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May 22, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:26:07

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #920

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	- - The time has come to put down the phone and free ourselves from algorithmic slop.
	Islander is the brand new magazine from LotusEater.com, a real thing in a world of digital abstractions, and has been carefully designed to bring you the most satisfying intellectual experience possible.
	Sit back in a comfortable chair on a Sunday afternoon, light a cigar and pour yourself a drink, turn off your phone and enjoy the tactile intellectual experience that we have prepared for you.
	The magazine contains the cutting edge of right-wing thoughts, From authors including Alexander Adams, Nima Parvini, Morgoth's Review, Charles Hayward, Raw Egg Nationalist, and of course, my own contributions.
	There will only be a limited print run of the first edition, and we will not reprint it in future.
	This is a one-time only deal, because Islander is a product of this time and this place.
	Just like you, it exists in the here and now for a purpose.
	Audios today.
	Hello and welcome to the podcast, The Lotus Eaters, episode 920.
	On today, the 22nd of May, 2025.
	For all Callum appreciators out there, I'm sorry, I had to get the date right, it's just part of who I am.
	Welcome, I'm joined by Josh.
	Me?
	Hello.
	Yes, you.
	You.
	Yes, you, sir.
	You, boy.
	Me?
	What day is this?
	Uh, Wednesday?
	Close enough.
	And I'm also joined by ever-stoic Stelios.
	Hello.
	Apologies for the delay, everybody.
	We were having a bit, a few technical issues.
	But there shouldn't be any technical issues for Connor's show after this, where he's finally brought out, he's dragged out from whatever cave he's been dwelling in, the long-awaited Stefan Molyneux, who was deplatformed quite a few years ago now, and since has been keeping to his own little corner of the internet.
	Connor has managed to drag him out of seclusion for an interesting interview, which will be going on at three o'clock.
	So make sure to tune into that if you've got a membership to the website.
	Today we're going to be talking about We Was Samurai, how Californian law is racist, and also the left ruining the arts, as they always do.
	You everything alright there, Josh?
	My laptop's not charging.
	One second.
	Still, that's all right.
	Somebody get that on audio.
	Please clip that noise he just made.
	That wasn't close to the microphone.
	I think I might be okay.
	I think you'll be all right.
	Okay.
	It's everything.
	Okay.
	All right.
	I think you've not got any grunts or groans that you want to speak into the microphone.
	Do you, Stelios?
	No.
	You were serenading us with music before.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I sang for 15 minutes.
	I need to rest a bit.
	Okay, well that's alright.
	In that case, we'll give you a rest while we go into the first segment talking about We Were Samurai.
	But before I get into the meat and potatoes of that, I'd like to reinforce what you may have seen at the beginning of the podcast, which is yes, we have a magazine coming out.
	Islander Magazine, which we've been very hard at work.
	You may have seen all of the advertisements popping up on the videos that have been on social media and on YouTube, and wondered, what's all that about?
	Because we've been throwing little teasers for you.
	Well, it's the magazine.
	And the magazine is fantastic.
	Very, very high quality.
	Lots of lovely artwork in here.
	And articles from people like Carl, Academic Agent, Morgoth's Review, Charles Haywood, and more.
	Some in-house and some outer writers that we've got as well.
	And, as you may be able to tell, we've got merchandise coming.
	Here it is.
	Yes.
	Islander merchandise.
	Other Islander merchandise.
	General cool merchandise, like this shirt here that says, For America.
	Now, guys, remind me, is the merch pre-order for the end of June as well, or is that just the magazine?
	Can you buy the merch right now?
	I don't know.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	You can buy the merch right now if you find the merch links on the website, and you can also go to the pre-order link on the website for Islander Magazine, issue number one, which if you pre-order it right now, you'll be able to get at the end of June.
	That's what we're aiming for.
	So, please click to those links if you're interested, and I'll get into the actual news now.
	So, Um, everybody loves Ubisoft, right?
	No, I hate it.
	Is that how you pronounce it, Ubisoft?
	Ubisoft.
	Ubi... Ubisoft.
	No, Albisoft.
	Ubi... anything else.
	Tough.
	Yeah, tough, there you go.
	Um, so Ubisoft are everybody's favourite gaming company, and they've got a whole spate of games coming out soon, but the one that's been getting everybody's attention is the new Assassin's Creed, which they've finally decided to set in Japan.
	I don't know if anybody knows this, but people were really looking forward to a game in Assassin's Creed set in Japan for a very, very long time, and they've decided to subvert everybody's expectations.
	But regarding Ubisoft themselves...
	They've declined their headcount.
	They've reduced their headcount by about 1,700 recently.
	And this isn't because of any downturn in business.
	In fact, according to the sheer numbers, 2023 to 2024 has been a very, very successful fiscal year for them.
	They've just decided to save themselves, I think it's... What have we got here?
	150 million euros in annual cost reductions by reducing the headcount.
	So, if anyone's ever played a Ubisoft game, they'll be well aware that one thing that is notable about them is they're very superficial.
	They look good, they look pretty for a trailer, but actually they lack any depth, detail, passion, and by cutting lots of staff, they're only going to go further down that route.
	Are you sure?
	Because I've heard a lot about this game, and I think that maybe there's a historical depth into it, is there?
	Well, we'll discuss the historic depths the game is sinking to as we get into it.
	But yeah, the Ubisoft Sandbox is a subgenre all onto its own for a reason, which is the sandbox has become, the Ubisoft Sandbox has become shorthand for lazy open world game design, where you design a big map, which I'm sure takes some Some effort, but also I think there are ways that you can basically algorithmically design them these days.
	And then plonk a load of checkpoints on them, and towers that you can go to, and a load of busy-bossy rubbish to do, which are essentially fetch quests.
	And then you've got a game!
	Staple a 6-10 hour story on it, and you're alright.
	Yeah, it's similar to a sort of sandbox in, say, like a preschool or something, in that it was exciting, you know, at first, but as soon as someone takes a dump in it, which Ubisoft have, No one wants to play in there anymore.
	It's the same thing with this, really, isn't it?
	It's become the cancer of game design, really, hasn't it?
	It's started to spread everywhere and it makes everything it touches degenerate and makes it worse.
	A lot of open world games now stick to the Ubisoft sandbox gameplay formula and it just makes it so that every game is the same, every game is boring and they're not really as fun as they used to be.
	But as well, if you go to the next one, Assassin's Creed is always one of their biggest games that they release every year.
	Last year they had Assassin's Creed Mirage, which after a few excursions, I think it was in Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, into a more RPG focused game style, they decided to take it back to basics.
	Now Valhalla was one of the best selling games in the series.
	I think it might have had the best opening week or opening month, where it sold about 1.8 million copies.
	Mirage did okay, but the sales were 49% lower than what Valhalla managed.
	So they decided, right, we need to draw from the well.
	We're doing really great business-wise.
	We just fired almost 2,000 people so that we could save ourselves some money.
	While we're pinching pennies, let's try and make some more money.
	Let's finally take it to Japan, which, as I mentioned, they've been wanting.
	Fans have been asking for this for a long time.
	My mouse isn't working.
	If you wouldn't mind going to the next one, please.
	Yeah, and in the past, this is 10 years ago, they said, oh, you wouldn't like that.
	You wouldn't like that because it's boring.
	Everybody's played games in Japan where it's set in feudal Japan and you play a samurai or a ninja or something.
	You wouldn't want that.
	But they've decided now is finally the time to do it, and they're finally giving the fans what they want.
	And they've decided that now is the time to give you something exciting, something that you've never done before, where you play as a black man in feudal Japan.
	Because everyone knows that lots of them- In the next one, please.
	Yeah, as you can see from this image that we've got up on screen, that's a black samurai.
	This isn't what people were asking for.
	And to be fair, actually, you can already play as like a black samurai in games like Afro Samurai from all the way back in 2008.
	There's a whole game dedicated to it.
	Yeah, they're not really breaking any new ground here.
	Uh, but they are making sure that they are giving the fans both what they want and the exact opposite of what they want.
	Because the character that you're going to play as, there's going to be two playable characters.
	One's called Yasuke, the black samurai.
	The other one's called Naie, something like that.
	So, it's actually based on Yasuke, the, the historic figure.
	Yes.
	Who was not a samurai, by the way.
	Well, we'll get into the history.
	I don't want to, uh...
