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Content:
BLM, Palestinians and Hamas
NY AG Trump investigation expands
Mark McCloskey running for senate
Rashida Tlaib's support for Palestinians
Biden allows Russian pipeline to Germany
2022 election thoughts
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Because it always is. And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass of tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind, and fill it with your favorite liquid.
I'd like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes...
Really everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip and watch it work right now.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, that's good. Well, in our ongoing series about Democrats eating their own, apparently Kamala Harris is, according to Politico, is facing criticism Because she spent the first few months of her term focusing more on being the United States' first black vice president and not nearly enough being the first Asian American one.
So, I guess you can't be too intersectional.
Is that even the right word?
Apparently you can either be the first black vice president or the first Asian American one, There doesn't seem to be a way to be both.
So that's one thing that the Republicans don't need to worry about.
Also in the Democrats' eat their own category, Chrissy Teigen.
I guess she's got some cookbooks or cookware or something, and major stores are pulling it out because she's accused of, credibly accused of, Cyberbullying a miner.
So, apparently, the nice people, you know, the people who stand for all that is good and proper in this world, you know, the Democrats.
Cyberbullying a miner to try to get her to kill herself, I think.
Does anybody have Bitcoin?
Any Bitcoin holders out there?
Yeah, it's...
You know, people always ask me for my predictions about Bitcoin, and I suppose I may have made them in the past, but anybody who makes a prediction about Bitcoin, you're really just guessing.
You're really just guessing.
But I'll tell you this.
When Elon Musk says that it's an environmental disaster, because it takes so many servers just to support Bitcoin...
I don't know that it can recover from that.
So I would say there are two things which has made Bitcoin a lot less valuable.
One is what Elon Musk said.
Well, maybe three things actually.
Two is that China is trying to ban it.
Maybe because they want to control their own currency and control the rest of the world.
And Bitcoin doesn't let them control things as well.
But that would be bad.
But then the third thing is that I bought some Bitcoin the other day.
And I thought, if there's anybody who can stop the rise of Bitcoin, I can do it.
I'll just buy some. So I wasn't planning on it, but I think I told you the story.
I ended up with some Ether in an account that I didn't know about, and there was too much of it.
So I just said, I'll put some of it in Bitcoin.
The moment I moved my money to Bitcoin, boom, 25% down.
I can do that with any asset.
If there's an asset you'd like to bet against, just let me know.
I'll buy a good dose of it, and it'll plunge immediately.
So, I'm not sure anybody should take any advice on crypto, but I would guess that you want to at least diversify.
If you're going to have one crypto, maybe you need a few more, just to get a little diversity there.
Demi Lovato continues to make news in all the wrong ways.
You know, if you're a really high-end performer and singer, as she is, she's tremendously talented, I don't know if it's good that you're making news for things that don't have anything to do with that.
So her latest news is that she's decided she's non-binary.
So she's neither male nor female.
She's She's just sort of fluid.
And ask people to call her by they and them.
Those will be her pronouns.
Now, as you know, if you've been watching me for a while, I'm completely in favor of people being able to define what group they're in and also to ask people to be considerate about what names they use to refer to people.
I'm generally in favor of that.
But it's hard for me to get past they and them being singular.
You know, it's one thing to say, call me this name, not this name.
Eh, reasonable.
And I would generally try to comply whenever anybody had that preference.
But do I need to comply changing a normal English language word from a singular into a plural?
I mean, I think that's gone too far.
But I would love to have a word that could describe a man or a woman without saying man or a woman.
They just isn't it.
They and them is just not singular.
You just need a singular, that's all.
Just give me the singular and I'm okay with all this.
But it just seems creepy to me that anybody who's trying to make news About their non-binary sexual identity.
Which, again, to me, whatever you want is fine with me.
I don't have any complaints about anybody doing anything that's their own preference.
But I don't know about making the news.
It feels like exactly the thing that shouldn't be news.
But maybe she thinks she's making the world a better place.
So as you've noticed, the racists in this world generally are on the extreme right or the extreme left.
So if you go to the extremes of the Democrats or the Republicans and conservatives, you end up at racists.
But I feel like instead of calling them the extreme left and the extreme right, we should call them extreme left racists versus extreme right racists.
Because they're just ELRs and ERRs.
Let's just turn it into an acronym.
You know, the far left, they're just a different kind of racist.
They're not less racist.
