.
	But this goes on to say, Tate, who lives in Romania, explained to Tucker Carlson on Fox Nation, I was not arrested.
	What happened is I suffered from a case of swatting.
	It's very popular with people who are large on the internet, which is true.
	It's where you call the police and you say somebody has a gun or there's a hostage situation and the SWAT team arrives.
	Somebody made a phone call to the American embassy saying I was holding women at my house, Tate explained.
	And then...
	Quoting here directly, the police turn up, they investigate, they realise nobody was in the house against their will, there was no crime committed, we had to go to the police station for 45 minutes for pieces of paper, we filled them in and we were let go.
	So that's entirely possible that it's the same thing again, right?
	This may just be my own bias talking.
	I do hope it's another situation like this because as much as I disagree with some of the things that Tate says and some of his lifestyle choices and business decisions, once again, I do think he has been useful.
	He's a very prominent voice.
	He's very clear.
	He's nice and authoritative in the way that he speaks.
	So he's very useful.
	also I know having gone out in public and met people that a lot of people really do like him.
	Young men, he's basically taken the place that Jordan Peterson was filling for young men about five six years ago.
	Yeah.
	Because Jordan Peterson has decided instead of helping young men he wants to go after Anons for some reason.
	So I do hope that this all turns out to just be a SWOT situation.
	It is important to acknowledge that you know people are nuanced They have good things and bad things, and that's true of everyone.
	So you can't just tar someone as good or bad entirely.
	And I think that it's good to clarify what we agree with and what we don't.
	So, moving on to his spat with Greta Thunberg.
	Here he tags Greta.
	Hello, Greta Thunberg.
	I have 33 cars.
	My Bugatti has a W16 8-litre quad-turbo.
	My two Ferrari 812s.
	Compezioni...
	I don't have one.
	Oh my god, I thought I was going to own you by pronouncing it right.
	Competizione, I assume.
	I just pronounce competition like you imagine an Italian would.
	There you go.
	I didn't go like this.
	That's how I failed.
	I've got the slipped back hair and the look, though.
	This is just the start.
	Please provide your email address so I can send the complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.
	And then Greta replies, yes, please do enlighten me.
	Email me at smalldenergy at getalife.com, which is an unusual email to have, Greta, but, you know...
	Yeah.
	Honestly, this entire exchange on both parts was cringe.
	It was, yeah.
	As far as I can tell, had Cretta said anything to Andrew before?
	He was just...
	Or was he just randomly throwing this out into the ether?
	A bit of a humblebrag.
	It's not exactly a humble brag.
	It's not even that humble, is it?
	No, this is just bragging.
	I've got 33 cars.
	My Bugatti, incredibly expensive car.
	My two Ferraris, they're incredibly expensive cars.
	He's just going, look how rich I am, I can afford these.
	Here's my incredibly processed picture of me looking fancy with my fancy car.
	By the way, emissions, etc., etc., Greta Thunberg.
	And then Greta Thunberg comes up with the most...
	Half-arsed, milk-toast...
	Ooh, you've got a small willy response that you could ever imagine.
	It is infantile, isn't it?
	And the entire left goes...
	Just like...
	She destroyed him.
	This is just embarrassing for everyone.
	That is exactly my thoughts.
	But he also released a video response which we're going to watch because this is very important to one perspective on why he was arrested in the first place or how he was arrested.
	More accurate.
	Release some greenhouse gases.
	I'm obviously a stranger to online controversy.
	It's not something I often do.
	But now, the mainstream press is commenting on the fact that I was informing Greta that my very extensive car collection with internal combustion engines, which went on dead dinosaurs, had an enormous emission profile.
	And she replied by telling me her own email address.
	Greta's email address is, I have small dick energy.
	Why would that be your own email address, Greta?
	Strange.
	I mean, also I don't want to assume her gender.
	It's 50-50, but it is what it is.
	I'm not actually mad at Greta.
	Please bring me pizza and make sure that these boxes are not recycled.
	Thank you.
	So, I'm not actually mad at Greta, right?
	Because she doesn't realize she's been programmed.
	She doesn't realize she's a slave of the matrix.
	She thinks she's doing good.
	Someone has sat her down and convinced her to try and convince you To beg your government to tax you into poverty to stop the sun from being hot.
	And then, because I called her out on it, the global matrix got this bot farm to like and retweet and all this bot commenting to try and pretend that her telling me that she has a small dick in her own email address somehow teaches me a lesson.
	Welcome to a new episode of The Clown Show.
	But now I know, at least, that Greta, with her little hate-filled face, bitter, sitting somewhere, without the heating on, in the cold, a little hat, shivering, used my peace, which is going to make my Twitter account far more fun into eternity.
	He's obviously just having fun here, right?
	Yeah, that was a bit of fun.
	I actually agree with quite a bit.
	He said, especially about the bot farms, because if you remember a few months ago, earlier on this year, when we had a run-in with a particular...
	leftist twitch user shall we say that one there was um a coordinated effort against us that we dug into and found that a lot of it is completely artificial drummed up through discord servers and likely bots as well yes although elon if there are still bots on the site please continue to work on getting rid of the bots please Please.
	They're just annoying.
	But yes, significant there is the pizza being delivered, because it had the name of the pizza company, which was, of course, Romanian, which some allege, not necessarily me, but some people allege, that this is what led Romanian authorities to finding out that he was caught, but of course...
	There is also the fact that he came into the country with a passport, and they know where he lives.
	They've been to his house before.
	It's very unlikely that it just happened to be that some, I don't know, FBI Romania equivalent was just watching his Twitter and went, oh my god, Romanian pizza, let's get in boys!
	Calling the cavalry, he's eating pizza.
	So yes, this isn't just my opinion.
	I've seen elsewhere here on, I believe this is a blog by someone named Ben Dreyfus.
	I don't necessarily know who he is, but he claims to have read the Romanian journalism going on, and apparently none of them claim that It was the pizza box that caught him out.
	And he says, there are lots of stories in the US and Britain claiming that.
	Why?
	Well, they're all basically citing each other.
	But if you dig through the citations, you eventually come to the Daily Star, which cites an American Twitter account, which the press are pretty guilty of.
	That's always fun when you follow the citations, isn't it?
	I know, yeah.
	But thankfully, I think lots of the press are correcting this misinformation.
	I mean, it's not like the mainstream media to misinform the public, is it?
	I mean, they never do that.
	I've never seen that once.
	I've not even heard of any departments that they try and set up in the US government to try and spread...
	Sorry, prevent misinformation and disinformation, which definitely doesn't mean spreading misinformation and disinformation.
	One of the most compelling reasons for him being arrested, other than what's been explicitly stated by the prosecutors, is from this, Fred.
	And he says, before you develop a theory that the CIA took down Andrew Tate because he threatened to masculinize American men, consider he went on the Internet bragging he had bought off Romanian officials.
	And they're sensitive about this as they're trying to conform to the EU and join the Schengen zone.
	And then it carries on to say, Austria is literally holding up Romania's efforts to join the Schengen zone right now.
	They also don't have the euro yet and they don't want an American celebrity screaming to the world that they can all be bought.
	Also, one of the reasons Austrians list is that Romania is a hub of human trafficking If Tate is involved in that, even on the periphery, it's a huge headache for I don't know how to pronounce his name.
	Johannes?
	And entire government.
	Very smart friend tells me there is possibly mafia element like John Gotti went down because he aimed at mainstream celebrity.
	Tate was too high profile.
	And if he was connected with gambling and whores...
	His partner would sell him out to the government, who also want no stench of corruption.
	These are all guesses, of course, but the point is, easy USA conspiracy theories are also guesses, and quite a bit more stupid based on what we know.
	And I think that's reasonable, obviously.
	That all sounds logical.
	We can't know whether this is true, but this is another opinion that you might hold.
	And I'm just presenting information for people to make up their own minds, because I don't really know what to think at the minute.
	But...
	Moving on, on a completely unrelated note, I have a contemplation, episode number 84, the Manosphere's Disastrous Dating Advice, where we talk about some of the worst dating advice that tells people to memorise scripts and things like that, rather than just...
	Trying to cultivate the virtues in which you embody.
	Basically coaching people to behave a certain way, which is insincere, rather than teaching them to be virtuous in and of themselves.
	And me and Connor take this down.
	This is quite old, but I thought it was relevant because the Manosphere have come to Andrew Tate's defence, rightly or wrongly.
	I'm not here to say so.
	As far as I can tell, he's kind of in that sphere.
	Would you count him as a Manosphere thinker?
	I don't know, really.
	Truth be told.
	Maybe he is, but it's up to him to choose that right.
	But anyway, I'm moving on to some of the reactions to Andrew Tate's arrest.
	First one I wanted to draw attention to, and this is...
	I drew your attention to this, yes.
