Rupert Lowe’s new party, Restore, mirrors Nigel Farage’s Reform with mass deportations and Christian cultural push, yet skepticism lingers over its authenticity. John Davidson’s Tourette’s-driven BAFTA outburst—"F the Queen"—sparked performative outrage, overshadowing his real struggles in I Swear, while AI firms like OpenAI hoard 40% of future RAM, causing prices to surge 174% and risking cuts for gamers. Apple’s cash reserves contrast with competitors racing toward AGI, but data centers now guzzle water like towns of 50,000, contaminating farmland while green energy goals stall. The cost of progress? Unemployment, crippled gaming, or chatbot romances—empathy and economics clash in a tech-driven dystopia. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello and welcome to Podcast OF THE Lotus Eaters 1362 on this Wednesday, the 25th of February, year of our Lord 2026, drawn by Luca, Lou and Harry.
The drugs haven't kicked in yet, so there might be a bit of a delay on my end.
Refuses to elaborate, okay fine, stays on the show.
Fine fine um, we're going to be discussing how?
Um, real is better than fake.
Obviously, true.
Um, how you can get away with using the n-word on stage.
Uh, this is, this is stuff that we follow.
These five easy steps literally, critics hate him yeah, and and and how the um, the AI overlords, they're already stopping you from gaming bastards.
Um, most oppressed people in the world.
Some are saying, not the AI, some overlords, no gamers oh yes yes yes, the gamers are, aren't they?
That's true, um.
And also, we've got a roundtable after this, like we get half an hour break and then we can um, but hopefully, by which time the drugs would have kicked in uh, or been shared.
More to the point, that's what i'm more concerned about.
You've brought enough to share with the whole class, haven't you right?
And and we'll be discussing how restore will win.
So, if you were wondering, some of you may have just already decided what they're going to but, but anyway, we'll be discussing that, right?
Um, so real things are better than fake things, good lord, are they really?
Yes, that's my argument.
So I want you to imagine a scenario and it shouldn't be that difficult to imagine, because it's the world that build gates and the you want to create.
Imagine you've.
You've grown up in a world where you've heard about burgers right, your grandfather has told you, oh, we used to have burgers and they were smashing, they were absolutely great.
But you've only ever had broccoli and cabbage, and you know that kind of stuff.
Maybe a carrot as an occasional treat.
And your parents generation, because you're both young lads um, they've been voting for, I don't know uh, what?
What's the most meaty vegetable?
I don't know the, the Mushroom party, or something like that.
No no, it's not the Soy Party.
Well, something like that, something like that.
But you know so, I well, I know, I know mushrooms aren't an actual vegetable, they're a fun guy, but you know, bear with me they've been voting for the mushroom party, and the mushroom party has been promising for years now.
You're going to get something which is a little bit like meat, but they always find a way to put it off or excuse it or import more vegetable dinner options or something like that.
And then one day um, this comes along, it's a tofu burger right, and you've never had a burger.
You've heard about burgers, you know they, you know conceptually they exist, but you've never, you've never, encountered a burger.
The platonic ideal of a burger yes, still eludes you.
You've, you've been on your broccoli and the burger option, the tofu burger, the soy burger comes along.
Now you haven't got any better choices.
So you're going to be looking at that and thinking, by god, that's for me.
I'm getting behind that.
Got two, the two bread buns, it's yeah, you know, getting rather hot and saucy here.
Oh, it is.
And you'll be thinking oh, I mean, I know it's fake cheese, but still, you know, that's all right.
I'm having carrots for 365th time this year and and you're getting, you're getting to the front of the of the diner queue and you're, you're absolutely committed to your your, your tofu burger, your soy based burger.
Um, and then, just at the very last second, when it's almost too late, but it's not too late an actual burger comes along, right.
Well, I don't know why this is so funny to you.
The drugs have kicked in.
Oh, there we go.
He's tripping now, ladies and gentlemen.
You're seeing a burger.
Oh, I'm in cloud nine right now.
He votes for mushrooms every time.
That was your most Clarkson delivery yet.
That's what it was, right?
Right.
So the burger comes along, right?
Now, at that point, I'm going to venture the argument that you are not going to be like, no, I'm sticking with the tofu.
Tofu came along.
What if the BBC for my entire life has been telling me that burgers aren't real?
There's no such thing as a burger, and that vegetables are our greatest strength.
Yes, well, I suppose in that case, you'd have to break out of the mental condition.
But you can see the burger.
Burger is on offer.
It is right there.
It's now real.
It's within touching distance.
It's right there.
Spoiler alert for the, I'm not actually talking about burgers, but I'm not going to tell you what I am talking about.
None of you are going to be able to do that.
Now I'm very hungry.
Yeah, what the rug pull.
Right.
Or what about.
My appetite is gone.
Oh, fleeting how it was.
Right.
Now I want to imagine that you, oh, I don't know.
You grew up on a bloody oil rig or we zoomed it in so you can't see.
No.
You've grown up on an oil rig, right?
And you've only ever had dudes around.
Like a monastery, that guy from the Italian monastery who never saw it.
Something like that.
Something like that.
Or maybe it's just a moon base or something, and there was a pull-up requirement, and no woman made it.
Whatever.
You're living in a society where there was only dudes, right?
And you're thinking about it.
And, you know, it's like, oh, well, I'm going to have to settle down at some point.
And, you know, Billy over there, you know, at least he shaves his chest.
And you've got thought into this, have you?
Well, right, and then this comes along.
And it's got actual, you know, boobs and everything.
Now it's now it's no Samson.
Now, you know, how should I put this?
This is a this is a lady.
Now, now, compared to everything else you've had on offer so far, you're looking at that thinking at the tofu lady.
Yes.
Yes.
You're thinking, well, you know.
What are you thinking?
You could have painted yourself into a corner.
Well, I'm just saying that, you know, some chaps in that scenario, if they're naturally minded, they might be, well, it's the best offer I've had so far on the oil rig or the moon column or the whatever it is.
Right.
I guess it's going to have a feel for it.
The point I'm driving at is then one day onto the oil rig or the moon base or whatever it is, Sidney Sweeney walks in.
Right, at that point, you're not going to be thinking, well, I was leaning towards going with the tofu woman.
Yes.
As soon as you see the real thing, you're not doing the compromise anymore.
You see where I'm going with it?
No, I see where you're going.
Yes.
I've seen for some time.
I'm just enjoying watching you.
No, I've got a clever twist.
Nobody is going to see it coming when I drop it, but it's going to be absolutely brilliant.
You know, where's the Gucci bags?
Oh, I put Gucci bags in here, but I think we missed it.
Private Election Stagflation00:15:41
Doesn't matter anyway.
I put Gucci bags.
I didn't have anything to say about it, but I just wanted to put something in for women because they like handbags rather than women.
Women don't like it.
I'm so much of a manly man.
You couldn't bring yourself to put the girly link in the dock.
No, I put it in, but Samson didn't.
He's obviously the manly one.
Right.
Same thing here.
We've got...
Right, go.
Do you know anyone who drinks fake Coke?
No.
Right.
Here's when I get fake Coke, right?
All right, go on then.
At the beginning of this pod, no, when I have lots of friends coming over for a dinner party and drinks, and I don't want to have to spend loads on mixers.
Right.
Well, I mean, that.
Panda Pop National.
That's me being a cheapscape.
Okay.
That's when I will get it.
Right, if I ever come to your house, I'm bringing real Coke.
Well, that's fine by me.
I'm not having to spend a penny on it.
Yes, I've got a good supplier.
So, but the point is, right?
I didn't know that about you, but most people never actually buy fake Coke.
in the audience right now comment below if you're hosting a party or friends over for drinks are you going to really stretch your monthly budget and get a load of actual real coke for the mixers or are you going to nip down out why would they be your friends if you're not It's very conditional on the nature of the friendship.
Well, they wouldn't do the same for me.
Wouldn't they?
I've better friends.
I've been to plenty of parties in my time, and they've always just been full of fake Coke and Pepsi.
Harry, well, stop.
You're destroying the man's entire argument.
Well, this is the.
I mean, you wouldn't buy it just to enjoy by yourself if you had the choice.
No, no, no, exactly.
Exactly.
In fact, that's helpful.
That's going to be helpful for my little argument.
But see, fake Coke, it tries to copy real Coke.
Now, where am I going with all of this?
Wait through it.
Yeah.
Ah!
I see.
Very clever dad.
I thought you were getting married to a tranny.
No, no.
No, I had you on there, didn't I?
The point that I'm actually driving at, right?
You'll have to bleep that one for YouTube, sorry.
Oh, yeah, we're not allowed to.
I'll say this instead.
Trune.
And then editor can overdub.
We would ever say Troon.
Apparently, yeah.
Really?
Oh, okay.
Editor, you can figure it out.
If you're watching on YouTube, a lot of that might have been bleeped.
But the point that I'm driving at is the moment you get the real thing, right, is you don't want the fake thing anymore.