	No, no, it's alright, yeah.
	But foreshadowing, he wasn't really a samurai.
	At least not in the way that anybody who knows what samurai are would understand it.
	And the other character is just a fictional woman because you need to have a black man and a woman.
	It's interesting that the trailer, when you watch through it, doesn't seem that there's much other diversity other than the one black man, so how he's going to conceal himself in a crowd After you've assassinated somebody?
	I don't know.
	Perhaps these are some questions the developers should have asked themselves.
	In feudal Japan they were so afraid of being called racist that they would not accuse the one black man in the entirety of the country.
	Yes, if there's one thing I know about Japanese people is that they're very, very welcoming to Africans.
	But if we move along to the next one as well, they put the announcement out on Twitter where they characterized it here as the the lethal shinobi assassin and powerful legendary samurai in feudal Japan.
	So they're making out like he's this legendary assassin.
	They're trying to say that, well, it's his work of historical fiction.
	I don't remember.
	Assassin's Creed has never really been historically accurate because it's about sci-fi time travel going back in time through your memory so that you can unlock some weird fantasy sci-fi egg in the future what was it the apple from the Garden of Eden is something related to the story that was actually kind of interesting in sort of the original time because I played a lot of the Assassin's Creed games the early ones from you know 1 and 2 and 3 and Black Flag they were good fun
	They weren't the most in-depth games, but I've had some good times.
	I remember being impressed by them.
	I'm a sort of a dinosaur here, because I haven't played Assassin's Creed.
	I wasn't that much into RPG.
	I was more into strategy.
	So for instance, I was playing Diablo, Lord of Destruction.
	So this seems like there's a generational gap here.
	Either way, people are not particularly pleased with this.
	But the Paladin, I remember the Paladin was black, I think.
	The Paladin?
	In what?
	I think.
	I may be mistaken, but in Diablo 2.
	I never played any of the Diablo games.
	I'm a basic bitch console gamer.
	No, no, no.
	You should have.
	You should have played Diablo in order to stretch out.
	Oh no!
	He wanted to just put the disc in and enjoy himself.
	Oh, what a terrible person.
	It's for a boomer gamer.
	Yeah, that's so boomer of me.
	Anyway, people aren't particularly happy with it, it's not what they ever wanted from a game for Assassin's Creed set in Japan, and of course you're using the idea of fiction... Ah, there it is.
	And you're using the idea of, well, it's artistic license to get away with it.
	But, it's being developed by Ubisoft, Ubisoft Quebec.
	That's the one.
	But you can see on Ubisoft Montreal, one of their other Canadian studios, that they have this big page celebrating diversity, inclusion and accessibility.
	If you wouldn't mind scrolling down for me, you can see the kinds of things that they are celebrating.
	Here's all of our wahmen and brown people.
	Here's all of the resource groups that we have available for our staff including UbiLove, 2SLGBTQIA plus community, the ND plus MH A11Y, what the bloody hell is that?
	Basically the retard club.
	Be Jedi.
	Yeah, you can also be a Jedi.
	Oh yeah.
	If you scroll down again.
	The Black Jedi community.
	Samuel L. Jackson.
	Ace Windu.
	Here's their key figures.
	And if you, just remember, it may be developed by technically a different studio, the Ubisoft Quebec, but this is going to be the same practice in all of the different studios that Ubisoft has.
	Montreal in Quebec.
	But they're different studios.
	Are they really?
	Yeah, they're different studios, technically.
	But you can see their key figures here.
	30% of all new hires are women.
	That's a good sign.
	60 plus different nationalities at the studio.
	Very tense working place.
	25 plus observances celebrated annually.
	Diversity-related observance days are opportunities.
	So 25 plus days to waste time and get nothing done.
	You see, I saw diversity, inclusivity and accessibility.
	Did they miss the equity?
	What's the accessibility about?
	I want an Assassin's Creed where the assassin is in a wheelchair.
	I want it now.
	I would like, honestly, you joke, but that would be interesting to see how they would work around the challenges that that would provide.
	That would be, that could kind of work.
	And I play as a disabled samurai.
	No one would suspect the disabled person to be a hitman, would they?
	No, no.
	Assassin.
	They certainly wouldn't.
	Ubisoft, if you're ever wanting for ideas, get in touch with our man Josh right here.
	Yeah, I'm more than happy.
	But if you go to the Quebec website, you can see that they have articles like this available on there.
	Unleashing the potential of women in our Canadian studios, one team at a time.
	where they say things like they've got Catherine, who's the vice president of talent, saying things like, "We told ourselves "that we really need to intensify efforts "in educating our team leaders about management practices "that foster a sense of safety and inclusion." So we don't really want to care about making good games.
	We're not going to foster a space where it's creative and productive, safe, and inclusive.
	Good games, out the window.
	We're Ubisoft.
	We don't make good games.
	We don't care about good games.
	It's ridiculous that they care more about the environment of the workplace than what they produce.
	This is a sort of male-female dichotomy of, I care more about the vibe than I do about the end goal.
	I think men tend to be a bit more ends-focused, right?
	Well yeah, you want to get stuff done.
	I don't want to sit here worrying about my fifis the whole time.
	Question here.
	There's an important question, because you're focusing on the assassin.
	The question is, who are being assassinated?
	Is there a diverse... Japanese people.
	Okay, but is there a diverse...
	Representation in in that front so if you play a particular were in a particular world.
	No you're a black man murdering Japanese people.
	So there aren't many uh groups of people represented as far as I can as far as I can tell from the trailer that's been released so far it's it's just he is a black guy and everybody else is as you would expect Japanese.
	Yeah.
	So, again, they say here, in Quebec City in Toronto, a developer at Ubisoft provided emerging talent with paid internships and mentorship opportunities.
	The program is open to people who identify as women, transgender, non-binary, and or two-spirit.
	So you can tell where that's from.
	Two-spirit?
	Yep.
	That the Native American thing, is it?
	I assume so.
	It's in Canada.
	Do the native Canadian tribes, do they also have two spirits?
	Not really.
	Who knows?
	Who cares really?
	These people are all nut jobs.
	They're all a bit mental.
	Do you trust these women on screen to make a good game for you?
	I don't.
	And again, they're unleashing the potential.
	Let's see that potential unleashed in the next slide.
	Yeah, Alyssa, lead writer on Assassin's Creed Shadows.
	Pronouns in bio.
	Protected account.
	Why has she locked it?
	You know why.
	No.
	You know why.
	Can you tell me?
	Can you guess?
	Can you guess, Stelios?
	Is it because she was so overwhelmed with the outpouring of positivity towards her involvement in Assassin's Creed?
	That's what it was.
	She looks like someone who is an expert in feudal Japan and is very dedicated to the history and portraying the culture accurately.
	I think she has a tattoo of a butterfly.
	I think that butterfly is from Japan.
	All butterflies are from Japan, I heard.
	And to head it off at the pass straight away, some people, as I mentioned, will say, well, these games were never really historically accurate.
	Well, yeah, they had a lot of sci-fi and fantasy elements in them as well.
	But they also, if you remember the first game, it was pointed out after the first trailer came out.
	What's his name?
	Not Ezio.
	Altier.
	Altier, yeah.
	The first character had a crossbow on his back.
	Whereas in the time and place that it was set, they didn't have crossbows yet.
	So Ubisoft apologized and took it out and replaced it with something period-accurate.
	So for the cultures and times that they were representing, while they wrapped it up in this big sci-fi story, they did actually take a certain care to represent it accurately.
	Well, to sort of hammer home your point here, in Assassin's Creed 2, obviously that was set in Italy, Venice was constructed in the game world based on historical maps of Venice.
	So when I went to Venice after playing Assassin's Creed 2, I was actually able to find my way around because I played the game.
	If that isn't cool, I don't know what is.
	Props to Ubisoft in about 2008-2009 for going for that level of detail.
	I imagine the people that did that probably don't work there anymore.
	But back then they weren't UNLEASHING THE POTENTIAL of Alyssa to be able to shit all over your dreams.
	She running for the WWE?
	What's going on?
	Perhaps I want to see her give a Randy Savage style promo of the CREAM OF THE CROP.
	Um, but again, nobody liked that.
	Everybody hated that.
	In fact, in the next one, it's already the most disliked reveal trailer in the series history.
	Nobody likes that.