Just different. They just prefer different races, but no less racist.
So the ELRs and the ERRs, to be distinguished from ordinary Republicans, who are neither of those things, and ordinary Democrats, who are neither of those things.
So let us reframe the extremes on the left and the right as just racists, and if they think there's a difference, well, let them work it out.
You and I don't need to work that out.
If the ELRs and the ERRs think that they're different, well, okay.
But it's not our concern.
They're all just racists.
Had an interesting little encounter with fake news this morning.
So Ian Bremmer tweeted out that apparently Fox News had a headline that didn't quite match the story.
So the story is that Black Lives Matter...
said it stands with the Palestinian people.
Whereas apparently, and I didn't see it because it changed so quickly, and Ian Bremmer pointed it out, that it looked like a Fox News headline said that BLM stands with the Hamas terrorists, which is not exactly what they said.
They said they stood with the Palestinians.
So about the time I saw that tweet and retweeted it, Fox News had already taken down the page.
So I don't know if it's up yet.
But it actually took minutes to change a headline from fake news headline to real news.
Now, I think that's what happened.
I see in your comments you're saying it's not a lie.
We'll talk about that because there is some nuance there, right?
But if you were trying to be technically correct, then you would say that BLM Now, if you say that you're backing the Palestinians at exactly the same time as the leaders who were chosen by the Palestinians are sending rockets into Israel,
is it completely unreasonable to say that it looks like you're backing the terrorists?
It's not completely unreasonable.
It's a little unfair, but not completely.
So I had to look up how many of the Palestinian citizens actually support Hamas.
Do they support their leaders?
Because if they do support their leaders, well, it's kind of the same thing, isn't it?
And it's somewhere about at least the latest best information, which is not very current, suggests that maybe...
40-50% of the Palestinians do support Hamas and their approach.
I'd say at least half of the Palestinian people are at least supporting terrorist actions, as defined.
So I'm not so sure that the idea is wrong, but I think the headline was out of whack with the story.
So look how quickly that got fixed.
You know, a knowledgeable citizen sees a problem, points it out, gets amplified on social media, and in minutes...
In minutes it changed.
Now I think it's because of that, but it could have been they just decided to change it on their own, maybe internally.
Don't really know, but it looks like something happened there.
Big news on the Trump legal front.
So now the New York Attorney General's office is saying that they've informed the Trump Organization that they're no longer looking at only civil potential infractions.
But they're also looking at possible criminal activity.
But not really any details.
How long do we have to go hearing about these potential criminal things without really hearing the details?
Because every day that I hear that there's a crime without hearing details makes me think there's not.
Right? Because if you have an actual crime...
I feel like that gets out, even if you don't release it.
I feel like that gets leaked.
Now, I hear what the scuttlebutt is.
It has something to do with some buildings or a building being valued differently for property tax than it was for banking and lending reasons.
I think that's the charge.
I don't even know if that's unusual.
Do you? Is that even illegal?
Is it illegal to say that you're Your building is worth just basically what the building is worth if you're doing your property tax.
But if you're going to get a loan, could you say, well, you also have to count the Trump name and intangibles and stuff like that?
It feels commonplace, yeah, as somebody says in the comments.
I don't know the details of the charge, But if you just go by, you know, the little rumors that we're hearing, I still haven't heard a crime.
So you have to ask yourself, it's been, I guess, two years or so they've been investigating this, is the entire point of this to make it look like he's a criminal and just keep dragging it out until people believe that there's something happening and then let's say that the, you know, Let's say that all charges are dropped or he gets off in some way.
Half of the public is still going to believe it's real.
I feel like this is a lot like the Russia collusion hoax.
If you were to do a poll today and ask people, did Trump collude with Russia to win the election?
I think about half of Democrats would say yes, wouldn't they?
I think they would. In fact, I run into them all the time on social media.
To this day, they still think it's a fact that Russia and Trump colluded, even though that seems to have been completely debunked.
So if the Attorney General's office in New York investigates Trump long enough, it just becomes a fact.
In the minds of half of Democrats, it just becomes a fact that he's a criminal.
And no evidence.
No evidence. How about all of that Matt Gaetz evidence?
Still waiting, right?
There is a new Matt Gaetz-related story almost every day, and still no specific crimes.
There are some specific allegations that he may or may not have done something, but it's very unclear that there's any crime involved here.
And the longer you wait, the less likely.