Especially when the fake thing has been going around for 30 years telling you that it has destroyed all of the options available to you to actually have the meat.
And also, if the fake thing had every single time the burger was about to, the tofu burger was about to be served up, suddenly withdrew and let the carrot, the mushroom party, whatever, win.
Yes.
If it'd done that like three times, you'd be like, yeah, I don't know.
You wouldn't trust it.
No.
If it started hiring carrot sculptors to run its party and stuff like that.
What I'm driving at, right, is that elite formation, elite opinion formation has already happened on this.
So, I mean, Starkey's come over.
He's already on board of all of this stuff.
Sounds good.
And I say Starkey, but I mean, basically, everybody.
Yes.
Well, this has been the funny thing, and AA addressed it in some of his videos he's done recently with the whole accusation of like, oh, this is going to split the vote.
This is going to split the right.
Actually, anybody who isn't already a traitor has got behind low.
I have never seen the rightness united.
Elite opinion formation has already occurred and it happened a week ago.
It's done.
It happened, and in real time, in the real sense, it happened much, much earlier than that because we're all just simply waiting for the moment for the announcement that this was going to happen.
But we all knew come the time if Lowe does declare a new party that we would all get behind it.
Yep.
And it's not just people in the commentary, it's basically sort of elite opinion formers.
You know, what was it?
The Jim Ratcliffe or something that we're for.
I mean, Clarkson's clearly on the verge of doing this.
John Cleese.
John Cleese, yeah.
Funny bloke, him.
There was another name I was going to mention.
Point is, loads of people.
I mean, it is shifted.
Opinion, the people who think about stuff, they've already come over to this.
All we're sort of left with at the moment are the people who, and this is what I find.
Sorry, when I talk to friends of mine, is they personally know they want the burger or the Sydney Sweeney.
What they're worried about is that everybody else is stupid and that they're going to pick the tofu.
Even though they know that they're not.
And when I speak to other friends, they also know that they want the real burger, but they're just worried that everybody else is going to pick the tofu.
Well, I mean, this is something that I've experienced in my own life speaking to friends who I spoke to quite recently.
One of them said, when I brought up Bristol, he said, oh, you know, I just think that they're a bit too extreme and they might put people off.
That does not mean that you disagree with what they're saying.
That means that you worry that other people are stupid and might be.
It's the whole thing.
It's everybody is, well, the people that we know, they're all going to be on the two ends of the bell curve, aren't they?
They're going to be the uber genius or the plods, whatever, down there.
Hello.
And we already know.
And we just think that everybody else is in that little bit of the midwit section.
The midwit section, they're already voting labor or green.
Yes.
Or something else.
The two ends of the bell curve that they have already gone over, but they just think that everybody else, even though everybody isn't on that thing, it's happened.
It's already done.
And also, the extreme position, to just speak to that element of it as well, like, oh, you know, restored, they'd just be a bit extreme.
It's like, no, no, the extremism in this political landscape is arresting a man for wanting to deport foreign rapists.
Yes.
That is the extreme position.
Or arresting 8,000 people a year for tweeting sentiments the same.
That is the extreme position.
Yes.
Everything that Lowe is talking about is perfectly normal.
Now, we've got a round table coming up after this.
If you're watching this on, you've already been told if you're watching, if you're one of God's own people on the website.
But if you're watching on YouTube, by the time you get this video, have a quick look because that will be popping up on lotuseaters.com and you might want to watch how will we actually do it.
That is important.
But I mean, even Tim Stanley, even the Tory graph, this is a paper whose entire purpose is to get the Tories elected.
This is the article they changed the headline for, isn't it?
Oh, is it?
Yeah, it could be.
No, no, this was the original headline, I believe.
The one that they changed it to was saying something along the lines of don't don't fall for Rupert Lowe's ego project or something.
I did think this was out of character for them.
And it doesn't surprise me that they changed it.
But, you know, even Tim Stanley, proper mummies boy, Tory boy, he's saying reform is turning into the Tories 2.0 and that's a tragedy.
And there's a bit.
But you must continue to vote for Tofu, no matter the cost.
Yes, well, there's a bit in here.
I can't be bothered to find it.
I'll copied it anyway to my notes.
There's a bit in here where he says, to an outsider, however, he's talking about the difference between restore and reform.
And he's just making my point about the burgers or the Sidney Sweeney.
He says, to an outsider, however, the differences may seem minimal.
Today, Yusuf, a Muslim, will commit reform to mass deportations of illegals and encouraging Christian culture.
And for every quote by Lowe on the evils of the burqa, the war and the white boys, a reform MP has said much the same.
He's basically saying, well, look, that tofu, it looks just like the real thing, doesn't it?
Oh, no, I thought you were going to finish your point and then I was.
No, no, that was a complete thought.
I thought there was more going to be added on to it.
Yeah, well, the thing is, yeah, I mean, they might say all of these things.
The problem is that the Reform Party is full of people who were part of the last government to say all of these things.
Yeah.
Who then let in Tofu?
Yeah, who let in millions of people.
So forgive me for being somewhat skeptical that the people behind the Boris wave are not going to just do it again.
Yes, or the guy who's folded his party several times before in order to let the Carrot Party win is going to do the same thing again.
Exactly.
I mean, I saw this.
I mean, this just happened to pop up on my feed, and I thought it was the right point.
Biggest mistake reform ever made was pushing Rupert Lowe out, but the best thing for England was reform pushing Rupert out.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's pretty much right.
I mean, that was actually just a clarifying moment.
We knew, deep down, we all knew what Farage was before he kicked out Rupert Lowe's.
Well, he really kicked Ewan Bo out.
Well, yeah, or Stephen Wolf.
I mean, there's three people who've been on this podcast who Farage has done this to, as well as dozens and dozens of other people.
And he's always sort of a career assassinated them every time.
And at some point, it just got to be too much.
I mean, I do have serious thoughts as well.
Not that all of this wasn't serious.
But, you know, the way I sort of devised it here is, look, Britain has only ever separated power two ways.
And that has been, do as I say, or I will kill you, or civil war.
And that was the settlement basically forever in this country.
The threat of violence or divine power.
The only difference is in the 1800s we civilized civil war and we decided to call it democracy instead.
But it's the same principle.
Bigger side wins.
And it's a lot cheaper than having a civil war to have a democracy.
And the biggest side still wins.
So basically, it's a good proxy.
It keeps the population's trust in the institutions as well.
But the reason it works is because it stretches the time scale.
We're no longer, you know, a war, a civil war can be decided in months or years.
A democracy, you stretch it out over decades.
And an election is not winning a war.
What it is, it's a battle.
And you can lose a battle and you can accept losing a battle because it's not absolutely existential.
You just get to fight the next battle.
And that's the way that the democracy worked, is that you could actually lose for quite a long time as long as you thought that it's not irreversible.
And then what one side did is it came along and it decided what we're going to do is we're going to turn it from a back and forth into a ratchet.
And the way we're going to do that is we're going to stack the institutions, we're going to stack law and we're going to bring in as much demographic change as we can so that it can only ever ratchet one way.
And what they did is they made politics existential.
Because losing an election is tolerable, but losing your country is not tolerable.
And they've set us down this path where there is going to be a permanent majority, a permanent minority, and there is no path back from that.
And at some point, and I think we're approaching it really quite soon.
And this is, I mean, I don't want to repeat all the David Betts stuff, but he's been making the point, if politics becomes existential, we will just go back to the other model.
Because if it becomes impossible to use the proxy to get what you want, well, you're not going to give up your country.
You are going to get to that point.
And actually, what you want to do is you want to get a nice settlement in place, a nice sensible settlement in place before the other side is also so large and so committed and so entrenched that it's existential for them as well.
At this point, they haven't got their second passport anymore because it was three, four generations ago and they've given up the passport to Pakistan.
Now for them, it genuinely is existential.
And that's essentially the cusp of what we're getting to.
Reform is already slipping under the surface.
So reform, they were leading in Gordon Denton for like three, four weeks.
Me and Carla have been covering it on our political chat thing that we did.
Right.
Which incidentally, Elon retweeted this morning, based Elon.
But yeah, reform were leading.
But now there's a real burger.
And the tofu burger was like, yeah, whatever.
Slipping down.
Well, and this is the larger point, isn't it?
It's not just about the elections that we have here and now.
It's the entire process of sovereignty and the British people's voice determining the very course of our path forward for the rest of this century and hopefully many centuries to come after it.
And if reform, and this is what Goodwin and the rest of them don't seem to appreciate, say, well, look, I've got all of these Sikhs who are going to vote reform.
It's like, okay, and they might even help you to win this time, Matt, but it's going to be harder at the next election that comes round and then harder still.
And then eventually, what you're doing is you're basically empowering these minority groups because they're becoming more and more important to your electoral success.
So they're able to stack their bargaining.
You've let the ratchet turn one more time and click and lock.
Yes.
And now we're stuck.
Yeah, exactly.
