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Sept. 20, 2024 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:37:17

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1005

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	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters for the 20th of September 2024.
	I am joined by Bo and And Lewis Brackpell once again, back by popular demand.
	And today we're going to be talking about the influencer desert dystopia that is Saudi Arabia.
	We're going to be talking about modern art being rubbish and Beau is going to be talking about illegal migration.
	So we've got two fun segments and a rather depressing one, I imagine.
	Although you are going to come up with solutions to these problems.
	Yeah.
	So it's positive you know we're giving you giving you a ray of hope so actually it's quite optimistic especially for our podcast on a Friday we don't want to depress you and of course don't forget um lads hour this afternoon three o'clock our time uh it's going to be GeoGuessr it's going to be a lot of fun I've been looking forward to this one for a long time I'm going to be running it so it's going to be good Not that I'm biased or anything.
	Also, more announcements.
	Islander, if you don't own a copy, we all hate you.
	No.
	It's really good.
	Just to go off some of the people who've written in it, there are some surprises, I'm not going to tell you, but Carl Benjamin, that guy, you might have heard of him.
	Dr. Nima Parvini, Morgoth's Review, Roig Nationalist, Marcus Follin, Dave Green, the Distributor, Stefan Molyneux, You get the idea.
	This one, you can't buy it anymore.
	It's out of print.
	So you want to get this one before it goes out of print.
	So do that.
	And also another thing, we're hiring, Samson, if you could pull up the hiring thing, a production administrator.
	I don't know what this is, but if you do, you might be fit for this career opportunity.
	You'll have the misfortune of sharing an office with us.
	I'm very sorry about that.
	That can't be helped, unfortunately.
	If you know what this is, and you are qualified, and you are willing to live and work in Swindon, actually you don't have to live here, but it helps, you will be working here, then apply for this.
	It's on the website, lotuseaters.com slash careers production administrator.
	There you go, you can see it on screen.
	If you can't even get to the page, you're probably not qualified.
	So, anyway, I suppose I may as well start off.
	So, almost just over two years ago now, Connor and I covered this, Saudi Arabia's plan to build a great big line in the desert as a sort of weird dystopian, I don't know what it is really, a living arrangement, a city?
	It's weird to call it a city when it's a great big line but we called it Saudi Arabia's rat utopia because everyone was living on top of each other in a sort of 15 minute city and they were talking about 2030 and it was all a bit World Economic Forum-y.
	And this was all the way back in August of 2022.
	And I wanted to have a look at where it's at two years on, just over.
	And so just to give you a little bit of information, you can see all of the sort of concepts that they were throwing around at the time and what was involved.
	But the line is said to be 200 metres wide or 656 foot and 170 kilometres or 106 miles long.
	That's how big they want to make it That's ridiculous.
	Oh, of course it's ridiculous.
	That's like the whole Arabian Peninsula, isn't it?
	No, it's not that far, but still.
	It's a decent portion of it, yeah.
	Is it mirrored as well, like that?
	I think so.
	So a great big mirror in the desert, that's going to go down well, isn't it?
	Do you remember the walkie-talkie in London?
	Yes, it is.
	Well, I say remember, it's still there.
	But that wasn't even mirrored like that, but it acted as some sort of giant evil death ray, and was like melting cars and things.
	Well, it's going to be covered in glass all around.
	It's going to turn all the sand into one big oven, really.
	It's going to be wildlife getting charred alive.
	You know, wind turbines chop seagulls into little bits.
	They're not all bad.
	That's going to do the same thing with lots of different wildlife.
	It's going to be like holding a giant magnifying glass to ants.
	But it's going to cost...
	1.5 trillion US dollars.
	Just a cool 1.5 trillion.
	And it was expected to house 1.5 million people by 2030.
	And now it is expected to house 300,000 people.
	So yes, that's a bit of a downgrade, isn't it?
	But they're still shooting for that 1.5 million eventually, just not by 2030.
	It's also worth mentioning as well, if you're not going to work in this horrible line dystopia, we are hiring a production administrator.
	So if you know anything about production administration, which I don't, so I can't really tell you much about it, we have a page here which I've unintentionally sabotaged.
	Here are the responsibilities.
	Here are the skills.
	You can pause the video and read those if you wish.
	If you fit the bill and want to work in Swindon for some reason, you can apply for this.
	You will be sharing an office with everyone at Lotus Eaters, so I'm sorry about that.
	It's just one of the parts of the job.
	And yeah, make sure to apply for that.
	So, back to the line.
	Here it is.
	This is one of the concepts.
	This is the concept of it.
	This is like someone's giving a five-year-old... Like a long ruler.
	Yeah.
	Some sort of design skills or something like that.
	We're just going to build a big line city.
	I know Cities Skylines is fun and everything, but you don't need to do this sort of thing.
	Even there, it doesn't work.
	I'm sure you'll get onto it, but is there any utility in it?
	Is there a reason for it?
	Other than to just be avant-garde?
	Probably environmentalism or something mental like that.
	It's gotta be.
	I think it is.
	I think the idea is because there's no cars involved, the transportation is just gonna span in one big line.
	I think that's the idea.
	It's in a line because that's what's most efficient for the public transport.
	Okay.
	Which is interesting.
	But here's another concept picture that is basically going to be two mirrors and you're going to live inside the mirrors and there's going to be greenery in the inside of this presumably very cool thing.
	Maybe it's mirrored to keep the insides cold because it's the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.
	But the idea is it's gonna look.
	Oh, this is another part of it.
	Sorry So this is a sort of subterranean thing I thought it was underwater from the filters on it, but they're also going to be building stuff underground as well For some reason it looks like a halo map for some reason And here's another one of inside the line for oh I would like it if they had that much greenery, I don't think that's actually going to happen.
	It's like I Am Legend, or District 9, but it's just as bad.
	They're trying to go for a sort of Gardens of Babylon style thing maybe.
	Reminds me of a more verdant Megacity One from Judge Dredd.
	Do you know what I think it is?
	Like the Burj Dubai, or the Burj Khalifa, whatever it's called, you know, that biggest building in the world.
	The Arabs, or people from the Emirates, got effectively endless money and no taste.
	So they go to a design company and say design us something sort of quote-unquote brilliant and cutting-edge or edgy and avant-garde whatever you want and and yeah we've got endless money to throw at it and someone at the very top in the Saudi Arabian royal family I imagine gave it this this lion city the green light but the problem is obviously it's absurd Yeah.
	So let's have a look at some more pictures.
	So here's another one.
	This one looks very different than the past one.
	Perhaps a little bit more realistic in that it doesn't look like it's overgrown.
	I mean, you're going to have a city full of gardeners to keep that other one going.
	Yeah, how many gardeners are they going to employ for this?
	Or is it all artificial?
	So, you know, it's a nice concept.
	It's a little bit idealistic.
	Is it a mall?
	It does a little bit.
	Waterton's going to look terrible.
	And here's another one.
	This one really does look like a Halo map here.
	Blade Runner.
	It does, yeah.
	The Death Star.
	It does, yeah.
	I think you can see Darth Vader.
	Oh no, that's just a woman in a burka.
	And here's another one.
	This, you know, is this... I forgot what that name is now.
	Is it Destiny?
	Oh yeah.
	It kind of looks a bit like that, doesn't it?
	I've not even played it so I don't know.
	I don't understand this though.
	So you get views.
	But I thought it was one big line.
	I think they've also got these other projects that connect to the line.
	So there's, you've got like a hotel, and there's like a marina, they're building an island, and all sorts of things.
	I'm just giving a sort of quick overview because we went into all the details and the plans two years ago, and I think they're trying to stick to those.
	Here's another one, here's a hotel, this looks very Dune-like, doesn't it?
	It does look like Dune, yeah.
	Particularly that one in the middle.
	Star Wars, Tatooine.
	The sand people are easily startled, but they'll see me back in greater numbers.
	The thing in the middle looks like a termite mound.
	It does a little bit, doesn't it?
	That is horrible.
	It is a bit garish, isn't it?
	The problem with these things is you're still in the middle of the Arabian desert, one of the most inhospitable places in the world.
	You've presaged what I was actually going to look at here, so can we tell the difference between Mars and the site in which they're building this?
	Top right was definitely Mars.
	I recognise that.
	Yes.
	This one I would say is Saudi Arabia because it's got grass on it.
	That's a pretty easy one.
	This next one, that's Mars.
	I recognise the picture.
	Can I say Mars?
	Yeah, I don't have the answers here.
	I think it's probably Mars.
	This one has a map.
	It's gotta be Mars.
	Not in a spacesuit.
	Gotta be Mars.
	That's a Martian there.
	Yeah.
	This is what NASA doesn't want you to know, right?
	And yeah, the point being that it's not a very hospitable place.
	If you do visit this city, you do live there, you go for a walk, you're gonna need a whole host of equipment You're going to need a desert suit, you're going to need to know about sand worms.
	A steel suit, yeah.
	You're immediately in a survival situation if you walk outside the Lion City.
	Great.
	That's what everyone wants, right?
	It's ridiculous, isn't it?
	It's like the outback in Australia.
	There's a reason why there's loads of things built there, loads of infrastructure.
	It's not a good idea.
	Yeah, it's not a good idea.
	There's nothing there because no one wants to live there.
	And to be fair, closer to the coast, where a lot of the development's going on, it does look a bit more habitable.
	There's water there, although still It doesn't look particularly nice, does it?
	I'm feeling odd just looking at it, to be honest.
	Yeah.
	There's accounts of people going to Jeddah.
	Like, look, I knew I'd bring up Lawrence of Arabia sooner rather than later.
	Here we go, of course.
	Get this elephant out of the room.
	But you're going to Jeddah, which is obviously in Saudi Arabia on the coast, on the Hejaz, just even for people that are used to living in Egypt, it's sort of horribly hot.
	It's very, very difficult to live and survive there.
	There's a few places in the world, isn't there?