It's real. I asked on a Twitter poll, highly unscientific, do you think space aliens have been visiting regularly?
29% of my respondents said yes.
24% said maybe, and 47% said no.
So the yeses and the maybes are over 50%.
I wonder how different that is from just a few years ago.
So my take on it is that It's possible that over the 15 billion years of Earth that you happen to be alive at exactly the time we learned that UFOs are really aliens.
Pretty lucky, huh?
Pretty lucky for you.
15 billion years and you just happen to be alive at just the time we learned there are aliens floating around the planet.
Somebody says 4.5 billion.
I think it's 15 billion.
15 billion for the universe.
4.5 might be for the planet or something.
But for the universe, I think it's 15 billion.
So I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I would bet a million dollars it's not.
If there were some way to know for sure, if there were some kind of betting service, I would actually literally put a million dollar bet that there are no aliens.
One million dollars.
Actually, literally, if I could make that bet and I would be confident that we could know for sure in some reasonable amount of time, like, let's say, you know, will we know for sure in three years or something like that?
I would bet one million dollars.
That we will not find that evidence.
Or proof, anyway.
But, I've been wrong before, so who knows?
Vernon Jones, who I think he's running for governor of Georgia, or has or will, he says that he's going to make an announcement, a huge announcement, about the Georgia audit, I think. Or getting an audit.
Forensic audit. Now, I wouldn't get too excited about the huge announcement, because that could be whatever Vernon Jones thinks is huge, not necessarily what you think is huge.
So I don't expect any smoking guns to come out of this.
It might be just some kind of an announcement that some auditing will happen, something like that.
Do you remember the gun-toting couple?
The McCloskeys in St.
Louis when there were the protests, riots, whatever you want to call them.
And Martin McCloskey stood with his weapon on the front of his house.
Apparently he's running for Senate.
Running for Senate in Missouri.
What do you think of that? Have you seen enough of Mark McCloskey to give you an idea whether he could get elected senator?
I feel like he could.
It depends who he's running against, right?
But I don't think there are any Republicans who don't like this guy.
And he's definitely smart enough.
He definitely is a good persuader.
I've seen him giving interviews.
He's really good in public.
So I feel like he's got a really good shot.
I wouldn't bet against him at all.
All right. Remember I was telling you that I think people who are overweight may be the super spreaders?
Well, there are...
Now we do know that...
Obese subjects with influenza, now this is influenza, shed the virus for a longer period of time, up to 100% longer.
So there is now some evidence, at least with viruses in general, influenza virus, that obesity makes you closer to a super spreader, all things being equal.
Not every person, obviously.
So, Rashida Tlaib is getting into it with Biden, because I guess Biden is not doing enough to speak out against the violence in the Middle East.
And when Biden tried to say some nice things about Rashida Tlaib, he called her Rashid, so he didn't even know her name, which is funny.
And I don't think there's going to be much movement.
I don't think Biden will abandon Israel.
He's got a long history of being pro-Israel.
But this is interesting, to watch the left eat itself and tear itself apart.
Now, what do you make of the fact that the one representative who has a Palestinian heritage, I don't know what the right word is, That she's more pro-Palestinian than other people.
Kind of makes it feel that race is a big part of this.
Which it is, because it's a big part of everything.
But it does make me think that she supports the Palestinians because she has a connection, as opposed to she's representing the United States and has decided that what's in the best interest of the United States is Is to be more supportive of the Palestinian people.
I don't feel like that's what's going on.
It feels like she's an American representative who's representing another foreign power.
Because it doesn't look like it's based on what's good for the United States.
So that's not so good.
So there's a big question about why Biden lifted sanctions on the Russian pipeline.
In Europe, which will make Europe more dependent on Russia, which is a bad situation militarily and defense-wise.
You don't want to be in that situation.
But a week after Russian hackers, not necessarily connected with the government, we don't know, but Russian-based hackers shut down a U.S. pipeline.
And then suddenly Biden is allowing a Russian pipeline.
So Russians shut down our pipeline, And right after that, Biden gets his pipeline back online?
Huh. I feel as if there's something we don't know about this story.
Let me speculate.
One possibility is that Putin has already executed the hackers.
Because let me ask you this.
If the hackers were operating independently...
And they made a lot of money, apparently over $90 million with their various hacks.
So there is strong evidence that the hackers were working independently, as they always had.
Is that good for Putin or bad for Putin?