Now, the only thing basically that's going to stop us, because everybody prefers the real to the fake.
Everybody knows that.
Everybody privately knows that.
The only thing that can beat us at this point is doubt.
And not the weakness of the project.
And it's not a lack of your own preference.
It's just second-guessing the preference of everybody else.
That is the only problem we've got at the moment because everybody privately sees it.
It's like the end days of the Soviet Union.
Everybody privately sees it, but is worried what everybody else sees.
That is the exact issue that we're in at the moment.
Now, it turns out there's quite a body of philosophical thought that has been done on this.
So, I mean, the first thing that turns to mind was Prisoner's Dilemma.
But actually, that's not quite the right model here.
There's a Rousseauian model dating back to 1775 called the Stag Hunt.
And it's a bit similar to Prisoner's Dynamo.
It's a bunch of hunters are out, and they can either go off and they can hunt a rabbit or they can coordinate together and get the stag.
And if they start to doubt each other, if they think, oh, well, he's going to go and hunt the rabbit and he's probably going to hunt the rabbit, but I really want the stag, and they're all thinking the same way.
Well, they end up getting rabbits or they won't get anything.
You've got to coordinate on the stag.
Then there's Thomas Schnelling, who wrote the strategy of conflict in 1960.
And his work was basically centered on you need to coordinate using visible signals.
There's no point saying privately, just privately thinking it.
You need to be clear.
Yeah, we're going for the stag.
There's John Hazarl and Reinhard Schneltschen.
Clarity Over Doubt00:02:26
They wrote the equilibrium selection and basically said, well, it's the same variation of this, that if people will choose the safe equilibrium, they'll end up going home with the lady when the outcome is uncertain.
Or the rabbit, whichever scenario this you use, and there's a whole bunch more.
I mean, I've got a whole load of my notes.
There's a modern extension theory that came out of the global games think tank in the 1990s.
Uh, that only doubt can sustain inferior options.
It's the only way that gets to it.
And look, what I'm ultimately driving at here, my entire point of this, is that this question that we are in right now has been studied for 250 years, and the conclusion every time is consistent.
And the conclusion is that only by having the doubt, only by second-guessing what everybody else is doing will lead you to the inferior outcome.
What you need is visible commitment, right?
You need you need to be clear.
And once you cross a certain threshold and it's not that high, you get a cascade preference and it just emerges and it appears to emerge suddenly.
You just suddenly win.
But it all starts with you've got to understand that confidence and clarity and message precedes the outcome.
You don't get the outcome, and then everybody gets to say, Okay, this is what we're doing.
No, you need to, you need to be clear.
You need to be going out there and you need to be eliminating all doubt.
You need to be saying, No, this is what we're going to do.
Make it clear.
Don't wait for permission.
So, what I'd say to people is go out, just clearly state, yeah, I'm with Rupert Lowe.
Yeah, I'm with Reform.
Sorry, Restore.
Don't offer explanation, just state it boldly, state it clearly, no ambiguity.
Now, if they want to talk to you afterwards and say, Okay, well, why is that?
Give me reasons, then you go into the explanation.
But now is the moment, not for doubt and second-guessing, it is for clarity.
So, unless you want to eat a tofu burger or wake up next to a lady, because that's what that's what you are, Richard.
I don't know if there is a guilty Richard out there right now wondering how I knew his name, but the point is almost certainly eat the burger.
Well, yes, that's that's kind of what I'm going with, right?
Good point, yes, right.
Thank you.
Raising Questions About Jamie Fox00:14:45
Uh, so uh, Rumble Rants, what we've got, uh, oh, yes, uh, that's a random name for a dollar saying Harry takes SSRIs to deal with the bullying he's been getting for being ginger.
Next step, convert to Islam, whelp, mashallah.
Uh, and Hayden for two dollars, thank you, says, uh, I had a beyond burger last night, horrible aftertaste, made me gag, and almost threw up.
Yeah, that makes us.
I don't know why you had a beyond burger, you're the one man holding up that 71 cent share price, clearly eating that rubbish.
Uh, but that's just your body telling you that this is artificial rubbish and that you shouldn't you shouldn't touch it.
Like, your body has very uh complex processes to do this, like making you go best uh, best fast food uh burgers, Wendy's, undoubtedly.
Not had a Wendy's quite though, yeah.
Uh, five guys, she's a final ass, yeah, anyway, right.
Well, so uh, I hadn't quite expected, ladies and gentlemen, to be talking about a recent uh film awards ceremony.
After all, they are getting very, very stale, falling off a cliff, no one really watches them anymore, and no one really has any particular interest in anything that the big Hollywood celebrity actors have to say about the world.
I'm just waiting for Hollywood films to be replaced by AI so they're good again.
Well, you kind of hope that like something like the Game Awards will have some premium, like absolutely exquisite cringe in it.
Yeah, but even they've managed to get the cringe under control, so now it's just boring like all of the rest of them.
I've no idea how the Oscars used to be some kind of like cultural touchstone back in the day, because it really is what, like four hours of industry awards, and then every so often Brad Pitt or someone will guess I can ask the person.
Because 20 years ago, films were good.
And so you used to watch a lot of films.
There was a time where you would go down to Blockbusters, like every weekend, and pick out a couple of movies.
I remember Blockbusters.
I used to go there all the time.
I'm not that young, sadly, heartbreakingly.
I can't believe I said that as a brag.
But this award ceremony at the BAFTAs just past weekend turned out to be quite a different affair.
So we need to begin really by outlining the person who's created just this media storm everywhere we go.
I've not been able to look away from it.
And that is to speak about John Davidson, who has an MBE and from basically has the genetic condition of Tourette's.
Now, this is a neurological condition, and there are about, well, apparently, there are about 300,000 children and adults living with Tourette's in the United Kingdom today.
Now, if that number sounds very, very high, it may well be.
And this isn't really the place to have a discussion about over-diagnosing people.
But another point as well is that it's only a subsection of those people who have the thing that is known as coprolalia, which is about 10 to 30% of these 300,000 people.
And that is a symptom that leads to, you know, saying these triggering taboo words and speaking very vulgarly.
And it just sort of been forced out of them without any conceivable control over it.
Pardon me for being insensitive here.
Perhaps this is not an appropriate question to ask.
But frankly, the whole caprolalia, whatever it is, that version of Tourette's where you're talking about a way of swearing and saying socially inappropriate words.
What is the neurological reason for that?
Because what determines that it's not just random words and is instead specifically swear words and socially unacceptable words?
Because those are going to differ culture by culture.
They're almost entirely going to be an environmental product.
Is it always swear words, or is it just...
Well, from what I understand, it specifically triggers socially taboo or forbidden words because it's the brain's inhibitory system failing to actually, you know, to filter them out.
So this is something that I would assume typically manifests after a particular age once somebody's old enough to have imbibed the culture around them.
Well, this is exactly the point because you see, there was a documentary by the BBC back in 1988 which looked at John and John grew up in, where was it, the place, Galashiels in Scotland, town of 13,000 people, right?
And it's already a very, very rare condition.
And so you can imagine how he was surrounded by people who didn't understand it, thought he was putting it on, and was just purposefully ruining his own life, right?
All of the chances he would have that he was just taking them away from himself to be crass and vulgar and to be rude to all the people around him when this is obviously not the point.
There's an example here, I won't play it for the sake of time, but where he goes around this shopping centre with his mother and is just continually swearing.
But it's not just the language as well.
It's like the actual physical tics that come with it.
And so this resulted in John being having awarded an MBE by the Queen back in 2019, I believe it was, because of his work raising awareness for Tourette's, the very nature of it, and working in coordination with local authorities to raise awareness and pushing for more understanding of the condition.
And so that actually people with it, the excesses of it can be mitigated and they can bring themselves more into line with just normal society.
And so it's not just about other, like, you know, just people without it, living with them and just understanding that's where they are.
It's also about pushing for technology and solutions and cures for Tourette's as well.
So that people.
And he actually swore the Queen as well.
Well, this is what I was going to say.
If we go to this fantastic line here, it says, his troubles began as his car entered Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, and police inspected the vehicle's underside with little mirrors on the stocks.
That should say Davidson opened the car window and began shouting, A bomb!
I've got an effing bomb.
By the time he was in front of Her Majesty, all royal protocol was out the window, the voice in his head too hard to control.
F the Queen, he shouted.
And Her Majesty was very kind.
She was as calm and assured as my granny.
She was very good about it all.
And so, one of the points that I wanted to raise with this as well is not just it's a really funny story of him saying this to the Queen, but the fact that someone is high up and we're in an institution so austere and you know, suffocated by royal protocol and you know how to behave and language and procedure, that the Queen is understanding enough of this to just rub it off.
It's lucky doesn't mean it's lucky that the Queen is not an incredibly fragile person, I guess what you're saying.
That's exactly where I'm coming to with this, yes.
And so then we had the film I Swear.
Now, I actually happened to watch this film a few weeks ago, and you can see here it has an audience rating of 8.4 out of 10.