	Phoenix, Arizona is one of the hottest places.
	Again, if you don't have aircon everywhere, if you're not used to it, It's a difficult place.
	Is that where Death Valley is in America?
	Death Valley is in Nevada.
	But it's the same part of the world.
	Absolutely the same part of the world.
	But yeah, there's lots of places in the world where if you don't know what you're doing, you're in trouble quite quickly, aren't there?
	Very, very cold places like Northern Norway.
	Fact check live.
	According to Google, at least, Death Valley is in California.
	Oh, is it?
	Yeah, there we go.
	I always thought it was Nevada.
	Oh, I stand corrected.
	It makes us good at our craft, that sort of thing.
	there we go so yes we do fact check ourselves at low seaters and uh you know there'd be a fedora tipping actually guy out you know there would be actually it makes us good at our craft that sort of thing so one of the first news stories to come out of this i found quite amusing so the boss one of the bosses of this project was accused of racism misogyny and corruption and Here we go.
	I thought it would have been racism, misogyny and sexism, but no, it's a new word, this one.
	Wait, so a Saudi guy was accused of racism?
	No!
	Oh, okay.
	It's the Westerners they should build it.
	I'm going to read a little bit about this because he said some things that are very offensive and definitely not funny.
	I don't want to hear it.
	No laughing.
	You're not allowed to laugh at what he says because it's obviously very offensive.
	Of course you can't laugh.
	Wayne Borg is the guy who said this.
	He's the managing director of the media.
	And I'm going to read from this article.
	In one incident after three workers on the project had died, Borg said, a whole bunch of people die so we've got to have a meeting on Sunday night.
	Okay, bit frustrated perhaps that they've got to have a meeting about it.
	And then he went on to call a South Asian migrant worker at Neom an effing moron, adding, that is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.
	I heard that, Samson.
	I'm sure that was just a cough.
	The comments were made on a phone call, and the audio of which was obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
	I don't know why the Wall Street Journal's trying to rat out people working on projects in Saudi Arabia.
	In another conversation regarding the workers' deaths, Borg said, you can't train for stupidity, and the white blokes are at the top of the tree.
	In a separate incident, Borg was summoned by Human Resources after calling a black female employee a black S.
	Right.
	And in a message to the employees in question, Borg reportedly said, I miss you and your arse is better than Beyonce's, with kiss emojis, according to a summary of the employee's grievances.
	In a meeting about the incident, Borg referred to that effing episode I have with that black B word.
	There's a lot of cohesion in the workplace.
	And there's one final thing.
	According to other audio clips, Borg refer to women from the Gulf as transvestites and they lead jokes about Islam and sexual positions.
	Sam's is cracking up if the mics aren't picking that up.
	Our producer's actually cracking up.
	It seems like a guy who's just off the leash, doesn't care what he says.
	Well he's in Saudi Arabia, there's no hate speech laws.
	Well, not like those ones anyway.
	Still, you never know when the New York, what was it, the New York Times?
	Wall Street Journal.
	Wall Street Journal.
	You never know when the Wall Street Journal is tapping your phone.
	You never know.
	They're probably all the time, isn't it?
	Everyone's phone.
	I wouldn't be surprised.
	So, they've replaced this guy now with someone called Michael Lynch.
	Not the one that you know.
	The British one.
	He's some other guy.
	He's a veteran of arts and culture and an executive of some kind.
	Isn't the one in Britain to do with the railways or unions or something like that?
	So think Commie.
	I don't know.
	But anyway, that's not the only controversy that they've faced.
	Saudi forces are told to kill people who refuse to move from the land that the line's going to be in.
	And apparently, they've already killed one person who refused to move.
	They just shot them.
	Mostly peaceful eco project.
	It is, yes.
	It's good for the environment.
	Randomly, well not randomly, but shooting people who don't want to be kicked out of their homes for a vanity project.
	Well, that's the classic House of Al Saud.
	Again, back in the very beginning of the 20th century, there was basically a three or even four-way civil war between various, what were then, Bedouin tribes of Saudi Arabia.
	And the House of Al Saud just happened to win, essentially.
	But yeah, completely cutthroat warlord killer types.
	So the interesting thing here is lots of Westerners are sort of going to be penned to be moved into these projects because of course there's the line and the other things as well.
	Sort of these influencer types and celebrities and things like that.
	And of course they're going to be moved into these nice modern futuristic built on the skeletons of the dead residents of the peninsula, which sort of casts a bit of a bad light on the whole thing, that people have to be shot after they've moved out of their homes to build this, this madness.
	Are you allowed to drink in there?
	I don't know.
	Because obviously, Muslim countries are drier, but usually in the Emirates or Qatar or something, if you're in the hotel or whatever, you're allowed to still.
	I think that's what a lot of Westerners, Europeans anyway, that's one of their first questions.
	What sort of laws are going to be?
	Well, I'm guessing it would be the same.
	I would say so, yeah.
	Well, I think it's a way to get people sort of invested in Saudi Arabia.
	Of course, they want to move away from oil, and so they want to turn into a tourism hub.
	But if you look at the average temperatures of Saudi Arabia, I don't see that catching on.
	A lot of Europeans don't necessarily like Saudi Arabian level heat.
	And they have been moving people in eventually, but here's a picture of the construction.
	Oh Here we go.
	Just a fleet of diggers digging in barren wasteland Whereabouts actually interest is it in Saudi Arabia?
	I'll be going to the very end I'll be going to a map and you can actually see the line carved into the earth from the satellite from Google Earth and Here's a video.
	I'm not going to, you know, play the audio to save you, but here's someone moving into... This isn't actually the line itself.
	As you can see, it's not a line.
	It is what amounts to, you know, a Holiday Inn hotel looking thing.
	But this is the village for the people involved in constructing it.
	And this has been doing the rounds and lots of people have been saying, well, the line looks very different.
	It's not actually the line.
	It's people being moved in.
	But if this is what the construction village that's meant to entice these Western titans of industry that are going to create this, you know, epoch-defining structure looks like, then it's not going to be that good, really.
	It looks like a generic Western hotel.
	She better not be caught outside without a bloke with her.
	Or her head uncovered.
	She better walk behind him.
	I think for these villages, because they're just European strongholds basically.
	She doesn't have to worry about driving, I guess.
	That's true, yeah.
	Well they have it all within walking distance, funnily enough, which they've sort of accounted for that.
	And here's another one, it's sort of Showing her evening in the desert as this mother.
	I think her husband must be working on the project and she's sort of a stay-at-home wife which, you know, fair enough.
	Looking after her kids.
	Can't fault her for that.
	Well done, if anything.
	But this is what's being shared about the project at the minute.
	This is what is circulating.
	It just looks like a regular western hotel at the minute.
	Obviously they're not going to put all of their effort into the construction village, but there's nothing really to write home about.
	There's some fancy lifts perhaps, but it's not that interesting.
	They're kafir, right?
	They're non-believers, aren't they?
	I mean, is it really the right land for them to be in?
	Well, it's interesting, you know.
	Sorry, I'm going to mute that quickly.
	But you get the idea.
	There's hardly anyone around as well, which I found interesting.
	Like, it's basically empty.
	It's sort of for show.
	It has a sort of North Korean vibe, where there are various people sort of milling about, sort of making it look busy.
	But a lot of things are set up for the Westerners.
	To be nice, but you get you can see actual Saudi Arabians knocking about in the background there So maybe it's just a bad time video.
	It's too clinical.
	Hmm because I you see these types of hotels and places Anyway, sometimes even in I guess you could argue like in the UK you see these types of cul-de-sacs or blocks new builds It's too clinical.
	There's no life to it.
	There's nothing.
	It's just you're taking something with no life and then just plonking it somewhere with hot weather.
	It's not bad.
	It's not awful.
	It's just a little bit bland, isn't it?
	A bit bland, yes.
	And I mean, for a construction village, I suppose it's not too bad.
	So you can't really fault it, but I wanted to show it and sort of correct some of the narratives.
	And she does confirm here on her TikTok that, I hate that I have to say that, That it's the construction camp and not the actual city itself.
	A Potemkin construction camp.
	Look at how clinical that looks.
	To be honest, with being really rude about it, I'd probably rather live there than Swindon.
	Oh, it's not even close.
	I'm less likely to get stabbed there for no reason than in Swindon town centre.
	Swindon feels a bit like Jeddah these days, doesn't it?
	And here's one construction camp.
	Here's another one side by side.
	So you can kind of see that this is what's being... the sort of social media posts and the influencers being flown in are showing the lifestyle on the camp.
	That's what's going on.
	And you can see they've got like sports fields and there's some swimming pools up there maybe.
	You know, it doesn't look that bad.
	It's okay.
	It's just a bit soulless and bland.
	It's sort of a bit like Dubai, right?
	You know, people perhaps might like to visit, but it is sort of taking the worst artificial aspects of Western society and making it all about that, isn't it?
	It's sort of very consumerist, very artificial, very superficially neat and tidy and nice, but there's no soul to it.
	Even just looking at it, from the videos to the giant magnifying glass running along the peninsula, For me I'm getting cabin fever even just looking at it like you're just so boxed in and it just oh no no don't go outside no no you don't don't go out of the area it's unsafe or it's you know it's dangerous.
	It has been pointed out as well there are six cricket grounds so that might well be for the foreign workers they're bussing in because a certain type of person the Saudis usually fly in to do a lot of their construction And those people tend to really like cricket.
	And spoiler alert, it's not the English.
	Just throwing that one out there.
	Six though.
	Yes.
	That's interesting, isn't it?
	I only ever need one at a time.
	But maybe two are absolutely... No, six is steely.
	Since she posted these videos, her account has gone private, and if you search her name... Oh, it did come up in the searches, but you can't actually watch these anymore.
	I imagine she's probably been told by the Saudis not to post because it's received criticism.
	So you can see, you can't view them anymore since they've been searched.