Do you think Putin said to himself, yay, some hackers on my territory took down some American infrastructure?
Yes. I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think Putin would have said, and of course we can't read his mind, but if you put yourself in his position, did you want those hackers to do that?
No. If you're Putin, you want those hackers dead.
Don't you? Because they crossed the line.
They embarrassed Putin himself.
They made Putin's job harder.
And Putin didn't get any money, if they're working for themselves, right?
Here I'm working under the speculative assumption that Putin wasn't running them, that he didn't like it either.
Well, one reason that the United States could suddenly get friendlier to Putin about their pipeline is if Putin has already rounded these guys up and executed them or jailed them or something.
Somebody says no, he would probably hire them, etc.
Possibly. But, you know, I'm not saying that I could...
Confirm, obviously, that that's what happened.
But it does look like the most likely, because I can't see an argument for why we would have lifted sanctions, especially when it happened.
And if Putin had shut down these hackers himself, I don't know that we'd hear about it, because it would be more of a behind-the-scenes spy versus spy situation.
So... There's at least one possibility that Putin whacked him.
Here's something interesting.
Apparently the European Union is going to put into place some rules that allow vaccinated people to travel, but not so much unvaccinated people.
But here's the weird detail.
You would have to have a vaccination that came from the EU or the U.S., But you could not come into the European Union if you had a Russian or Chinese vaccination.
Wow! They won't let you in the country if you're vaccinated if it's a Russian or Chinese vaccination.
That's sort of a big deal, isn't it?
I didn't realize that those other vaccinations were that weak.
I knew they were weaker, but I didn't know they were that weak.
Yeah, so it makes you even wonder if they're real vaccines, doesn't it?
Um.
And I tell you, I'm a lot less worried about the dominance of China when I see stories like this.
Really? China couldn't put together a vaccine that worked, but Europe and the United States could, several different companies.
I also think that maybe we shouldn't be worried, at least in terms of some kind of attack on the homeland, From China having a big navy.
How long does a navy last when two superpowers get into a shooting war?
Doesn't the navy on both sides just sort of disappear in an afternoon?
I feel like.
I can't believe that our navy, even with our carrier force defensive perimeters, our ability to shoot down missiles in a variety of ways, even with all of that, I can't imagine that either the Chinese Navy or the US Navy would still be in business one day after a war started.
I think they would just all be gone.
And I think it would just turn into an air war by the end of the week.
So I'm not too worried that their Navy is getting big, although that certainly would help them dominate their oceans over there.
But they would be dominating it against weaker forces.
I don't think it would be a direct military threat to the United States beyond the fact that they have nuclear weapons.
You can't get much more dangerous than that.
Somebody says, satellites would be targeted first.
Maybe. I would love to know what our ability to target satellites is.
I'm sure we have some.
Where do you land the aircraft?
Yes, you're making lots of jokes about semen.
I see you. I can see your chat texts if you're just asking if anybody can see it.
Yeah, Space Force is going to be a real big deal in the future, and if we don't control space, we're going to be in trouble.
All right. Now, Since we've learned that the news that there is is all fake and boring, is there anything that you'd like to hear about that I haven't mentioned?
Is there anything you wanted an opinion on that I haven't mentioned so far, maybe this week?
Of course, the big question is, if there are aliens, would they use Bitcoin?
I think they might. And I guess there's big news now from Ford.
Ford is introducing their F-150 truck as an all-electric vehicle, which apparently will make a big difference in uptick or uptake.
Big difference in uptake of electrical vehicles.
What about the border, somebody says.
Well, does it feel like there's a blackout on news about the border?
Because there's a blackout on news about the border, as far as I can tell.
Do you know where the migrant kids are being held?
I don't know. Maybe we know where some of them are.
Do you know if the numbers are going up or down or why?
I don't really know. So I feel like the big change about the border is we stop talking about it.
Now, when are we going to see all of the big problems from immigration?
When I look at the infection rate in California for the virus, can we conclude, and this is a question, I'm not even speculating this is true, do we know that California is maybe not doing as well as other states because of immigration?
Do we know that?
Or is that just me guessing?
Kevin, I tried to read the book 1984, but it is such a downer.
That you get a few chapters in and you just say, I would rather do anything than spend a minute looking at this.
And I don't feel like I would learn anything, because we're all aware of the concepts in it.
Oh yeah, the Abraham Accords.
It's amazing that the Democrats are trying to make the Abraham Accords look like some kind of a failure.