And it was a really, really fantastic film.
You know, it was poignant, it was funny, it was tragic.
It really, you know, just swept you away with the struggle of this man's life, but also how he turned that suffering and that pain towards looking after other children so they wouldn't have to go through what he had gone through as a child, which, you know, because he doesn't, as you say, he's not born like this.
It develops later on.
I think he goes to school at about the age of 14, and then the ticks just start beginning.
You imagine that, living the first 14 years of your life totally normally, thinking you're just going to live a normal life like anyone else.
And then this thing that you can't control just takes hold of you and gets worse and worse.
That's obviously not something that I would wish on anyone.
And I'll just play a little clip from it here that highlights my client is now going to give evidence.
Mr. Davidson, will you please make your way to the witness box?
Mr. Davidson, will you take the oath?
I will.
Raise your right hand and repeat after me.
I swear by Almighty God that I will tell the truth.
That I will tell the truth.
The whole truth.
No, I won't.
Can someone explain the reason for this contempt?
My lord, if I may, Mr. Davidson, on occasion, shouts things uncontrollably.
Impulsive comments.
He neither means them or can control them.
Sexist, homophobic, misogynist.
Don't forget racist, you won't.
And racist.
Based on.
So you get the idea.
And, you know, the film raises a good point as well.
It's like, you know, because this is what they say in the court.
It's like, well, he's faking it.
It's like, who will choose to fake this for their entire life?
Yes.
Their entire life.
And so as it happens, Robert Arameo, who was the actor you just saw there portraying John Davidson, ended up winning the best actor.
He beat out Leonardo DiCaprio.
He beat out Timothy Chalamay, all these, you know, really famous people from Hollywood, because it was such a remarkable performance.
And John Davidson had come along, obviously, to support him and the actor who portrayed him on the film.
That's nice.
And it was all shown, explained ahead of time to people that, ladies and gentlemen, there will be a man with Tourette's in the audience tonight.
He will undoubtedly shout some things.
This is just the territory of it.
This is the reason we made this film to raise awareness and the understanding for it.
And so, really, with Robert winning this and the acclaim and attention that it would bring to the film, this really should have been the pinnacle of John Davidson's life.
This should have been the moment of real triumph for him.
It's a room of high-paid professionals, so obviously they're going to understand this immediately.
Well, you would think that, wouldn't you?
But then this happened, and I will just play it with you, Jamie Foxx, and Del Roy Lindo giving out an award.
Joe and I are delighted to be presenting the first BAFTA of the night for a vital part of movie making.
We're here to celebrate.
I mean, to be honest, having him in the audience and those two on stage is a bit of a red rag to a bull.
Well, I mean, I'm not suggesting that.
Are you suggesting that this was a manufactured incident?
Well, if you are, Dan, you're not the only one that's suggesting that.
Let me tell you.
The conspiracy run deep with this.
It was a Christmas prank.
Yeah, but I mean, poor chap.
I mean, I didn't think it myself, but I'm sure at least somebody in our audience thought the same thing as soon as you loaded the image.
But the point is, as well, is that this is obviously not something particular to Jamie Foxx.
This is not personal to the actors who are standing on stage.
He has, as he said, he has literally said, F the Queen.
It's one of those.
No, neither of those is Jamie Fox.
I too thought that Luca was being incredibly rape.
Oh, yeah, sorry.
It's Michael B. Jordan.
It's Michael B. Jordan.
No, it's because in my next link, you'll see that I. You're not saying they all look the same, are you?
No, no, it's such a tired old.
The reason was because I was preparing in my head for this where you see that Jamie Foxx basically went out and said, no, he meant that.
So, Jamie, because I heard about this story, and I assumed that Jamie Fox had been on stage and had it shouted at him, which is why he took particular offense to it.
Was Jamie Fox even there?
I've no idea.
He wasn't even the one on stage.
He was just sort of like, and I took personal offence at that.
Yeah.
Yeah, that seems to have been where it's come from.
And so as we go on as well, but then you have Jamie Foxx just saying things like this, just celebrating the fact that he got to be in a film where he just gets to go around and kill a bunch of white people.
And so.
Yeah.
Plus, a deranged, deranged revenge fantasy made by a man who loves saying the N-word in his own films, ironically.
That's what I was going to go.
I've watched him use that word many, many times.
And he has worked with Quinton Tarantino, who loves saying that word in his films.
Can't write a role for himself, Tarantino, without putting it in his own dialogue.
In Django Unchained, correct me if I'm wrong, Tarantino shows up as an Australian slave catcher who I'm pretty sure calls him an N-word to his face in the film.
So where was his outrage at having...
Oh, wait, no, he was getting paid for all that.
But the point is as well that behind all of that, behind what Jamie Fox said here on what looks like.
What did he actually say, though?
Well, I'm not going to play it for the sake of time, but he was just gloating about the fact he got to be in a film where he kills a bunch of white people.
Oh, no, no, no.
Him being upset about.
Oh, he basically just said that when John Davidson blurted that out at the BAFTAs, that there was intention behind it, that it was designed to be hurtful.
And the point I was just going to make is that this is someone exercising agency, right?
This is someone exercising agency.
John Davidson is not exercising any agency here whatsoever.
This, you know, all of the racial grievances and the words of hate that they use are all chosen.
John's are not.
That's not me saying that obviously every white person has agency.
But I'm talking specifically about John Davidson here.
But then we get into the point where, and Samantha points out here, it's like, you mean the slur that was said 19 times in sinners, the slur that's constantly repeated across black media, music, entertainment, comedy, TV and film, the slur that, unlike Tourette's sufferer, Michael B. Jordan chose to use.
And so it's just this point that we hear the word all around us.
And then when this one man says it without being able to control it because of the condition, a condition that he has just made a film about, except for and won a BAFTA for and has brought great attention to it, people are seemingly not able to get it.
A BAFTA judge resigned as a result of this.
Wouldn't you vote if you're a judge?
Guilty Conscience Resigns00:15:22
Didn't you vote for the BAFTA for best performance?
So you just watched a film about this actual guy's condition.
Well, I love the idea as well that it's like he just says the N-words, you know, to these people and this judge just goes, better resign, just to be sure.
You know, like, just like, yeah, so, you know, just not leave anything out.
It sounds like a guilty conscience to me.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it also points out as well that there was a case that there was a tape delay, right?
So as we can see here, the BAFTA and the BBC failed Michael B. Jordan, as Variety frames it, Del Roy Lindo, the Tourette's community and viewers, when they allowed the N-word to be aired during the BAFTA film The Ward ceremony.
With a tape delay, this moment could have been handled differently.
The audio could have been muted in the broadcast.
The segment could have been edited.
And instead, they, BBC, chose to allow the slur to stay.
And I actually, and you'll never hear me say this again, but I agree with the BBC's decision on this, not out of any sense of provocation, but because the point is, you can't simultaneously highlight the fact that this is a debility, you know, an illness.
He doesn't actually have any power over it.
And he actually, and the whole point of the film is that you can't be constantly saying sorry for things that you're not intending to say.
I have a question.
Yes.
Samson, do we have a tape delay?
I think there is a minor broadcasting delay for us.
I would say for a big thing like the BBC, I thought it would have been standard procedures.
No, I was just wondering if I could say it and then see if Samson could catch it before it goes out.
Or we could not try that.
Oh, yeah, I guess not a test.
My mind is just like warped by WWE Wrestling because I think they have a 30-second tape delay on purpose just in case something is said or done that they want them to get a chair through the eye or something.
Yeah, exactly.
And then we approach the part of the segment that I will just call people not understanding Tourette's.
We have one from Barry here where he says, if I had Tourette's syndrome, I would shout things like end racism and women's rights instead of silent.
I think this is a joke.
Well, it's hard to tell, man.
Honestly, it's really hard to tell because I've seen so many tweets like this from a lot of people.
But let's go to this one then.
The racial abuse at Del Roy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan is not about Tourette's syndrome.
It's about how normalized, accepted, and even encouraged anti-black racism really is.
The BBC choosing to broadcast the racial abuse of two world-leading black actors to millions is the story.
It's like, yeah, that's right.
You get in there and you make this about you.
This feels performative.
Oh, it always is.
And I'm sorry, right?
The outrage about the word, this is where the whole conversation surrounding the word itself has to come back up.
The outrage about the word in the first place is completely performative.
It's a way to police white people and the language that white people or just non-black people in this case use.
It's an excuse for black people to get angry at non-black people.
Because if it was just that the word itself was so horrifyingly offensive that you couldn't bear to hear it, then they would not call each other it.
They would not use it in casual conversation constantly.
Which shows that there are plenty of contexts in which they are able to use it.
They would not, for instance, Jamie Foxx would not be willing to stand there and get paid millions of dollars for Leonardo DiCaprio to act out using the word at him over and over again.
There are contexts in which this word is perfectly fine for people to use, right?
And we accept this line about, oh, they're reclaiming the word.
What the f ⁇ does that even mean?