	And there have been other people as well, I'm just gonna...
	Have a look at some pictures.
	There you go.
	Another lady wearing a lot of makeup.
	Wandering around, very generic.
	It looks sort of like if someone were to create a sort of sci-fi version of an American suburb.
	It's like something out of Edward Scissorhands.
	But yeah, it's a similar sort of thing.
	Here they are, people sort of selling the lifestyle of people moving out there.
	She saw the words climate crisis.
	I was like, oh, she's switched off.
	Here's a BBC journalist, a sports journalist, I think she also works for other publications, sort of doing a photo op here, outside of it, trying to make it look all glamorous and candid.
	Are you allowed to show that much neck, arm and ankle?
	I don't think so.
	Are you really allowed to do that?
	Good question.
	And because we've been very mean, I thought it'd be nice to try and find something that makes it look nice.
	Roads?
	I don't want the horrible pop music though, sorry.
	There we go.
	Oh there's a burger van!
	We've got plenty of those here.
	Despite looking very empty relative to the infrastructure, it doesn't look terrible.
	That's a nice sunset.
	You've got to give it that.
	Oh yeah, look at that.
	I'm sure that greenhouse is going to be lovely in the Saudi sun.
	But there we go.
	If I had enough friends and family I probably would rather live there than Rumford.
	There's even moisture there on the street.
	I mean, yeah, it just would probably get a little bit boring after a while, wouldn't it?
	I mean, after you get bored of cricket.
	Dino heaven.
	Dino heaven.
	That's what Samson says.
	And yeah, I think it's sort of like Dubai in that if you're sort of new money, you can afford to go on holiday and you don't mind vapidity, then it might be a nice place to go.
	But I wanted to end off the segment, just have a quick look.
	So it's sort of the Saudi Arabian counterpart to the Sinai Peninsula here.
	So you might be able to start seeing where the line is.
	Where is it?
	So it's a bit easier to see it here.
	That's where it is.
	And you can see the line.
	There we go.
	And you can see it going all the way along here.
	So this is one of the other projects that they're doing down here.
	They're doing, I think it's an island hotel thing.
	And it looks a little bit grim and dense, personally.
	But it's meant to be a sort of playpen for billionaires where they can park their yachts up in the big dock and have an island where they can have everything catered for.
	There's another one here.
	This one looks a little bit nicer.
	It's gonna be like along here you can sort of see the line it's a shame that the quality is not great but you can follow it along and then it goes through here and then it goes through the mountains They're only getting a couple of hundred thousand now instead of the millions.
	Well 300,000 yeah you can see here they're digging out the foundations because you know it's was it 500 meters tall so it's gonna need some big foundations they're also digging through what is effectively mountains You know to give you an idea.
	This is the sort of terrain They're digging around a giant giant rock.
	Yeah So yes, it seems like one of the biggest vanity project.
	Yeah in human history.
	Yeah You can zoom in and see what's going on.
	Obviously this was taken at some point in 2024 I'm not sure when it was so it might be further along now, but you can see effectively just a line in the sand is what it is now there's a fishing spot nice oh yeah let's have a look you can't go there because you're in the line that looks all right to be fair you know a bit of a trek from the line you'll probably die of exposure by the time you get to the fishing spot but uh there we go as long as you're not caught you know holding hands or kissing your fiance or wife or girlfriend i think
	because of course then you're in trouble that's true it's But what do you reckon?
	Good idea?
	Bad idea?
	Terrible.
	It's absurd.
	Of course it's absurd.
	Terrible.
	Would you visit?
	I hate it!
	The thing is, do you remember they tried to do the sea reclamation thing in the Emirates?
	Oh, it went terribly, didn't it?
	Where you fill in the sea and make little fake islands, completely artificial islands.
	Oh, right.
	And for a while, lots of rich people, like footballers and stuff, would buy one up before it's even been built.
	Because they thought it would be Some of the best real estate in the world.
	It would be so desirable.
	And then it turns out that it's not at all because no one wants to live there.
	They've got to continually dump sand on it to keep it even staying there.
	And who really wants to live ultimately in the Emirates or in an Islamic country if you're not a Muslim?
	Who wants that?
	It's really repressive.
	You can put all the pretty ladies in makeup and summer dress that you want but we all know the reality is it's a very repressive regime so no one wants to live there really.
	I mean even LA there's the old joke like no one wants to live in downtown LA there's nothing to do downtown.
	Right.
	So even LA hmm right people even the San Francisco until fairly recently a paradise city but now it's a bit crappy and literally shitty so no everyone's just flooding away no one wants to live there now so in order to make people flood somewhere in the hundreds of thousands or in a million people it has to be genuinely genuinely desirable and the middle of Arabia isn't I wholeheartedly agree.
	But I thought it'd be good to have an update on this because I've been keeping an eye on it for years now and I will be keeping an eye on it continuing into 2030 at this point because I don't think it's going to get to its target.
	I don't think there's going to be many people living in it in six years time, to be honest.
	Should go there.
	As if it's just a line in the sand at the minute.
	Should go there with a GoPro.
	Yeah, Carl, make it happen.
	But yeah, there's your update.
	It looks bad.
	I've got a bunch of comments to read here.
	So, lots of vids have been made explaining details of why these cities will be nightmarish to live in.
	Hopefully the influencers will move there so we can watch the trash take itself out.
	Here, here.
	Six cricket grounds, Saudi Arabia approaches city planning like SimCity players, min-maxing recreation scores.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I'm not surprised the guy was ratted out to the newspaper with co-workers like Mohammed Bin Affended and Imam Bin Sohi.
	Bo, you talk about it being an immediate survival situation outside as if it's a bug for an autocratic regime, it's a feature to keep them in their place.
	That's a fair point.
	Hang on, why not send the refugees to Saudi Arabia?
	They have need for a massive labour force and the housing is being provided.
	I'm sure the Saudis will even let the families come.
	Good point.
	Not if you've seen their border policy.
	They shoot people en masse and the line is the construction of a real life rat utopia experiment.
	That was the title of our initial segment, yes.
	So, you know, great minds think alike.
	Anyway, sorry, I went on for a bit longer than I intended there.
	Would you like a mouse mat as well?
	Speaking of mice...
	I think I'm alright.
	Okay.
	No worries.
	All set?
	Okay.
	I don't know about you guys, modern art sucks.
	I agree, yeah, of course.
	Beau?
	Yeah, nearly all abstract art is a joke.
	A bad joke.
	I find that, you know, you come across some art that you go, yeah, that's quite nice, but then you forget the artist's name by the end of the day and there's nothing that appealing to me anymore, to be honest, because of the times that we're living in.
	So you may have heard the news recently about the fourth plinth In London.
	But before we go ahead, we have a magazine.
	It's not just any magazine.
	It is Islander Magazine.
	And it is a very good magazine.
	It's got lots of good things in it.
	It's very aesthetically pleasing.
	It's a beautiful magazine.
	And yes, we've got lots of good authors in it.
	We have Carl Benjamin, Dr. Nima Parvini, Morgoth's Review, Roeg Nationalist, Marcus Follin, Dave Green, Stefan Molyneux, Christopher Jolliffe, something like that.
	I don't know how to pronounce his name.
	And lots of other people as well.
	Some surprises in there.
	So if you want to get this for a limited time, because we did the first edition.
	It did very well.
	It's no longer for sale.
	You can't get this magazine anymore.
	It is not available anywhere.
	So if you want to get this limited edition, very high quality product, Buy it now before it's out of the store.
	Beautifully done.
	Speaking of something not so beautiful, however, let's take a look at the fourth Plinth artwork.
	The Guardian have written a lovely article about it, of course.
	London's fourth Plinth artwork aims to unite trans community around the world.
	Trafalgar Square piece by Mexican artist Teresa Margoles is made of masks depicting faces of transgender and non-binary people and as you can see there it's just on top of the plinth with lots of people's faces on it.
	But normally when people wear a mask, I'm going to be careful what I say here, You are embodying something that is not your usual self.
	Yes.
	And normally masks express a certain significance of hiding one's real identity.
	Like an alter ego.
	Yeah, something like that.
	Normally it's sort of you dress up for an occasion.
	Something like that.
	Well, that's correct, Wayne.
	We all wear masks.
	Metaphorically speaking.
	Very good.
	I hope people got that reference.
	I got it.
	I'm completely mad.
	That's so ugly!
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's just one of the ugliest things.
	Yeah.
	It's a collection of plasticine... Is that plasticine?
	It looks like plasticine masks.
	Are they death masks?
	It says, a towering cuboid made of more than 300 masks depicting the faces of transgender and non-binary people, this year's fourth plinth artwork has been described as a piece designed to quote, unite the trans community around the world.
	The Mexican artist Teresa Margoles was flanked by members of her country's trans community as Mil Veces Un Instante, I think I've said that right, a thousand times in an instant, it's called, was unwrapping in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday.
	Now obviously this has been doing the rounds as it would you know putting the fourth plinth as a just faces of trans i'm trying to be careful with my words uh transgender people and the non-binaries um i don't get it sorry i i'm just gonna i don't get it so what was the actual purpose of this as stated by the artist of course not the actual trans community so you know how are people united by this statue exactly
	Well it says each of the masks that make up of Mil Vecis Un Instante has a name and features traces of the person on whom it was based with lipstick smears and false eyelashes visible on the work.
	I mean they're digging themselves their own hole, if I'm totally honest.
	I believe that is the artist in front of it.
	She doesn't look too happy.
	Might I point that out?
	Is it a she?
	I don't want to speculate just in case because we're not allowed to in case we get arrested.
	Schrodinger's artist.
	Oh there you go, there's a close-up.
	It's very... Has it been sterilised?
	I think it's a public health...
	It'd be a public health hazard.
	I'm sort of reminded of a certain scene in The Silence of the Lambs.
	Leather faces is not his fine work.