They are so successful.
Not a single country that's part of the Abraham Accords Has turned on Israel, even though there's a shooting war going on.
SMR investment? I don't understand that comment, but thanks for the super chat.
What was my emergency yesterday?
I can't tell you what it is just because it's funny and unimportant.
Let's just say nobody was hurt, but there was something that needed to be dealt with right away.
It just couldn't wait, but it wasn't an emergency in a bad situation.
Did taking mushrooms make you more creative?
Probably. Now, there's no way to measure such a thing, but anybody who's Had an experience with hallucinogens, and mushrooms in particular.
They probably will say it did.
I would say that it...
How did somebody actually guess?
That's weird. Somebody actually guessed what the emergency was.
NFTs are tanking, somebody says.
Yeah, crypto's on fire right now, in the bad way.
Just in. Whoops.
Just in, says Michael.
The U.S. expects significant de-escalation by Israel.
Well, did he see the story that Israel is trying to target the top Hamas commander?
I don't know if he's the number one guy.
But he was described as a guy with one eye, and he's lost three limbs so far.
All of these because of Israeli attacks that wounded him but didn't kill him.
And when you heard that story, that he only has one eye and one limb, I don't know if it's one arm or one leg or what's left, but did it remind you of the Monty Python knight?
You know what I'm talking about, right?
There's a knight in the Monty Python, Life of Brian, or whatever it is, whichever movie that is.
Yeah, it's only a flesh wound.
As the other knight lops off his arms and legs.
Come on, come on, it's only a flesh wound.
So, if Israel is planning to de-escalate, the only reason I can imagine that would be true is if they've dealt all the damage that they think they can put on the other side.
Now, I understand there are rockets coming in from Hezbollah.
Which would suggest that they would have to open up a second front, etc.
Yeah, he goes by the name of Lucky.
What does everybody think about the midterm election coming up in 2022?
Is there anybody that thinks Republicans won't win the midterm?
Or at least, yeah, win.
I mean, pick up enough seats to have control, maybe of both bodies.
Let me see your estimates of whether Republicans will win back both houses in 2022.
I feel like it's obviously going to happen.
Now, history suggests that this would be normal.
That the first midterm after election, the party in power loses power because there's more to criticize about them, etc.
But when you throw in taxes, Biden's taxes, and you throw in border stuff, and you throw in some other stuff, I don't feel as though Democrats can hold Congress.
I don't feel as though they can.
Now, There also might be some interesting revelations from the various audits and all of that, but I wouldn't count on it.
MapleBob, you are welcome.
I crashed the crypto market by buying some, and so now the rest of you have a buying opportunity.
That is correct, if Coinbase ever gets back online.
Yeah, I think we're in the 80% range that the Republicans will take back control.
So I stopped worrying about my taxes going through the roof under the Biden suggested plan.
I'm a little less worried about that because even if it does happen, I believe the Republicans will reverse it if they get control.
And I also don't think...
I just don't think they're necessarily going to even get it through the Congress the way it is right now.
Are we ignoring the election BS? Well, I'll tell you this.
I feel as if the smart people will be way better at detecting any problems in the upcoming election than they were in the past.
So I would hope that our ability to monitor elections is getting better because of all the pressure to do so.
But I don't know that that's the case.
Maybe it's no more better than it was.
What is a good mattress, I'm being asked.
I wish I knew. TerraPower, did I ever get involved?
No, I did not. There's a unanimous Supreme Court verdict on confiscation of guns.
I didn't see that. Must be in a limited situation.
Alright. Do we miss Kanye?
Yeah, what happened to Kanye?
Kanye just disappeared for a while.
I'll be looking forward to getting him back.
Oh, ego in resisting arrest.
Yeah, I was saying that The people getting killed resisting arrest have an ego problem, not a police problem.
And that anybody who can control their ego during arrest is almost certainly going to be safe.
Because the police need to assert dominance in that situation.
And if you don't let them, they're not going to stop trying.
And they're going to assert their domination all the way to killing you.
If you keep asserting your independence.
Now, one of the things I've been wondering is if there are entire groups that could get a personality disorder or a mental problem.
And I started developing that concept and did some research, and I don't think quite I can pull it off.
But do you think that...
Let's take the one example of narcissists.
So narcissists actually really have low self-esteem, and so they act out with big egos to really cover up the fact that they have low self-esteem.
Now, if you were black in America...
