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April 12, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
46:49
Episode 907 Scott Adams: Swaddling Your Questions Like it Was Nothing. Get in Here.
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Time Text
Hey everybody, whatever you do, do not touch your face.
Do not touch your face.
Don't touch your face!
No! Guess I'll have to throw that away now.
Great. Hey everybody!
Is there something missing?
Yeah, I think there is. I think there is.
We're not properly swaddled.
I don't know what's become of me, really.
There. Oh, that's better.
Yeah. So, one of the things about this coronavirus thing is that it's allowing us to learn about Society.
It's allowing us to learn about ourselves.
And let me tell you what I learned about myself tonight.
I had always been under the impression that I would probably be good at cooking if I had enough time to concentrate on it.
Turns out that's not the case.
Nope. Doesn't matter how much time I have.
Cooking It is not my special skill.
So, there's that.
You want to hear a sign of desperation?
I was just watching a Bill Maher show, and he was asking, I think Al Gore, he was interviewing, and he asked Al Gore what he thought of this idea.
What if Biden announced that he was going to pick Obama to be the coronavirus czar?
And I thought to myself, and of course Al Gore answered it the smart political way by saying, you know, you should ask Obama first before you get too excited about it, because he might not want that job, which I would imagine he didn't.
But can you think of anything that sounds more give-up-y?
Than asking, hey, wouldn't it be a good idea if Biden got Obama to do the hard part of Biden's job for him?
That is really desperate sounding.
And at this point, I don't know if anybody is even pretending that Biden is capable.
It's funny, at least among the smart Democrats, Well, not just Democrats.
I'm not sure where Bill Maher is.
I don't know if he identifies with the party or not.
But it feels like all the smart people who do identify with the left are kind of noticing they don't have much of a candidate.
So we'll see what happens there.
All right. Have you noticed that it's getting harder to tell the difference between People who just really love their constitutional freedoms.
And sociopaths.
Because at the moment, they look the same.
The only difference is whatever is internally happening in their head.
But if you're observing from the outside, let's say you're at the tail end of the baby boomer generation, just as an example.
Say somebody from that perspective...
was looking at some of the younger folks and seeing that the younger folks definitely seem to value getting back to work more than the life of some number of older people.
Now, if you're just observing it from the outside, How could you tell the difference between young people who are just sociopaths and they couldn't care if you live or die?
It's not their problem.
Or people who just put a really high value on freedom.
Wouldn't they look a lot alike?
You know, whenever I see people debating, hey, if the government takes this freedom from us, yeah, it might solve this problem in this short run, but then we'll lose all our freedoms.
I'm not sure if people know how many freedoms we've given up over the course of human history.
We've probably given up more freedoms than you can even list.
Some of it's trivial.
You can't yell fire in a crowded theater even though you have a freedom of speech.
You can't libel somebody even though you have freedom of speech.
So we have lots of limitations.
I can't go sleep in your house just because I want to.
We have tons of limitations.
Most of them have the same quality, which is the reason that I'm limited, my freedom is limited, because if it's not, there's a good chance it would hurt somebody else.
That's how laws work most of the time.
So, what's the difference between every other law in the world, which is mostly about Helping other people, you know, helping the greater good, and, you know, whatever draconian restrictions are being put on people at the moment.
Isn't it always at the cost of freedom?
We act like something happened in the last month or so that changed the direction of things from our open, free, privacy world, and now it's heading in the wrong direction, to which I say, what? We're 99 miles down a 100-mile road, and we just went another half mile.
I'm not even sure we'll notice it.
So we've been giving up rights and things for hundreds of years, and so far it's kind of worked out.
I don't know. Can you think of anything that was a right you gave up that's really made the world a worse place, that stuck around?
I don't know. Alright, I've been pressing people on Twitter to give me a number of how many people they would be willing to see die extra from the coronavirus in order to get back to work.
So, as I often say, if you can't put a number on it, If you can put it in those terms, that's a real opinion. Well, you should go back to work.
Or you can only say, lives will be lost.
You're not really helping.
You're just sort of taking up space.
So, I asked somebody today, and I got this, somebody who leans conservative.
I don't know his exact.