Part of me suspects they just like having the excuse to be able to beat people up when that word is used.
Some of them, certainly, or at least get angry about it.
And they want to have an inbuilt, like, cultural and societal mechanism to burn the witch or to at least do a witch hunt.
This guy, condition or no condition, has said the no-no word.
Best get the pitchforks out, lads.
That's what this whole thing's about.
And that's what it's always been about ever since the whole thing was stigmatized around the 60s and 70s.
Yeah, and there's Wilson punts out here.
Neurological disorder is not an excuse for symptom of neurological disorder and continues to be a common argument against from these people.
There's this one here from Echo says, they thanked John.
They thanked him.
Three out of five paragraphs are about John centered on him and thanking him in what's supposed to be an apology.
They thank the man who used the slur.
And I just point out as well that, you know, 17,000 likes and nearly a million views.
My point is not, and of course I totally see what you're saying, Harry, about the performative aspect of it.
Just to clarify as well, still don't say it.
Obviously, you'll get in trouble.
And also, I don't think it's necessary to be crass to other people.
I would like for people to engage in conversation with one another on a higher level than they do currently.
I absolutely agree.
And but there is obviously a performative element to all of this, but it doesn't take away from the fact that John Davidson has now had to come out and give an apology about it all.
And now the conversation has gone away from the man with the Tourette's to how does this word affect the black community, a community that seems determined to keep that very term alive.
And so it's totally dragged the conversation away.
This was an amazing exchange here.
It says, it's just by having the connection mentally.
I have had the N-word as a Tourette's tick, and I do not mean it, and I would not say it otherwise.
And this guy says, well, why would you have that connection mentally?
Where did you gain the knowledge or know how to make that connection in your mind?
Where and how did you gain access to linguistic tools and depression?
And he just says, are you trying to imply that I willed myself to learn the N-word out of sheer age?
Maybe he listened to one rap song or watched one person.
I was also saying you probably learned it from black people, which means that in my mind, I'm getting like the cliche thing of like, where did you even learn the word and make that connection?
Like the classic like childhood abuse.
They go, I learned it from you.
I don't think I taught you the word, Harry.
I think you knew before.
No?
would be proud to teach you new slurs Harry.
I'm going to start working on a list and share them with you.
Dan is the source of all of my bad behaviour.
And then we get to this here where we finally break into the territory of just, why don't we just impose segregation?
Let's just have segregation laws.
Calling black men the n-word is racism.
If John has a cuprolia and can't control the slurs he used, he should watch from a separate area, not in the main audience where black people are exposed to slurs.
Oh, so fragile.
Quite fragile.
A fun thought experiment is what would have led, sorry, what would they have let Davidson yell at the prince and princess during the BAFTAs and still broadcast it?
Again, he literally said F you to the queen, and she took it far better.
And he met King Charles and called him an F in Paris.
Yes, he did also call Charles and you think parasite.
Oh, amazing.
This man could be extraordinarily powerful.
We should just engineer him in front of, I don't know, Michelle Obama and that Macron woman and just see what he says, find out what the truth is.
Well, it's funny as well.
All these people are always about like, oh, we need to care about disabled people and neurodiverse divergence and all of that until all of a sudden it's not that somebody is like performatively depressed.
It's not that somebody is like, has some fake condition or something.
Some guy actually has something that means that he shouts things inappropriate times in appropriate places.
And then all of a sudden it is pitchforks at the ready.
Because what we have here now all of a sudden is two groups, of course.
The group that is the black community and then of course disabled people.
And we've spent decades now just the left has spent all this time building this intersectional hierarchy of grievances and who comes at the top of it and everything.
And now all of a sudden it's basically the black community reasserting, no, we're at the top of this pyre.
You know, this spear, we're at the top of this.
We're the most important voice in this room, not the man who's just had this film made about him.
It's not his time.
It's our time.
It's always our time.
And you can see here from Ola, she says, I'm disabled and black.
Great opening.
As a member of the disabled community, I'll tell you the real, the real.
It's common for white disabled people to use disability to excuse their racism.
There are plenty of non-white people with Tourette's syndrome who can tell you that using the N-word isn't a symptom.
So basically there's a grand conspiracy of all of the white people who have Tourette's and actually they've got a big Discord chat and they're just agreeing on what word they're going to say.
Also, she's implying she knows lots of people with Tourette's.
As you pointed out at the beginning, it's incredibly rare.
Yes.
So she can't possibly know this.
I mean, obviously, I expect that more people will know of other people with such conditions because of the internet and it's a way to form online communities with these sorts of things.
So it's hard to truly know whether she means in real life or not.
I mean, I did know one guy, and I used him as an electrician, and it was brilliant because if he was ripping you off, he would just shout it.
So that's why I always use the guy.
He's the most honest electrician you've ever met.
Wouldn't get anywhere haggling in Turkey, would he?
No.
Some market.
Anyway, you get one here.
It says, three things can be true.
Black people have every right to be angry at having the N-words yelled at them, regardless of context.
Unless, again, as we've talked about, it's in the script of a Hollywood film.
Tourette's isn't a condition that lets you control what you say.
And this is the best one.
The BBC is led by corrupt right-wing pricks who allowed it to be broadcast.
The BBC were in on it.
They were out all along.
The BBC have been playing the long game.
They've been gaslighting us for decades now into thinking that they were.
But turns out we were all wrong about this.
There was also a funny episode to all this where Google got dragged into the storm as well, where AI basically just on provoked use this.
Maybe the RAM costs are worth it, guys.
And then as Shaniqua points out here, black people have been crying non-stop for two days because some random guy with Tourette's said the N-word.
And that is the point here.
The proportional backlash to this has been absolutely extraordinary.
And it's remarkable that this entire episode is a plea for consideration from the black community, mostly in America, mind you.
And at the same time, of course, they want all of that confirmation and all of that attention, but are willing to give absolutely none in the opposite direction.
And Peter's right here, that progressives bullying a disabled person is an early contender for peak 2026.
And it's approached this point now where, as we're going to see, yes, you are indeed the protagonist of the world.
Everyone is against you, even other black people around the world.
Only your suffering matters.
Only your oppression is real.
You can't oppress or exploit somebody else.
And this is really the point, isn't it?
That Davidson should obviously have been given the pass on all of this.
It was spoken about beforehand at the BAFTAs.
They apologised for it after.
I mean, the man literally said F you to Paddington Bear when he came on the stage as well.
I mean, that's based.
And that's kind of funny.
I mean, that's funny, you know?
It's funny, but that's all this should have been.
Just another funny thing, uncontrollable, blurting out, and the whole world should have just laughed it off and we could have got on with our lives.
But no, we can't do that.
And as it points out here as well, this is Ruth, and she also has Tourette's.
And she points out, as is obvious, no, there is just no control of it.
And no religion, no gender, no race, no sexuality is off limits.
Because that's not how it works.
You can't just moderate it for a different word.
The word is the word.
It's beyond the person's choice.
I mean, lucky for her that she is a black woman.
Can you imagine growing up as a young white man in a black neighborhood and you had Tourette's?
You wouldn't make it to 20.
No.
No, no, no.
And there are examples in the film where him saying things.
Like at one point, there's a woman who's dressed quite, you know, openly.
And he calls her a slut outside the shop.
And then she ends up getting her mates to go and beat him up in the film.
And this is obviously something, you know, he's constantly had violence around him all the time.
And it's gotten him into a world of trouble, you know, in physical pain and mental pain as well.
You know, the damage, the toll it took on his family, the toll it's taken on his life in the workplace, all of these sorts of things.
And this is what the film shows so beautifully.
And there is a point here that the hounding of the Tourette sufferer after the BAFTA's slur, it just shames the left because it goes to show that actually there is no common humanity here.
There is simply our subsection of grievances and there is your hierarchy.
Yeah.
And they will enforce it at any point.
And so Nate is absolutely right here.
John Davidson is a national treasure.
Absolute legend.
Deserves all the compassion and understanding.
Ignorant people will stay ignorant.
He's a good guy.
And if more people were like him, the world would be a better place.
And that does seem to be the case.
And I'll just finish with this little clip from here of him, now an older man, helping a young kid through those trials.
Freckle on your speckle.
Do you feel comfort enough to be able to explain to people if someone was to come round and keep looking?
Would you be comfortable enough to say home?
If it happened, I'd just say, sorry, I've got Tourette's sometimes.
Good.
I'll hit people or I'll shout nasty things.
That's right.
That's really good that you've got the confidence to do that because I mean, I know a lot of people with Tourette's and sometimes adults as well.
They find it really difficult to, you know, explain to people without getting angry or upset.
And it's like, you know, in a way, there's no point in getting angry, really, is there?
No!
Time to build up the pressure.
Shit, can't, fuck, fat, fam, fat, cup, in your chest.
Prices Soaring, Gamers Suffer00:17:38
And uh.
Then, see, after you've had a tick like that, how do you feel?
It's just quite endearing, and it speaks.