	So, Hassan Piker, infamous for being a coward and not fighting Sam Hyde, says, Andrew Tate fans thinking doing sex trafficking and bragging about it is leaving the Matrix, but he hasn't been convicted of it yet, for a start.
	Yeah.
	For a start, also, Hassan, move to the next article, because we know where this is going.
	Hassan Piker is a man who has proudly stated that he has gone to brothels before, particularly a famous one from Berlin called Artemis.
	Yeah, I'm going to read an extract from this Daily Dot article titled, A lot more people see sex work than you think.
	Hassan Piker says he went to a brothel sparking debate.
	That sounds like Cope to me.
	It does.
	It's completely normal, bro.
	Everyone does it.
	Everyone pays for sex, bro.
	So, it says as follows.
	A clip of Twitch streamer and commentator Hassan Piker saying he's hired sex workers before Ignite a debate on Twitter.
	He specifically said he has hired workers from Berlin's Artemis, a brothel.
	Piker was responding to someone in his chat asking, have you ever had an escort?
	No shame, obviously.
	sex work equals real work which isn't really true if you have to proclaim something as real work then it probably isn't just in the same way that if you have to proclaim yourself king you're probably not king um and it quotes directly here from hassan i've gone to a brothel artemis in berlin and had sex with the workers there piker said i don't hide it i don't give an s why would i well there are plenty of reasons yeah Yes, exactly.
	For one, because it's pathetic, and two, maybe because it's a little bit hypocritical of you to be criticising Tate right now, given that whether or not it happened years before you visited there, two years before Hassan Piker visited this particular brothel, Artemis, it was in fact, in the next article, raided...
	By the German police in 2016 for potential trafficking.
	900 police officers have taken part in a raid on one of Germany's biggest brothels in Berlin, making six arrests over alleged human trafficking and tax fraud.
	The operation follows months of investigation into Artemis' brothel.
	So, yes.
	He's actively supported a business which has been...
	Tied to, at the very least.
	Yes.
	Human trafficking.
	So...
	Not saying that he actually had sex with victims of human trafficking or anything before.
	So I don't want to smear him in that way.
	I just want to smear Hassan, as always, as a hypocritical retard that he is.
	Which isn't a smear, that's just an honest observation.
	That is objective fact.
	So, moving on, we have Ethan Klein...
	And that's why I call him Andrew, the human trafficker.
	We're really going through the dregs with his responses, aren't we?
	I thought it would be funny just to look at the creatures at the bottom of the earth and what they're saying.
	He sent me a cease and desist, threatening to sue me for defamation for saying he's a human trafficker because he's not been convicted.
	He's allowed to do that.
	What else am I supposed to call someone that buys and sells human beings against their will?
	Again, it has not been proven yet.
	Andrew Tate, the human trafficker.
	You're just asking to be sued, Ethan.
	I would like Ethan Klein to be sued.
	So would I? Honestly, I don't want to sound like a commie or anything, because I know they hate the rich and they don't think rich people should have money just for their evil morals.
	I would like to see Ethan Klein rendered destitute.
	To be perfectly honest, obviously not wishing any ill will on his own children.
	If that were to happen, I would hope that something could be done to make sure his children live a good and comfortable life.
	Ethan Klein specifically, though, no, you belong in the gutter.
	I mean, I wouldn't wish poverty on anyone, but I don't think he deserves wealth either.
	So moving on to something that's perhaps a bit more controversial, here we have Eliza Bleu.
	I'm not familiar with her.
	I just assumed Bleu.
	Bleu, yeah, okay.
	So someone's saying, kind of funny that Eliza's been quiet about Tate, especially since they claim to be about stopping sexual assault and ending human trafficking.
	And she says, you pointed to a tweet, I have not been at liberty to discuss that individual because I've been serving one of his accusers as a survivor advocate.
	So that's interesting if this is true.
	So clearly there are accusers.
	I didn't really know about this, if this is to be believed, of course, which I don't know.
	And from whenever I've seen her on Twitter, Eliza does seem like a trustworthy person for the most part.
	And obviously she's a human trafficking survivor herself, so it's something that's very important to her.
	Yeah, I would be surprised if she were lying.
	But, I mean, you can never believe anyone at face value, really, can you?
	So, moving on to someone else.
	This is Julia Hartley Brewer, who tweeted this shortly before Tate was convicted, but someone was talking about the Greta spat.
	I think she's quoting Greta directly here.
	She says, I'd choose Andrew Tate's life every single time over the life of a half-educated, doom-mongering, eco-cultist, and the only car I own is a diesel Tiguan.
	Did you say this is a Greta quote?
	This is Julia Hartley Brewer reacting to Greta.
	I agree that yes, I prefer Andrew Tate for the time being before anything's been proven.
	I prefer Andrew Tate and his rhetoric to Greta Thunberg's doom and gloom.
	I feel like it's weird to just phrase it as I choose his life over yours every time.
	That feels really weird to just go there.
	It also seems a little bit mean.
	She's only a young...
	I mean, she's autistic.
	A young child that's been manipulated into doing stuff by her parents.
	Yeah, her parents have been there behind the scenes the entire time.
	Greta Thunberg is not somebody who's come to, like Tate said, Greta Thunberg is not somebody who's come to these conclusions on her own, through her own research and volition.
	She's been given these opinions.
	Yeah, and although I'm not going to defend her, I feel a little bit sorry for her in a way.
	You've got to have a bit of humanity, don't you?
	I mean, with a face like that, you'd have to feel bad for her, wouldn't you?
	No comment on that.
	So, moving on to Blair White.
	I'm not going to talk about...
	Of course, Julia Hartley Brewer pointed out that Greta was autistic and then retracted it rather shamefully.
	I don't know why.
	She points it out in her bio.
	Stand by it.
	But never mind.
	She's deleted the original one.
	Blair White brings up a good point.
	Whether Andrew Tate is guilty or not, they skipped the entire Jeffrey Epstein client list because he's their enemy and the people on that list aren't, which is always worth drawing attention to.
	The media furore around Andrew Tate is far greater than that around...
	Any lasting effects of the Epstein debacle.
	Which...
	You think he's in the public interest.
	Everyone I've spoke to, just normal people that don't necessarily follow politics, when I say to them, are you interested in finding out who's linked to the Jeffrey Epstein paedophile ring?
	They're like, of course.
	Everyone should be.
	I find the best example of when to bring that particular subject up is when you're speaking to an absolute NPC. Who thinks you're a conspiracy theorist, and they go, well, do you think some elite pedophile ring runs the world?
	And you go, Epstein.
	And they immediately give, they've got no response for it.
	They just shut up, because they can't really say anything.
	Well, I mean, Epstein's ring was a conspiracy.
	There's no doubt about that.
	Of course, but it was a true conspiracy.
	I mean, the only thing I would say about what Blair has said here is that I would suggest going back to the thread that you read out earlier, just talking about how this wasn't US authorities going for him, it was Romanian authorities.
	Although, of course, intelligence networks across international lines, who knows what's really going on behind the scenes.
	Yeah, once the smoke is cleared, we can have a better idea of what caused this.
	But moving on to this next one, here's an opinion that I... I would not be at all surprised if the EU and or the US government strong-armed Romania into arresting Andrew Tate.
	He's a threat to their worldview and they would have no qualms about throwing him in jail on trumped-up charges.
	I agree that the authorities would be happy to throw him in jail for trumped-up charges, but I don't know about the overarching collaboration.
	We need a bit more evidence to prove that, even though I can believe that to be the case.
	And finally, he's back on Twitter.
	Very quickly.
	Well, I mean, they only held him for 24 hours, but who knows what's going to develop from this.
	He could end up still going to prison, depending on what the authorities do.
	But he says, to end the segment, the Matrix sent their agents.
	So hopefully we find out a bit more about this, because this is certainly an interesting development and something I didn't see coming.
	Yeah.
	Alright, moving on to another serious subject.
	Let's talk about the CIA to TikTok pipeline, because yes, it is a thing that exists.
	So this segment I've done mainly in response to...
	Somebody on Twitter, Theo Fletcher, pointed out that some of our coverage of TikTok matters has been a little bit inconsistent, perhaps, and mainly it's been done by other people.
	I think I've only done one segment on TikTok, and that was just pointing out all of those insufferable day-in-the-life-of-tech-worker...
	TikToks that have been going around, I hate those videos.
	They're insufferable.
	I agree.
	But when other people have been covering it, like Carl and Connor, it seems that we either split between saying that it's Chinese state media if it's promoting stuff that we dislike, and then just not mentioning it if it's presenting stuff that we do like, or at least there's some inconsistency in the way that we present it based on whether it's the people's fault who are behind TikTok or the people's fault who are posting these videos on TikTok in the first place.
	Yeah.
	But I think this is...
	I'm doing this to clear it up, and mainly also just because in having that discussion with this guy on Twitter, he pointed me towards some really interesting information that I think is very important for people to know, especially after the Twitter files revealed the amount of US government involvement in Twitter and manipulation of information.