	But then I thought, well I haven't really, I don't really know much about sort of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
	I'm sure you guys do a lot more and like a bit of the history about it because I know that that has been left blank after a certain someone came into the country.
	You know about this more than I do, I think, Beau.
	Well, yeah, just obviously there's Trafalgar Square with Nelson's Column in the middle.
	That's it, yeah.
	And the other three, what are they?
	George IV, the Prince Regent, Sir Henry Havelock and Charles Napier.
	So great, all of them great sort of Victorian, or obviously the Prince Regent, pre-Victorian heroes.
	And then there's one corner, the fourth plinth, where they put other things on it.
	I think was it not that long ago, I think maybe under Ken Livingstone, when they decided they would just rotate whatever's on that fourth plinth.
	They'll just keep rotating it.
	And of course, immediately, because it was already the late 90s, early 2000s.
	And under a red Ken, a communist, immediately put something disgusting and degenerate and perverted on it where possible.
	So for example, there's just been loads of different sculptures put on it and they're nearly always revolting.
	And ugly.
	Nearly always.
	And this sort of takes the biscuit.
	For me, everything about that is alien.
	Of course it is.
	It's a Mexican artist with the faces of Mexican people put in that cube which is alien to the English aesthetic.
	Everything about it is weird and wrong and doesn't fit.
	I agree.
	But that's why though.
	You ask why?
	Why?
	Well that's why.
	Because it's deliberate.
	It's deliberately subversive.
	It's deliberately, I think, to juxtapose people like Havelock and the Prince Regent and Napier.
	And of course it's also right in front of the National Gallery.
	Or is it the National Portrait Gallery?
	They're next door to each other.
	No, it's the National Gallery.
	Which is this great sort of classical edifice.
	It looks like the front of the Parthenon or whatever.
	Sort of.
	Again, just classical.
	Classical lines.
	Easy on the eye.
	And so the commies have got an opportunity to put something disgusting in the middle of all of that.
	Like the perfect symmetry of Trafalgar Square.
	So yeah, let's put something gross and weird there.
	There's already enough disgusting things in London, as is.
	Yes, true.
	You mentioned the walkie-talkie in the last segment, that's one.
	Well, Sadiq Khan and Westminster... I guess it's sort of Westminster Council, I don't know, it might not be, but... Yeah, it's just completely overrun by...
	Weirdos and freaks that are going to, you know, if they could, if they would, they would rip down Nelson's Column.
	They would rip down the other three statues.
	They would replace anything that reminds us of our heritage and history.
	They would do away with it.
	Sweep it away and replace it with something freakish, if they could.
	But at the moment all they control is that fourth plinth, so that's what they do.
	Well, I thought then we could have a broader discussion a bit about art.
	Contemporary art, modern art.
	As I've given away at the start of the segment, I hate it.
	I hate all of it, actually.
	There's nothing that I really like, actually.
	And I'm, you know, I watched We'll talk about it at the end, but I watched Roger Scruton's documentary Why Beauty Matters, I believe it's called.
	It's a very important documentary because he goes through modern art and how it's just been completely perversed, it's subverted completely.
	And I wanted to go through some of the top 10 most influential contemporary British artists according to this website, Angela Edwards, and just see if they're any good, really.
	I mean, already, I don't know what that is.
	If you squint, you can almost make out something.
	There's a moon, water, something else.
	And then a thief's dream of nonsense done by someone who isn't any good at art.
	There you go.
	That's contemporary artists.
	The top 10... I don't know who this is.
	Tracy Emin.
	Born in Croydon, 1963.
	She's considered one of the young British artists who rose to prominence in the 90s.
	She's quite famous.
	She once did an installation which was just her unmade bed.
	Oh yes, we'll be getting on to that.
	That is the same woman.
	She's a moron, yeah.
	Francis Bacon is another one, obviously born in Ireland.
	Not the Francis Bacon.
	There's two Francis Bacons.
	One's good, one's less so.
	I mean, can you make out what those are on the right?
	Yeah, they're nightmarish visions of someone who isn't very good at art, again.
	Anyway, didn't...
	What's his name?
	Hieronymus Bosch already do that sort of thing with the Garden of Earthly Delights and things like that.
	That was what, 13th century?
	Where he was creating these weird creatures and all that sort of thing?
	He's been there and done it about 700 years.
	Me and Josh did a piece of content ages ago, didn't we?
	Like two years ago or something?
	Talking a deep dive long-form conversations about modern art and we went through all this and one of my observations is that it usually boils down to, I talked about Rothko a fair bit in that, what it boils down to is the reality is these are people that can't do fine art.
	No.
	They're not capable of it.
	People always argue with me about that with Rothko.
	Oh, no, look at his early stuff.
	He was actually good.
	No, he wasn't.
	No, he wasn't.
	His contemporaries said he was very poor as a draftsman, being able to draw, essentially.
	So you end up doing crap.
	Weird stuff like that.
	And then talking big about it.
	Exactly.
	And if there's enough dupes to buy into it and actually buy it, then you can make a living that way.
	But don't ask me to buy into the nonsense.
	And it's usually after you're dead.
	It's usually when you make the most.
	You know, I like Silent Hill, stuff like that.
	All the weird creatures in that and the artwork in that.
	I can appreciate that.
	But I wouldn't want it on my walls.
	Is it the same?
	Yeah, I wouldn't want it on my walls, no.
	I think it's at least interesting, like weird creatures.
	I can kind of humour that a little bit more.
	We actually talked about this one, didn't we?
	David Hockney.
	Born in Bradford, attended Bradford College of Art from 53 to 57.
	Mandatory army service, influential figure in the pop art movement with paintings and installations like The Splash, A Bigger Splash and American Collectors.
	See, they're not all the same.
	If you look, that Hockney painting, it actually exhibits that he is okay, if he wants to be.
	Right.
	He's obviously made the conscious decision not to be.
	There are some examples.
	Someone like Picasso.
	He decided by the end of his life anyway, he completely abandoned good art.
	But he was capable of it.
	I think Jackson Pollock.
	Again, was capable, deliberately chose not to.
	So there's two different types.
	Do you think it's laziness?
	Well, I think there's two different types.
	There's someone like Hockney or Picasso who made a deliberate decision.
	Then there's people that were never good at it, never good artists in the first place, like Rothko.
	Yeah.
	So I actually make a distinction between those different types of people.
	Like, if you ask Tracey Emin to make something photo quality with oils on canvas, she wouldn't be, I'm sure, She wouldn't be able to do it.
	She can't even make her bed.
	Right.
	Sam.
	Anyway.
	She really captures the lifelessness of her eyes.
	Yeah.
	Well, there to be fair.
	This one's Jenny Saville, unfortunate surname.
	Yeah, it's too close to... I feel a bit sorry for her for that.
	Yeah, it's not her fault.
	She has become renowned for her paintings of fleshly women, which often include self-portraits, artists exploring the physicality of the female body and has been compared to... is it Lucian Freud?
	Is that how you say it?
	Lucian?
	Yeah.
	In her style of painting.
	You can tell she's got some skill, some ability, but look how narcissistic though.
	i don't know see the one that lived in portugal where madeleine mccann maybe it's one of the other threads anyway um you can say you can tell she's got some skill some ability but how narcissistic though what just what a narcissist that's that's how i feel about most artists anyway really like Like, majority of them.
	And I believe that... Oh, no.
	We've got some more Damien Hirst.
	Tasteless.
	Just someone's skull, but... Funny thing about Damien Hirst is he often actually admits these sorts of things.
	Yeah.
	I've seen him say about his own work occasionally.
	Yeah, it's sort of the Emperor's New Clothes.
	It's funny that people take me this seriously.
	Oh, interesting.
	Not always, though.
	It depends what mood you catch him in.
	But he's...
	Yeah.
	But that's the funny paradox about it though, isn't it?
	Because you do anti-art, let's say, and it becomes artistic, it becomes part of that.
	Like the can of... S. Oh, yes.
	Yeah, like that.
	I thought you were going to talk about the can of Campbell's soup.
	Oh, that's the pop art, isn't it?
	No, we're talking about the can of literal...
	Alright.
	VCs.
	I don't know if you've talked about that in our series.
	I've watched that from my memory.
	Sorry to bring it back up.
	Selling his own excrement.
	Another one.
	There you go, Lucian Freud.
	Grandfather was Sigmund Freud.
	Became one of the founding fathers of contemporary era, so he's kind of to blame really, in a way.
	Well, Freud wasn't good for psychology and he's not good for art.
	There you go.
	State of that, Rich Hamilton.
	Never heard of him.
	See what is produced there on the right-hand side?
	Yeah, like what's... Okay, that is a nonsense.
	If you take that seriously, it's a practical joke that's on you if you take it seriously.
	Yeah, I could have produced that at two years old.
	It's not difficult.
	Don't know what that is.
	Barbara Hepworth.
	Sort of organic sculpting, it looks like.
	Abstract sculpture.
	It's the kind of thing that rich people would have.
	Like a large foyer.
	Oh, this has got to be Banksy.
	Arguably, I'm going to really upset people with this.
	Arguably the most overrated... I don't like Banksy at all.
	I used to when I was growing up, when I was a kid.
	Because I thought he was so anti-Semitism, so cool.
	And then you look back and you go...
	Is it though?
	It's very pro-establishment and also I don't think graffiti is good.
	I think it's a public nuisance and I think he encourages people to go out and graffiti nonsense everywhere.
	The fact that people carry water for him is ridiculous because all you're doing is making a stencil and spraying paint through it.
	Yeah.
	I mean I could go further and say I don't even see graffiti as art at all really.
	That's fair enough.
	I don't either.
	in everything he is yeah i i mean i could go further and say i don't even see graffiti as art at all really that's fair enough i don't either i don't see it as a lot of it's like tagging for gang stuff and oh yeah you've being rebellious for the sake of it There's nothing artistic there.
	This is a conspiracy theory of course.