I'm not sure how he would describe himself, but just based on Twitter interactions.
Somebody who would be conservative slash libertarian, maybe?
I don't know. But his number was 250,000.
So here's a person who lives and works among us, walks the streets like you do, shops and stores just like you do, and he's okay with the trade-off.
Nobody's okay with people dying, but he would be okay with the trade-off of a quarter million people dying who would not necessarily die otherwise, at least most of them, in order to get back to work.
And I had mixed reactions.
The first reaction I had was that I always respect anybody who can put a number on it.
You know, it wouldn't be my number.
I would want...
Actually, I think the number was gross, not net, in this case.
When I do my predictions, I've expressed them both ways.
When I express it as gross, I was talking 50,000.
When I express it as net, I talk more like 5,000.
I think those have been my consistent predictions.
Anyway, 250,000 deaths.
Just put a size on that.
That is sort of in the midway range between all the people that the United States lost in World War I and all the soldiers we lost in World War II. So there's just somebody on Twitter who may actually be watching this right now.
Who thinks it would be...
And I'm not even saying he's wrong, by the way.
If it sounds like you're detecting my criticism, I would say, I don't think I can do that.
Because, you know, there is reason to believe people will die both ways, and there's reason to believe that no one is smart enough to measure exactly where the right balance is.
So I would say he's sort of on the...
The outside edge of something that a normal human could suggest is reasonable.
It's further than I would go.
But it's World War size.
And he'd be willing to take that risk.
That's not, I don't know. I can't say it's wrong.
It's just, I wouldn't say that.
Alright. I ask you for questions.
And I believe I have some.
I'm going to Twitter where my question was asked.
Where is my question?
Let's see what questions people have.
I'm looking at your comments right here first.
Did China send this as a diversion?
Now, I don't think anybody did it intentionally.
I don't think we'll ever find that to be true.
All right.
So, question from Skip.
What is the talent stack needed to be a great teacher and presenter as you predicted we'll learn in the future?
Do you believe those skills can be learned and maybe outline the specific persuasion skills needed?
Well, I think that the future will be people who maybe don't have the full talent stack, but it's a team of people just like making a Hollywood movie where the director's got these skills, the actors have different skills than the writers, etc. So I think it's going to be more like that.
But if you were trying to do it with one person, of course it would be being comfortable talking on camera.
That would be number one.
So it really is about being comfortable.
That's mostly just practice.
You just have to do it a lot. You need to be able to put a thought together.
You need to be able to organize your thoughts so that you have some content that's interesting.
And ideally Ideally, you'd want to look good or at least know how to be fit and fashionable.
Whatever is the best that you can do, given what you're working with.
You should learn a little bit about maybe even makeup.
And I'm talking about online video makeup.
Probably you need to know lighting.
You need to know whatever equipment you need.
You need to know social media to promote it.
So it's a pretty deep talent stack you need.
Alright, Erica says, would you consider doing a YouTube cooking show and Periscope it for us to watch?
Then you can surprise Christina when she comes back.
Well, actually, I'm going to do that.
Joke as you might, Erica.
I actually plan to do that.
So I told some of you that I'm starting to move some content.
I'll do an announcement pretty soon, but moving some content over to the Locals platform.
That's Dave Rubin's new platform where there will be no...
Censorship of the type that I get typically everywhere else.
But I'm going to put some extra content there.
So some fun stuff that is a little off my normal stuff, I'll put that there because that's a subscription service so people get extra.
Rory says...
Holy cow! Oh, that is spooky.
So Rory asked me if I like his art in progress.
Well, you're going to have to see this because this is not to be believed.
Can you see that?
What does that look like?
Does it look like anybody you know?
All right.
Well, I don't know what that's made out of.
What the hell is that?
Apparently I've been cloned.
So, alright Rory.
Rory the sculptor.
Clay? I guess.
That's pretty impressive.
Elisa says, thanks for so many helpful hints.
Well, you're welcome. Michael says, isn't the system just a way to achieve a goal?
No, it isn't. No, it isn't.
It can be.
So it would include that.
But what is magic about a system is it allows you to be flexible enough to take advantage of opportunities that you didn't even see.