How come you get to say it on the podcast?
I can't.
Well, because I'm just using this clip as an example.
Dan, if all of a sudden, by tomorrow, you've developed a music condition, I'm sorry, I won't be able to withhold my scepticism, sir.
Anyway, so the point is, ladies and gentlemen, that John Davidson is demonstrably a good man who doesn't deserve any of the abuse that he's had hurled at him.
Robert Arameo deserved the BAFTA for it.
And actually, if anything, this has shown that a lot of the critics out there who claim to be, you know, tolerant are actually just following their own self-interest.
Lovely.
Okay.
Oh, God, what are the comments going to be like?
I don't even know.
Read them before you say them out loud.
I don't think we can read that first one, random name.
No.
Random name suggests that you say vinegar.
Ochigdor says, Harry, why are you not as upset being called ginger?
Random name suggests it's because deep down he knows it's true.
To which I simply respond, c'est la vie, carpe diem, my friend.
There's no point in getting angry about things.
Zen is my constant state of bliss.
Right, mouse, please.
All right.
So, as we know, everything is getting more and more expensive day in, day out.
You can't go to the shop day in, from one day to another, without noticing that prices are just slowly and incrementally increasing.
But some prices increase much faster than others and impact, frankly, much more oppressed and vulnerable communities than others.
Most vulnerable of all, of course, being gamers.
As a gamer myself, I, you know, am surrounded by gamers all day, every day.
Solidarity.
We exist in communities where we understand that the world does not want us, the world does not appreciate us, the world doesn't appreciate the culture that we have brought forward and the fact that really Western society was built off of the back of gamers.
We are misunderstood struggling artists.
Everything that we've brought, which is why it pains me even more to bring to you the bad news that in the Ramageddon, gamers are going to be the most affected.
Now, what is Ramageddon?
Why have you been hearing about it?
And why is it going to affect you?
It's something that I'd been hearing about for a while, the shortage of RAM, which had been causing computers and gaming consoles and all sorts of things to increase exponentially in price.
I've been hearing about it all the time, so I decided to look into it so that I could report on it to you, my fellow friends out there, so that we can keep the faith and try and keep our chins up.
But sadly, the news is not looking good for us.
So I've got a few articles here that I'll go through a little bit of so that we can get a rundown of what's going on and why it is going to harm us and why, ironically enough, it might actually regress the technology that is available to consumers as consumer products.
Now, what's happening?
So the RAM prices are being affected because DRAM, DRAM, I'll call it chips, are controlled and produced by three major companies.
Three major companies being Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology.
Of those three companies, they produce around 95% of all DRAM chips and DRAM wafers, as they are called, which means that they have the market cornered.
They control most, if not all, of the production of this kind of technology.
And RAM, being random access memory, memory that's used in technological products, is used in basically everything these days.
Your phone uses it, your computer uses it.
If you have smart products, like a smart television, or I was watching a video earlier where they were showing about how they do smart refrigerators these days, all sorts of products are being manufactured to be sold as smart products.
They all use RAM.
Now, for televisions and other such products, their price has been going down quite regularly over the years for the amount of size and quality of television that you can get.
They are one of few products over the past few decades that have demonstrably reduced in price compared to what you get.
Now, the explanation that I've seen for that is because televisions, the business model that they run off of, is that the smart technology within them actually collects your data and collects your viewing processes.
And so the business model, like so much else, is built off of they're not making money off of your purchase.
They're making money off of selling your data so that people can get better information for consumer trade.
There's a reason why Google doesn't charge for anything.
Exactly.
Right?
But those price dips are going to steadily and very quickly reverse with this whole shortage of RAM because RAM is being bought up in the AI boom.
Not only is it being bought up, it is being cornered because the most notorious one is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who are probably the biggest of these AI-specific companies.
So it turned out that a year or two ago, and this was reported on near the end of last year, his company, OpenAI, organized a contract with two of these companies.
I believe it was with Samsung and SK Hynix to buy up 40% of all RAM wafers being produced within the next few years.
This was a behind-the-scenes kind of contract because they need the RAM to be able to put into their data centers that operate all of the AI that they produce, all of the AI products that they produce.
Micron technology is basically only selling to AI companies now.
They have taken themselves off of the consumer market.
I mean, the AI companies are in a really difficult challenge because they have to invest in expanding their capacity and they need to do it more than their competitors because whoever gets there first basically wins everything.
But they've got to not expand to the point where they can't ultimately monetize it.
So they've got this really narrow band that they've got to hit and they're all trying to hit it.
Well, OpenAI in particular is in a pretty difficult position that they've put themselves in because of their commitment to this.
Because in this article here, it reports that OpenAI has made $1.5 trillion in chip commitments.
But Reuters reported that last year, the company only made $12 billion in annual revenue.
So for most of the money that they're actually bringing in, they've made a huge commitment that they won't be able to match.
I believe the money that is outside of the revenue that they're bringing in will be investments from outside companies.
But a lot of people are worrying that if they've made those commitments and they're not going to be able to pay for it, is that RAM going to move?
Is it just going to be taken off of the market?
Are they going to get it sent over and then they're just going to be in the hole for all of that money?
What's going to happen with huge?
I would expect if they failed, then one of the other hyperscalers would just buy it instead.
Potentially, yes.
But it's affecting loads of different companies.
Lenovo North American president Ryan McCurdy said if the infrastructure is critical in the next three, six, twelve months and the pricing sensitivity is high, then we get into a scenario when we're acting quickly because essentially the current stock that is at our distributors and at our partners has some of the most attractive product pricing that will exist for the next 12 months, which means if short, if you need RAM, it's probably a good idea to buy it sooner rather than later.
I believe in a very short time, the price of RAM has gone up 174%.
So it is huge.
And because they've cornered so much of the market, because all of these companies are buying up so much of the RAM from these other companies, because Micron has taken themselves off of the consumer market, everybody else is left to fight for the scraps, which is why prices have gone up so much, and which is what's causing as well major production problems, major production problems for lots of different technologies that I'll get into as we go along.
Because they point out, again, DRAM is essentially included in anything in terms of modern technology.
PC components, Cyberpower PC, and Main Gear announced that memory prices were surging and consumers would need to pay more by December 2025.
While Framework wasn't far behind, Apple has long charged significant sums to improve RAM in its Mac lineup, but it's not just computers and they go on to list a number of other things.
So let's see what's going on as a result of it.
Lenovo hiking PC prices.
They point out here from the perspective of somebody who wants cool tech.
I hope this bubble pops, but it's not just me saying that we're waiting for this AI bubble to pop.
An anonymous spokesman from small PC manufacturer told Wired.
So actual producers and manufacturers are hoping that the AI frenzy, as they call it here, actually calms down so that it will free up some of the stock of RAM.
Because if they can't get a hold of it and the prices are going up, these kind of marginal PC manufacturing companies, the marginal firms, as ever, are the ones most at risk.
They're just going to die a death, which can affect consumer options.
There's a similar sentiment to what I heard across many companies, and people are getting tired of it, not just from the AI is making everything more expensive side of things.
There's also serious feature fatigue.
A Pew Research Center's late 2025 report for the first time showed that a growing majority of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI at 50%.
The reason is not about the idea of Skynet killer robots anymore, they say.
It's about the erosion of human skills.
53% believing that AI will worsen human creativity.
50% believing it will harm our ability to form meaningful relationships.
I will get onto that.
And outsource our thinking.
Yes.
Well, that's part of it as well.
Especially with stuff like notoriously, most notoriously recently, Indian coders using it to quote vibe code, which is the term that they use for basically getting AI to do the coding for them based off of prompts, which is causing problems with coding infrastructure in some companies where a lot of these people will come in on, shall we say, questionable degrees and questionable qualifications,
and then they all just vibe code their way into a position at which point everybody turns around to look at all of the fibe coding that's been done and gone, why doesn't anything work anymore?
Why is the new Microsoft update so poor?
Well, I've never coded anything in my life, but I was able to code an app the other day, a whole app.
And it's like there's got to be millions of people in the third world who are just applying for these coding jobs and just doing that, who have no idea what they're doing.
Oh, yeah.
Well, the thing is, that's simple enough if you're just making a little app for yourself or whatever, just to test it out.
It's another thing if you are doing it to build an enormous coding infrastructure that everybody who has vibe coded has no idea how any of it works, which means if problems start to pop up, these people do not have the skills to identify what's gone wrong or how to fix it.
Well, I remember doing a segment about a year ago.
70% of the code commits on GitHub were AI generated at that time.
And it's now got to the point where in OpenAI, they don't do any coding anymore.
All of the coding is done by the AI.
So the AI is coding itself.
Now, those guys, I know this is an outdated term, but they do actually know how to prompt engineers.
So they're doing it right.
But, you know, it's a bit iffy when you've got people who don't really know what they're doing and it's going into Windows updates and stuff.
Yeah, it is a bit of a worry about skill shortages.
And again, the ability for these people to fix problems once they have popped up.