What are your odds of having low self-esteem because of the weight of racism and the history of things and the way you are treated and the way you imagine people think of you, etc.
Do you think that you would be in a situation in which low self-esteem pretty much would be impressed upon you?
I mean, even if you weren't born that way, I think you'd have it pressed on you just by the situation.
Now, the predictable outcome of that would be acting out ego-wise to protect the value of you when your self-esteem is under assault.
So let's say the police stop you.
If you're feeling perfectly, let's say, confident about your ego, and I usually am.
Let's use me as an example.
I don't spend really any time worrying about my low self-esteem.
So if a police officer stops me, I would immediately be able to switch into, okay, whatever you want.
No resistance, whatever you want.
Police officer, let's stay safe.
But what if you felt like you were a part of a group who had been abused for centuries, and had been, and had been?
Could you let your ego go down in the face of, let's say, a police acting like they're superior to you in this moment?
Well, I could, because it's temporary, and I don't have any low self-esteem, and yeah, yeah, if the If police officers want to be in charge, sure.
You want me handcuffed?
You got it. No problem.
But if you put me in the same situation, let's say the magic genie comes in with magic and says, boom, Scott, you were born a black American and you grew up in the inner city.
Now what do you think when the police stop you?
Would I feel the same if the police stopped me And I feel like I had been nothing but abused and my self-esteem was under assault.
Would I act exactly the same if an authority figure that I thought was abusing me started to do what felt a little like being abused?
I don't know. I don't know.
Somebody says, if you had parents who taught you better, I just don't know if that's it.
I'm wondering if it has more to do with the ego of the group because the group is under assault.
I feel like that has something to do with it, and maybe that has most to do with it.
Yes, somebody was asking on the comments there.
If I could get a real UFO expert to come on and do a deep dive, it wouldn't help.
So it's the same reason I don't have a climate expert on to do a deep dive.
I don't have experts on to do a deep dive.
If you think that that would help, you're really wrong.
You're as wrong as the wrongest thing could ever be wrong.
There is nothing less useful...
than one expert talking to somebody who doesn't know how to check them.
And I wouldn't know what's true and what's not.
So all you would know is that some expert jabbered for a while, and you wouldn't know anything.
So I could get you one expert who says there are definitely no aliens, and you would come away thinking, oh, I guess there's no aliens.
Or I could get you one expert that says there definitely are, And you would come away thinking there are.
Would you have learned anything?
No. No, there's nothing to learn.
That system just doesn't work.
Now let me explain a system that might work.
A couple of experts on both sides.
Unlimited time, so there's no time period you have to get cut off.
And a capable moderator...
I can do it. But if you don't have both sides, so that one can say, we caught this on video, and then the other can say, we studied the video, and we can tell it's not real based on this or that, you've learned absolutely nothing.
All you learned is one side's argument.
It's nothing. It's actually worse than nothing.
So let me say it as clearly as I can.
Doing nothing would be better information Than doing a deep dive with one expert on any topic.
On any topic.
You just will be misled by the one expert's opinion.
And even if that expert is completely right, you don't know.
Because there's no counterpoint.
So it would be a waste of time.
But I'd love to figure out how to do that right.
Yeah, Brian's saying that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Do you know what we don't have for alien visitation?
Extraordinary proof, or anything like it.
In fact, we have the lowest level of evidence.
There's something and we don't know what it is.
That's it. There's something and we don't know what it is.
Why do you all think you are so certain?
The more certain you are on a question like this, the less reasonable you are.
Why not moderate that discussion?
I would. I'm just not set up for that business model.
I would need a producer and a different set up to do it right.
But I'm not that far away from being able to do it.
Aliens designed into simulation.
Yeah, part of my reason for thinking it's unlikely there are aliens is that the simulation seems to already be slowing down, meaning that there's too much complexity here on Earth.
It feels like we see the same stuff just repeated and repeated because it's conserving resources, the simulation is.
So the odds of a foreign planet...
Being completely populated just in case we ever discover it seems very low on a system resource basis.
Why is Bill Gates getting such bad press?
Because there's a divorce.
So far...
With all of the Gates bad press, none of it has really landed, has it?
Now, if you look at the worst allegations about Bill Gates, there's the deal he had with Melinda about visiting his old girlfriend, but that was an explicit deal.
So you can't really blame him for something if she agreed to it at any point.
Then the other thing is he spent too much time with Epstein.