	Yeah.
	I'm really interested to find out about this because I'm going into this blind, but it's a really promising thing because, of course, the extent to which the CIA and the FBI and all the alphabet agencies were involved in Twitter was even beyond what I had imagined, which I thought was, you know, they're the ones basically pulling the strings.
	But even then...
	Even past the point of Elon getting a hold of the platform and releasing the very first Twitter files, they still had Jim Baker, former attorney for the FBI, as the one curating the content that was sent to the journalists.
	So even after Elon thought he'd cleared them out, there were still a few hiding in there, nestled in there.
	Good to see Elon clearing them out.
	I'm sure AA will approve.
	Absolutely.
	But...
	It relates to an article that I wrote recently talking about asking the question whether Twitter is real life, and I point to the fact that, well no, Twitter is not technically real life, it's an abstract online platform, obviously, but the things that happen on there are real, they take place in people's lives, and the US government thought that Twitter as a platform was important enough in terms of disseminating information to have all of this interference in it.
	Elon Musk thought it was important enough to try and be honest on Twitter and allow for a greater breadth of discussion to spend $44 billion buying the thing.
	And Twitter is not the only platform that is important in that way.
	And TikTok especially, especially given that it's aimed at a much younger audience than basically all the other platforms other than maybe some kids' content on YouTube, is very, very important to the alphabet agencies and the US government in general for being able to get all of this information, get the right information out.
	Indoctrinate children.
	Vulnerable children, yeah.
	And this also ties into something that Carl spoke about recently when he was talking about the book on a premium book club, Hannah Pitkin's concept of representation.
	As far as I'm aware, this was him and Beau talking about this book, which discusses what actually does representation mean in a democratic context.
	And given what we're talking about, given the sort of stuff that we cover a lot, you should probably be very familiar with this point, that the fact that democratic representation, as it's sold to you theoretically, is not at all what we get in practice.
	You're told that you vote in the representatives who are going to represent your interests, you think you do that, and then they go with the globalist agenda anyway.
	Yes.
	So as far as I'm concerned, democracy, as we understand it, has been sold, is a complete sham, just a smokescreen for power.
	So this is talking about the theoretical origins of the concept of representation as it pertains to democracy.
	But let's carry on.
	It's worth checking out.
	So these are the videos that I was sort of pointed to for where we've been a bit contradictory, perhaps.
	So if we just move past these, because like I say...
	What we've done in the past, we've mainly just been going off of various people's opinions on this, so it was interesting to look into this, because it seems the whole thing is much more...
	It goes a lot deeper than you'd expect, because it's not just that the US government is filling TikTok's important positions with its own agents, but instead it also looks like the Chinese owners of TikTok and the US government are seemingly having a tug of war right now over who's going to be able to have the most influence over the platform.
	And both of those are not people that I think have my best interests in mind.
	It is interesting, really, that the Chinese have allowed the alphabet agencies to infiltrate their organisation.
	You'd think that one of the main things that they would be doing is policing the organisation for foreign government infiltration, because obviously the Chinese do use it.
	Yeah, we'll get into that.
	Because I do think that what it seems like is TikTok is happy to let the US government have influence as long as China is still able to operate within our markets, make money through advertising and such, and then also make money selling our data off, because that's obviously what they're doing.
	Because even if the US government gets complete control over the platform, servers and certain parts of its infrastructure are still going to be processed through Chinese infrastructure.
	Therefore, they're still going to have access to our information.
	I mean, all tech companies seem to sell our data anyway, don't they?
	So it's not necessarily anything unique to TikTok, but it's just especially nefarious because it's the Chinese communists doing it.
	Yeah, but like Twitter, it's been fairly obvious for a long time that the US government has been involved in Twitter, given the fact that it's not Twitter, sorry, TikTok, given the fact that last year we had a literal moment where TikTok influencers were just invited to the White House to try and convince everybody to get vaccinated.
	This person, Benny Drama, got invited to the White House to make TikToks encouraging people to get vaccinated.
	This was obviously just a psyop.
	For younger TikTok viewers.
	Like those videos I mentioned, The Day in the Life, it was presented as one of those ones, and there were the hilarious memes that came of it, of this degenerate peeking through the door going, Honey, they've invaded Ukraine!
	Jen Psaki.
	It's just this really camp guy, poncing about the White House with his long nails.
	If that doesn't sum up the complete degeneracy of the US right now, I mean, if we're going to get propaganda, and everything can be classified in some way as propaganda, can we make it cool?
	Can we make it cool propaganda, please?
	And also, next time you try and humanise Jen Psaki, don't.
	It failed.
	It will continue to fail.
	We all know it's Mark Zuckerberg in a ginger wig.
	LAUGHTER They look identical.
	They have the same mannerisms, the same dead eyes, obviously.
	That was far too fluid and human, Josh.
	Thank you.
	You're welcome.
	There was this that came out earlier on this year, immediately after the Ukraine conflict started up, where it was saying, in its continued attempt...
	To help Ukraine fight against the Russian invasion, the White House officials and National Security Council staffers gathered 30 influential TikTok stars on a Zoom call to receive guidance and information about the unfolding war in Ukraine and the rising cost of energy.
	So they're just feeding them the information that they want to get out there so that moronic children can just know what the right opinions are.
	Because people...
	Don't come to their own conclusions.
	They don't get their own opinions.
	They receive opinions from social media and people who they see as authority figures.
	That's what happens.
	I never thought I'd see this sort of thing in my lifetime, that people are going to resort to basically paid TikTok grifters who do silly dances and stuff like that and post pictures of their arse online to get followers.
	And these are the people who are going to disseminate information about Ukraine.
	Oh yeah.
	It's not just Lizzo Nation, it's Lizzo Planet.
	We're in Lizzo World, that's what we're living in.
	Lizzo Dystopia.
	Yeah, the Lizzo Dystopia, the Lizzo Technocracy.
	Oh, God.
	The White House Director of Digital Strategy, Rob Flaherty, told the influencers that he saw that influence as a critically important avenue to the American public and asked them to assist the government in opposing misinformation.
	They're just outright saying it.
	They're just saying, you're a brilliant propaganda tool, so please spread our propaganda for us.
	Simple as.
	I mean, they're called influencers for a reason.
	I despise that term as well.
	It's right for them, though, because they deserve the scorn.
	My missus knows that she can tease me and infuriate me by referring to me as an influencer.
	It really gets on my nerves, and I think we've just given everybody watching this some ammunition to target us with now.
	Brilliant.
	And it uses an example in this Newsweek article.
	18-year-old TikTok star Ellie Zeela, and you know 18-year-old girls are who you want to be getting your political information from, who has over 10.5 million followers, presumably all of them old enough to be her dad, told the Washington Post how she saw her role.
	I'm here to relay the information in a more digestible manner to our followers.
	I would consider myself a White House correspondent for Gen Z. What a cursed sentence.
	I know, just say it out loud.
	My most trusted news source, 18-year-old Thoughts.
	Brilliant.
	But let's move on, because I was mainly pointed in the direction of this article, which is really very interesting, from Mint Press News.
	It came out all the way back in April, called the NATO to TikTok Pipeline, asking, why is TikTok employing so many national security agents?
	And there's quite a lot.
	It's a good question.
	It's a really good question.
	I can think of a few answers.
	But, I mean, the FBI has organised all manner of perverted things, so it's no wonder they want to get their hands on a bunch of young girls.
	Listen, man, once again, we don't know who was on the Epstein lists.
	It's true.
	The entire FBI. I wouldn't be surprised, let's be honest.
	But there's quite a lot of information to go through here, so I'll try and get through it as quickly and efficiently as possible, but I don't want to skip over this because it is just really interesting to see how many people in the alphabet agencies have embedded themselves in important places in TikTok, just like they did with Twitter.
	TikTok itself has taken steps to align itself with the US government policy, deleting more than 320,000 Russian accounts and removing at least 41,000 videos peddling misinformation about the war.
	In addition to this, it's placed warning labels marked Russian state-controlled media on 49 accounts linked to the Russian government.
	So pretty similar stuff that you saw from all of the tech companies today.
	Although TikTok is a Chinese company, it is ironically completely blocked inside of China.
	Their domestic market being served by a sister app, Douyin, which functions in a similar way but is separated by the Great Firewall.
	And presumably only promotes stuff that the Chinese want their citizens to see.
	Great Firewall is a genius term.
	That's brilliant.
	I do love it.
	in China, its parent company, ByteDance, launched a global platform.
	ByteDance first reached a deal to sell TikTok to Microsoft because originally, I think it was in 2020, Donald Trump made that threat that he was going to ban TikTok in America unless they sold the platform to an American company or investor.
	Biden decided that didn't need to be the case.
	He said, we don't need to do that anymore.
	So it was originally going to go to Microsoft, then to Oracle, and then to Walmart of all companies.
