Episode 1381 Scott Adams: Hamas Versus Israel Persuasion War, California Versus Florida, Lightfoot Versus White People
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
No tenure for 1619 Project author
Lori Lightfoot...no white journalists
CA vs FL COVID Death + economics
Poking the bear analogy...Israel vs Hamas
Does AOC own a Tesla and luxury apartment?
Shocking NAEP statistics on Black students
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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And let me tell you, my printer is working perfectly today.
And if that isn't a good sign of good things ahead, I don't know what is.
I really don't know. And if you'd like today to be amazing, all you have to do Is participate in the simultaneous sip that's coming up.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank of chalice, a canteen, a jug of flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
Really unparalleled.
The dopamine hit of the day.
The whole day. It's called the simultaneous sip and watch it go.
It happens now. Go.
Now, I saw in the comments that somebody is doing the simultaneous sip from a train.
You have to watch out for that because, as Einstein warned, there is no preferred frame for the simultaneous sip.
Well, you can work out the math.
So, many of you had said to me, hey, Scott, why is the volume so low on your podcast, but other people have higher volume?
What's up with that, Scott?
Well, I just did some research and it turns out that everybody who uses an iPad has the same problem.
So there's something about the iPad that doesn't do volume recording correctly, but reportedly the iPhone does not have that issue.
So as an experiment, I might do an iPhone recording and just see if the audio is any different.
The problem is I don't want to do these on my iPhone because I can't see your comments.
The screen would be too small.
But I could use an external screen, so I might have a workaround.
Maybe. All right.
Do you remember the news that in the Arizona election audit, you had heard that there was some big database that had been deleted?
Do you remember that story?
Big old database was deleted.
And if that's true, Well, then there's some shenanigans.
But it turns out it's not true.
What should be your immediate assumption when you hear any initial news come out of an audit?
Your initial assumption should be every time.
That's not true.
Just have a little recording running in your head.
Now, at the end of the audit, Presumably there'll be some claims, or not.
But if there are some claims, there'll be ones that other people need to verify, etc.
But anything you hear before the end, when things have really been nailed down and they've got a solid opinion, everything you hear until then, probably bullshit.
Probably. Not definitely.
I'm not saying the audience won't find anything.
I'm not saying they will.
I'm just saying that anything you hear early, it's just not likely to be true.
You know, it's a fog of war situation.
So, I don't recall if I called BS on this when I first heard it.
Maybe you can remind me?
Can somebody remind me how I reported this the first time?
I've got that selective memory thing going on right now.
Did I say in public that I wasn't so sure that was true?
Or did I just report it as something that's being claimed?
In the comments, somebody says you did.
Oh, I did. Okay. You said to ignore it.
Oh, well, how about that?
I couldn't remember if I had called BS on this before we knew it was BS. Oh, okay.
Well, let me claim that as an accomplishment of sorts.
Do you know how to tell when something that you've created is really good and people will care about it and buy it or whatever, versus creating something that people might say, eh, that's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
But they don't do anything with it.
They don't buy it. And I have a rule for that that I use quite a bit, and it works every time, as far as I can tell.
If somebody takes your product, whether it's a writing product or a physical product, whatever, and they use it in a way that makes them physically act in some way, in which they're trying to promote it or extend it or improve upon it, then you really have something.
If people take your product and modify it, You really have something.
It's only when they don't care that you're done.
I don't care.
It's good. It's fine. I just don't care.
And I've never seen more activity since really the Dilbert comic came out.
There was a lot of activity around that.
But when my book Had It Failed Almost Everything and Still Win Big came out in 2013...
It was a success, a commercial success, but it didn't really light the world on fire.
But now, what, eight years later, I just recorded the audio version in my own voice for the first time.
The prior audio version was a voice actor.
And part of the theme of that book was that I couldn't speak for a few years.
I had a speaking problem, so I didn't record the audiobook, and that's actually a theme that goes through the book itself in a meta kind of a way.
But now it's in my voice because I can, and so that's available now.
Anybody who wants to hear that book in my voice.
But here's my point on that.
This morning there was a Tweet thread that went around taking something from my book about how to pursue happiness.
That was just one part of the book.
And turned into a summarized tweet thread.
Now, do you know how many times that's happened?
Not just that part of the book, but different parts of the book people are picking out and summarizing and turning into tweet threads.