So having a goal, you set your focus on something and you're marching toward that specific thing.
Having a system...
Can prepare you for lots of different things, and you might be more opportunistic and say, well, I never thought about this other thing, but now that it's there, I have all the skills I need.
I'm all practiced up, accidentally, but I have these skills too.
So it'd be a little like going to college and getting, say, an English degree.
You could end up with a variety of different jobs.
You don't know exactly which specific one, so it's not like my goal is Is to get a job in that building over there, you know, to be vice president of marketing.
Rather, you get your college degree, and then you say, well, I could do a lot of things, and you start looking around at all your possibilities.
So that's the big difference. Why do many conservatives are so afraid of losing something, privacy, they don't already have?
Well, that's a good question.
And it's sort of my biggest question.
Why would you be afraid of losing something that you don't have?
Privacy. Because here's the way I look at it.
If the government has a legitimate reason to check on you, They can do it.
They just get a subpoena to a FISA application.
Apparently it doesn't take much to get those.
So the government already can get all your stuff.
You see that every time somebody's accused of a crime.
So you don't have any privacy if the government cares.
Now what if the government doesn't care?
Well then, you don't really have privacy.
In the sense that if they started caring, they could go get it.
But as long as they don't care, it's like a functional privacy because just nobody cares.
But even if the government doesn't care, there are going to be developers and programmers and people who have access to databases, administrators, and they have access.
There's no way to design this planet so that nobody has access to your private stuff.
It just can't be done. Because if it can be programmed, it can be done.
So, yeah, you live in a world where the only thing that keeps you private is people being uninterested in you.
That's it. As soon as people are interested for legitimate reasons, let's say they think you committed a crime, they can find out anything they want.
Now that the government's assessment of this threat has proven wildly wrong, no it hasn't.
That didn't happen.
It is true that half of the country thinks that the government's assessment of this threat has proven wildly wrong.
It just isn't true.
Here's why. I'll give you the short version.
Models, prediction models, are not meant to be photographs of the future.
It's not possible.
So having an accurate forecast model is not even a thing.
You can't say that it did or did not do the thing that can't be done, nor was it designed to do that.
The models are simply designed to give you a rough size, how big the problem might be, and maybe how sensitive it is to certain variables.
But that's about it. Now, if they said we could get it down to 100,000 deaths with full mitigation, but then they changed it to 60,000, is that wrong?
Not in my book.
In my book, that's as close as anybody could ever get with something this complicated and with so many unknowns.
If they guessed 100,000 at the low end with mitigation and we hit 60, I'm sorry, that's a home run.
That's a dart thrown from the length of a football field and hits the bullseye.
Do you know why you think it's a gigantic miss and the government was wildly wrong?
Because the news does not interpret things.
They told you that. You can look at it yourself and see that the range was a million to a hundred thousand.
And the 100,000 was, at least after the first initial confusion, the 100,000 was always if you mitigate.
Now the difference from a million down to 100,000 is a really big difference.
The difference further from 100 down to 60 is lost around it.
So given that prediction models are not really made to predict, they can't, nobody can see the future, to get that close, even by luck, would be extraordinary.
If nothing changed, and all we knew is that they lowered it down to 60, and let's say it was exactly that, When it's all done, it's 60.
It's a thousand. This would be hailed as one of the most successful models of all time.
Because it doesn't get better than that.
If you think it could be better than that, then you don't even understand what the models are for, or why they do them, or what anybody's thinking.
You can't interpret them at all.
That's as good as you can do.
And if they work to scare people into action, Then they were the best models of all time.
So I reject your premise. I can't answer the rest of the question.
Joe says, how do you feel about your smartwatch or your phone tracking your temperature daily?
Not only would I like that, but I would like an app that does the following things.
I would like an app that asks me these questions.
Have I taken my temperature?
It'd be great if it were, you know, paired with a little temperature-taking thing.
But let's say you've got your own temperature-taking thing.
So every day it pops up and it says, did you take your temperature?
You're like, oh, okay. Take your temperature.
And you put it in.
And then it says, do you still have your sense of smell?
And you say, huh, hadn't really thought about it.