	Walmart?
	Yeah, Walmart wanted a slice of that TikTok pie.
	Yet the new Biden administration, without explanation, quietly dropped the sale requirement indefinitely in early 2021, saying in a court filing that it had begun a review of security concerns cited by the Trump administration.
	So they basically went, yeah, don't worry about it, bro.
	Joe Biden just there sleepily on his chair, just like, don't worry about it, man!
	But when you're in the pocket of the Chinese, you don't need to worry about them propagating propaganda in your country.
	I wonder why.
	Hunter Biden, in between puffs of crack, told his dad that, no, man, TikTok's cool, bro.
	It's how I meet all my girlfriends.
	For example, while simultaneously being the content policy lead for TikTok Canada...
	Alexander Corbyl is also the Vice President of the NATO Association of Canada, a NATO-funded organisation chaired by former Canadian Minister of Defence David Colonnette.
	In order to join TikTok, Corbyl left his job at the SecDev Foundation, a US State Department-funded security think tank.
	Corbyl's work focused on Middle Eastern security, and in particular, on the war in Syria and what NATO's role should be.
	Another NATO-linked new recruit is...
	So, after Biden said that they didn't need to sell it off to an American person anymore, what it seems has happened is the US government has just decided to start filling it with its own agents.
	So, even...
	If we don't own it, well, we'll still control it.
	That sort of thinking.
	If it were being done for good reasons, though, I would actually support this.
	If, you know, these people were on side of, yes, we're going to be promoting freedom and liberty and we're going to be countering the Chinese propaganda...
	But no, they're going to be augmenting it, making it more digestible for a Western audience, in the words of an influencer.
	No, it's being stacked with bug men.
	Bug men who hate you and your way of life.
	So yeah, another NATO recruit, Ice Kokak.
	I have no idea how you're supposed to pronounce that name.
	Ice Kokak, maybe.
	A global product policy manager at the company.
	Before joining TikTok last year, she spent three months at NATO. Ford Copeland, who works on TikTok's trust and safety policy, is also an ex-NATO man.
	And given what we learned about Twitter's trust and safety, I think we should go and look into some previous dissertations that this person has written and see if they've said anything dodgy about Grindr and Miners.
	Perhaps the most worrying NATO alumnus, from a public perspective, this article continues, is new feature policy manager Greg Anderson.
	According to his own LinkedIn profile, until 2019 he worked on psychological operations at NATO. Literally, psyops.
	Okay, so this guy, one of the people, the new feature policy manager, which means he's going to be deciding what new features will be added, literally was in charge or worked on PSYOPs for NATO. This is just fine.
	This is just normal information that you expect to hear about a tech company.
	Being up to scratch with my psychology, I also know that there are so many ways in which a policy manager can manipulate people unwittingly, like design choices and things like that.
	And it's their entire job.
	That's the job of the algorithms that they promote.
	That's the job of the layout of the apps, is to make sure that they're as addictive as possible to keep you on there and keep as much screen time as possible.
	And at the same time, you've got people psyoping you.
	Your entire brain is going to be filled with nonsense.
	Being in that position with that background, he's going to be like a kid in a candy store for psyops.
	Yeah, because guess what?
	You get to promote it not just to the normal people you're used to.
	Now you've got kids.
	Kids with malleable, vulnerable brains.
	Mm-hmm.
	Brilliant.
	This fact, according to Mint Press contributor Loki, was removed after his tweets raising concerns about the relationship between big tech and the national security state went viral.
	So this tweet on the article from Loki talking about it went viral, and then all of a sudden this guy, Anderson, took it off his LinkedIn profile that he worked on PSYOPs for NATO. Oh, that's funny.
	It never happened.
	Forget, citizen.
	It's funny that the left always talks about that F word, the one that YouTube might tell us off for saying, not the rude of one.
	Not the cigarette word.
	No, not that one, or the other one, but the mid-century Italian word.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Wait, is YouTube going to tell us off for saying that now?
	I think so.
	Bloody hell.
	I know, but...
	Yeah, and you've got this clearly revolving door between government and private company here.
	And I mean, if that's not that word that I can't say...
	It's not even just something as simple as subsidies, which you can make the argument have an influence on those companies to be more...
	Pro-government.
	Because, you know, they're receiving massive funding from them.
	But at the same time, this isn't just as simple as that.
	This is people from major intelligence positions going straight into a big tech company that has a massive amount of influence over people.
	And the government, they've prepped these influencers before.
	They know what influence these people have.
	So they go in, they influence the actual operation of the app itself to be as addictive as possible and to make sure that it's psyoping you in ways that you don't even realize.
	And then they also just prep all of these influencers on how they can continue to be part of the psyop in the first place.
	Everything you see on these apps is controlled in one way or another to your detriment.
	But let's carry on, because there's more to go over in here.
	So the company's new global lead of integrity and authenticity...
	Tech companies talking about authenticity.
	Okay, and integrity.
	It's rich, isn't it?
	Chris Roberts is a former senior director of technology policy at the Albright Stonebridge Group, ASG, a powerhouse strategy and consulting firm started by the late Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.
	Brilliant!
	Okay, this is getting interesting now, isn't it?
	The ASG has perhaps been the major staffing source for President Biden's administration, with at least 10 ASG employees appointed to key positions in the national security, state, and foreign policy positions.
	Before ASG, Roberts worked, in his own words, on special projects for the National Democratic Institute.
	The NDI exists to channel US government money, money training, and support to political and social groups around the world, which means funding insurgencies to topple foreign governments.
	So this isn't just a rabbit hole, this is an entire rabbit warren, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	This is huge.
	We're in a den of vipers, right here, is what's actually going on.
	And at TikTok, his role is to lead the integrity and authenticity policy team.
	This act team covers misinformation, synthetic and manipulated media, media covert influence activity, and spam and inauthentic engagement.
	Brilliant.
	Okay.
	And then since January, Bo Patterson has been working as a threat analyst for TikTok's Trust and Safety Division.
	Between 2017 and 2020, however, he was a targeting analyst for the CIA, after which he joined the State Department to become a Foreign Service Officer.
	And obviously that's about as far as that goes right now, but why would they do this?
	Why would they do this?
	I've already made it clear that this is a brilliant platform to influence young people's minds, and they've just got some facts and figures in this article explaining.
	So it grew exponentially from about 85 million global users in early 2018 to 1.2 billion global users by late 2021.
	That's a year ago, so it's probably grown even more since then.
	And it is exceptionally popular among the younger generations.
	2021 Reuters Institute Digital News report found that 9% of people aged between 18 and 24 worldwide had gone to TikTok to get news over the past week, while 31% of that age group used the app in that period.
	And if you're using that app, you're scrolling through your You may not have necessarily strictly gone for the news.
	You will get some news-related content on your feed.
	TikTok users also spend an average of 68 minutes per day on the platform.
	Over an hour on TikTok.
	Being fed psyops.
	I don't spend that long on my phone full stop.
	Maybe I am getting on in the ears, maybe that's it.
	I spend probably too much time on my phone, but I do at least mostly use it with Audible, listening to audiobooks.
	That's fine.
	It's basically reading, isn't it?
	Yeah, that doesn't really count.
	And then there's been more information since then, because that article was all the way back from April, whereas recently, in the past few days, in literally the last week, this Reuters article...
	I was just going to say, credit to the journalists for putting that together, because that's quite an impressive article in the work that they've put into that.
	Yeah, go up so we can see the name, so we can just give a shout-out to the journalists that wrote this article.
	Sorry, maybe it's closer to the bottom of the article?
	Yeah, go to the bottom of the article instead there, Michael.
	Because they also point out big tech is a big weapon, also drawing parallels to Operation Mockingbird.
	It's a journalist called Alan McLeod, senior staff writer for Mint Press News.
	So well done for that article, because that was really well put together.
	So thank you very much for that.
	But like I say, recently there's been even more updates regarding this, like Reuters pointing out that TikTok...
	has stepped up efforts to clinch a US security deal, and I'll go through some more information here.
	So, it's offering to operate more of its business at arm's length and subject it to outside scrutiny as it tries to convince the US government to allow it to remain under the ownership of Chinese technology company ByteDance, according to people familiar with it.
	I wonder why it would be doing that.
	Yeah, and they've been seeking to assure US government departments and agencies for the last three years that the personal data of US citizens cannot be accessed and its content cannot be manipulated by China's Communist Party or any other entity under the influence of that country's government.
	Yeah, right.
	Like I said, this is where the tug of war comes in, where it's obvious that China and US have their own interests that they want with TikTok, except I think China's are more malleable.
	China basically just wants access to our information.
	And as long as they still have...
	The infrastructure it's built on, as long as they still technically own the platform, okay, let US operatives go in there and manipulate and propagandise their own subjects if they want, as long as we can still get the data and sell that off and make money.