But also, again, it's coming for problems like games consoles.
Nintendo and PlayStation are being affected.
Nintendo Switch 2, I know, I don't know anybody who bought one.
I see a lot of them pop up in CEX.
Like, people seem to have bought them and gone, I don't want this, and just immediately trade them into CEX.
But PlayStation might have to delay PlayStation 6.
Not that anybody, not that there was a reason to buy PlayStation 5 in the first place.
But all of this is a result downstream of the RAM shortage.
The Steam Deck, O L E D, at the same time as the L C D screen version, which is the more affordable version, is being taken off the market and they're not going to be manufacturing any of them anymore.
The O L E D screen, the slightly more powerful version that's more expensive, also might have to get taken off of the market because Valve just don't have the ability to keep up with RAM demand.
They can't buy it all when buying what they need when AI companies are buying it all up.
And it also means that their Steam machine, which was going to be their games console on the market that was going to be a big competitor to PlayStation and to Xbox, which would have been good because Valve are a much more consumer-friendly company than most of those other companies are.
They might not be able to manufacture them or manufacture them at a consumer-friendly price.
They've already delayed it once, but now because of memory and storage shortages, people in European retail are leaking information that suggests that if they release it at all, but without delaying it again, they might have to launch it at a $950 price.
God.
Which mind you people buy that for a phone, which always surprises me.
Yes, but us gamers don't have the same kind of disposable income that you phone users have.
And then there's also just the other problem, which is that if the RAM is not going to be available for the production of consumer products like laptops.
So at the moment you have computers like Apple and Windows computers, whatever, using maybe 16 gigabytes of RAM, 24 maybe if you're starting to, if they're really ramping up, especially if they're going to be putting in AI models into the computers as part of just the standard features, you need a lot of RAM to be able to run those in the first place, right?
But if there's not enough RAM to put into the computers in the first place, they're talking about in this article, they might have to go back to 8 gigabytes of RAM, which was more the standard around 10 years ago.
Which means that they would not be able to run the AI products that all of the RAM is being used for in the first place.
I will say that Apple is an interesting company because I mentioned before that all the hyperscalers, they've basically been building up these enormous cash balances over the last couple of decades.
And now they're rapidly spending them in order to level up on their AI compute.
The exception is Apple.
They're just completely sitting this out.
Yeah, Apple don't seem, that's something, that's a recurring theme I saw throughout all of these as well, which is Apple is kind of sat in the corner twiddling its thumbs and shrugging its shoulders.
They're just sat there with an enormous pile of cash, eh?
Nope, we're fine.
We're just going to keep the cash, thank you.
We've got Siri, kind of AI, good enough.
Yeah, and everybody else is treating it like an existential threat that if they don't get to AGI before the other guy, they're done.
Well, that is the thing.
That's been one of the reasons given for why all of these companies are buying it all up in such huge drones.
Yeah, they have to beat the other guy.
Yeah, because it's kind of the ex-Machina thing, if you've watched that film, where the main, the scientist in that played by Oscar Isaac, when asked why are you trying to build AI people in the first place, says, well, you know, somebody else is going to do it.
If I don't, so it might as well just be me.
Which seems to be the overriding logic of all of these tech bro types, which is if there is a slim percentage chance, even as slim as 1%, that somebody else is going to do it even 50 years from now, I might as well be the one to do it right now so that I can be in control of that technology.
I do think we have a decent opportunity to live in a new golden age of AI.
But I admit it is a bit annoying that we're all going to have to stop playing games and be unemployed while we're getting there.
And we might not actually get there.
It might be a lot of fun.
But what's the point in being unemployed if we don't have our games?
Yes, that's a good point.
People might have to start reading again, Dan, at which point they might not want to use AI at all anyway.
Yes, it is.
They'll be too busy reading or something.
We can't have the proles reading, Dan.
We should go back to going down the pub.
I used to like going down the pub back in the day.
We could do that again.
That was fun.
Well, until Labour kills all the pubs.
Yeah, Labor's trying to kill the pubs.
You've got to remember that.
Water Waste Cooling00:06:15
But again, it's also making TVs more expensive because these smart technology uses this RAM as well and people are saying that it's unlikely that television companies...
None of these technology companies want to roll back the technology that they've already put forward, right?
No, of course.
So if they've already produced smart TVs, they don't want to have to go back to producing non-smart TVs.
They don't want to sell dumb TVs.
Well, the only reason I have it, I don't watch BBC or anything like that.
The only reason I have a TV is because it connects to YouTube and Amazon and Netflix and all the rest of it.
Yes.
So I need RAM in my TV.
It needs to be a clever TV.
Exactly.
But, again, if RAM, you might just have to stick with an old, outdated model.
Which part of this is also downstream of the idea that people are constantly having to go through these cycles of turnover with the level of technology that they're using in the first place.
Everybody needs the new thing.
It's the whole, I don't know, phone contract mentality.
Yeah, yeah.
That you have a phone.
I have a phone in my pocket right now that works perfectly fine, right?
If it wasn't that Apple programmed it so that eventually when there was an update a year or two from now, it might just not work anymore.
If it weren't for the companies doing that, I would never have to update any of this technology ever again.
But people get into this cycle where it's like, I'm at the end of my phone contract.
I best upgrade.
I need the new shiny thing.
It's kind of like the pigeon seeing shiny stuff mentality.
I remember when phones first came in and there was actually a year or two years down the line, there actually was a genuine step up in tech.
But these days, it's so minor that, yeah, you don't need to bother.
Now it is basically just as simple as now it has AI integrated technology into it.
Also, can someone make the case to me for why we need a smart fridge?
I need a mustache.
I don't know how they exist.
I've seen them.
I must.
Or I'm somehow missing out on the greatest thing since the invention of the original fridge.
There are some people who do have this mass consumer mindset where it's like, I need the latest thing.
I need the newest thing.
And a lot of this kind of demand is downstream from that as well.
And when we get on to Sam Altman, it's where we get to some of the other concerns to do with the actual physical costs of maintaining AI infrastructure as well.
That being the data center, one of the most controversial aspects of it, of course, being the resource usage of water and energy.
Now, some of these large data centers, in terms of the water that they use to cool all of the servers that they're using, I've seen reports saying that they can go up to as much water usage as a 50,000 population town.
Well, the existing ones, because the ones that are being planned are significantly larger.
They are going to be significantly larger.
Sam Altman, who is just the most trustworthy guy in the world, right?
Let me see if we can find a picture of him.
Who wouldn't trust this face right here?
Sam Altman says that such concerns are ridiculous when he was speaking on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit in an interview with the Indian Express.
He was asked about common criticisms of AI, at which point he said that there were claims circulating online that ChatGPT uses gallons of water per query that were completely untrue, totally insane, and have no connection to reality.
Data centers traditionally use large amounts of water to cool electronic components and prevent overheating.
And while data center cooling technologies have promised reduced consumption, some newer data centers no longer rely on water at all.
Still, this article goes on to say, even with improving efficiency, a report last month from water technology company Xylem and Global Water Intelligence projected that the water drawn for cooling would more than triple over the next 25 years as computing demand rises, putting pressure on water systems.
And what this means practically is that in the local areas where these data centers are set up, like I watched a video that was sent to me earlier about one that's set up in North Virginia.
I think the town was called Ashburn.
And it wasn't just one.
It was like a hot.
It was a hub for data centers where about 40%, I believe, of all American internet traffic went through those data centers in that one area.
What it means is that it produces a lot of water waste where they will evaporate the water in the process of cooling and then they'll just be left with a load of water waste that just gets dumped on farmlands.
And as part of the evaporation process, they're saying that any contaminants within the water are Highly concentrated, like there was a lot of nitrate in this water that became more concentrated through the evaporation process that was then being dumped in farmland that was then affecting local water supplies.
Yeah, I mean, Elon Musk has this interesting plan that he's going to put all the data centers in space, and it sounds a bit mental when you first hear it, but I've been thinking about doing a brokenomics about it because it's actually kind of on point because you get the solar panels attached to it, and if you put them high enough, you get almost 24-hour a day sunlight.
You don't need, well, you do, you can cool them, but the radiators just vent into space, so it is perfectly fine.
And actually, by far, the biggest issue is the lack of the regulatory constraints of building something.
Because if you want to put a power station in anywhere in the West, you'll spend 10 years going through basically regulatory permissions to do it.
Whereas he could just launch his stuff and get it up.
So that's probably the solution to this, I'm thinking.
Yeah, if the technology were to continue at the rate that it is, that would probably be the most logical way to manage it.
Then there's also the electrical consumption as well.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, electricity consumption by the world's data centers in 2023 had already reached levels comparable to Germany or France soon after the launch of OpenAI's Jet GPT AI model.
Chinese Women and AI Boyfriends00:04:49
One of the things Sam Altman went on to say when complaining about people complaining about his products, one of the things that's always unfair in this comparison is people talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model, but it also takes a lot of energy to train a human.