	Japan as well, despite the fact that they've had a campaign of Japanese-Americans doing some PR, doing some real heavy lifting for the company, saying, Oh, see, I don't care.
	I'm Japanese.
	I don't care.
	Well, judging by the like-dislike ratio on the Japanese YouTube page, if you go to the next one, please.
	Yeah, they don't like it.
	Mm-hmm.
	They went, oh, why am I playing as this guy?
	It's worth mentioning as well that the series Shogun came out relatively recently.
	One of the leading actors, I can't remember his name, unfortunately, but insisted that there aren't any race swaps in it.
	And mysteriously, the show turned out good.
	Shocking.
	Shocking how that happened.
	I'm sure it was made by Amazon as well, which I didn't think they had it in them to make anything good.
	I might be misremembering.
	Well, you might be, but at least there's something good out there.
	And again, people have been memeing on this in the next one.
	George Alexopoulos, who we've had on the website before, you can find the premium video that Carl did with him, has been having an absolute field day with this.
	So he did one of his classic little cartoons here.
	Oh no, somebody's been assassinated.
	Who could have done this?
	Search for anybody who looks different and out of the ordinary.
	Couldn't be me!
	Couldn't be me.
	It was that guy over there.
	That little nippon gentleman.
	There you go.
	Don't point at me.
	It wasn't me.
	And again, the legendary black samurai.
	Let's see other representations that we can find of him.
	And then there have been some people who've been saying, guys, guys, listen.
	Right.
	Maybe it's not that inaccurate when you think about it in the next one.
	When you think about it, you're playing as a black guy, killing Asians and assaulting them.
	Maybe, maybe this is salvageable, question mark.
	Ubisoft are just making comments on New York crime statistics, that's actually the reason for their casting decisions here.
	Clearly what it is, this is social commentary.
	But I thought it'd be interesting because I, when this first was announced and I saw the backlash, I'd heard of this Yasuke guy because He is a big figure in, shockingly enough, black American media.
	He seems to be somebody that they like to point to so they can say we was samurai in the same way that we was Egyptians and we was the real Romans, etc, etc.
	So I thought, okay, there's a story behind this.
	Ubisoft is justifying it by saying that while this is historical, this is a historical figure, what is the actual story of Yasuke?
	So shall we take a look into it?
	So this is an article from Smithsonian Magazine written by a black woman.
	So she is going to be doing I mean, I've actually read the historic accounts of it just long ago before I knew there was going to be a game about it.
	Just out of interest, really.
	bloody anything that we know about the guy i mean i've actually read the historic accounts of it just out long ago before i knew there was going to be a game about it just out of interest really and i think the most sort of interesting thing to the japanese was obviously he had dark skin and he was very tall compared to them And that was really all they mentioned.
	Yeah, that was about it.
	Because they point that, well, William Adams was a historical figure who's had games like Nioh based around him.
	So we can do this for this as well.
	But William Adams was in Japan for years and years.
	He was honored there.
	He became a samurai and served as a samurai.
	He's got a lot more context and historical documentation of him and he was only there about what 10 years after Yasuke was supposed to be there.
	Yasuke was there for about a year and a bit and let's see what it says.
	So they point out first to the episode of the Netflix anime Yasuke, viewers witness a massacre.
	Tens of warriors lie dead near the Honnoji Temple in Kyoto, Japan.
	The year is 1582 and flames envelop the area surrounding the fallen.
	Inside the temple, a black samurai named Yasuke has a tense conversation with a Japanese daimyo warlord, Oda Nobunaga.
	When Nobunaga is resigned to his fate, Yasuke remains hopeful the pair can evade their enemies and live to fight another day.
	All that's left for me is an honorable death, he tells Yasuke.
	The daimyo pierces a sword through his own abdomen before asking Yasuke what he's waiting for.
	Letting out a loud scream, the samurai lifts his sword to decapitate Nobunaga, completing the warlord's ritual suicide, or seppuku.
	So, this is pretty epic sounding, right?
	And they say, though the Netflix series introduces several mystical elements including giant flying robots, magical armies, and weaponized laser beams, so we know that like Assassin's Creed, it's pinpoint accurate on the money with historical accuracy.
	Japanese well known for their medieval lasers.
	The broad strokes as of its depiction of the Hinoji incident are historically accurate.
	He was a warrior, Yasuke was, in the employ of Nobunaga, powerful feudal lord known as the Great Unifier during Japan's Sengoku period.
	The first black samurai, he was at Nobunaga's side when the Daimo died.
	I'm sorry I'm mispronouncing everything.
	You picked up on me cringing, did you?
	Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not Japanese, if you couldn't tell.
	It's Yasuke.
	Yasuke.
	I've heard it pronounced Yasuke.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Maybe I'm wrong.
	Who knows?
	You probably are.
	You always are, in fact.
	That's not very nice.
	According to popular law, Nobunaga tasked Yasuke with returning his head to his son.
	Well, that sounds fantastic.
	So, what actually happened?
	Well, not much is known about him, actually.
	Some historians speculate where he was born.
	Some people, one historian, Thomas Lockley, who wrote a full book about him, says it's probable that he was enslaved.
	And trafficked as a child.
	But he was probably free.
	He believes he was free by the time he met Alessandro Valennano, an Italian Jesuit missionary.
	The duo travelled from India to Japan in 1579, with Yasuke essentially serving as his bodyguard.
	So again, believes he was a free man, so that's all up in the air.
	That's conjecture, speculation.
	He first crossed paths with Nobunaga in 1581, when the Jesuit missionary Nobunaga threw a welcome party for his visitor, who officially entered his service soon after.
	practice in an era before passports, according to Lockley.
	He was fascinated by the colour of Yasuke's skin, which he initially believed to be covered in black paint.
	As Lockley explains, the daimo ordered Yasuke to be washed, but his skin colour remained unchanged.
	In fact, he probably got darker.
	Nobunaga threw a welcome party for his visitor, who officially entered his service soon after.
	Entered his service is... bit... bit Bit vague?
	Yeah, I mean, it could be euphemistic for a slave still.
	It's unclear.
	Yeah, a lot of the- and the thing is, there's only four or five historical references that they can actually point to, and a few paintings that are maybe contemporary.
	So this is a lot of guesswork.
	The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, 17th century book written by one of Nobunaga's followers, describes Yasuke as appearing to be about 26 or 27.
	This man looked robust and had good demeanor.
	What's more, his formidable strength surpassed that of ten men.
	Yasuke joined Nobunaga during the last months of the feudal laws unification campaign.
	Nobunaga was then betrayed by one of his generals, which is then the only recorded incident that we know that this guy, Yasuke, was in combat when his general, Akachi Mitsudahide, I don't know if I pronounced that, He was one of his generals.
	They ambushed him with about 13,000 men.
	They slaughtered the group of 30 or so that Nobunaga was with, which included Yasuke.
	Eventually, Nobunaga, Yasuke, and an attendant named Mori Ranmaru, the feudal lord's lover at the time, retreated to one of the temple's chambers.
	It was here that Nobunaga performed seppuku, using a sword to slice open his abdomen before the other guy beheaded him.
	The other guy then also killed himself and Yasuke was there, just, I don't know, hands in pockets going, well, that sucks, what now?
	The last known record of him describes him being escorted to a Jesuit mission by Mitsuhide's warriors.
	What do we do now is that Mitsuhide, what we do know is that Mitsuhide did not execute him.
	So we know that he carried things, Nobunaga entered his service was in one fight that he lost and then was captured and given back to the Italians.
	Legendary Black Samurai.
	Let's write books about him.
	Let's have TV shows about him.
	He probably saved millions of Japanese people, and as the game is saying as well, is going to free Japan from their oppressors.
	Given that the only other people in the game are Japanese people, he's going to free Japan from the Japanese people.
	Where have I heard that kind of story before?
	You know what is interesting here is that, you know, obviously people who are behind this, they don't care at all about historical accuracy.
	No.
	It's just, you know, Netflix source.
	Netflixius, as I call the historian who Netflix reads.
	But what is interesting here is that if you play this game of representation and of increasing representation in anything, Including in games.
	You are ending up offending people.
	Either way.
	So what I want to say is that what is interesting is that we should know that there isn't any kind of harmonious road or endpoint in which this agenda is leading.
	So what they're trying to do is to say, OK, we have this group.