	I think what's likely to happen is, if they're trying to remain in the United States, what they're going to do is they're going to make their operations more subtle, aren't they?
	They're going to realise, okay, well, we can't do this because it's going to draw too much attention, and therefore there's going to be subtle tweaks to algorithms promoting certain things like...
	I know it was quite a while ago now, but wasn't there the trend on TikTok of it, the algorithm downgrading people who are disabled?
	Was it?
	Yeah, the Chinese scorn the disabled, unlike in the West, where we hold them up as being stunning and brave, which many of them are.
	It's a difficult position to be in in life.
	Yes, but I don't think that they deserve to be discriminated against by an algorithm just because they're disabled.
	That's awful.
	Well, I think what's happening is that if China really wanted to subvert the US and the West through TikTok, they don't need to bother.
	They just need to let the US government do it for them.
	They go, oh, we need to subvert the West, and then look over and they see Joe Biden, they see that, what's her name, Rachel Maddow?
	No, not Rachel Maddow.
	Rachel, the one, the Army, Naval, something or other, the Navy General or something.
	Levine.
	Levine, yeah.
	Thanks, Michael.
	Rachel Levine, they see debates over whether men are women and women are men, and they just think, do we even need to subvert these guys to do a good enough job themselves?
	I mean, Biden is copying Xi Jinping's homework, isn't he?
	He really is.
	But here's where it goes even deeper.
	So TikTok has unveiled several measures appealed...
	Sorry...
	TikTok has already unveiled several measures aimed at appeasing the US government, including an agreement for Oracle Corp to store the data of the app's users in the United States and a United States Data Security, USDS, division to oversee data protection and content moderation decisions.
	So now all the information is going to have to be processed through American servers, but China's still going to own it, so now it's going to be everyone owns our data.
	If you've got a TikTok account, everyone gets it.
	You get some data.
	You get my personal address.
	You get my phone number.
	But some government officials, including at the U.S. Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA, remain opposed to a security deal, according to the sources.
	And this just comes across as performative opposition, because realistically speaking, all of these departments...
	They aim to benefit from the use of TikTok.
	We have infiltrated the departments.
	Yeah.
	These officials argue that TikTok's users would continue to be vulnerable because the app would still rely for its technology on ByteDance, which operates Chinese short video app Doyin, as we pointed out before.
	So, as far as I'm concerned, the only real problem that they might see is they might get Chinese propaganda instead of our beautiful, inclusive, stunning and brave US propaganda.
	That's the only division I see here.
	To be fair, at this point, Chinese propaganda is probably socially more extreme than even the right.
	Like, they're just like, yes, disabled people, bad.
	Anyone who isn't white or Asian, bad.
	Yeah, it is probably more extreme.
	Well, I mean, Dan and I recently covered in one of the segments that we did that China's laws accidentally incentivise people to, if you run someone over and only injure them, it's incentivised to kill them instead.
	So, yeah...
	Chinese propaganda probably is a lot more extreme than we get over here, at least in terms of just encouraging physical violence on people.
	And then it just carries on.
	So it's also, TikTok has proposed to form a proxy board that would run the USDS division independent of ByteDance.
	The sources of Seoul said the USDS board would have three members who would be screened by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
	I'm sure they're a trustworthy organization.
	A national security panel, the sources said...
	ByteDance would not have control over the board and its decisions, even though it would pay for the USDS division's operations.
	So, yeah, they're fighting for control of it right now, but realistically speaking, who loses, we all lose.
	If you've got kids who use TikTok, just throw the phone out the window.
	That's my best advice.
	Just uninstall the app, I think.
	That's probably all you need to do.
	No, throw the phone out the window.
	Interestingly enough as well, to make it even more suspicious and confusing, the US House of Representatives has banned TikTok on all of its devices.
	That's a good idea, really.
	Yeah, if you're a member of the House of Representatives, then you're not allowed to have it downloaded on.
	But if you're in the Senate, go ahead.
	Yeah, everyone detected to have the social networking applications on the phone would be contacted to make sure it's deleted and any future downloads are prohibited.
	Last week, lawmakers approved the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill...
	Which I assume nobody read because it's probably 3,000 pages long and they just go along with it anyway.
	It's drafted up by lawyers who have their own incentives here.
	That included provisions that would prohibit the use of TikTok on executive branch devices.
	That came after the Senate unanimously voted to approve the No TikTok on Government Devices Act that was introduced by Senator Josh Hawley.
	So Josh Hawley, Republican, he's pushed back against things like the...
	Yeah, it was the Diversity Howard-Kontaji Brown-Jackson to the US Supreme Court earlier this year.
	He was pointing out, well, you've said some pretty restarted stuff.
	And she was like, are you racist, bro?
	Are you racist, bro?
	Is that what you're saying right now?
	You're criticizing what I'm saying?
	You must be racist.
	Have you considered the color of my skin when you're criticizing me?
	That means I can say anything.
	Yeah, basically.
	And it came after the sentiment...
	Oh yeah, TikTok's critics and the US government have been raising concerns that it could be used as a tool to spy on the US by Chinese officials, but the only people we're actually worried about, as it shows here, them spying on are the senators and people in the House of Representatives.
	People in important positions, not people like you and me.
	They don't really care about the plebs like us.
	And if you want more information on this, Glenn Greenwald on his substack had an excellent article here talking about his experiences posting some mild criticism of Zelensky on TikTok, and then it just being wiped off the platform.
	Whereas even other platforms like Google, YouTube, Twitter were more than happy for the video to remain up, but TikTok was going even further, which he suggests fits much more in line with US foreign policy goals than Chinese foreign policy goals.
	Yeah, it does.
	TikTok is not as simple as it just being a Chinese state media app trying to subvert the West, because the West is trying to subvert the West.
	The leaders of our glorious civilization want us all to be weak, fat, gay, all sorts of things, and they have made sure to put people in positions in these platforms to make sure they can propagandize you in that way.
	So yeah, there you go.
	Moving on to The Witcher.
	So, I take it you're a fan of The Witcher games at the very least?
	I have played the third one.
	It is fantastic, isn't it?
	A masterpiece?
	It is a masterpiece, I would say.
	I have also read the first two books, which are the short story anthologies, I think, The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny.
	I've not read the more serialised narrative that came after that, though.
	Yeah, I've not read any of the books because I'm lazy.
	They're potentially ripped off from Michael Moorcock's Elric series, at least according to Razor Fist, but I cannot confirm that.
	But I have watched the Netflix series and I've played through at least the third game.
	I didn't think the third series was too bad.
	I watched five episodes and it was kind of boring.
	I'm so into The Witcher world that I enjoyed it for what it was, although I did think that some of the writing could have been better and some of the casting was pretty woke.
	I'm sorry, if you're going to hire a coloured person or person of colour to play Trish...
	At least get someone attractive.
	She's supposed to be hot.
	Come on!
	I mean, seriously, that was my main complaint.
	I know.
	It's set in a Polish world, and you would imagine...
	I mean, it's written with Polish folklore in mind, is a better way of putting it.
	And thus, you would imagine that it would be European, but it had been Americanised.
	This is like the Kingdom Come Deliverance argument, where they were like, well actually it's set in medieval Poland, and a load of people going, where's all the black people?
	Sorry, medieval Bohemia, and everyone was going, where's the black people though?
	And it's like, there were no black people there.
	It's historically accurate, that's why it's good.
	That's my opinion, anyway.
	But, they produced a spin-off series, which is a prequel about a thousand years before the events of The Witcher, and it's...
	Got the worst Netflix audience score of all time, according to this Forbes article.
	And Rotten Tomatoes.
	Remember everyone as well, this is immediately coming after Henry Cavill has left the show.
	I will be talking about this, don't you worry.
	Henry Cavill, I feel so bad for the guy.
	He's been taken from pillar to post because he was...
	Excuse me.
	Screwed around in DC for ages as Superman and represented not the best Superman on paper, but he looked like he could be the best Superman.
	Goes to do The Witcher, a series that he's in love with.
	Well, yeah, he's read all the books, played the games.
	And he's corrected all of the writers on all the places they went wrong in the lore.
	I think he's the only reason that I was able to get through the series.
	And then he leaves that show so he can go back to DC to continue being Superman.
	DC James Gunn, who's made some curious jokes in the past, say, no, you can't be Superman anymore.
	We need Black Superman or we need Elliot Page Superman, which is a rumor that's...
	I don't want to imagine what that looks like.
	Super trans.
	And then as soon as he's not part of any of these, they all just go to absolute S. Yeah, and that's very much the case.
	And here we can see a screenshot in this Forbes article of Rotten Tomatoes, where the tomato meter isn't exactly flattering at 35%, and then the audience score is 9%.
	Audience score, remember, might be influenced by miffed fans who liked Henry, but I'm shocked that the critic rating is so low as well.
	You never see that.
	I know.