	He is 100%, because of the work that he's done over the years, the decades, and never been caught, never been charged, never been arrested, can still retain his identity.
	He's 100% in bed with the establishment.
	100%.
	That's what I believe.
	Well, from all the puff pieces written in The Guardian and all that sort of stuff, talking about Banksy like he's some sort of hero, like a working-class hero or something.
	No, of course not.
	It's just mental.
	So that's Banksy as well.
	And Peter Doig, this guy?
	Is that how you say it?
	Doig?
	I don't know.
	It doesn't deserve the respect.
	That's like a year ten effort, isn't it?
	If I painted that with no artistic skill whatsoever, I'd still be ashamed.
	Yeah.
	There you go.
	Yeah, if someone in year 9 or year 10 class produced that, the teacher should be like, this is borderline whether we're going to put it up or not.
	So we've got a couple of tests we want you to take to find out your mental capabilities.
	Don't worry, you'll be fine.
	But art has had its controversy, of course, and here are ten controversial artworks that have changed history according to Magazine Artland.
	Couldn't even try to pronounce that.
	Apologies, but it's French.
	Édouard Manet.
	Édouard Manet, quite famous.
	Guessing.
	The unbashed presence of nude women surrounded by fully clothed men in the dress of that period scandalised the art world and even public.
	It's funny because in the ancient world, two and a half thousand years earlier, he was able to show a bare-breasted Venus or something.
	But the prudish mid-19th century was not so happy with it.
	Next one is Fountain.
	I think this is a very famous one.
	Yeah, well this was just satire though, wasn't it?
	I was going to mention it earlier.
	This is where the first comes up, the idea that it's a joke.
	It's a satire.
	But the problem is with the art world, they take things so... you have to look for meaning in things, and yeah man, and just... I hate it.
	But you can reject meaning on meaningless things, can't you?
	Exactly.
	That's a problem in the world, is that trying to read too much meaning into things can be detrimental to you, can affect your entire view of reality in a detrimental way.
	It's like beauty and I think we've had a conversation when we were doing the CS Lewis segment about what is beauty?
	What makes something beauty?
	Is it objective?
	Is it subjective?
	Beauty is objective, right?
	Yeah, well, there's an example, I think it's in Wales potentially, of a waterfall that was named three different times.
	It was recognised as significant as warranting a name, and the name translates to waterfall, waterfall, waterfall.
	But the notion is that three different cultures saw it as significant enough to give it a name because it's beautiful, because everyone can identify that a waterfall is beautiful.
	In fact, There have been studies done whereby they showed chimpanzees pictures of waterfalls and chimpanzees look at waterfalls more than other things because supposedly they would have some sort of perception of it.
	So even non-human primates can identify this stuff which seems to indicate that there is something tangible and real to it if non-human animals can do so.
	What's next?
	Picasso.
	The 1937 mural which depicts the massacre of Basque Village as well.
	I wouldn't necessarily call it good art but it's at least interesting.
	It's kind of funny in a sort of silly juvenile way.
	You know, it's terrible art, but as I say, there are examples of Picasso as a much, much younger man.
	It's not like he didn't possess the ability to do something beautiful.
	So he's making a conscious decision there.
	But yeah, I hate it.
	That's disgusting.
	Yeah.
	Next one was Jackson Pollock, which is just... I hate this sort of stuff.
	They're obviously in the jazz age.
	Yeah.
	They've lost their mind at this point.
	Yeah.
	They've bought into the Duchamp fountain thing at this point.
	They're starting to believe their own... Yeah, it's because they're all on LSD.
	They're all on something that, you know, they're trapped in their own minds and it's just ramble.
	And it's jazz.
	Some of the best music.
	That's a visual representation of jazz.
	Yeah, I know, that's the argument.
	Red Hot Chili Peppers, better on smack.
	You know, like, I've heard that.
	I've heard that before.
	They're better when they use an effects pedal.
	You mentioned about the soup cans?
	Yeah.
	See, now it's nothing.
	Now it's sort of self-parody, if that even.
	Yeah.
	And... No.
	No.
	Then you got the real, sort of, well, you got Blasphemy, of course.
	Sure.
	Well, let's move on.
	Just move on from that because it's just... I just get so bored of stuff like that.
	I mean, it's always that.
	It's always... It's always Jesus Christ every single time.
	Well these people are nearly always very, very childlike.
	Yes, childlike mentality.
	And so the idea of breaking a taboo.
	Yeah.
	So I'll put a urinal and call it a fountain and make you pretend that you're looking at a good piece of art.
	Tee hee hee.
	Or we'll make it, we'll have a tin and fill it with actual excrement.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I know, yeah.
	Am I so inventive and funny?
	Look at me.
	We'll ridicule Christ.
	Yeah, it's like nine-year-old stuff.
	Yeah.
	Indeed.
	I've never understood this one.
	The dropping a Han dynasty urn. 1995.
	again because it's a taboo thing yeah no normal person would do that or so so I'll do it and look at me again very very nihilistic narcissistic self-absorbed yeah I thought the Han dynasty collapsed 1,900 years ago I mean I'm not hmm So it's a 200 year old urn.
	Hang on a minute.
	Never mind.
	I get all my dynasties mixed up.
	Maybe there's the hand.
	I've come back more than once.
	Just keep on coming back, the hand.
	And there's the bed one.
	Oh, it's dribble, isn't it?
	Unfortunately, I believe that is not with us anymore.
	I believe it got burnt down.
	Loads of Tracey Evans art was held in a big lock-up somewhere in East London, and it accidentally completely burnt down one time.
	And the world's better off for it.
	I think the bed was in there.
	Real shame, crying shame that.
	Do the Clarkson meme like, oh no!
	Anyways, I don't think my bedroom's ever got that messy in my entire life either, so she's a dirty lady.
	I think there's a used tampon in there at some point.
	Again, just deliberately gross.
	Pretty sure that was an element of it.
	Can you imagine people standing around it, looking at it from different angles?
	Mm, very interesting.
	Mm, mm, mm.
	I can see what she's saying.
	I wish I'd known about this when I was a teenager and my parents would come into my room and say, you need to tidy your room and say, actually, this is art.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Excuse me.
	You're not cultured.
	Well, of course there's- Clip round the ear, probably.
	There's different types of art, of course, and I'm being a bit facetious, I guess, if I say, oh, it's all bad, modern art's all bad.
	You know, like I said earlier, you might find something, a painting or a whatever, a graphic design, that you go, oh, that's very appealing to the eye, I really like that.
	But you forget the artist's name by the end of the day, and you just, you don't really remember it.
	It doesn't have a cultural impact.
	It's not like some of the ones on this timeline, like Renaissance.
	You can point to Renaissance and say it had a cultural significance.
	It had meaning.
	It was impressive.
	You know, I just feel like, well, we know that IQ is dropping.
	So maybe it has a correlation with that.
	Maybe people are getting lazier.
	Well, I think that IQ might be dropping because of migration.
	It's not that, you know, your average European person is getting dumber, necessarily.
	Could go down the fluoride route, I guess.
	We'll leave that for another time, I guess.
	There are some things in modern art which I don't mind.
	It's not everything.
	I don't hate it all out of, just completely out of hand.
	For example, once I went to, I think it must have been the Tate Modern, if I recall, and someone, they'd got like a small shed or an outhouse or something made of wood, and they'd blown it up.
	They put a small amount of dynamite on, and blown it up.
	Then got all the, painstakingly, got all the pieces back together, and then, and it was like an installation.
	- Right. - And put them back together on little sticks Sort of a moment, an instant after the explosion.
	So you could, it was like this outhouse, small shed thing.
	Like, uh, sort of frozen in time just as it exploded.
	And for me that was sort of at least interesting or cool on some level.
	Do you remember who did it?
	No, no.
	Don't remember who did it.
	I don't remember the exact point they were trying to make.
	Yeah.
	I don't, I'm not sure they had one.
	They hate animal shelters.
	But I didn't, I didn't hate it.
	I didn't, right?
	So there are occasionally something, but um... But it doesn't make an impact.
	It's not like a cultural significance.
	No.
	It's like... Yeah.
	But there was something quite new that one of the guys from Lotus actually found.
	And it was a painting of a naked woman sparks police gallery visit.
	So the police actually turned up.
	I'm not, can we show the image?
	Is that... Probably best not to.
	Probably best not to.
	I won't go down.
	Does it have any... has it got nudity in it?
	I mean it's poorly drawn breasts.
	Chewy, Samson, you leave that.
	Can I describe it but not too graphically?
	It's a drawing that's about the height of, I don't know, like a 4 foot 11, someone who's 4 foot 11 or something, like a child or something that can see it.
	It's that high.
	We're just going to check to see if we can show it.
	The sensors.
	The ultimate arbiter.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	All right.
	You can have a little look.
	You can see that.
	So to describe it, it's a woman with her legs open, but the eye view is very low down, I think, and it's poorly drawn, but it had the police called to it, and the artist... The Sharia police?
	Probably.
	She chose the painting for the window partly because of its proportions.
	Soon after it went on display on Monday, she said she was called back to the gallery after reports of abuse from some members of the public.
	On Thursday, she said police told her to remove it from the window and place it further inside the gallery.
	I think that that's probably fair enough.
	I mean, I don't mind this sort of thing being in a gallery or, you know, it's time and place, isn't it?
	You can't be too prudish but at the same time if it's on like a high street and you've got like a gallery shop and you're walking by, I don't think it's necessary.
	No, it's not necessary.
	But I saw that she'd written a note in front of the graphic bit, let's just say, where it says some people may be offended by the painting.
	This is not corn in the window.
	We hear what you say, and we would like to open up a dialogue about this issue.
	Oh, I hate that.
	I hate people that are like that, I'm sorry.
	We need to open up a- who talks like that?
	What are you, an AI?
	I want to open up a dialogue, just because I painted some really poor image of someone showing their This is someone just absolutely desperate for any sort of attention, isn't it?