In other words, they're taking the product and modifying it and extending it.
And it's happening a lot.
Now, you may be less aware that there are other best-selling books, other fairly large media things happening that are really based on the book.
It's either based on the systems versus goals part of the book, which I think changed the country, honestly, and the talent stack part of the book, which I think changed education.
Now, the number of people who know about those two things, talent stacks and systems versus goals, it's really extensive at this point.
It would be hard to find an educated person, let's say somebody who works in the business world, or even academics, I think, who are not aware of those concepts.
So give it a look if you haven't looked at it.
And that's how you know you have something, when people are modifying it.
Have you heard the story about Nicole Hannah-Jones?
She was the author of the 1619 Project, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New York Times, and she was up for tenure at the University of North Carolina, but after, I guess there was probably some complaints or pushback from conservatives, I'm guessing, and she was not approved.
For tenure, which apparently is unusual.
And it was based on, it looks like, based on her work on the 1619 Project.
I might be wrong about that, but that seems to be the implication.
Now, the left is saying this is obviously racism, and it's only the college caved because there was too much Activity on the right, you know, protest or whatever.
And I think the right is saying something like this.
So, how's that cancel culture thing working out for you?
Just the way you hoped?
I feel like every conservative is saying something like that out loud or in their minds.
So, cancel culture.
Got exactly what you wanted, didn't you?
That the mob can fire you from your job because the mob doesn't like you, even if your job or your employer does?
Is that the world you want to live in?
Well, that's the world you got.
You got exactly what you bought.
You know, if you pay for something and you get exactly what you paid for, can you complain?
So, I've told you before that the one way to destroy something you don't like is to adopt it fully.
If you adopt fully a bad idea, then the badness of the idea becomes more obvious.
It's only when you fight against it that it can stay there as strong as it was originally.
But the more you see people on the left cancelling themselves, or in this case, It may be cancelled by the activities of people on the right.
You say to yourself, is this the world you want to live in?
Is it? Do you want to live in this world where the mob can decide if you get hired or fired?
But that's our situation.
Now, I can't tell if this is healthy or not.
It feels like it is.
It does feel unfair to Nicole Hannah-Jones.
So let me say that clearly.
I think this is unfair.
Because people seem to be quite united in saying that she's qualified in general, has done a lot of good work, highly educated, successful, Pulitzer Prize winning, you know, she has all the credentials.
But the 1619 Project was a little bit controversial, if I could say that.
A little bit controversial.
So, should you get denied tenure for the one thing you did that was provocative?
Well, if it's this provocative, Maybe yes.
Maybe yes.
So we'll see where that goes.
The funniest, most ridiculous story of the day is Lori Lightfoot, who's mayor in Chicago, has said that she's only going to accept one-on-one interviews from black or brown journalists because she noticed that there are way too many white journalists And so to even things out, she'll only take one-on-one interviews from black or brown journalists.
Now, a lot of you laughed at me when I said I was starting to identify as black.
But here's the reason.
You know, you can't fault people for using the rules if you're the one who came up with the rules, right?
It's the one who comes up with the rules who has to be responsible.
It's not the people who follow the rules.
And the rules are that you can identify as what you feel closest to.
And I identify as black.
I've given the reasons before.
I won't repeat them today.
And by the way, I'm not joking.
I'm not joking. It's available to me to identify as black.
And I prefer it.
Legitimately, I prefer it.
Because I have experiences which are similar enough, and I have sort of an affection for that group that I identify with.
I spend a lot of my efforts and work trying to figure out how to make the black community more successful.
So why not identify?
I have that right.
So I've decided to do it.
So apparently I would be able to get an interview with Lori Lightfoot.
Now I do some writing on the topics of politics and I wondered what would happen if I asked for an interview and just tell her I identify as black.
What would happen? Would she mock me for not being serious?
Because I feel that's what the conservatives get in trouble for all the time.
Mocking people for identifying in ways that other people don't feel are legitimate.
But that's not how it works.
It doesn't really matter if other people don't think it's legitimate.
The whole point of it is you get to do it yourself.
If other people get to define me, that's a different set of rules.
Those are not the ones we play by.
So I'm going to play by the real rules, the ones that actually are here, which is you can identify as the way you want.
And if I asked her for an interview, what would she do?
But the funniest response to this was from Kim Klesick.
I think I'm pronouncing that right.