	We want them to feel represented.
	And at the end of the day, they can't be represented unless we offend the Japanese people, for instance.
	No, because this comes again with Cleopatra, for instance, on Netflix.
	The Japanese clearly aren't that happy about it.
	I think more than anything, the majority of the Assassin's Creed audience is likely to be, like, normie white guys.
	Like most video games, that's the audience.
	And so you can't tell me that there won't be a part of the marketing for this that isn't banking on Anti-woke backlash, anti-woke outrage, and pissing off a significant portion of the audience.
	Because a lot of the kinds of people involved in the production of this will be the type that take a pleasure from pissing off the white guy audience.
	Yeah, as in many other companies that take higher brand ambassadors from other groups and, you know, it ends up in disaster.
	But if we skip through to the Wikipedia link that I've got, the Wikipedia page on the guy actually has some quite interesting stuff, because they include some of the actual accounts of when he's mentioned, written down in here.
	The legend of Yasuke.
	Yes, the three or four written paragraphs about him, historically.
	So here's the one about when he got captured.
	And what it says here, so, Louis France, uh, Louis Frause?
	I don't know how to pronounce that.
	Annual report on Japan contains the following statements.
	A black man whom the visitor sent to Nobunaga went to the house of Nobunaga's son after his death and was fighting for quite a long time.
	And to be fair, If he was fighting and involved in combat, he must have been a very brave man.
	But still, he lost.
	We only know that he was in one combat encounter.
	Historians fill in the blanks and say, well, he was in the service of this one guy, so he must have been in battles.
	That's conjecture.
	But still, he was probably still a brave guy, but they said, when a vassal of Akechi, the betraying, the traitorous general, approached him and said, do not be afraid, give me that sword.
	So he gave him the sword.
	The vassal asked Akechi, what should be done with the black man?
	And he said, a black slave is an animal and knows nothing, nor is he Japanese.
	So do not kill him and place him in the custody at the Cathedral of Padre in India.
	So, like a true warrior, he was very well respected.
	Or not.
	Again, there's only so much that we can talk about here because so little is known about him and everything else is just guesswork.
	And from there, you get things like the Yasuke TV series that was mentioned on Netflix, where people valorize him and make him out like he was this really great, amazing samurai.
	And that's the impression that I had from all of this before I looked into him.
	I knew that he was a real historical figure, but if you just go by fictional depictions of him, shockingly enough, they're not particularly accurate and would give you the impression that he was some celebrated samurai who lived there for the rest of his life, when in fact he was only there for about 15 months.
	And the backlash of this, predictably, has broken a few brains.
	In the next one, people just complaining that you're racist.
	If there was a white guy, a fictional white guy, you guys wouldn't care.
	Personally, I would have liked to have seen an actual historical Japanese samurai in it.
	I think that's a missed opportunity.
	I think, um, what's it called?
	The Tsushima game that's just come out on PC.
	Ghost of Tsushima.
	I can't believe I forgot the name of it.
	That's just obviously a better alternative, even though it came out, like, many years ago.
	It's probably going to be better than this anyway.
	I haven't actually played it but it looks great and it is actually Japanese.
	I don't think it's necessarily trying to be historically accurate but it looks fun and it looks beautiful.
	I've heard very, very good things about it.
	I've heard very good things about it.
	So that's a shout.
	There is also what somebody brings up in the replies here, which is Neo saying, well, this has got a white guy in it.
	Again, the guy that that's based on much more historical documentation.
	We know a lot about that guy's life.
	Also, that game was developed by a Japanese studio and Yasuke is in it.
	As well.
	So, I don't know what point they're trying to make.
	Again, George was having some fun with this, because some people posted things like this.
	If you scroll up a bit, just to see the reply.
	No, no.
	If you go back, scroll up a bit, please.
	Uh, playing as a black man murdering tons of Japanese people isn't the hill to die on, guys.
	And scroll down, somebody responds.
	Big Brain responds, where did they say he was a murderer?
	Well, George, George figured out why.
	Because he looked at the artwork and read the name of the series in the next one.
	Right there!
	Right there, where it says assassin.
	I don't know if these people know what assassins are known for.
	It's not giving hugs.
	As well, he was pointing out, you know, this is just black-on-Asian violence to the video game.
	Television screen has gone, so I have no idea what you're seeing.
	IGN has been trying to carry water and cope for this as well in the next one.
	There we go.
	Let's not pretend we're mad the new Assassin's Creed Shadow Samurai isn't Asian.
	They basically just made the argument, well you can play as Asians in loads of games.
	Yeah, but people wanted to play as a Japanese guy in this game specifically.
	I want a story about the campaign of Julius Caesar and I want Julius Caesar to be played by, I don't know, a Papua New Guinean man.
	Why not?
	We're in topsy-turvy world, throw it all into the air, watch it all go upside down, splat on the walls.
	Who cares?
	It makes his betrayal and his stabbing in the back all the more clear, you know?
	When all of the Romans looked around and went, wait a second guys, I don't know if you've noticed, this guy's not Roman.
	Oh my God.
	And then the piece de la resistance, this last one that I've got.
	Hi, I'm an idiot who's mad about everything in video games except the layoffs.
	And this is an actual child temper tantrum that I assume somebody got paid for writing.
	Again, this has broken people's brains that these guys Can't accept and can't understand why people wouldn't be happy with this when this is the image that is getting shoved down everybody's throats 24-7.
	This is not isolated, this is part of a pattern and if you're not on the left you might have something called pattern recognition and you might not be happy that everything you see constantly is trying to push like the cool big black guy down your throat when you just wanted You dirty mind, Josh, when you just wanted to play a game about playing as a Japanese assassin.
	There you go.
	May I be able to have your things?
	I know it's Stelios' segment, but... Oh, it's working now, is it?
	Fantastic.
	It just doesn't like you in particular.
	Oh, Stelios actually needs it.
	Oh, go on then.
	Have a mouse.
	I'll have this.
	I don't actually need the mouse.
	There you go.
	It's musical technology today.
	I will need that one though.
	Right.
	We're all tied up.
	Thank you.
	Right.
	So, Californian law is racist.
	And as you will see, one of the racist things with California is that it has judges.
	This may strike you as very weird, and it is weird, and we are going to talk about it.
	But before we talk about it, check out the Islander.
	This is a new newspaper, magazine, journal.
	You pre-order it now and you read it, I think, end of June?
	Well, you can pre-order it now and it will be in print by the end of June.
	It's just amazing.
	Just have a read.
	Who's in it?
	A lot of people.
	Do you want to tell me who is in it?
	No, you.
	You have read it.
	Carl Benjamin, Academic Agent, Morgoth's Review, Bo Dade of the Lotus Eaters, Rorik Nationalist, and many more.
	Right, now, one thing to say that we need to remember something really bad that happened seven years ago.
	On the 22nd of May 2017, we had the bombings at the Manchester Arena, and I think that it's a good thing to remember them.
	We have here, seven years ago today, when 22 people were killed in Manchester in a terrorist suicide bomb attack at the Manchester Arena.
	Just, we had to say this.
	Right, okay, so...
	Right.
	California in 2020 has passed this Racial Justice Act of 2020 and there are some really interesting things about this.
	One of the things it does is that it makes people who have been convicted of felonies more able to appeal the sentences and the convictions and to plea By saying that they were victims of systemic racism, even without being able to actually prove that in the specific case, judges were racist against them.
	That is the interesting thing here.
	Now, let us see some stuff about this from Stanford Law Society.
	It says, Contra Costa A county superior court judge recently dismissed all gun enhancements in a murder case against four young black men under provisions of California's recently enacted Racial Justice Act.
	The court ruled that data showing racial bias in prosecutorial charging decisions and the racist text messages police officers sent about the defendants violated the Californian law, the first of its kind in the state.
	Now, does this make sense?
	To me it makes zero sense.
	I understand what ideological place it's come from, so it makes some sense, but I don't agree with it, no.
	Well, if you see, what they're doing is that they're saying that just because The police officers sent some racist messages between themselves and they violated the Californian law and this must somehow translate in the case of the crime of the person, of a particular crime?
	I don't see how that is.
	So you have a criminal, you have the victim, you have some police officers who catch the criminal and bring them in front of the court.
	What does the racist text messaging have to do?
	With respect to the criminal and the victim and the judge.