	A painfully obvious cry for attention of any stripe.
	And by the way, we should not say her name or where it is.
	Just for that.
	But of course, I don't think we can show the swear word, of course, but I re-watched the clip that I posted two years ago, I think this was.
	Where Michael Craig Martin, who was showing Roger Scruton, Sir Roger Scruton, who's sadly no longer with us, said the artist's function is to make someone see something as beautiful, something that nobody thought was beautiful up until now.
	And Sir Roger Scruton said wittingly back Right, like a can of S, in reference to the can of excrement that was used as anti-art, I believe, in the 60s?
	It was around that sort of time.
	Around that sort of decade?
	French artist, I think it was.
	Yes.
	Of course it was!
	I'll double check that, actually.
	But if anyone hasn't seen it, the documentary is called Why Beauty Matters and it was released- Italian, sorry.
	Italian?
	Yeah.
	Interesting.
	Why Beauty Matters by Roger Scruton.
	It came out in 2009 and it's a good insight into how modern art sucks.
	Really, is to be plainly honest.
	I don't mind art.
	I like Renaissance because of its history.
	I like how it looks.
	It's impressive to look at.
	I like art that screams, how did they do that?
	It's like when I watched Blade Runner for the first time and with all the buildings and everything, the sets.
	How did they do that?
	Even the newest Blade Runner with the AI model.
	It was great.
	It was great!
	And I was like, how did they do that?
	I like that it's the mystery behind it.
	How did someone do that?
	Like the sculptures where they, you know, you talk about nude sculptures and how they managed to make the thin sort of dress over nude and things like that so you can see through it.
	It's like see-through but it's all carved in stone.
	It's so impressive and I sit there and I go, well how did they do that?
	But with contemporary art, with modern art, I just think it all sucks.
	That thing's not quite Michelangelo's Pieta.
	No.
	I did it if anyone wants to Google Michelangelo's Pieta.
	Yeah, just a wonder in marble.
	Yeah.
	That actually took obviously So much skill and time and energy.
	But yeah, so yeah, I like things like Caravaggio or Titian or something.
	Yeah, something exactly as you said.
	It's like, how is that even possible?
	I love that.
	In 2D on a bit of canvas.
	How did you even?
	Yeah.
	You know.
	Yes, this is what I was talking about as well.
	That versus the square tin we saw a moment ago.
	That's incredible.
	Look at her hand under his armpit.
	Incredible.
	Look at the expression on her face.
	For a moment, just like she's taking the expression on her face.
	Yeah, quite remarkable.
	Yeah, so it's a shame really, but that's my pitch on why modern art sucks.
	Okay, I wholeheartedly agree.
	So we're not doing too well on time, can we overrun a little bit?
	That's fine, the segment doesn't have to be all that long.
	I can do my segment in 15 or 20 minutes.
	I don't want to miss out on comments because we did the same thing yesterday.
	Oh yes, we've got some chats in.
	So, speaking of art and graffiti, I hope my video comment from yesterday made it.
	Very relevant.
	Quality discussion, thank you.
	I'll come back and re-watch it as stuck in a meeting all day.
	Well, best of luck with that, and I'm sure your comment will be played.
	And modern art, 21st century, is all about making political statements.
	I prefer the absurdist to the outright political.
	And, uh, da-da-da-da-da.
	You cannot convince me that leftists aren't followers of the chaos gods.
	All they do is corrupt and defile.
	We must return to our roots where we venerate the virtuous, beautiful, and the good.
	I very much agree.
	And, uh...
	That fourth plinth thing is like something Slanash would dream up.
	It is, yeah.
	And then they correct themselves and they said, I meant to say Chaos Gods, but I knew what you meant already.
	Don't worry, I've played the Warhammer Total War.
	That's how I know about them.
	Also, I went on to an arts program in uni and at no point was I taught to create true art or improve.
	All we were taught was how to express ourselves and other such nonsense.
	But also, some emotions are more worthy of communication to other people than others.
	If I'm frustrated because I keep on bumping into stuff and I'm being clumsy and stupid, I don't necessarily want to share that with the world because people have enough experience of that already.
	You want to share beautiful things, you want to share emotions and evoke emotions in people that you want the world to have more of.
	Let's just have more Bob Rosses.
	How about that?
	Let's just have more of that.
	That'll be fine.
	Lots of landscapes, lots of happy little trees, that sort of thing.
	If the world was populated only with Bob Rosses, we'd all be fine.
	Yeah, we'd all be great.
	We'd be going to the stars by now.
	If Bob Ross was just the only human possible, we'd be living in a utopia.
	Okay, so I'm going to do a segment all about the illegal invasion happening across the English Channel, but first, I'm under strict orders to shill our magazine, Islander.
	No, I'm happy to do it.
	It's a good magazine, it genuinely is.
	I'm chuffed that I'm even loosely associated with it.
	No, it's great, yeah, and we've got a lot of big names in this one, right?
	Carl, AA, Morgoth, Wren, Stephen Molyneux.
	Not bad.
	You're in it, right?
	Don't tell them that.
	Oh.
	No one will buy it then.
	It's a secret.
	It's not a massive secret.
	It's well good.
	Yeah, even I'm in it.
	And you can buy it now at lotusetus.com forward slash Islander 2.
	Do it.
	Buy it.
	Do it.
	You're doing it.
	Go on.
	You want to buy it?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Do it.
	Elegantly dark.
	Love it.
	Calm down a bit, yeah I know.
	Back to illegal immigration.
	Yeah, so we are being, the British Isles are being invaded, that is the correct word, correct descriptor for it is an invasion by people who don't share our values and haven't got the best in mind for us or our culture or our society.
	That's happening and Matt Goodwin actually made a video or a film About it.
	And I thought if we could play the first minute or two of it and see what Matt's got to say.
	Samson.
	Oh Samson.
	I can do it, don't worry.
	There you go.
	I am Samson now.
	I'm going to tell you something that nobody in Westminster and the corridors of power are going to tell you.
	Britain is being invaded.
	Since 2018, more than 135,000 people have entered Britain illegally.
	Enough to fill a city the size of Exeter.
	And they're joining more than 1.2 million people who have entered the country illegally.
	Enough to fill a city the size of Birmingham.
	Now if you look at Home Office data, 70% of all people coming over on the small boats crossing the channel are young men.
	And they're coming mainly from Muslim countries.
	Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Eritrea.
	This invasion is undermining our laws.
	This invasion is undermining our community.
	It's costing us billions of pounds.
	And most importantly, it's putting the British people and our children at risk.
	Some of the people coming over are genuine refugees, but many are not.
	A not insignificant number are going on to murder, rape, sexually assault and abuse British people.
	I think it's high time somebody called this out, because that's what the British people deserve, honesty and respect.
	Now, throughout history, Britain has always fought off invasions.
	We're one of only a few countries that has not been successfully invaded for about a thousand years.
	So why is it that we can't stop this one?
	Well, the answer is many of the people in the expert class, the politicians, the journalists, the academics, the civil servants, they don't want to stop this invasion.
	They're fully invested in the status quo.
	I don't think that's good enough.
	My name's Matt Goodwin.
	I'm an academic.
	I'm a writer.
	I'm part of a community of more than 50,000 people at Matt Goodwin's Substack who are fed up and frustrated with this status quo.
	We want change.
	Okay, so, I think that was a, it's a good video, go on Twitter or Matt Goodwin stuff and find it and watch it, it's a good video.
	And yeah, it's about high time that we're doing 100, what did you say, 135,000 in the last little while and all in all maybe, you know, up and around a million or more.
	It only went up this morning, yeah.
	No, no, 135,000 people have crossed the channel.
	Oh right, I was looking at the views.
	We've all viewed the video apparently.
	Yeah, every single one.
	So those numbers are astronomical.
	You know, like the Romans invaded us, far less than that.
	The Normans invaded us with a tiny fraction of that number.
	Yeah, something in that order, perhaps, we don't know exactly.
	But even Herman Goering's Luftwaffe didn't have anywhere near those numbers when they had a genuine attempt to gain air superiority over us.
	It's sort of silly, it's absolutely silly numbers and it is an invasion.
	It absolutely is.
	So we just thought we could talk a bit about What's happening, what's going on, what can be done.
	But I just do want to stress before people out there in the comments say, oh illegal invasion is only the tip of the iceberg and it's the legal invasion, the legal immigration which is the real problem.
	I know, I agree, absolutely.
	But for this segment we're just going to focus on the channel and the legal boat people.
	I know that legal immigration is a bigger problem.
	We talked about it yesterday as well so we don't want to...
	And here at Loadseekers, we've called that out many, many, many times.
	I personally have called that out many, many times, so I'm aware.
	But just for this segment, we're just going to talk about the channel.
	And also, for the people who say, what are you going to do about it?
	Well, I've given you a good policy roadmap yesterday.
	I've thought long and hard about it, given you five stages of how to carry it all out, how to deal with both illegal to some extent and mostly the legal migration, and what policies we can do to sort that out in pretty good detail.
	You know, I'm gonna refine it down and then eventually publish that as something that we can push for and rally around and say, we want this and anything less is, you know, treason, basically.
	You're betraying the British people if you do anything less than this.
	I wrote a thing a couple years ago, got in trouble for, with Hope Not Hate, and got deselected from Reform for talking about a roadmap of how to deal with this.
	That was very, very broad strokes of the brush, that was.
	Grand sort of strategy, sort of policy things.
	Steve Laws has written some sort of roadmap thing.
	Seven point plan, yeah.
	Seven point plan, you've written a point plan.
	Matt Goodwin talks at the end, which I'll go into, about a few things that can be done, practical steps, how to go forward.
	So there are things, we don't have to be completely lost and just throw our hands up and say, oh, it's a fait accompli, nothing can be done.
	We just have to accept it ongoing forever.
	No, not necessarily.
	There are things that could be done and to even roll back this crime that has been and is being committed against us.