	It's amazing, really, to see the critics and the audience somewhat in line, because normally they're kind of diametrically opposed, aren't they?
	You're a bit of a film buff.
	You must have seen lots of reviews.
	I've seen it plenty of times.
	I think the first one I first noticed was...
	The Last Jedi, when the tomato meter was something like 95-96% and the audience score was dead on 50%, split down the middle.
	That film absolutely sucked.
	I don't know how anyone could have enjoyed it.
	That film was my first red pill.
	That was my first step to being right here.
	I was so mad that I gave the money.
	I went to the cinema to watch it.
	I agreed to go with my friends who were into Star Wars more than me.
	I was just like, eh, I like the...
	Some of the originals and the prequels.
	I remember sitting in McDonald's after it being kind of shell-shocked with my friends going, like, really struggling, going like, wasn't it cool when Holdo did this thing?
	And I went, no, it's stupid.
	And they were like, yeah, it kind of was.
	They massacred my boy Luke, didn't they?
	Yeah.
	Although it turns out in real life Mark Hamill's a POS anyway.
	It's one of the few times I've agreed with Mark Hamill on something.
	The writing was bad and they sabotaged his character.
	Yeah, it was Jake Skywalker.
	Jake Skywalker.
	Yeah.
	But yes, this article carries on to say The Witcher Blood Origin is currently the number one show on Netflix, indicating it's got great viewership to propel it over the likes of Wednesday and Emily in Paris.
	However, what people are actually watching may make them wish they hadn't bothered.
	Right now, in addition to having pretty poor critic scores, The Witcher Blood Origin has literally the worst audience score ever.
	Bought a major Netflix original I've ever seen.
	Which is quite something, isn't it?
	Considering the filth that goes on in Netflix.
	Things like Cuties.
	I'm sure that there's probably some Netflix original that's got a worse score than that.
	But 9% is pretty bad.
	It is really bad.
	And it goes on to talk about Rotten Tomatoes.
	And it said, The last time I was writing about a series with an all-time low score on Netflix, it was a now-cancelled Resident Evil series, which had 22% from the audience.
	So that's quite a difference, isn't it?
	I think Netflix also put out the Sandman series recently that was two thumbs up from the original creator of the comics, Neil Gaiman, which is always horribly sad to see because I really enjoy those comics, where it was diversity casting, woke talking points, etc.
	And that's been cancelled as well after the first series.
	So Netflix not doing so great right now.
	I'm thinking about investing a subscription to the WWE Network instead.
	That's the based position, I think.
	Yes, it is.
	Reject Netflix.
	Embrace WWE. Embrace wrestling.
	So, I think one of the reasons, of many, that people steered away from this is things like this.
	The Witcher, Blood Origin star, says having more black characters in fantasy is exciting.
	I mean, if it's medieval fantasy, medieval Europe, then it kind of seems a bit weird.
	It takes you out of...
	The immersion of it.
	I'm more than happy to watch a fantasy world somewhere outside of Europe.
	In fact, I think it would be interesting and exciting.
	I want to learn about their mythology, but I don't want to see European mythology colonised, basically.
	I don't know too much about...
	African history at the moment, but it seems that when they try and do that, they come out with rubbish like the Woman King, where in real life they lost horribly.
	They lost catastrophically.
	Not to English people, to French people, of all people as well.
	They were just absolutely wiped out, and I think one of the French soldiers may have stubbed their toe or something, and that was about as far as their casualties went.
	Or you get actual fantasy like Black Panther.
	Which, honestly, had the potential to be interesting, had the potential to be good, but sucked.
	It was terrible.
	And Black Panther 2 is one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I regret going to the cinema.
	I'll tell you what a good Netflix series was that is from a different culture, and in its fantasy, is that the series...
	Kingdom.
	It's a bit lowbrow.
	It's like a South Korean sort of 15th century zombie.
	South Korea's got loads of great stuff, though.
	But it's a South Korean 15th century zombie series.
	But you learn a lot about the culture, about the time, and it's interesting.
	And it's got zombies in it.
	Yeah.
	So if you want to find something from a different culture, there's a good example of it being done well, in my opinion.
	Maybe other people didn't like it, but I thought it was fun.
	It didn't take itself too seriously.
	Yeah.
	Shout out to fans of South Korean cinema, anybody watching this, if you haven't watched the original Old Boy, watch it.
	For the love of God, it's well worth a watch.
	But this article carries on to say, Sophia Brown plays Ellie, or Eli, I don't know, in The Witch of Blood origin, and is excited to be part of its diverse cast.
	So, yes.
	If that's the only thing you can be excited about in the show, then you've got a stinker on your hands.
	Yes, and also, moving on to this article from Cosmopolitan, they changed the title of this.
	It used to be...
	The Witcher.
	Blood Origin fans celebrate this one detail despite controversy.
	That's the current one, but it originally read, Witcher Origin fans celebrate diversity despite controversy.
	But they've changed it, and in the byline it says, sometimes deviating from the source material isn't such a bad thing.
	For years at this point, they've really harped on this one point, and it's just not true.
	No.
	It's just not true.
	The fans have decided that if you deviate from the source material, they don't like it.
	It sucks!
	It's really bad!
	It's so frustrating that people are just saying, yes, we want a truthful adaptation.
	I mean, look at something like the Lord of the Rings films.
	That is a more or less truthful adaptation.
	Obviously, they changed some elements for cinematic value, but it tried to stay true to the themes and the casting, the descriptions of the characters somewhat, at least, and Yeah, as always, there's that quote from Peter Jackson where he said that he didn't want to insert any of their own politics in it and he just wanted it to be as if they'd made it for Tolkien.
	That's how you should approach these adaptations of beloved franchises.
	Aim to make the original creator proud.
	So Cosmopolitan here say, others have praised the show's diverse cast with another Twitter user that I'm quoting in the body of the text because I've skipped loads of the nonsense commenting, the one thing Blood Origin did perfectly was their casting.
	The diversity was phenomenal.
	You're the one weirdo that enjoyed that then.
	And commending the casting of a deaf actress, Amy Murray, whose character Fenric must use sign language in the show.
	Well, hiring someone who's deaf to play a deaf person, that's probably a good decision, right?
	Playing someone who has experience of the thing, yeah, I agree with that.
	But then...
	The racial element is strange because you're dealing with Polish mythology, basically, and that clearly wasn't abided by.
	It's basically appealing to American mythology, and that's mythology of diversity, isn't it?
	Sorry, I'm just looking at the cast that they did for that Netflix Resident Evil and just cringing.
	So, just as further proof that this is cancer, The Guardian has given it a good review.
	As always, with the Guardian, take their statements, invert them, and that's accurate.
	And I'm going to read, they think it's basically propaganda for them.
	That's what's implicit.
	Well, it is.
	And sometimes explicit in their article.
	They know it is.
	That's why they all got a rally behind it.
	It says, Welcome to the Resistance.
	That's how it starts.
	Perhaps we ought not to look primarily to fantasy shows on streaming services for tips on how to combat authoritarianism, but you take what you can get.
	So...
	Funny that left-wingers are talking about authoritarianism despite the fact they want to expand the scope of the government.
	But never mind.
	They're literally talking about getting their entire worldview from fictional fantasy shows.
	And they point out Andor.
	I've not watched the video, but I noticed that just right on YouTube, he released a video called Anti-Fascist Media Andor Review.
	And I just immediately was like, I'm not going to watch it.
	I'm not going to watch that.
	I mean, obviously, fascism is lame, but if leftists are calling it that, it doesn't necessarily mean it is that.
	If a leftist refers to anything as anti-fascist, it's just going to be rubbish.
	It goes on to say, now the Witcher blood origin maps out how to fight back when the man has pointy ears.
	I mean, that's coming across as anti-establishment, even though you're writing in the bloody Guardian.
	You can't claim to be anti-establishment.
	I'm almost certain if a right-winger had written that sentence, we'd somehow be accused of anti-Semitism.
	It carries on to say, out in the sticks, soldier-turned-travelling bard, Eli, Sophia Brown, is already fomenting revolutionary solidarity by singing rousing folk songs in pubs.
	You can see why this appealed to Left Discard.
	And in her introductory scene, taking care of drunk punters who get aggressively handsy with a waitress by stabbing them in the legs and smashing their faces on tables before continuing to play her bowed zither thingy and sing about people power.
	So she's a big, strong, independent girl boss who don't take no S from no man.
	This man's face when he was writing this article must have been just concrete, stuck like this.
	Overdosed on soy.
	Yeah.
	And it carries on to say, before long...
	I don't know.
	Did they misspelled it?
	I don't know.
	It's spelt differently from before.
	What's going on?
	This is a sigh off on us.
	It's making it very difficult to mispronounce when it's spelt differently every time.
	I'm trying to deliberately mispronounce it on purpose.
	All they're saying is just like, whatever, who cares?
	It's just fantasy BS, isn't it?