	Well the way the justice system is set up is that the police are normally the ones prosecuting the criminal and the judge is the one presiding over the case and seeing whether the prosecution is fair or not.
	So they are by definition separate things.
	Yes, but the point is that this is going to be applied to people who have already been convicted of felony.
	So for instance, there were people who were involved in a murder case, they were gang members, and the gun enhancements that are extra penalties on people who are committed in gun crime receive.
	So they were dropped because of reasons like that.
	So it says, the RJA, Racial Justice Act, expands a defendant's ability to gather evidence of racial bias and allows for the reversal or modification of a conviction or sentence, even without the racial bias being shown to have altered the trial outcome.
	So what they're saying is essentially that there are patents of sentencing when it comes to courts.
	And you can cite evidence of what kinds of sentences have been given to criminals by other judges.
	In other cases, you can appeal to them in order to yield a verdict about a particular case, irrespective of what the judge said.
	That's what they're trying to do.
	And I think that's purely ideological.
	No sane person would be in favor of this, because when you have the judge, we have the judge precisely to translate the abstract and general law in a specific concrete case.
	When people are saying that the judge shouldn't judge in terms of the concrete case, but we should constantly focus on abstract general stuff, There's no need for there to be a judge, is there?
	Well, it says a lot about California that they spend so much time, their legislators that is, concerned about the rights of the criminals rather than the victims themselves, right?
	They're more concerned about helping these poor, deprived criminals and murderers and mysteriously, oh, crime's going up, oh, crime is terrible in California.
	Well, who'd have thought, eh?
	You have anticipated some of the data that I will share with you in a In a bit.
	So it says here, what is the RJA of 2020?
	Challenging criminal convictions or sentences as racially discriminatory is difficult due to an impossible standard, according to the author, set in 1987 by the U.S.
	Supreme Court in McCleskey v. Kemp.
	That decision established that a defendant must prove that the decision makers in his case Acted with discriminatory purpose and cannot rely solely on statistical studies showing discrimination broadly.
	The defendant must offer evidence specific to his own case that would support an inference that racial considerations played a part in his sentence.
	Defendants are rarely successful in meeting that standard.
	So just because they said that just Just because people couldn't use that to reduce their sentences, they said that right now we need to lower this, we need to relax this clause, and we need to make it even more easy for someone to just abstract from the concrete case and just look at abstractions like criminal, black criminal, white criminal, victims.
	All these abstractions.
	So what is this is in the name of, let's say, addressing historical injustices, whatever, however it's being clothed.
	What is this doing is actually ideologizing justice and depriving the judges of their actual role, which is to translate the abstract into the concrete.
	What this does is to completely neglect the concrete cases and the concrete circumstances of the specific case.
	Right.
	So we have here an interesting thread by Heather McDonald that you should definitely check.
	And she says, California is about to demonstrate what a world constructed from the tenets of critical race studies looks like.
	Starting this year, anyone serving time can retroactively challenge his conviction and sentencing on the ground of systemic racial bias.
	The Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020 without meaningful public review, turns long-standing academic tropes about implicit bias and white privilege into potent legal tools.
	In other words, the bill is a ticking time bomb.
	Serious offenders can allege bias merely by showing that a disproportionate number of those convicted of crimes in-country are minorities.
	It says the thinking behind the Racial Justice Act will soon expand to other policy areas and likely to other blue states.
	Unless voters repeal the law, California is about to become more violent and the promise of equal justice less credible.
	And there is a really good article by City Journal that you can find here.
	I have it for people who want to read it.
	Right, so let's see here something that did happen in San Diego, which is, if I'm not mistaken, the second largest city in California.
	There was a judge who was recently disqualified from hearing cases based on California's Racial Justice Act because the judge's comments indicate he believes certain racial or ethnic groups commit more crimes than others.
	Which is a statistical fact, by the way.
	Yes, but apparently statistics is something to be used only when it fits a narrative.
	And yes, and in fact, this happens not just in the US, it also happens in the EU, because when we are talking about crime, obviously one of the reasons that lead people to crime is poverty.
	It is a, you know, adverse material conditions, but it's not the only one.
	So, a lot of the crime statistics are being circulated, and often by government agencies, and they are allowed for people to communicate only to the extent that they push forward the economic narrative.
	Why?
	Because the more people start talking about crime as being solely economic, that's where you have the facade of a justification for increased taxation from the state in order to get resources from everyone else in order to give to members of these communities.
	And so that is why statistics are being circulated by government agencies.
	But if a judge says something that is an actual fact, and it's an actual fact according to the government agencies that circulate these, that's a problem.
	And we have here the article from the San Diego Union Tribune if you want to read more.
	Now, what happens is that in some cases they say that this judge was sending some messages or he was overheard using some slurs or something.
	Obviously I don't support this, but again I want to say that irrespective of what happened in his case, I want us to... I don't know the specifics of this case.
	There is something else that is a bit more sinister here, because if we just think of hate speech laws and how there is a progression with respect to characterizing more and more and more claims as hate speech.
	Now, if the same thing happens with judges, Then we are going to have a just judicial system or a judicial branch of power that is not going to be independent.
	That is not going to be neutral.
	You may tell me that 100% neutrality is not something that is accurate.
	Maybe it's not.
	Most probably it is not.
	That doesn't mean that we should opt for 0% neutrality.
	That doesn't mean that this isn't a problem.
	So what I want to say is that I don't know about the specific judge here and the specific case, but the idea that more and more instances of speech are being branded as hateful, and we can use that in order to, let's say, disqualify judges, that is not going to be a good thing.
	This is going to destroy the justice system completely.
	Now, do you think that these policies, these ultra-sensitive policies, help with crime in California?
	No, no!
	Don't laugh!
	Harry, don't laugh!
	If you're good to people who are criminals, they may smile back at you and stop the crime.
	Well, what side of the equation are we talking about in the crime?
	I mean actual crime, not just... No, no, no.
	You mean it would help the victim or the criminal?
	Because this is going to help the criminals.
	Yeah, but would you say that an institutionally... An institutional hug.
	A relaxation of institutional punishment.
	More leisure centres for the kids.
	If they can go and play pool somewhere or darts, then they'll just stop committing crimes.
	Yeah, sure.
	Yeah, go for it.
	Why not?
	Screw it, we've tried everything else.
	Why don't you just give them a hug?
	We've not been trying to do that for the past 60 years.
	Yeah, bear in mind Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California from in January 2019.
	And he's very much pro these policies.
	He's six years governor of California.
	He is a lot, okay?
	Right, so it says here, California's violent crime jumped in 2023, even as national levels decreased, according to FBI figures released this week.
	The Golden State saw a 3.8% rise in violent crime over 2022, driven by a spike in aggravated assaults and an increase in rapes and robberies, the federal data show.
	These same crimes fell by 1.7% throughout the rest of the United States.
	So something really wrong is going on in California.
	We have yet another article here.
	Annual crime reports show Californians fear of increasing crime is justified.
	It says here, political off-holders at all levels and of all ideological stripes habitually pursue a time-dishonored practice when releasing data.
	If it's positive, politicians try to maximize its importance with lavish news conferences, self-congratulatory declarations.
	Let's go down to numbers.
	It says, the 2022 report revealed that the state's violent crime rate increased by 6.1% since 2021, and property crime was up 6.2%.
	Homicides dipped very slightly, but robberies jumped by 10.2%.
	Thank you.
	So, this doesn't seem to pay off.
	I don't know why people would carry on.
	Supporting this.
	Here, charts show how California crime trends compared to the rest of the U.S.
	It says here, Californian violent crime rate increased for the second year in a row in 2022, while violence in the United States overall declined.
	But the state's property crime increased on immodesty and in line with the rest of the country.
	Again, we have numbers showing that California isn't doing well.
	And let us also bear in mind that stealing under $950 isn't considered a crime but a misdemeanor.
	And also there are also issues with borders and issues with a lot of people who are fentanyl users just flooding the streets.
	We have also San Francisco in decline and the historical center of the town being just covered in human feces.
	Yeah.
	Right, so I want to end by focusing on the corrosive elements of this ideology that constantly talks about victimization and constantly has to split the whole population in oppressors and oppressed.
	And this is definitely not the way to unite a people.
	This cannot be a rhetoric employed by people who call themselves patriots.
	When you want to unite a country, you stop watching at the differences and you focus on the people of that country.