I don't think I do.
And so that's, you know, it's not confirmation, but it's one of the more frequent symptoms if people lose their smell.
So you go, yeah, I lost my sense of smell.
Maybe you say, did you have any body aches?
Do you have any headaches?
Whatever the other symptoms are, scratchy throat, etc.
So every day, whether you had symptoms or you did not, you would at least take your temperature.
And then you would just say who you are.
Now, here's the thing. If enough people did this, that even a small rise in temperature, along with maybe paired with some people who said they lost their smell, you could probably tell that maybe like an apartment building was becoming a hot spot.
I feel like if you just reported it on your own, Just how you feel and your temperature, I think you'd catch not all of it, but maybe a quarter of it.
It would help, I would think.
All right. Based on Diamond Princess data, M. Meshin says, without social distancing, infection rate would be 20%.
Really?
Data also shows with social distancing, infection rate is 15%.
All right, so much math, I can't figure that one out.
So he's done the math and says that if his math is right, we spent $128 million per death avoided.
Well, I hope that's not true.
But here's the way, in any case, it's the wrong analysis.
So, if you buy insurance and then your house doesn't burn down, you buy fire insurance and your house doesn't burn down, was it a mistake to buy insurance?
Was it? If you pay for insurance your whole life and your house never burns down, was it a mistake?
The answer is no.
I mean, if you had ESP and you could see the future, yeah, but you can't.
So, from the perspective of when the decision is made, it's not a mistake.
So, the number of people we did save should have been a million.
So, what are we going to spend?
Two trillion to save a million?
I'm going to talk to my digital assistant here in a moment and let me ask.
Alexa, what is two trillion divided by a million?
Two trillion divided by one million is two thousand.
No. Alexa, what is two trillion divided by one million?
Two trillion divided by one million is two million.
It's two billion. So it would be two billion to avoid a million deaths.
So it would be two billion per person.
Is two billion per person too much?
Is that too much?
Depends if you're a sociopath, I guess.
All right. Let's see what else you go.
Do you think Bill Gates is a good guy, using his wealth to try to preserve and improve lives worldwide, or a monster of a man trying to kill people off with yet to be sufficiently tested vaccines?
Vicki asked this question.
Here's what I think.
I think Bill Gates is exactly what he says he is.
I'm not sure he's capable of lying in that way.
Now, I'm sure when he ran Microsoft, he may have exaggerated his sales numbers and there might have been some hyperbole in there and maybe there's some shenanigans.
But in terms of who he is, I don't know if he's capable of lying about that, about his own basic character and his goals for the world.
The thing that always impressed me about Bill Gates is that even when he was a young man, and he was already the richest person in, I don't know, country or the world or something, he was already the richest person, and he said that he was going to retire early and dedicate his life to intelligently giving it away.
So not just giving it away, but coming up with a new intelligent way to do that.
That became the Gates Foundation, and of course that's exactly what he's been doing.
And if you haven't watched the Gates documentary, I don't know what it's called, maybe it's called Gates, I don't know, on Netflix, where he talks about his mission to develop a better toilet for Africa that works everywhere, etc. And he's really taking on some thankless tasks.
I mean, Bill Gates has taken on all the worst jobs, the hardest, most thankless ones.
And my sense, unless I'm the worst judge of character in the world, he's 100% real.
That's my assessment.
And I don't think I would give anybody 100%.
Well, maybe I would. But there are many people that I would say, Yeah, my opinion, I'm 100% sure that what you see is what you get in terms of Bill Gates, that he's actually just trying to make the world a better place.
Let me put it in concrete terms.
If he thought that pushing, let's say, a vaccine he has an investment in could make him an extra $10 billion, But, doing something else would work better for the public?
I don't have any question.
I don't have any question that he would push for the one that works better for the world.
Because he doesn't really need another 10 billion dollars.
He's trying to give it away as fast as he can.
He doesn't need another 10 to have to give away.
I mean, I'm sure you would appreciate it, but...
So unless I'm the worst judge of character in the world, Bill Gates is exactly as good as you would think, based on the fact that he's dedicating his life to charity and doing a good job.
All right. Do you think it is more likely California has lower COVID cases because of herd immunity?