	So first of all then just talk about the channel one of the first things is that we can scroll down for me on this I've got my my notes in front of me but I know most of anyway but first thing then is just the the incentive for people to come here in the first place really and we're a massive soft touch of course they come over and we give them asylum we put them in a hotel we give them a mobile phone they get free dentistry NHS we even give them legal support so some even business grants as well right
	And above the native population as well, as in they get priority over us.
	So we're funding our own invasion and demographic change against our own will.
	I hate people that say, you voted for this, this is what you get.
	No, but we didn't though.
	We were never asked.
	It's a tiny elite at the top which never gave us a choice about it.
	So no, it isn't what we voted for.
	It isn't what we get.
	It isn't what we deserve.
	No.
	In fact I think a lot of the polling suggested that immigration was the main issue of the most recent election and no party... No party even really addressed it.
	You saw recently with Farage and his comments about deportations, extremely disappointed.
	Impossible, the man said.
	It was impossible.
	He had no aspirations to deport.
	He said it was politically impossible, which I think was a sort of interesting way of putting it because that can mean one of two things.
	So either He doesn't want to do it and is trying not to alienate his own voter base or two he's as he went on to say and I think the angle he was trying to emphasize was that if he did agree to it he'll never hear the end of it which I think is silly and I think that you should be able to put your name to these policies because the time is now.
	Don't be a leader of a political party then if you're worried about that, Nige.
	I just... Steve Edgington, friend of the podcast, teed him up perfectly.
	He could have done some milquetoast version of maybe in the future, you know, we can look at it and think about... He just said no.
	He just said no, it's politically impossible.
	If for you, Meanwhile, we're endlessly invaded and raped and murdered and gaslit while it happens.
	There's only a set amount of time before the people who have come to this country outnumber the native population.
	Yeah, 2050, 2060, somewhere in there.
	And then how are we going to solve it then?
	We'll be a hated minority in our own country.
	Exactly, yeah.
	It'll be extremely difficult.
	So yeah, we're a soft touch, obviously.
	I saw someone in committee just the other day, some Tory MP I think, standing up saying, we have to smash the gangs.
	And Lee Anderson standing up and saying, oh it's a bit more than that.
	You can play whack-a-mole as much as you want, there'll be another gang.
	Why don't we make it so that there's not as many incentives to come here?
	And the guy goes, oh I don't want to make our country less appealing.
	Well, what will happen forever then?
	What happened forever then?
	What are you doing?
	Well, they know that.
	They know that it's a game of whack-a-mole.
	They know it.
	But they'll say it anyway because it's kind of like, well, I've addressed the subject, let's move on.
	And that's kind of how people are seeing it now.
	You have politicians that stand up and say, we've had enough now, we need to sort out illegal immigration.
	Just focusing on that for this segment, obviously, we know about illegal.
	It's all words now.
	It's all words now.
	We talk about conferences.
	We talk about people getting together to talk about things.
	I'm sorry, but the talking is done.
	Like we need to see policy action, please.
	And like you said about immigration being the number one topic during the election and we thought that there was only one party that would actually sort something out or at least attempt.
	But now it feels like Betrayal.
	Back to square one.
	I think one of the reasons for this, that this is such a sort of monolith of the Western world, is that these global elites, these globalists, want to flood countries with cheap foreign labour.
	One, because It makes sense for them to do so from a financial perspective because it pushes down our salary, increases demand for whatever they're manufacturing their products, right?
	So it maximizes the profit for them.
	As well as sort of scuppering any competition because the competition is likely going to come from, you know, the European population or the North American, you know, the native North American population, not as in Native American Indians, but you know what I mean, right?
	It's going to come from there because they're generally speaking the most educated, they're the most likely to create a business that will succeed and create competition.
	So on the one hand they have incentives to maximize the amount of money they're making whilst also crushing competition and that is why all of these large companies are donating large sums of money to political parties is to keep this running because on the one hand they're crushing competition on the other they're maximizing their profits and so unless we do something about that there's going to be no incentive to change because all of the money is going to be against it.
	There's a whole industry built up around it, but I think that the economic and sort of corporate angle of what you're talking about is one of the least maneuvering aspects of it.
	You've got something like the Runnymede Trust who want to actively change the ethnicity of Britain for its own sake.
	That is true.
	There are charities that are on board with this.
	That's not just about the filthy lucre, that's about wiping out the native people.
	That's what that is.
	The problem is that we have, as well, we have two new classes that have come around in the last few decades.
	You have the activist class and the expert class.
	Expert in the quote-unquote.
	So you have the activist class that have poisoned institutions, the Home Office, where it's so politicized and so bent one way that it's just obvious.
	We can all see it.
	We can all see that the majority of the Home Office are pro-open borders because Whether it be politics, whether it be just being afraid to be viewed as a nasty or horrible person for wanting to have control over immigration.
	And then you have the expert class, you know, like your fact-checkers and the people that go out and say, well, this is going to be best for Britain if you do it like this.
	And it's like, well, sorry, where's your credentials?
	And then you find out it's either ESG, DEI or something like that and it's not a meritocracy anymore.
	Well many of these experts that get wheeled out are not necessarily, even in their own field, people who are respected.
	They're sort of quizlings for political machinations that are above their own heads.
	It reminds me of... who was that communist, literal communist, who now works for the WHO but was handling During the vid era, a couple of years ago... Susan Michie?
	Could be her, yeah.
	She's part of the SAGE scientific committee who is an actual member of the Communist Party and said she wanted lockdowns to carry on forever.
	That's it.
	So that, to me, yes it is her.
	Yes.
	That is the pure definition of what I would call the expert class, quote-unquote.
	And these two classes now, within institutions and within government, are the reason why, or partly the reason why, we're in this mess today.
	Massively.
	And, you know, we all like to sit around and say, well if I was in charge I would do X, Y and Z.
	But for hypothetical sake, you have to drain that swamp now, just to paraphrase some other guy.
	You have to go into the home office.
	You just fire.
	Fire and clear them out.
	Completely.
	Create a new department to control the boulders if anything.
	Clear it out.
	Turkey's voting for Christmas.
	These are suicidal.
	It's a suicidal policy to have open borders.
	If you have open borders, you have no country.
	The nation does not exist if you have open borders, essentially.
	The idea of open borders is just... that's just what a traitor would do.
	That's just what a fifth columnist traitor would advocate.
	Opening the gates is a sort of euphemism for a traitor, isn't it?
	Just quickly, I want to say any Christian that believes in open borders is unbiblical.
	I just want to say that because you can even go back to the Tower of Babylon to even show that nations, nation-states, language, culture, everything Derived.
	So seeing Christians as well that are openly open borders as well just really does my head in because they can't seem to understand that.
	So I just want to throw that in.
	Fair enough.
	See the picture of the I guess it was an Anglican female vicar holding up a thing saying we're all Muslims.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Turkey's voting for Christmas.
	Absolutely insane.
	Effectively suicidal.
	I say just to run through this thing because we are running low on time in this segment.
	So yeah, France is a big part of the problem.
	They're not going to help us.
	We can keep throwing millions and millions at them.
	They're not going to secure those beaches.
	There's a handful of beaches in Calais and down the Normandy coast around there, even like Brittany or something, or even the Belgium coast.
	It's not a massive, massive coastline where they could secure it to physically stop small boats from ever leaving.
	They're not going to do it.
	They've got no intention of doing it.
	We are politically Essentially still, not necessarily enemies, but rivals of France.
	They want to get rid of their troubled people, and if they can force them on us, then all the better.
	So they're not going to do anything.
	We can't rely on France to ever really tackle the problem.
	Right yeah, they're not going to do it.
	We could keep throwing money at them but they're not going to do it.
	So now it is difficult to, it is actually, the real real physical logistics of doing something in the channel is a little bit difficult because it's a really really busy shipping lane.
	It's not really international waters where anyone can do anything.
	Like off the north of Australia, Matt Goodwin makes this point, off the north of Australia where they have lots of problems, used to have lots of problems with people from Indonesia or whatever coming down to Australia.
	You could be in international waters and you can tow them off to some island somewhere out of view of journalists and all sorts of things.
	We can't do any of that.
	And we're not just going to let people drown.
	right so we're just not that's not really gonna that's not on the cards it's not even actually desirable is it really it'd be best if we just tow them back to the french beach they came from dump them there um so the channel the actual the physical bit of water there the english channel is sort of relatively difficult but it's not that difficult all we'd need is one royal navy what a cruiser or something that's got a load of royal marines or the special boat service dudes
	that go out and physically take control of any dinghy or small boat and physically take it back to French Beach.
	If we wanted to do that, we could do it.
	If the French Navy want to get involved, then we'll talk.
	Then we'll start talking some serious turkey with the French.
	But our political leads have got no intention of doing that.
	Someone like Rishi Sunak or Boris or Theresa May had nowhere near the balls to think about doing that.
	And of course Starmer would never dream of doing such a thing.
	New voters for it.
	Lock you up for even talking about it.
	Right, yeah.
	So what we need to do is, there's the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights.
	We need to scrap that, get rid of that.
	That was good and made sense perhaps in the 1950s.
	But now it's obviously been completely perverted to facilitate our invasion.
	There's the Human Rights Act, which Blair brought in.
	Again, exactly the same thing.
	Perverted and used by legal people to facilitate our invasion.
	That would need to be scrapped.
	Matt Goodwin ends by saying these things, by the way, because it's costing us, again, to just go down the economic route, which I do think is one of the least important arguments, but still, we're spending something like eight million a day On these people, on funding our own invasion, which is something like 7 billion a year at the moment, which could pay for something in the order of 200,000 policemen a year.
	So those numbers are just absolutely... 7 billion a year?
	Yes.
	Like the James Webb Space Telescopes cost 10 billion.
	Like the Channel Tunnel cost 15 billion.
	We can put it in that perspective.
	Makes you winced, doesn't it?
	Yeah.