	So we have here Joe Biden, again, giving us a graduation ceremony speech.
	to African-American graduates.
	And again, he's talking to them about victimization.
	So this is really weird.
	Imagine you have students who are graduating.
	They're happy.
	They're happy with the opportunities that are being open to them.
	And you have someone telling you this.
	You missed your high school graduation.
	You started college just as George Floyd was murdered.
	And there was a reckoning on race.
	You know, It's natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you.
	What is democracy?
	If black men are being killed in the street, what is democracy?
	Betrayal of broken promises still leave black communities behind.
	What is democracy?
	You have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot.
	Most of all, what does it mean, as you've heard before, to be a black man who loves his country, even if it doesn't love him back in equal measure?
	Grandpa's having an episode again.
	It's interesting there that democracy is a black man getting killed on the street and the Democrats repeatedly say they're the party of democracy.
	I mean, they've unintentionally revealed their true influence on America there, haven't they?
	What's that flag behind him as well?
	Do you know?
	No idea.
	Just some random flag behind the President of the United States.
	Not an American flag, no.
	I think things have stopped working again.
	It's okay, we'll find it.
	Your mouse has stopped working.
	Could we have the next slide, please?
	It's okay, we'll talk.
	So what is interesting about this case was that a lot of the students there, a lot of the graduates, they turned their backs on Joe Biden.
	And some people have rushed to say that they disagree with the narrative and what he was saying.
	Could be the case.
	Another reason could be that they disagree with his stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, so we just don't know.
	But his speech wasn't particularly well received.
	And I want to end with this, that when you want to When you're literally looking at wokeness and what it does, it completely destroys a country.
	It will destroy the West unless a lot of these woke policies are being repealed.
	And the reason I'm saying this is that what we have presented here to you today is the triumph of ideology over common sense.
	And ideology thrives in generalizations, it thrives in not focusing on empirical data, it thrives when we are fostering the mentality that when ideas clash with facts, so worse for the facts.
	And when we are translating this into the justice system, into the court system, and we are saying that no matter what a particular judge has said about the sentence of a particular criminal in a particular case, people should look the general stuff, that's again ideology trying to encroach upon Common sense.
	We need judges because we need them to translate the general into the particular case.
	Ideology completely neglects the particular case and just leads us into a completely generalized and abstract mindset where all we see is victims and oppressors.
	And I think that this is deeply corrosive.
	You can't unite societies like this.
	This has to stop.
	Okay, am I able to do my segment?
	Is it working now?
	now?
	Oh.
	Fantastic. - It's still being fooled.
	Okay.
	So are we able to actually do the segment then?
	Okay, I may as well.
	Um... - Cheers, you've had a trial by fire since starting, haven't you?
	Anyway, so, I wanted to... Actually, I need to wait until my segment's up.
	What I need is one of them mice as well.
	Right.
	If you're watching this at the minute, I'm sorry, but it's about to get better.
	So I want to talk about how the left ruins art.
	You start that again when I'm not coughing.
	Oh yeah.
	I zoned you out entirely.
	I didn't even hear you.
	Oh that's fine.
	I like to do that with myself as well.
	Sorry it's just a habit at this point.
	So, I think we all know that the left ruins art, but I tell you what hasn't been ruined is Islander Magazine.
	This is a new magazine that we are releasing today, or at least the Wednesday that this segment is recorded, and it is good.
	It is not fraught with technical issues like the internet, but it is in print.
	It looks great.
	There are articles here from famous names, people you'll recognize, and it's beautiful, and it's a nice physical thing.
	And as well as this lovely magazine, which you can pre-order now on our merch store for print at the end of June, I believe, there is also a merch line to go along with this.
	And that is this t-shirt here that I'm wearing, along with a bunch of others.
	Harry is wearing a t-shirt also.
	I like this t-shirt.
	It looks like a skate brand that I would have worn in my younger years.
	It's making me nostalgic.
	Video games style t-shirt there.
	There's also the t-shirt there that Stelios has on the back of his laptop.
	And I'm going to show you some others as well.
	Here, if you like t-shirts, here they are.
	Go on the website, if you want a cool t-shirt, that's the place to look.
	But anyway, Rolling Stones, in 1969, wrote a song called You Can't Always Get What You Want, and in that song there's a lyric which funnily enough goes, you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll find you get what you need.
	I think that not only is that a good philosophy in life, But also a good philosophy in consuming art, in that you don't always know what you're going to get or you don't know what to expect, but sometimes it gives you exactly what you need.
	And I'm sure you both have found this before, where you've watched something and you've not really expected or even sorted out, but you're glad that you've witnessed it.
	An art form, right?
	Like Twin Peaks is a good example.
	The ending of Series 3, yeah.
	Definitely not what I wanted at the time, but I've come to terms with it and love it for what it is now.
	Exactly.
	Some might also call this Stockholm Syndrome.
	Yes, but I think it's a very healthy attitude towards the arts.
	You don't go into it with an agenda that you just want what you want to hear parroted back to you because that's not bettering yourself.
	Sometimes what you need to hear, what you need to see isn't what you're looking for because that's what creates a well-balanced person and all the best art gives you something you're not expecting, but is good for you, is nourishing.
	And there's a phenomenon at the minute that I think is interfering with this, that is trigger warnings.
	And I know we've talked about those before, and you think, well, what are you on about, Josh?
	We've heard about this for a long time.
	But the thing is that they're expanding to such an absurd extent that lots of famous people are now coming out and saying, listen, this is ruining our art form.
	We're working hard to do this and it's interfering with it.
	And so I wanted to quickly fire off some things that I think are wrong with it, as well as looking at some famous people that have pushed back on it and why.
	So obviously it ruins the surprise of what happens because it tells you.
	It's lame woke signalling, it's needless when they age-rate things, and also it marks a series, and this is the most important thing, that if something gets pre-emptively trigger-warned, if you will, it will mark it for death for removal later on down the line, which is the main problem.
	Dame Judi Denchville, people, has come out and said, if you're sensitive, avoid the theatres because she's annoyed at these trigger warnings.
	And this is from a few days ago now.
	And she's saying they kill the surprise of seeing the drama in your own way.
	And so this is theatre, but it's also true of TV and film as well.
	and she says I can see why they exist but if you're sensitive don't go to the theatre because you could be very shocked where is the surprise of seeing and understanding it in your own way she asks which is fair enough and then in February um Ralph Fiennes also said a similar thing uh scrap trigger warnings for theatre audiences and of course he's a famous uh film actor but also he is he has a sort of theatrical background doesn't he um
	I sort of know him for In Bruges and playing Voldemort in Harry Potter.
	Obviously lots of actors actually have some very serious theatrical chops and are classically trained and therefore have a great appreciation for the art.
	And he says the impact of theatre should be that you're shocked and it should be that you're disturbed.
	I don't think you should be prepared for these things, which I agree with.
	I think the whole point of art is to change your mind about things and open your mind to new ways of looking at the world.
	Even people like Matt Smith, who plays a character in House of the Dragon but they refer to him as Doctor Who even though he's not Doctor Who anymore, he agreed with Rafe Fiennes and said, I watched it and I agree with Rafe utterly and completely.
	Which is interesting that lots of these famous people are coming out and basically counter signaling woke messaging.
	These are big names in the acting world and they're coming out and saying, yeah, this is ruining it.
	Why are you doing it?
	Which is interesting because normally you'd think people in Hollywood are quite conformist, aren't they?
	Yeah.
	And I'm still imagining all of these people.
	I'm not going to go out of my way to compliment all of these people.
	They still all probably believe similar things to one another.
	You know, just because I agree that trigger warnings are kind of pointless and can spoil the surprise.
	That's one very, very small aspect.
	It's all part of the bubble wrap culture, you could say.
	But they're still not going to go out of their way to say anything That's really controversial.
	No, of course.
	Controversial to whom?
	That's the point.
	To a lot of the people now, this is controversial.
	I get what you're getting at though, Harry.
	And of course, it's just interesting that there is some counter-signalling going on.
	Of course, the Guardian and the lefties are defending this sort of thing.
	For trauma survivors like us, theatre trigger warnings are not a luxury.
	Well, I think if you're that sensitive, don't engage in public life stay at home until you've fixed yourself stop being a weirdo and demanding the world change because you're emotionally frail and pathetic and it's got to such a point um that here is a theater performance where there was a trigger warning for the sound of people eating oranges that's very specific it's That's spooky.