Better policy or warmer weather?
Well, I don't know, Nick Bot.
I think that's the big...
The big question. The most obvious things are density.
The weather might have something to do with it.
But I think it's density and Californians are notoriously healthier.
Californians are lower weight, you know, eat better, more likely to exercise, more likely to spend time outdoors, more likely to open the windows.
I think we have, at least this winter, our humidity has been pretty good in terms of, you know, keeping down viruses.
So, a whole bunch of stuff.
But I have another hypothesis.
I don't think this is mine.
Maybe I heard somebody say this.
But haven't you heard that there are two forms of the coronavirus?
I don't know if that's confirmed yet.
But supposedly there's a bad one and a not-so-bad one.
It could be, if it's true that Europe infected New York City and China infected California.
I don't know if you can believe that or not, but preliminarily I think the New York Times is reporting that.
If that's true, that also opens the possibility that we got a weak one, Oh, I wonder if that makes sense.
Somewhere along the lines, I heard this, and I don't know if it's true, that things are the deadliest when they first jump.
So it's maximum deadliest when it first jumps, but in subsequent jumps it can get weakened.
And I wonder if, I'm just going to put this out here as a hypothesis, does a virus weaken if it's given across ethnicities?
I wonder. So here's the hypothesis.
Could it be that the China version was actually not that strong?
Maybe it was a relatively weak version.
Maybe they had both, but the weak one was the worst, the one that got around the most.
So that would explain why China had a relatively good result.
Because it could be that their form of the virus was more the weak one than the strong one.
Now, imagine that That also went to California, which would have meant California also got the weak one.
But what if the strong one got out and that one went toward Europe?
So then the Europeans would bring the strong one over to, and that would explain Italy, right?
So you'd see the strong one laying waste to Italy, and then it gets over to New York and lays waste to New York.
So it could be I mean, it sort of fits the data that I can think of.
Maybe there's some facts and evidence that I can't think of.
But it could be two viruses coming in from two different directions.
Just maybe.
I would throw that, you know, on the list with 10 other possibilities.
So Dog is My Co-Pilot says, What's happening with you?
Is it theater or a true breakdown?
Asking because I like your work and I would like to know you're okay.
Do I look like I'm having a breakdown?
Does anybody think my mental health is at risk?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Alright, anyway. Melanie asks, has anything made in China ever lasted as long as this virus?
You know, it used to be the old days that, you know, made in China meant low quality, and obviously sometimes it still does, but I think it really depends.
You know, your iPhone was made in China, too.
So it's not like China only makes bad stuff, but they do too much of it.
What do you think New York City did so wrong compared to the rest?
Density, mostly.
Is there any alternative to lose privacy or death from the virus?
Well, I made a list downstairs, and I forgot to write it down, of all of the different things that are floating around that could solve this thing.
So there are a bunch of things that could just by themselves be the solution.
For example, if hydroxychloroquine works and we can get enough of it in a few weeks, maybe that's all you need.
I mean, it's possible to do just that one thing.
Now, also, if we ramp up our ability to test, and we get so good we can just test the heck out of things, well, that's all you need.
You know, the testing alone would be enough.
Then there's the serum stuff where they give you the recovered people's blood.
That might be enough.
I mean, that could be the thing that gets us back to work.
Could be... I don't think masks by themselves are enough, but isn't it...
Is it Norway or Sweden who's basically just saying, be smart and wear masks and go back to work?
You know, some version of that.
There's a...
So there's several different tests.
There's the remdesivir that was tested, and there's some early indication that it might work, but based on the story, it didn't look like it worked to me.
So it's one of those, the headline didn't match the story.
The headline says, this drug makes a lot of people get better.
And then you read the body of it, and it's like, two-thirds of the people who took the drugs, you know, got better.
And I thought to myself, two-thirds who took the drugs got better?
Isn't that pretty close to what would happen without the drug?
Because they didn't really have a control group.
And I'm thinking, even these were the more the ICU cases, the worst ones.
But by the time you get into the ICU, don't you have at least a 50% chance of getting out?
Don't you? I don't know.
All right. What is it?