But... Gates says directly that he thought Epstein would be ultimately a channel to billions of dollars of charity.
Do you believe it's a reasonable assumption that Bill Gates, a reasonable person, believed that Epstein did have access to all these other billionaires and maybe could have helped him?
Yes, that's completely reasonable.
Now, I'm not saying it's true, right?
Who knows what's true?
We don't know. But is it completely reasonable, completely reasonable, that Bill Gates would have been hanging out with somebody who could come up with billions of dollars and probably could?
He probably could.
Epstein did have exactly that kind of skill and access.
He had exactly that. So...
Yeah.
So I would say that...
There's plenty of reason to suspect Bill Gates was up to something, but I just don't see it yet.
And remember that Epstein's primary character is that he was a con man, right?
So if you have the best con man in the world in Epstein, and he might have been literally one of the best con men in the world, Do you think he could have conned even Bill Gates?
Of course. That's how it works.
And it would have been easy because Epstein did actually have all these connections to billionaires.
That was true. And he was persuasive.
What was Epstein doing, Scott?
Well, what Epstein was doing may not have been so awesome.
Yeah, somebody's pointing out that in the news is Bill Gates and Matt Gates.
It's just system reuse, code reuse.
I have not seen that chin thing you're talking about.
When did I, Vicki says, when did I start believing in the simulation?
It was sort of a gradual thing.
I first heard of it from, somebody helped me with the name of the philosopher who came up with it.
So it wasn't me. I didn't come up with it.
But as soon as you hear it, the logic of it is so compelling that if you want to be a creature of reason, it's hard to leave it.
And that's why Elon Musk...
Yes, Nick Bostrom is where I heard it first.
And it's the reason that Elon Musk is attracted to it as well.
I won't name other people who are attracted to it, but a lot of smart people.
A lot of smart people are attracted to it, just based on the math.
All right. Yeah, what is California doing about the wildfires?
Nothing, right? Maple Bob says, it's even more reasonable to assume a guy who can't get girls would hang out with a human trafficker.
You know, I see what you're saying.
But do you think that Bill Gates and his billions couldn't figure out how to get girls except to hang out with an accused pedophile?
I don't know. Feature request.
Please increase your mic gain.
I can't. No, it's just plugged into the iPad.
I don't have access to any controls.
Do a hand-drawn Dilbert watercolor and sell for charity.
Now, if I do anything for charity, there's a trap here.
And it's a trap that you don't understand if you haven't been in this situation.
Which is, if you do anything for a charity...
Everybody who sees you do it is involved with some other charity too.
Because people involved with charities tend to be involved with more than one.
And the next thing you know, you're spending all of your time dealing with charities saying, well, why can't you just draw us a picture?
It would only take you five minutes.
Really, it's just five minutes to just draw a picture.
And it's all I would be doing is turning down...
Hordes of requests for me to draw a picture for a charity.
That's all I would be doing. And I know this because I made that mistake early in my career.
I did some charity things because I thought, oh, things are going well for me.
I should do some charity things and let people know, right?
Let people know. Terrible mistake.
The moment you let people know you're open to charity, you just get descended on and they just pick you to death.
And I finally had to just say, I don't do charity anymore.
Don't do charity. But obviously I still do it.
I just do it privately. Audio could be fixed in post with a fraction of effort.
Now that's a good point.
But fixing it in post would delay the reposting of it to other places.
So I've made a decision to focus on Just getting it out there and getting it quickly and no focus on fixing my background and my audio, etc. And it might depend on what device you're listening to because I listen to it myself in playback and it's fine to me.
So I don't know what device you're using but all my devices play it fine.
It is softer than other YouTube videos.
Yeah, look at all the people who say the audio is fine.
So probably that's not what I'm going to work on.
I'm seeing a lot of calls for Dale, for Dale to come back.
I think Dale made more sense during the Trump administration.
Because there was more crazy Dale-like behavior then.
Hey Scott, how do you identify a good charity?
I am not in that business, let me tell you.
Actually, I have an answer to the question.
There are entities that grade charities.
So just search for something like charity evaluation review, something like that, and you'll find one or two entities that tell you which charities spend the least on administration and stuff like that.
Somebody says Charity Navigator.
That might be the site, but I'm not sure.
Let's see. MIT article saying anti-maskers are more scientific.
I think it says that conservatives are more scientific, and they're more anti-maskers in that category.