	Oranges are scary.
	The direct quote is, the performance contains sounds of people eating, so those with misophonia find some parts uncomfortable.
	Right.
	I absolutely hate the sound of other people eating.
	If someone's eating noisily, I can't be in the same room.
	I think it's disgusting.
	I think you're uncultured and a savage.
	However, I don't feel like this warning is necessary for me.
	I understand that it's a theatre performance.
	It serves a purpose, right?
	And if I don't like it, I can do this.
	And then I can't hear anything.
	And all of a sudden, the problem is solved.
	Or you can do that.
	Or you can take Josh's advice and just look like some knobhead in the audience.
	I mean, if you want to signal to everyone you're an emotionally weak freak, that's a good way of doing it.
	So, things have got so bad, in fact, that even Goodfellas has been slapped with a trigger warning, as the New York Post reports on AMC, and it says, this film includes language and or cultural stereotypes that are inconsistent with today's standards of inclusion and tolerance and may offend some viewers.
	Warning, this film may contain Italians.
	So this is just absurd, right?
	No one watches Goodfellas thinking this is true of every single Italian ever.
	I do.
	Well, this trigger warning is just for you, Harry.
	I don't need to be triggered by it, I just accept it.
	It's agreeable.
	I sit there taking notes.
	You need to pay to the family.
	But they spoke to a police officer who played a police officer in Goodfellas.
	Which is confusing, because he's actually a police officer.
	But he says, the effing political correctness is effing taking everything away.
	This is how life was back then.
	It's not a clean, beautiful thing.
	You can't cleanse history.
	If you want to tell a true story, you've got to tell it the way it is.
	And it seems to be the case, because Michael Franz... I don't want to pronounce his name right.
	Franzuse?
	Some Mafia guy, he was apparently a one-time captain of the Colombo crime family, said he was amused by the note.
	We don't need anyone protecting mob guys.
	It's crazy.
	You know I'd like trigger warnings for Karens.
	That would be nice, wouldn't it?
	But yeah, AMC defended it saying, in 2020, we began advisories in front of certain films that include racial or cultural references that some viewers might find offensive.
	Interestingly enough, when The Godfather plays on AMC, they don't do that, which seems a bit hypocritical.
	Can't get my words out for some reason.
	But it is worth mentioning as well that lots of mafia men really like Goodfellas.
	So in this article asking Sammy the Bull Gravano about the Irishman, he also mentions Goodfellas.
	And he says, yeah, I was a fan of Goodfellas.
	I knew some people that were involved in the whole thing.
	And that was fairly accurate.
	You know when they go through the basement to get in the Copacabana?
	That's the way I used to get in.
	Me and my friends, we'd go right down there, boom, right in, sitting at somebody's table.
	That's the way we lived.
	There's a lot of truth, though I'm sure there was some Hollywood involved.
	And again, another person, So this is the guy who wrote the book in which the script was based and he also co-wrote the script and he said to GQ in 2010 that people in the mafia love it because it's the real thing and they knew the people featured in it so it felt like a home movie.
	The article carries on to say it's worth noting that Scorsese even cast some real wise guys in the movie which was a bit of a problem when the studio had to put them on the payroll as they kept giving fake and inaccurate social security numbers.
	Oh, they just can't help it.
	And in response, if I can get the mouse up, the mouse is not working.
	Oh, here we go.
	It's very slow.
	Gentlemen.
	Yes, please.
	This is Technology Manifest.
	If you can just move on to the next tab.
	AI is hitting us.
	So, there are also now trigger warnings on Gilligan's Island, which is a sitcom from the 60s, saying the program includes language and cultural stereotypes inconsistent with modern standards.
	And also, this is going on in the UK as well, there's a channel known as Britbox, which is sort of a streaming service, which is a collaboration between the BBC and the ITV.
	Terry and June has been given a trigger warning, which is A late-70s, mid-80s sitcom.
	It was considered a bit safe and old-fashioned and a bit boring, even in its time.
	And now there was a scene in the show where They have a for sale sign that they can't get rid of as part of a running gag and people keep on coming to the door to ask if the house is for sale and an Indian man comes to the door and because he's saying oh the house isn't for sale the Indian man thinks oh well you've got the for sale sign up and he's saying oh no we just can't get rid of the sign.
	And he thinks that he's racist and the man in the sitcom is just like, oh, I'm not racist.
	It's terrible.
	And the whole gags stem from him being worried that he's being called racist and he's just digging a deeper and deeper hole.
	But that's been given a trigger warning, even though, you know, it's technically that, you know, the woke messaging in the first place that he even cares about that sort of thing.
	And of course, There are lots of other things that have been given warnings as well.
	Wolf Hall, which is a show about Henry VIII, has been given a warning saying it contains scenes of violence, you know, following Henry VIII, known for beheading his wives.
	Jack the Ripper, of course, contains scenes of violence.
	Robin of Sherwood, which is about Robin Hood.
	Violence including the use of swords and the use of knives.
	Poirot, which of course is the Agatha Christie detective novel, It has lots of ones, like references to suicide and nudity, scenes featuring gun violence, contains mild shots of crime scene aftermath.
	I think people know what they're getting in for.
	Downton Abbey even has one as well, contains some shocking and bloody scenes when a guy's ulcer bursts and sprays blood on the table.
	There's also one about a majority black sitcom as well.
	So, oh, sorry, I'll go to the previous one.
	I didn't realize.
	So there's a sitcom called Desmond.
	I've never heard of it.
	It's a largely black cast and is created by black writers.
	And even that has offensive racial stereotyping warning on it.
	So it's just getting to the point where even A black show written by black people can have this sort of warning on it and it's even getting to the point where audiobooks are getting trigger warnings in case you're listening to it out loud as you know you're a third worldist on the London tube.
	Yeah, on the bus.
	I don't know why you're doing that.
	I've never heard one of them listening to an audiobook.
	Could you imagine?
	You're listening to The Tempest by Shakespeare.
	That might make quite a pleasant bus journey, actually.
	Me and the diversity do have that one thing in common.
	You can't read.
	No.
	Have you seen how I struggle to read stuff on the screen?
	We're all struggling.
	I'm just making up the words as I go along.
	But my main problem with this is that the things that are marked with trigger warnings often get taken off air later on down the line.
	It's basically marking stuff for death.
	as i as i sort of alluded to before in that once it's been demarcated that it's offensive that it's bad it's potentially got controversial things then people are more inclined to remove it like the mighty bush has been removed completely from netflix over an episode where they do blackface in the spirit of jazz and harry i'm sure will be aware of this one i I never even thought of that as him doing blackface.
	I always just thought it was the look of the weird spirit.
	It's a mystical fake spirit supposed to embody a style of music.
	Yes and also there's a jungle episode which I don't even remember The closest I would say to them doing blackface is when they play the guys with afros with little doors on their heads.
	And is that not the one that they're furious about?
	Well, they're meant to be Santana anyway.
	So it's not even blackface.
	Also, who cares?
	It's a joke.
	It's funny.
	Get a sense of humor, you boring turds.
	But they've been removed off of Netflix entirely.
	It's still on BBC iPlayer, but there is a content warning before each episode for some reason.
	Fawlty Towers, back in 2020, had an episode removed.
	It was called The Germans because of use of racial slurs.
	But because it's a beloved show, there was pushback and it got reinstated more or less the next day.
	Also, there are lots of episodes of shows that have had blackface, supposedly.
	The community one really annoys me because it's a joke in the episode that the character isn't actually doing blackface.
	He's painted himself as a black elf, as in a completely separate species.
	And the joke is everybody's awkward because they think he's done blackface because it looks a bit like it.
	Most of these episodes that have been taken off are because somebody does blackface and the joke is, ooh, that's inappropriate.
	You should feel bad that you've done blackface.
	There's also Scrubs, The Office, I presume that's the American office.
	It's Always Sunny.
	There's quite a few episodes.
	There are a few.
	Those are some of the best episodes though, when they're doing Lethal Weapon.
	Come on!
	Golden Girls.
	Have they taken the episodes off as well, where they refer to the trans person?
	I would imagine so, because that tends to get removed as well.
	Little Britain and Come Fly With Me, that's the same thing.