Klesick. Who pointed out that Lori Lightfoot is married to a white woman.
And... And Kim Klasek was wondering in a tweet if Lori Lightfoot still allows one-on-one meetings with her own wife, or if she's trying to get a little fairness in there.
So I think I laughed for ten minutes after I saw that.
I couldn't even do anything.
I just kept laughing, and I would try to do something else, and then I'd be laughing too hard, and I couldn't think, and then I'd be laughing again.
I swear to God, I laughed ten minutes at that.
Here's a question for you.
I asked this on Twitter with a little Twitter poll.
How many people think that California is doing better than Florida?
Let's say just in terms of the COVID response.
Death rate and economics.
So we're going to look at those two things.
Death rate, not infection rate.
Because the infection rate has to do with how much you're testing, blah, blah, blah.
But just look at the death rate, California versus Florida, per thousand, right?
Or per million, whatever. You have to do it as ratio.
And look at the economics.
So when I asked my followers that question, what do you think they said?
98% said Florida is killing California.
Florida is just crushing it.
And California, not doing so well.
According to 98% of the people Who followed me on Twitter and decided to answer that poll.
Very non-scientific.
Does that sound right to you?
If you check the data, would the data confirm that?
That Florida is just crushing California.
Better on death rate?
Better on economics?
Nope. No.
No. 98% of the people who answered that poll seem to be deeply uninformed.
Yeah, they're pretty close.
Pretty close. California is doing better at the moment.
So if you look at the history of it, the curves have been reversing each other.
But at the moment...
Right now, this week, California is doing better than Florida.
In terms of, specifically in terms of death.
Death rate, not just death.
Because there are twice as many people in California.
So did you know that?
Did you know that the death rate in California was lower?
Especially lately?
I'll bet you didn't.
Because this is that problem of the silos, right?
The news silos.
I bet you didn't know that.
I didn't know it. Andres Bacchus pointed it out to me this morning on Twitter, and I didn't know it.
I would have guessed the opposite, actually.
In fact, I think I said the opposite.
I probably said the opposite in public.
But what about the economy?
Now, I know what you're saying.
You're saying, okay, okay, I get it.
The death rates are maybe close to comparable.
And as is being pointed out, can you really compare death rates?
Florida's got a lot of old people.
California has a lot of immigration, which presumably is bringing in a lot of young people.
Can you compare them?
Well, I will say that if they're in the same neighborhood, then you can't.
If they're generally close, Then I don't think you can say anything except, oh, they're in the same neighborhood.
Which is what they are.
They're actually in the same neighborhood.
So let's look at economics.
Because if one of them crashed the economy to get that same result, that would be a mistake, right?
How is the California economy compared to the Florida economy?
I'll get to the point, El Green.
How is the California economy compared to the Florida economy?
Go. In the comments, tell me which one's doing better.
You don't know.
You don't know.
I'll bet you don't.
Right, the assumption that we all made before I brought this up or before you Google it, probably your assumption was that Florida was doing better.
Right? But it turns out that California...
Had a $75 billion surplus in the budget.
Plus we got, I don't know, $26 billion from the federal government.
California is $100 billion ahead during the pandemic.
Why? Well, the reason is that rich people were always taxed at a high rate in California, and rich people didn't lose their jobs.
Do you know who's paying taxes?
Not poor people, right?
Yeah, we have high taxes, but that much surplus certainly suggests that the economy did all right, because the people who were out of work Got some kind of government and state help and seem to be at least surviving it.
I'm not hearing of people dying or starving.
I'm not hearing of people not getting COVID health care that needed it.
I don't know that California did poorly.
And if you think that, if your current thinking is that Florida just wiped the table with California, I don't think the evidence suggests that.
I don't think so. Now, I think there'll be a lot more analysis of this.
You'll have things such as number of businesses that closed.
I don't know how that matches up, you know, per, let's say per thousand or whatever.
And there may be a whole bunch of other things we can measure that have not yet been measured.
But at the moment, I would say that Florida was more permissive, California was less permissive in terms of opening up, But they got kind of a similar outcome.
Now, if you got a similar outcome, but one took more of your freedom away than the other, which one did a better job?
Yeah. All right.
If they had a similar outcome, but one of them took your freedom away, it's not even close.
Right? It's not even close.
Because we do put enough value on freedom, and should.