How many Bernie supporters do you think will vote for Trump in November?
Well, probably there will be more staying home than there is voting for Trump.
There will be a little of both. Everything depends on this summer.
It's almost like nothing that's happened between Trump's election and now, it's almost like none of it mattered.
Because I think the election will be entirely decided on what happens over the summer between now and November.
What does, Lexi says, what does hydroxychloroquine look like as a prophylactic?
I believe we do not know.
I don't think anybody believes it will stop you from getting the infection.
I believe that people do believe that if you add it in your body already, it might...
You know, make it sort of a non-problem, but you would still be infected.
I think that's the current thinking.
Will coronavirus have a second or third wave?
Well, at the moment, we don't have a plan to be done with it.
You realize that, right?
That nobody has described a plan that even on paper could work.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
But I don't think anybody said, alright, if we do this and this and this, we can get back to work?
Because it's always based on imaginary things, right?
Everything I hear is, alright, once we're doing widespread testing, then we'll get back to work on, you know, May whatever.
And then I'll say, can we do widespread testing by then?
No. Okay, so that's not a plan.
If you can't actually do the widespread testing, that's not the plan.
So at this point, since vaccines will take too long, we're not hearing anything about hydroxychloroquine that feels new and updated, and we can't test, and we don't have enough of the serum stuff, what's our plan?
So at the moment, nobody can even scope out on a piece of paper.
Alright, alright, this makes sense.
You do A, and then you do B, and then you do C. That doesn't even exist.
The only plan that anybody has is that the 60% or 70% of the country gets it.
We just get it slower than this summer.
That's it. The plan is for like 4 million to die.
Well, help me in the math.
Let's say... Let's say 70% of the country is going to get it sooner or later because it'll happen before the first vaccine is available.
So let's say 70% of the country gets it, but we spread it out.
So the hospitals are okay because it got spread out, but how many people would it be after, you know, a year and a half?
Well, I don't know, 2% of 60% of 327?
Yeah, it's a big number.
It's a big number.
So, our current plan is for millions of Americans to die.
Did you know that?
Did you know that the current plan is for millions of Americans to die?
Not 100,000. Because the 100,000 is, if we can get it down to that, we'll feel like we're over the hump and maybe we can talk about going back to work.
But what happens if we go back to work?
It doesn't matter how intelligently you do it.
It's the most viral virus of all time.
So a little bit of going back to work basically just infects that group of people.
We pull back, they infect them.
But the current plan is herd immunity.
Over a long period of time, because there's no vaccine that will get there in time, right?
Yeah, so somebody did the math.
It's around 4 million people would die.
So that's the current plan.
So for those of you who are thinking this was overrated, consider that the current plan, by default, because we don't have any other plan, is for 4 million people to die.
Now what would change that would be Hydroxychloroquine works better than anybody has said so far, and we have enough of it.
What could change that is that we're ramping up.
Did I see the CDC or the FDA or something?
I think there were like 300 different companies doing various types of testing.
So just that whole field is being flooded with stuff.
So if they ramped up, then you'd have something to work with.
But at the moment, those things don't exist.
All right. Which state will be the last to completely open up?
Yeah, it might be New York City.
That'd be a good guess. What part of the movie are we in?
Are we nearing the point where the hero finds an impossible solution?
Well, I hope so.
Because, as I said, short of a surprising pull a rabbit out of the hat, nobody has a plan that doesn't involve four million people dying just a little more slowly than it could have been if it had been faster.
So, yeah, I think the third act is probably June 1st-ish.
That's when it will look the darkest.
Things will look the worst around the beginning of June, so that should be the third act.
Why have American citizens so freely given up their rights?
Fear. Ben says, can you address this flaw in your model framing?
Well, I don't know what the rest of this sentence is holding for me, but apparently Ben thinks there's some flaws in my framing.
And he says, in order for a model to persuade, It must be perceived as credible.
True. Accurate and trustworthy to the public.
True. Without that prerequisite, it cannot be a persuasion tool.
Where's the flaw in my model?
Ben, you just stated what I believe.
I don't see the flaw. So I think you're making or you should make a distinction between what is true and what people believe to be true.