	They've got The Mighty Boosh and The League of Gentlemen, not that they're equivalent, and a bunch of other things as well.
	And there's also episodes of Seinfeld that have been removed.
	It's the Puerto Rican Day episode has been removed because apparently, I haven't actually seen the episode, I haven't watched that much Seinfeld.
	Kramer gives an unusual stand-up performance.
	That wasn't an episode of Seinfeld but it should have been.
	I've done a bad thing.
	He used the n-word very liberally.
	But supposedly in that episode, as one of the gags, the Puerto Rican flag gets set on fire and then to put out the fire it gets stomped on.
	And it's not meant as disrespect, it's a gag that it is disrespectful.
	As far as I understand it, again I haven't seen the episode, but that episode's been pulled, regardless of context, as well as the IT crowd as well.
	This, of course, written by Graham Linehan, who's not very popular with certain people who are, you know, medical intervention enthusiasts.
	That's all I can say.
	A controversial episode that killed the comedy series.
	Was it even in the last series?
	No.
	I didn't think so.
	No, it was in the second series.
	There was a third series.
	And then a fourth special series, if I remember as well, where they did a few extra long episodes.
	But it's where Matt Berry's character sleeps with a lady who is not actually a lady, but is played by an actual lady.
	I think that's the problem.
	Set bad expectations.
	The aspirational aspect of it was completely off.
	Yeah, it was giving a lot of people lots of body discomfort, I suppose.
	I don't know what it is.
	But my point being is that this, you know, tagging things with trigger warnings is just one step towards the removal of any content that has anything remotely close to counter-messaging to wokeness, right?
	You know, You look at things like Fawlty Towers, they're sort of lefty boomers, right?
	The pythons.
	You know, I enjoy some of their stuff.
	That is true, a lot of their stuff, particularly their films.
	However, they in their day were left-wingers themselves.
	They were the radicals of the time, yes.
	Yeah, and so when they're coming to things even to that degree, you've got to question, well, what is sacred?
	Well, nothing.
	And the fact that we're in a model now where it's sort of media as a service, you've got to subscribe, and that means that Netflix or Amazon can just take away whatever is deemed unacceptable.
	You can't have a physical copy that the government comes in and takes off you.
	It's set up so that they can police what media you can watch and so keep an eye on what is getting trigger warnings because people are trying to force these things out.
	Anything remotely wholesome that's promoting a traditional family that perhaps has normal moral messaging where it's just like maybe if you're a happy family and you don't sleep around and do nice things that you will be happy.
	You know, that sort of messaging is not acceptable.
	And those sorts of shows are going to be forced off air eventually.
	And I don't want to see that because, you know, entertainment is important still.
	We live in a time where it's nice to be entertained.
	You know, there's not a lot going on positively elsewhere.
	So at least we can have an escape.
	But even now, things are slowly being clawed away from us, our modes of entertainment.
	And I think it's a real tragedy because it ruins the art form and I think it ruins art more generally.
	Alright, shall we go on to the video comments, gentlemen?
	We shall.
	We are running over a little bit because of the technical difficulties.
	Yeah, we had the technical problems.
	The xenophilic outgroup preference that the progressive demonstrates can easily be explained by simple cultural familiarity.
	They're familiar with their own culture, hence know all of its negative sides.
	However, they are not as familiar with foreign cultures, hence why they put them on a pedestal.
	This could also explain the background of Rousseau's myth of the noble savage.
	If you're not as familiar with something, you probably don't know all the negatives.
	That's very true.
	And in fact, it's quite a robust psychological phenomenon whereby familiarity with something allows you to have a much more nuanced view of it, which is really obvious when you say it out loud.
	But, you know, people forget that that is how your brain works.
	And people think that, well, it's true of everyone else, but me, I'm the exception.
	Whereas I think one of the best ways of approaching being, you know, a mature person is to acknowledge that, hey, I'm just as flawed as everyone else.
	Right.
	Dr. John Campbell hosted a three-part interview with Dr. Claire Craig on his YouTube channel about her book and her research into COVID, where it came from, how it's transmitted, and the futility of the measures imposed to tackle the disease.
	Her book is sensitive and presented with humility as she reveals how she too was caught up in the activities at the outset.
	Fortunately, Dr. Craig realised her mistakes and presents the truth of the virus and its spread, along with her frustrations that untruths are still circulating despite their basis in science being thoroughly undermined.
	I'd advise reading this book, but the interview on YouTube is a good start.
	Hmm, sounds very interesting.
	So that's, for anybody wanting to know again, Expired Covid the Untold Story by Dr. Claire Craig, for anyone interested in that.
	I feel like I need to do more work on Covid, because now it's over, I kind of, it dragged on for so long, I kind of don't want to dwell on it, even though it is a horrendous thing.
	It's still very important and we shouldn't let it just become consigned to something that happened a few years ago.
	We shouldn't let it fade into the memory because it is very telling of the state of our leadership right now and the state of the populace at large that they would go along with that and that our leaders would do that to us in the first place over what was essentially a cold.
	Yeah, what that Catholic guy said.
	Yeah, I've started saying that in my videos.
	Here's an example.
	No, his 20s are best spent developing skills.
	Your 20s are best spent developing a family for whom he will dedicate his skills and energy to provide.
	obtain promotions and earn more money no his 20s are best spent developing skills your 20s are best spent developing a family for whom he will dedicate his skills and energy to provide this is true it's a very good statement yes it's a cool Okay, that's it.
	Well, we've got a few rumble chats that people have paid for, so let's go through a few of those before we do a few of the comments.
	So, BaldEagle1787 for $2 says, Fun fact, the only reason why Ubisoft is still around is because of the Canadian government.
	They keep getting grants and support since they're Canada's only gaming studio that has name recognition.
	I didn't know that they were the only gaming studio but that's interesting because from some of the reports that I saw in reference at the beginning of the segment it seemed like they were actually doing quite well financially although that might help to explain why they were laying people off although that seems to just be a case of
	one profit margins and two that's for some reason the standard procedure in western gaming studios you'll complete a big project and then sack off at least half of the staff members which seems like a very a very tight way of doing things especially because i don't hear as much about that happening in say japan
	Where they may have slightly smaller studios but they'll keep the same staff on the whole time, they'll have directors who are dedicated to directing the games and you end up with studios that build up a base of skills like from software and can just keep pumping out games at really high qualities in very short periods of time.
	Yeah, surprise surprise, if you treat your staff well, pay them well and keep them, you will produce better stuff.
	Yeah, and the West also has the horrible crunch culture with the gaming studios as well.
	They overwork these people just so at the end of the day they can be rewarded by being fired.
	I don't understand.
	Ah, I wonder why Western games suck so much these days.
	Sean487 for $10 says, I got sick of Assassin's Creed and how they portrayed the Templars.
	The Islamists were the saviors and protectors of science and Templars.
	Ignorant, murderous monsters.
	Well, yeah, once again, there were, I don't remember much about the earlier games because I only played them a bit.
	The last one I played properly was probably Black Flag and even then I didn't even get far enough into to get to the ships because tailing missions!
	Oh boy, don't you want to go through three hours of tailing missions before you can get to the fun part of the game?
	No.
	No, I'm good.
	Cheers.
	But I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of early woke stuff in there because this stuff has been in games for ages.
	People just weren't as switched on to it back then.
	The Shadow Band.
	Alright, we're going to finish after we've gone through the rumble comments, so apologies for anybody else who wanted the comments read out, we're just running low on time right now.
	Shadowband for $10.
	The weird part of the Assassin's Creed Shadows drama is they keep rewriting the Wikipedia page for Yasuke.
	Didn't know that, not that surprised.
	And you've got one as well.
	So, trigger warnings on Goodfellas is a very loud and obvious flashing sign that says films in the past were better artists and artists were more free.
	That was the Shadowband for $50.
	Oh, thank you very much.
	And that's very true.
	It's also worth mentioning as well, before we wrap up, that Connor has Stefan Molyneux coming out of his interview retirement on his show after this, in this studio, so make sure to check that out.
	I don't think he's done an interview for over four years, so it's quite an occasion, so make sure to check that out.
	Probably not since he re-interviewed people about human biodiversity and got into a lot of trouble for that.
	So it's one for the occasion, gentlemen.
	Watch that once it's broadcasting.
	And thank you very much for watching.

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