	But that person is assembling a diverse gang of outcasts, loners and cleaver-swinging mercenaries, former enemies united against a bigger common foe, an assault on the palace.
	I mean, it's pretty evident.
	He's writing in a British newspaper.
	He's just talking about an incredibly standard fantasy plot.
	Within the walls of the capital, meanwhile, a young princess called Merwin is undergoing an awkward coming of age.
	She feels she is bound for greatness, but to realise her destiny, she will have to navigate a court full of men bent on assuming absolute power and wielding it nefariously.
	This is just the most rote, bland fantasy narrative you could ever write.
	It's just explicit leftist propaganda, from what I can gather.
	Ely has assembled a band of merry men who want to annoy the king.
	The toxically masculine court needs to be destroyed by this diverse cast.
	So it's basically just diversity versus white men in power.
	That's the entire narrative of the thing.
	Never could have told you that one coming.
	And it carries on to say, Blood Origin is strong on personal mechanics of autocracy, with Lenny Henry leading that side of the drama as Baelor, a scheming druid whose advocacy of a let-them-starve-austerity government hides a deep-seated personal inadequacy.
	Oh, they've got to psychologise it, don't they, Josh?
	Josh, as a psychologist yourself, have you ever encountered anybody who believes in self-sustainability and self-reliance and you've just automatically just said, oh, you just must have a small penis?
	Well, being self-sufficient is normally a good indicator of psychological health.
	I mean, in most...
	The fact I have to say that at all kind of says a lot about the world we live in.
	Leftist shaking and crying right now.
	So it carries on.
	Where was I? It's always satisfying.
	I've lost my...
	Oh yeah, it's always satisfying when fictional wrong-ins are crying inside and the show's take on the concept of benevolent dictatorship is nicely dismissive.
	Some of Baylor's colleagues seem less evil but are shown to be moving in the same direction and thus given no sympathy.
	In 2022, we could do without one of the proto-fascists having the weaknesses that he is secretly gay, but this misguided subplot is mercifully brief.
	I'm sorry, it's just that in actual history there seems to be a recurring theme of fascists, real-life fascists, being secretly gay.
	It's just a thing that keeps happening.
	I think it's more repression, isn't it?
	It's not that gay people are inherently fascist, it's more that people who repress things overcompensate in other areas, don't they?
	Yeah, just look at Fuentes.
	People getting big cars when they're very effeminate men and things like that.
	So it ends on this line as well.
	The revolution is at the gates of the evil empire within four slim episodes.
	This insurgency is a riot.
	God, they managed to get four episodes out of that dross.
	Ugh.
	But yeah, there we go.
	That's the Guardian reviews in a bit of a summary.
	Obviously I didn't read the whole thing because I don't want to torture you all that much.
	Just a little bit.
	But moving on to a...
	A plug for something on our website.
	This is something that you did, so tell us all about it.
	Yeah, I'm a huge fan of David Lynch's films, Mulholland Drive, and the entirety of the Hollywood trilogy as it's called, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and then into Inland Empire, which is...
	A very strange film.
	Some of my favourite films.
	I love David Lynch's work, going all the way back to Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway.
	Everything he's done, except for Dune.
	Even then, the first half of Dune is actually a very good film.
	The second half sucks.
	I haven't actually seen that first.
	Everything he's done has at least got something interesting and worthwhile.
	So I thought it'd be interesting to get Connor to watch it and to see his take on it.
	And his take was not positive.
	But I think that despite the fact that it seems a bit left of field, Mulholland Drive does have a narrative where it's kind of basically exposing the corruption and evil that is L.A. and Hollywood.
	I quite enjoyed the film.
	Yeah, yeah.
	About 15 or so years before Me Too was a thing.
	And David Lynch was doing it in a much more nuanced way where he's not actively...
	Just giving a free pass to the women involved.
	He's like, well, a lot of these women are also choosing to take this lifestyle on.
	They're complicit in their own sense, in a way, anyway.
	And besides that, I find it to be a very entertaining film.
	It's very enigmatic.
	It's a plot that you kind of have to put the pieces together yourself, which really appeals to me.
	It did not appeal to Connor.
	And it does not appeal to quite a few people.
	But to those that it does appeal to, we love it.
	And I'm hoping to come...
	Hoping to cover more David Lynch in the future, and if you get the chance, this is just a shout-out, I did appear on Proper Horror Show's channel a few weeks ago talking about Lost Highway and the significance and meaning and symbology of the plot.
	So check out that video if you can get a hold of it.
	And the final article I wanted to go over was this one titled, Admit it, Netflix, without Henry Cavill, The Witcher is worthless.
	That's just true.
	Yes.
	The Telegraph spitting straight facts there.
	For once.
	And it says, as Blood Origin proves, The Witcher owes its success to Cavill, and Netflix should move heaven and earth to persuade him to return.
	No, Cavill was already too good for the show as it was.
	He's going to be executive producing a 4K series, just let him nerd out with that.
	You're too good for her, Henry.
	Move on.
	Yes, you are.
	Also, appear on the show with us, Henry.
	We'd love to have you on.
	Please, we want to interview you.
	Trust me, Vicky and Daisy desperately want you to come in.
	I wonder why.
	So yes, this basically explains the position that we alluded to earlier, that yes, Henry Cavill's perspective, they basically call him a massive nerd in the article, and I feel like that's a bit unfair.
	No, he would accept that label.
	Have you seen him talking about PCs and talking about Warhammer and talking about the deep lore of Sarkowski's work?
	He's going to be doing a lot of talking about Warhammer soon enough, isn't he?
	Oh yeah, Carl's going to love it.
	I just know Carl's going to do a 12-part video series on that show when it comes out.
	But yes, obviously, Henry Cavill, who was dedicated to actually representing the true nature of The Witcher, is the reason that it succeeded.
	And I mean, how many times do we have to say that being true to the source material is how you make a good adaptation?
	Being true to history as well is also something that is good, or at least the history that it's drawing from itself.
	It's source material.
	If you're adapting good source material, as long as you keep it faithful to, and with a good production value, the original source material, it doesn't matter if the only people you think you're appealing to are the original fans of the source material.
	If it's still good and in a more accessible medium, extra fans will end up coming eventually anyway.
	Just look at Lord of the Rings.
	Lord of the Rings, yeah, was really popular in the Western canon, but I don't think anybody, even at the time, expected it to be quite as much of a hit as the film series was.
	Well, I mean, we can even go to things like the Witcher games.
	Like, I didn't play the first two games, but I played the third one, Inside Out.
	Oh, yeah.
	And it was fantastic.
	And by it being a good thing, and taking the task of telling a compelling story seriously, and trying to stay true to the characters, obviously they've changed some bits.
	I think Geralt's a bit more humorous in the game than he is in the books.
	It's also set after the plotline of the books as well, because...
	There's something that happens at the end of the books which means that they couldn't have made the game series, so they just changed a bit at the ending and were like, go wild, guys!
	But it got me into it in the first place, right, playing that game.
	So it's proof that if you do something with artistry in mind, it will succeed.
	And it's frustrating that the film and TV industry just don't seem to understand this, and it's something that I want to draw attention to until it's fixed.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	On to the video comments.
	I had a thought on which I want a response, very specifically, from Josh.
	I've noticed that songs which talk about substance use, and often abuse, use sexual imagery, often sexual abuse, as a metaphor.
	Two such examples are Rape Me by Nirvana and Addict by Silverhound.
	Is it because both are commonly seen as consensual vices that commonly result in harm?
	Is it because of the vulnerability of people who extol the vice itself?
	Is it because of some other psychological reason?
	I love to hear Josh's thoughts on the matter.
	Well, the link between substance abuse and domestic abuse is quite complicated, really, because one of the best predictors of substance abuse is being abused as a child, not necessarily sexually, but also physically as well.
	I think...
	I remember citing a study whereby about 78% of crack addicts cited the fact that they had been abused as a child as being one of the main reasons why they felt drawn to crime.
	So it makes sense that if you've got this background of abuse which is informing your drug use, then you're going to repeat the behaviours which the adults in your life taught you and made normal in your life, even if people understand that, hey, this isn't necessarily desirable.
	But one of the key things that a parent is to a child is a model of how to be when you're an adult.
	And if their parents are being abusive towards them, well, these things are deeply entrenched.
	And even if someone understands that it's bad, sometimes it's difficult to escape how deeply seated into their psychological framework this abuse is.
	And it's a very tragic thing.
	And I think that it is right to be linked together because I think most domestic abuse is motivated by being altered, albeit by either alcohol or illegal drugs.
	So I think the link is compelling.
	And I think that it's good that there's some sort of scientific reasoning behind some of these anti-domestic violence campaigns.
	I think that basing it in the research is the way to do it because you're getting at something objective and real in the world.
	Oh, that's all very interesting.
	There we go.
	One for me, it looks like.
	Yeah, let's move on to that.