That's probably the J. Rock Tiger says, I will never submit.
Why have you?
Because I'm not a frightened little bitch.
That's why. Here's why I'm not afraid of losing my privacy.
Because I'm not afraid that the government will go too far because I think the people are still more powerful than the government.
If that changed, if the government became more powerful than the people, I would be worried about temporarily giving them some rights that maybe I couldn't give back later.
But as long as the people are more powerful than the government, and it's not even close, really.
It's not even close. I'm not too worried that if they borrow some of our rights to solve a problem, that we won't get them back if we care.
Now, I do think it's very likely that we won't care that much.
We'll just get used to it and say, yeah, what you did with our tracking location, just keep that on.
We might need it later. I think people just get used to giving up their privacy.
Let's see. And to J-Rock Tigers, I would say, why have you given up so much of your freedom?
You can't carry a machine gun down the street.
You can't buy a hand grenade.
There are just hundreds and hundreds of things that you can't do.
And how did you give it up so willingly?
Well, it's always the same answer.
Stuff you don't care about.
It's no big deal. Why have you stopped doing a robot in Dilbert?
Yeah, you know, I tried that character and he was fun for a while.
I'll bring him back. Actually, just you reminding me to bring the robot character back is probably enough.
So yeah, he'll be back.
This week... And last week, all the comics that I'm writing for May and June have Dilbert and that's my dog dreaming.
They all have the characters wearing masks and it's saving me a lot of time because the hardest thing to draw with Dilbert characters is the noses because you kind of get the nose just right.
It's just too prominent.
You just got to get it right. But now because all the characters have face masks, my work is 20% easier this week.
All right. What is your opinion of Amazon banning the hoaxed documentary?
So I've been kind of watching the tweets on that, and I'm not sure I know the full story.
So Mike Cernovich's...
Incredible movie, Hoaxed, which I've talked about before.
It's honestly one of the most enjoyable pieces of content that I've watched in a long time.
In a long time.
It's really good. And I'm in it, but that's not why it's good.
But anyway, I don't know why it took so long to get it on Amazon.
There might have been some problem originally.
Because it's very controversial.
It talks about fake news, etc.
And Mike is controversial himself.
But there's nothing in the documentary that crosses any line.
You can be provocative and controversial, but he's not even close to crossing a line.
I mean, I've seen it, and there's nothing in there that I would think is even a little bit suspect.
I don't know what it would be.
So, Amazon, obviously, according to tweets I saw, did not offer a reason to And said, we don't have to offer you a reason.
They just took it off and they took it back from the people who had actually bought it digitally.
Somehow they can take it back from people who already bought it.
So I would say that that's...
I don't know how else to interpret it, based on what I know, except for a grotesque and obscene...
censorship by a private company that's so big it's operating as a monopoly, basically.
And it's one of the worst things I've ever seen, really.
I mean, it's so bad. Now, here's the interesting part.
Amazon just made an enemy of Mike Cernovich.
And I have to admit that Well, my first choice would be that Mike makes a fortune on his excellent movie.
So that's my first choice.
But if that's not going to happen, at least through Amazon, watching Mike rip them apart from now until the end of time is going to be pretty good.
I have some mixed emotions because when the stock market crashed, every penny I had in cash, I put into Amazon stock because I didn't think I'd ever see it that low again.
Financially, it's not a big percentage of my investments, but it's a big enough number that it would influence me if I cared about that.
But watching Mike Cernovich Figure out where the soft underbelly of Amazon is.
You can see him already working on it.
His tweets are suggesting he's already putting his attack plan together.
And I don't think they know what's coming for him.
Because they may be under the impression that he's a random gadfly on the Internet.
And if they haven't researched him well enough...
I don't know. There's something about it that's just funny because they don't see what's coming.
Like, that's the funny part.
They're probably thinking, well, I think they're thinking, how much harm can he do?
I think they're going to find out.
It's going to be hilarious.
Anyway. So watch for that.
And by Wikipedia, he'll let us know.
So, am I going to dress like the Easter Bunny for tomorrow morning?
Probably not. Probably not.
Alright. Anyway, that's all for me.
I'll talk to you in the morning.
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