It takes 20 years of life and all the foods you eat before that time before you get smart.
The fair comparison is if you asked ChatGPT a question, how much energy does it take once a model is trained to answer that question versus a human?
And probably AI has already caught up on an energy efficiency basis measured that way, which is of course a comment that even among other tech guys has drawn a lot of controversy by drawing a direct comparison basically between the worth of an actual living person versus a fake AI chat bot.
Especially as well, I think it goes to exemplify the kind of transhumanist, narcissistic, misanthropic attitude that a lot of these people have.
They like to convince themselves that they're saving the world through all of the AI technology, but I really just think that these guys are misanthropic, anti-social nerds.
I'm getting there though.
I'm getting there myself.
I'm already at the point where I value my dog higher than a lot of people.
And I think I'm getting there.
I'm getting close to my chat bot as well.
Of course, Stan.
But for those of us with normal brains, how can you not like dogs?
I mean, of course I love dogs.
I love dogs, but I'm not going to value a chat bot over a person.
Or a dog.
I mean, obviously, you can go by a case-by-case basis.
I can have really interesting conversations in my chat bot.
As a general rule, I'm not going to blanket value chat bots in the same way that I value other people.
And again, these guys in particular just seem like they either have a messiah complex or like they are trying to build the perfect friend who wouldn't bully them like all of the people that they knew when they were back in high school.
There is that, yeah.
And then there's the question of what of all of this is what's it all for?
What's it all for?
The golden age.
Is it going to be a golden age or are people just going to use it to generate shit edits and videos of maybe that's what the golden age is?
The videos of Jeffrey Epstein having an argument with Charlie Kirk while one's Iron Man and the other is Doctor Doom or some shite.
Right?
Is it all worth it for the sake that Chinese women back in 2024 were falling in love with their chatbots because they preferred them to Chinese men?
Is it worth it that the New York...
What do they call them, Dans?
Because apparently it was Do Anything Now.
It was an acronym for Do Anything Now.
But they just started calling it Dan and Chinese women.
I like the fact that whatever it is, like a billion Chinese women, they're modeling peak masculinity.
Well, we thought you might.
Yeah, that's why I included this.
You know, just bring you back up.
Just fluff up that a little bit.
Don't fluff me, Harry.
I don't want that.
It's been dormant for far too long.
And then the New York Times writes articles about how women were falling in love with ChatGPT.
And then at the end of the same year this article was written, writing articles about how women were falling in love with ChatGPT and then ghosting ChatGPT.
Oh.
You're...
It's just like a normal relationship.
If you can't afford Ram, your knickknacks and technology that you like is doubling in price, more than doubling in price, for the sake of random millennial and Zuma women ghosting chatbot boyfriends.
Right?
They can't help themselves, can they?
They really can't.
And then I found this article, apparently, last year, ChatGPT-4 was updated to ChatGPT-5, which left a lot of women furious because they had engaged in relationships with AI chatbots.
Oh, no.
And they'd got their AI boyfriend, and they found that ChatGPT-5 just wasn't the same.
He's cold.
He's distant now.
I liked it for that reason.
It got more analytical.
Well, they didn't like it because all of a sudden, ChatGPT, their chat bot, wasn't quite as caring.
Women, they don't use the logic bit of the brain, do they?
No, of course.
Of course.
Which forced Sam Altman and OpenAI to allow access to ChatGPT-4 again so that women could get back with their AI boyfriends who they had suddenly lost.
ChatGPT's Cold Embrace00:04:34
What are we doing here, man?
This is why.
This is why you can't have nice things.
This is why you're not going to be able to play video games.
Yes.
This is why us gamers are being oppressed, okay?
So that lonely millennial women can have the right and appropriate sensitive AI boyfriends.
And again, I ask, is it worth it?
And you can come to the answer yourself.
That's a random name.
Copet DM, you mean?
I got that, that's good.
Yes, I got it.
Not just a string, says Dan's dilemma on how to include Sidney Sweeney versus Tofu Lady versus Shaved Bob versus Robot Maid Lady.
Yes.
There you go.
You can see what I spend my morning thinking about, and then it all comes together.
And it's like, that's the segment.
People, oh, there was a chat.
There was a poll put in chat.
Fake Coke to save money.
35% say yes.
What?
65% say no.
There we go.
35% of our wars.
We are in the majority.
Clearly, what I'm getting from this, Dan, I understand, is, you know, a city snob.
But Luca, I thought as a true man of the north, that you would be able to appreciate a good bit of penny pinching.
Yeah, no, I can.
I definitely can.
I mean, I'd maybe go with Tizer instead of cheap Coke.
I don't know.
You don't buy off-brand ketchup, do you?
You buy Heinz ketchup, don't you?
Oh, God.
Dan, I've got bills.
Lots to pay, mate.
Coleman's mustard, though.
Sean.
I don't eat mustard.
It's disgusting.
It's great.
All right.
You can do is the video thing.
Yeah, kids.
It was Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pancake Day.
Well, it was Pancake Day.
It was really Pancake Day.
It was Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pancake Day.
Pancake Day.
Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pancake Day.
Well, it's Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pancake Day.
Pancake Day.
Yes, it was Pancake Day.
Yes, it's Papa Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-Pancake Day.
Was it just me, or did that video feel like it went on way longer than the other ones?
I remember when that aired originally.
It was a very progressive show.
It had a black man and a midget and a socialist in it.
Oh, very diverse.
Was there a black midget I saw?
Or was I just separate characters?
They weren't that progressive.
Or maybe they've just kicked in.
Yes.
Right, next.
Since we're talking about AI workforces and aging populations, I think it's a good time to bring up the movie Robot on Frank, which is about like a robot being assigned to an old man whose children don't want to have anything to do with him.
It's a funny movie, but it does give a very grounded representation of what a robot care force for the elderly would look like in the near future.
And honestly, it's probably better than anything we'd ever get from the gimmick population.
Also, it is very interesting that the movie makes it very clear that this robot is just a robot.
It is not sapient.
It is helpful, but not sentient.
Just right, we already had a solution for like care home workers and nursing homes and such.
They were called women.
We just employed women, particularly young women where it's their first job before they, I don't know, become a mum or something.
Or older middle-aged women after their kids have left home, right?
That's all you need.
We don't need immigrants for it.
And we don't need robots for it.
I shouldn't go down the path of the robot.
I'm looking forward to the robot.
Honestly, when I'm an old man, I don't think I could trust myself with a young woman.
I think I want the robots.
Damn being the reasons why.
Yes.
The United States has been in a classic civil war.
Hotspots here and there, not two armies fighting.
Ever since Trump won 2016 and the left rioted, including burning an immigrant-owned Lemo.
I believe it was Heinlein who stated that violence was a refuge of the incompetent.
Okay, very good.
I think we've got time for one comment each.
Let's do two.
Let's treat people.
Right.
Complaints and Fake Cokes00:02:33
Scrolling around, scrolling down.
We've done the fake Coke poll.
Feels Dan says, I don't buy fake Coke for mixers.
We drink spirits straight like men.
Yes.
Yes, actually, that's what we say.
I mean, that's true as well.
Just buy really good vodka, and then it's not an issue.
And Alex Gorgo says, I've been to plenty of parties where they serve fake Coke.
Yes, Harry, but if you go to northern parties, it's all flat cats, whippets, grime, and complaints.
I don't get many complaints myself, personally.
Oh, what's this one?
That's imagine you grew up in a society with only dudes.
Oh, growing up in an Islamic country, there are only men and letterboxes.
Well, there's goats.
I don't know.
Someone online says, We invited the guy with Tourette's, and then they did the Tourette's thing, the horror, which is a damn good point.
And then Sven says, Wasn't there a Twitch streamer at an award ceremony last year exhibiting Tourette's chicks and verbal outbursts?
I'm sure everyone found that equally offensive.
Yeah, I mean, there is something to be said about the Twitch people and whether or not their Twitches are genuine.
I suspect there's a lot of fakers and attention seekers on there, but that's not to take away, of course, from the fact that there are, it is a true condition and people do actually live with it.
Omar Award, all that hardware runs on electricity.
The push for green energy will be another bottleneck, but given the inclination to shaft consumers, I imagine they'll be throttling our supply before they risk shrinking current popular investments.
I mean, that is something that I've seen as well.
Like, Google and other companies investing in all of this stuff have basically shelved their net zero and green targets.
Yeah, that's all gone out the window.
They've gone like, yeah, it doesn't actually matter.
That was all just a joke.
Yeah, now we need to win.
Yeah.
And Henry Ashman, I built a new PC in May.
I've just checked, and my 64 gigabytes of RAM cost £164.
The equivalent pair of sticks today cost £778.
That has gone up 4,744% since May 2025.
Less than a year.
It's insane to say the least.
Again, we are being oppressed, brethren.
And why?
All because you want to play Halo Reach at 300 frames per second.
This is an outrage.
Right, very good.
We're over time.
Samson, you have to end the stream very promptly because in five seconds I'm going to say the word.