	I'm sorry, just look at that image.
	Look at that image of that young cheeky chappy right there.
	Look at the spark in his eye.
	Where'd it go?
	Anyway, let's play the video.
	Two years of legacy, that's what happened.
	...is familiar with this given his masters.
	The four levels of measurement, nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio, describe the precision of a variable.
	How precise we think it is determines its level, but what happens when we can't agree on its precision?
	Consider the term woman.
	Conservatives absolutely know what it is, while libertarians only know absolutely that it's measurable.
	Progressives will always place it on a spectrum, and leftists say it's a meaningless term.
	So the question is, what do you make of this strange alignment?
	Well, I think it's somewhat confusing.
	because I would say that...
	It's entirely obvious.
	Man and woman.
	It's basically a clear-cut.
	These are two categories, right?
	I always find it insufferable.
	I saw Sydney Watson did a debate recently on Vice where she was debating a bunch of leftist nutjobs who were all citing random studies.
	I don't need a study to observe with my eyes the obvious reality that surrounds me every day.
	I hate it.
	One thing that people never point out is why is all of this gender-bending weirdness exclusive to human beings?
	Why doesn't it occur more in nature?
	And they might talk about frogs and just how, well, different conditions, you know, that scene in Jurassic Park where they talk about the frogs changing their sex.
	Well, human beings aren't amphibians.
	We evolved in somewhat different circumstances.
	We got out of the water.
	I don't know of any apes whatsoever.
	That can invert their genitals at will.
	No.
	Although that would be entertaining to watch.
	I don't remember any Attenborough documentary showing that.
	Like a monkey with retractable genitals.
	It just comes out like landing gear.
	It's got little people waving you in.
	Yeah, it doesn't happen.
	I admire your effort to apply some sort of scientific reasoning to it, but you can't reason with crazy.
	I've just thought of something, because obviously we've got the political spectrum, right?
	And it's obviously nonsense.
	I think...
	The left one, instead of it being two quadrants, it should basically just be a pyramid.
	No matter where you start on leftism, you will always be funneled into the same ending.
	Absolutely.
	On to the next one.
	Shark Week incident reminds me of the conversation on some black nationalist blog where they're asking some white people expert, what's the deal with white people?
	Why are they the way they are?
	The expert said something interesting where he's like, when a white person walks on a beach, they don't just walk around and enjoy life.
	They pick up that grain of sand and they just look at it for hours and are like, what is this?
	Where does it come from?
	What is its purpose?
	How can I use it for me?
	Now, obviously, he says, like, black people don't care about such frivolities and doesn't seem to understand that this isn't a negative trait.
	No, being curious about the world tends to be a good enough thing for a lot of people.
	I really appreciate the overlaying of these memes.
	I always like the shark tries to rescue trapped man memes.
	Let me help you get out.
	Who locked this man in a cage?
	I did really enjoy presenting that Shark Week segment.
	That was good fun.
	That didn't get as many views as it deserved.
	Oh!
	We've got John!
	Mr Crow.
	Hi, everybody.
	I just wanted to wish you all a very happy new year.
	As you can see, I finally decided to detransition.
	Now, my new year's resolution is, of course, to get back in shape, but I also want to read more books, so I've started reading The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant.
	A little bit difficult for me.
	However, I also am going to create a very important piece of jewellery this year.
	More updates on that to come.
	Happy New Year, everyone.
	Happy New Year to you too!
	And best of luck with creating your jewellery as well.
	I'm interested to see what you're doing, because isn't he becoming some sort of metallurgist or something along those lines?
	That's a really cool hobby, by the way.
	Yeah, it's a really cool hobby, really cool career if you can get into it a bit more professionally.
	When it comes to Kant, I have not touched Kant.
	I do not want to touch Kant, because it seems just like mostly academic, snobbish, warbling, to be perfectly honest.
	I've covered him a few times when I've been talking about philosophy, but I've never actually directly gone and sat down and read his books cover to cover.
	The most entertaining thing, the most I know about Kant is in The Righteous Mind when...
	Jonathan Haidt presents an amusing scale of autism at which he puts Kant just on the tiniest bit outside the autism spectrum, but puts Jeremy Bentham smack bang in the middle of there.
	It's Hegel off the scale then.
	He didn't contemplate Hegel, so we'll have to see.
	Missed opportunity.
	That's your next book we're looking forward to, John.
	But let's go on to the written comments.
	So General Hai Ping on the Chinese Internet Battalion says, Shout out for Dan's freemium Brokonomics series.
	Always good to know that everything is the fault of that bastard colony that we should have put down.
	That's all true.
	Yeah, I watched the first episode of Brokonomics yesterday.
	Dan's going to do a great series there.
	Everybody keep an eye on that one, because it's really interesting.
	Really important information for people to know.
	Colin P says, Oh, and Happy New Year to all!
	Thank you.
	Happy New Year to you too.
	We've got a few minutes to go through some comments, so...
	Sure.
	Matthew Hartshorn?
	I'm really sick of conservatives attaching themselves to bad people purely because they want to make the movement cool.
	Just because the left has celebrities promoting their degeneracy does not mean we should fawn over sketchy individuals.
	Our values is what we promote.
	Andrew Tate and Kanye West have done damage by delegitimising the right.
	Suddenly the media can use these individuals to push their agenda that we are all racist, misogynist, etc.
	And I very much agree with that, I think.
	I do agree, but also, just going out into the world, lots of young men really like Tate and really are attracted to what he's putting down.
	I found a greater enthusiasm, just possibly because he's more confrontational, than I've even seen for Jordan Peterson, especially recently.
	I think that people...
	There are positives that you can get from Tate, but yeah, he does come with a lot of really negative baggage, which I wish wasn't involved there.
	And obviously we also have to wait and see what happens with this.
	Yeah, I think people should just look at individuals with a bit of nuance that you can admire traits that are good about them and disavow traits that are bad, right?
	It's...
	It's about that.
	I mean, I like John Lennon's music with the Beatles, but he beat his wife and was an annoying leftist.
	I can like his music and separate it from the bad stuff and still admit, hey, he was a bad guy, but he made some good music.
	He made some rockin' tunes, man.
	That's right.
	From Bob Dylan making a surprise appearance on the podcast.
	Should we move on to the CIA ones?
	We haven't got much time left.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Omar Awad said, at this point, I don't think it's fair to say the US government is outsourcing censorship to private companies.
	If the companies are now 90% government, we are being silenced by literal glowies.
	That's very true.
	Absolutely.
	Henry Ashman: "Given how friendly Biden is with Xi and how officials have been compromised and by known and open Chinese spies, is there any point China trying to directly control TikTok stateside?
	They've paid enough stacks to let the US proxy run it for them.
	And anyway, the CCP wants to weaken the West and so do the Dems.
	So why shouldn't China save their effort and just let the lunatics run their own asylum?" That's my point.
	If you're going to try to subvert the West, the Western leadership is doing a good enough job of that as it is.
	So anyway, let's go on to the last segment.
	Lord Nerevar, I'll confess to you here and now, boys, I actually liked the first season of The Witcher.
	I liked it as well.
	I said so.
	I gave up halfway through.
	I just got really bored by it, and I didn't like the cheap Netflix production values.
	That open field battle scene was bloody awful.
	And the grey scale colour of it was dull.
	It wasn't spectacular by any means, but it was good enough to satisfy my interest in the universe, which is...
	I'm on the same wavelength with you, I think.
	But now we can see what really lay beneath the surface.
	The only good part of Season 2 was Henry Cavill.
	The rest was utter trash.
	Season 3 looks to be treading the same path, and without Cavill, things will only get worse and worse.
	Blood Origin is a taste of where nonce flicks will go with the IP. The backlash against the S show...
	See what I did there?
	Has been delicious to behold.
	With any luck, it'll serve as a warning to other companies that are bastardizing other franchises.
	Apparently I can't read.
	But no, I agree with everything you say there wholeheartedly.
	Yeah, I'll just give one quick moment to the honourable mentions of Peter Wallace, who said, usually you have to wait until the night to catch the podcast.
	Finally catching it live, great way to finish my night shift.
	Helps me forget how crap living in San Francisco is.
	I'm sorry to hear that you're living in San Francisco, but I'm glad you enjoyed the podcast.
	I share those sentiments, but yeah.
	Thank you very much for enjoying the podcast.
	And that's all the time we've got for right now.
	If you are a Gold Tier member, you can go onto the website and attend the Gold Tier Zoom call that will be happening in an hour, where you'll be able to speak to me and Callum.
	And yes, don't forget to check out the merch website.
	We've got plenty of great stuff on there, including, not trigonometry mugs, no, no, no, no, Lotus Eaters mugs.
	Carl, if you're watching this...
	Got my eye on you.
	Anyway, that's all we've got time for, so thank you very much for watching, and I hope you all have a wonderful new year.

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