What music am I listening to?
None, as usual.
Any update on the WEM tokens?
No, the only update was that there was one project that might use those tokens, but I think that's on pause.
So the when is kind of stranded at the moment.
And the only place it's traded is on hotbit.io.
So it's still there.
People can still buy it and sell it.
And it's available if anybody wanted to create an app that uses it.
We could work with you.
What makes my background look unlevel?
Probably... That's a good question.
I don't know. Why does it look unlevel?
It's an optical illusion.
Printer execution date?
Well, I just got some new ink for my printer, so I might not execute it today.
How do you hack the simulation?
I feel as if affirmations might be the way.
if we're in a simulation.
Let's see.
Wow, you got a lot of comments today.
I've never seen so many comments.
Would I switch to cannabis beverages?
No. I don't like any kind of cannabis edibles or beverages.
It's just hard to control and you don't get the same effect.
What is the secret I know but won't tell you?
I can't tell you. That's the whole point of it.
I can't tell you the thing that I knew that you don't know.
I will just tell you that a story disappeared because apparently the news can make a story disappear.
And it did. How often do you smoke weed?
Well, it's every day. It's, you know, at least half of the day, usually.
Is the UFO news setting us up for something?
Okay. Now, I've seen some people speculate that all of the UFO news is a diversion, so that we'll be thinking about that instead of, I don't know, thinking about our taxes going up or something else.
I don't think so.
So I don't think that anybody is cleverly doing it.
I think that UFO stories are just cyclical.
They come and they go.
I think it's just that.
Do you think we'll eventually grow meat in skyscrapers, not farms?
Yes. Yes, I do.
It doesn't necessarily have to be in a skyscraper, but we'll definitely be growing meat or meat substitutes.
What are the odds that it's the devil?
Pretty low. Um...
Here's a good question. Why doesn't China have outbreaks or variants like India with a weak vaccine and no more lockdowns?
Yeah. Good question, right?
Can anybody come up with any good reason that China doesn't have a huge outbreak?
Because I can't.
Now, I get that they closed the borders, right?
But it didn't work anywhere else, did it?
Except islands, right?
Can China close borders so effectively that they can just keep the coronavirus out?
I don't believe it, but I suppose nothing's impossible.
It feels like there's something else going on there.
And who knows what that is.
I mean, it could be the lack of obesity.
It could be that.
I don't know what the obesity level is in China, but it's got to be pretty low, right?
And I feel like if you didn't have obese people, you wouldn't have the super spreaders.
Maybe that's all you need.
You know what would be an interesting experiment?
You couldn't possibly do this, but imagine if you could.
Take one town or county in the United States during the pandemic and remove, just temporarily, have everybody who's overweight Go just temporarily live in a hotel in another county and don't visit.
And see if a county ever has an outbreak if there are no obese people there.
Because I think you would still get people infected, of course, but they would be so unspready compared to the obese.
Maybe that's the whole story.
It could be. Not that you wouldn't get it, you just wouldn't be as spready if you did.
And then there's, of course, the thought that there's something about the virus that makes it especially not viral in China.
Well, I wish we could rule that out, but we can't.
Why don't I sell Coffee with Scott Adams mugs?
You know, I spend a lot of time putting Dilbert on coffee mugs and every damn thing, and I'm just not big on licensing anymore.
It's just not fun. How does cannabis help with working out?
Oh my God. Are you kidding?
A workout when you're high is fun.
A workout when you're not high Can be a lot of work.
It's a completely different situation.
You can lift more, enjoy it thoroughly.
It's just so much better.
I mean, marijuana and exercise are the perfect combination.
You know, if you wondered how is it that I could be in my mid-60s, And still be basically as fit as I am, at least on the outside visually.
I'm as fit as I am at any other age.
Weed is a big part of that.
Because exercise is easy.
I just smoke a little and then go do it.
Yeah, I wouldn't mix marijuana and guns.
That seems like a bad idea.
Junkman says, BS, marijuana is bad for you.
Well, I haven't seen the evidence of that, but I wouldn't rule it out.
John says, can the Wacom be used for graphic novels as well as comic strips?
Well, the Wacom is referring to my drawing tablet, the computer screen that I draw on, and it could be used for any kind of art.
So anything you want.
If you can draw it, it'll do it.
Heads are chubby, somebody says.
You know what would really help you?
Is if you do, what do you call it, mouthwash right after you smoke.