	And so, yeah, there's all the charities, quote-unquote, and lobbyists and all the various types of legal organisations which are all facilitating this.
	So it all needs to be addressed.
	Just revoke their charitable status, right?
	And overturned, yeah.
	Easily done.
	One other big thing to mention is, of course, the Supreme Court.
	Tony Blair's Supreme Court.
	Which trying to rival, or does in some ways rival, Parliament.
	That's a complete absurdity.
	That's a complete travesty.
	It's a constitutional abomination.
	Yeah, it's an abomination.
	Dr Starkey is very good and clear on all of that.
	That would need to go.
	Again, you need a government with balls.
	Way more balls than Nigel's got.
	Way more.
	Just do away with that Supreme Court.
	Anyone that argues against it, say no, we did very well without one before Blair came along.
	We did very well without one.
	Don't need it.
	Sweep it aside.
	Get rid of it.
	It's just there to foil Parliament and getting done what needs to be done to save us.
	So, okay, I mean, maybe if we could play... Can you play from... Can you do it, Josh?
	From 14 minutes 30 in, or about... Go on, Thompson.
	Lead us to victory.
	If you take up to 14 and a half minutes, fairly near the end... I must say, I'm very impressed with Matt.
	It's a strong video.
	If you just play it from about there, listen to what Matt says.
	Matt is loading up.
	Blimey.
	Well, he's only actually really gonna rehash what I've said really about the ECHR and stuff, so we don't necessarily need it.
	But there you go.
	Anyone that tries to argue that we're not being invaded, that it's not happening, that's pure gaslighting, that's nonsense, don't accept it.
	Anyone that quibbles with your use of the term invasion, again, push back against that.
	It absolutely is an invasion.
	And something needs to give.
	It cannot go on forever.
	It just cannot go on forever.
	And if we need to now look beyond reform, if their senior leadership think it's impossible politically to ever get rid of these enemies in our midst, then there's going to have to be a newer movement then.
	New parties.
	Or a whole new wave of independence, if the commission won't let us form a party.
	So anyway, that's it.
	Hear, hear.
	Hear, hear.
	So, got a few comments quickly through.
	Bad art is nothing new.
	Back in the early 80s, a picture called Sex was hung at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB, titled Sex.
	A picture of stained underwear with S cum blood got raves.
	I can't believe I read that, but thanks for telling us about it, I suppose.
	Sorry, I don't know your names yet, but the bald guy on the right seems like he was in lock stock and he's making barrels.
	Who would that be?
	Jason Statham, is it?
	That's not bad.
	I'll take Jason Statham.
	I'll take it over Nosferatu.
	- I can't say that.
	- Yeah, I've had all sorts.
	Richard O'Brien, quite rude.
	So any bald guy, fictional or real.
	- Nosferatu's mean.
	That is mean. - Someone said I look like Zaya Yusuf, and I've not covered that.
	- Oh, that is mean.
	- That is mean, thank you. - Sometimes it's not even a bald guy I'm liking to.
	It's a normal person, but with their head shaved.
	Like, once I had Michael Owen on chemo.
	But no, Jason Statham, that's quite kind.
	I'll take that.
	Best one you've had.
	So firing them is not enough, in my opinion.
	They should be stripped of all their money and assets as payment for their treason.
	I agree in seizing assets for treachery, yes.
	Parasitism and treason deserve no mercy, no absolution.
	Justice must be served.
	Hear, hear.
	You're talking about multi-millionaire communist Susan Michie, whose father, Donald, was a leading light at Bletchley Park when it mattered.
	There we go.
	Oh, well.
	Thank you very much for the info as well.
	Video comments, go.
	A great explanation of the political left and right came from Stelios's interview with Dr Geoffrey Bale.
	The concept comes from pre-French Revolution, but the real surprise was finding out that also on the right are Muslims whose traditions often conflict with their own.
	Very true, yeah.
	Thank you.
	We can do all of this and more, but patriotic New Yorkers must get your asses out to vote.
	Get it out.
	Get it out. - Harry, get up, Harry!
	Harry, get your fat ass out of the couch!
	You're gonna vote for Trump today, Harry!
	Get up, Harry!
	Come on, let's go!
	Let's go, Harry!
	If Harry was in today, that'd be perfect.
	Is he talking about a specific person?
	Who is this Harry he's talking about?
	I've noticed a recent trend.
	Any graffiti that even remotely resembles the will of the people gets priority removal.
	See this here.
	This said, Protect Our Kids.
	A quote-unquote, far-right slogan, apparently.
	The gangstand below it?
	Totally fine.
	There's pictures from a friend, but I do have more examples saved somewhere.
	I want to put it out there to our audience.
	Has anyone else seen something similar?
	Please do share.
	Find me on Twitter.
	I want to get a compilation going.
	I've actually noticed this as well, where you see right-wing sloganism and stickers, ironically enough, around various UK cities, and they get removed very quickly, whereas the Palestine ones are left to fade and rot.
	Written in 2003, I'd be surprised if this book isn't the foundation for Clarkson's Farm.
	I still see ones about Brexit sometimes, just like you've gone out of your way to complain about Brexit.
	It's just a bit pathetic.
	If they do a St George's flag, the council come round and wash that off.
	But a rainbow flag will stay there full time.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Written in 2003, I'd be surprised if this book isn't the foundation for Clarkson's farm.
	Colin Tudge dives deep into farming practices and identifies the root causes that are leading to mismanagement of the land and a paucity of variety in our diet.
	Unfortunately, despite his claims to be a good capitalist, Tudge quotes from influential socialists, jarring with his accurate analysis of the corporatization of agriculture, taking it away from its husbandry roots, instead to encourage monocultures and abuse of the land.
	Leftists can always point to the problem, but utterly fail to identify the solution.
	Well, I've noticed that there's a hardcover version for £3.50.
	I'm going to add it to my Amazon basket.
	Yes, I'm using Amazon.
	Kill me.
	So, a lot of people were confused when Ben Stiller said that he wished he had been black.
	But, um, this is actually a very common sentiment among Hebrew leftists.
	I mean, just look at any of the meetings of the Weathermen Underground.
	Or, more interestingly, the author of Fritz the Cat, which is basically his childhood memories of the 1950s race riot.
	The author, Fritz the Cat, even tells one of the crows, which is just an anthropomorphized black person, that he wished he'd been born black and gets chewed out for such a sentiment.
	I think it's really pathetic that people do that.
	I've heard it a few times before.
	I've also come across people... I've heard people in real life who have a comfortable middle-class existence say that they wish they were black, and it's like, I'm sorry, but you know, you can't do that.
	Your parents have very professional jobs, you know, you're far too white, middle-class and suburban to do that sort of thing.
	Don't be ridiculous.
	It's just, someone wants to be interesting, don't they?
	They see it as interesting.
	It's a strange thing to say.
	It is, yeah.
	It is, yeah. yeah.
	That was a nice palette cleanser, wasn't it?
	You're like a one-man PR wing for California.
	You're sort of redeeming it with all the lovely nature you're showing us.
	I think another problem with the overdiagnosis epidemic is the widening of spectrums to fit more people under a specific label.
	Asperger's used to be separate from autism in the DSM, and although they do share a lot of similarities, there are some differences, like with spoken language and intelligence levels.
	My main struggles are detecting sarcasm in figurative language, proprioception, and parallelia, but I don't really struggle as much with eye contact or expressing empathy like other autists do.
	Also, Josh saying that the education system medicalizes men as faulty women is crazy to think about when you realize that autistic people are much more likely to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria and subsequently become ensnared in the transgender healthcare system.
	Absolutely, and that's something so impressive.
	I know, yeah.
	I would be there for months just trying to figure that out.
	Yeah, the expansion of the definitions I think is deliberate to try and medicalise a larger number of the population, but what it does is people who are actually suffering with more tangible problems then are thrown in with people with lesser problems and they don't get addressed.
	There's a sort of proportionality to these things that gets missed in the sort of weeds of it.
	The US Army Chemical Corps' spirit animal is the dragon.
	We put it on everything.
	This year's annual training mission was Operation Red Dragon.
	My role in that mission was opposing forces commander, and I was permitted to select my own heraldry and call sign.
	Naturally, there was only one logical choice.
	That's cool.
	That's great, yeah.
	As I say, the original one looks very Welsh.
	Celtic Welsh.
	But yeah.
	Good old St.
	George.
	I'll have to fire through a few written comments, because we have lads out at... Two minutes!
	Two minutes, Samson says.
	Okay, I'll just read them very quickly.
	So, Arizona Desert Rat says, building underground is cooler and more energy efficient, but a dome is a better shape than a long straight line.
	That is almost certainly true.
	Supreme Duck says, if it was for environmentalism, wouldn't it make more sense for it all to be underground?
	Exactly the same thing.
	See, we've got lots of smart people in the Lotus Eaters audience.
	And for the Modern Art Sucks thing, Canis Familiaris says, in Norway all the modern artists get government grants while there is an alternative figurative scene led by Odd Nerdrum.
	You can guess which of these two groups get an actual audience that doesn't consist of captive school children on a field trip.
	Lancer Enjoyer says, I recently was in Alfa Romeo Museum.
	Yeah, in Milan, and the older car design is definitely art, mostly Italian.
	I thought it was Alfa Romeo, and I was just like, a museum for Alfa Romeos?
	But fair enough, they are nice cars.
	Someone online says, modern art exists almost exclusively for money laundering?
	Yes.
	I mean, look at how much Hunter Biden made from his art.
	Jane Saxby says Beau for PM?
	Hey, there you go.
	And Saint Benny Pax says, so France is England's Mexico?
	Yes.
	In lots of different ways.
	But anyway, we'll be back in about 24 minutes time with Lads Hour.
	It's going to be a good fun one.
	We're going to have a few more people on it, obviously.
	And we're going to be trying to guess where we are in the world, having a few beers and having a good time.
	So tune in 25 minutes time for that.

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