That if you can get that result without taking away people's freedom, you're the winner.
I'm sorry. It's not even close.
But don't be confused that Florida is just wiping the table in economics and in death rate.
That's just not happening. But freedom, freedom, freedom is a big thing.
Maple Bob says, it suggests California doesn't know how to manage its citizens' money.
Should be issuing rebates.
Well, it looks like the governor is going to do just that.
The governor has said directly he thinks the money could be better spent by the people, but I think you'll end up being more like COVID relief than it will look like tax rebates, because I don't think anybody's feeling sorry for the rich people who got richer during the pandemic, nor should they.
Alright. So, are you watching the battle between Geraldo and Dan Bongino, usually on Fox News?
I don't think they like each other.
I'm starting to get the feeling that if Dan Bongino and Geraldo were in the same room, it could get tense in there.
So, Geraldo is calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestinian-Hamas situation there.
And Dan Bongino, of course, is more on the side of supporting Israel's right to defend itself.
And here's the real question.
We do know that innocent people are being killed.
We know that children are dying in this conflict.
Whose fault is it?
So it sounds like Geraldo would say it's the United States' fault because we're giving weapons to Israel and supporting them.
And that it would be Israel's fault plus the United States.
And Dan Bongino, it looks like he would argue that Hamas is bringing it upon themselves.
Now, I feel like this one's really obvious.
There's lots of room for differences of opinions and lots of things, but I would like to turn this into the poking the bear analogy.
Suppose you see a bear...
That doesn't seem to be too aggressive.
You're out taking a walk in the forest, and there's just a bear.
And the bear looks at you, but isn't afraid of you and isn't going to attack you, and it's just eating some bear food, whatever bears eat.
What do bears eat?
I don't know what they eat, but it's eating some bear food in the forest.
And you come across the bear, and it doesn't attack you, and you take a stick off a tree, break off a stick, and you walk over to the bear, and you poke it with a stick.
And the bear goes, what the hell?
Dude, what the hell?
And then you take your stick and you poke it again.
And then the bear goes, you poke it again.
And then the bear just kills you.
Whose fault was it?
Was it the bear's fault?
Because the bear is a murderer.
And it's certainly not...
I wouldn't say that killing somebody is equal to poking them with a stick.
So I think the bear overreacted.
So wouldn't you say it was sort of the bear murdered the stick guy?
Right? It's the bear's fault, isn't it?
It's completely the bear's fault.
Because the bear did the murdering, and that's not even close to being poked with a stick a few times.
You see the problem here, right?
I always blame the guy who pokes the bear.
I'm sorry, I'm never going to change that.
If you poke a bear and the bear kills you, it's your own fault every time.
Somebody says false equivalents.
Well, I think that fairness has nothing to do with anything.
Israel is just pursuing its strategic self-interest, which they have every right to do.
Every country does. And strategically, what would be the good reason to stop their military attacks on Hamas right now?
Ryan wants me to find some idiot to ban just to make this more entertaining.
That could happen. It could happen, Ryan.
So, yeah, give me one good reason that strategically.
Now, emotionally and morally, ethically, human-wise, there are lots of good reasons to stop killing innocent people, right?
From a human perspective...
If that's all you were looking at, just, you know, what's the most human thing to do?
Stop killing people.
But of course, it's a complicated world, and nobody's killing anybody for fun.
They're doing it because there are great forces at work here.
But what would be any reason that Israel should stop?
Let's talk about a few. Number one, Is there a chance that this will escalate into a wider conflict?
What about the Abraham Accords, the other Arab countries that are or are likely to make peace with Israel in more of a permanent and commercial sense?
Do you think that they might withdraw from the agreement and maybe even participate in fighting against Israel?
Do you think that's going to happen?
Nope. Not without a lot of notice.
Don't you think that Israel is having continuous conversations with the Arab countries that are part of the Abraham Accord or might be soon?
Don't you think they're talking to them every day, saying, Are you okay so far?
Are you okay so far?
And probably they're saying something like, Really uncomfortable with this.
Really wish you would stop it.
But I kind of see why you're doing it.
And we like the Abraham Accords.
I feel as if Israel, if they had, let's say, private warnings from any of the other Arab countries, that they probably would have already stopped.
So whatever is happening with these other Arab countries, it's not affecting Israel.
So I've got a feeling they're either saying, go ahead, or they're at least not complaining.
So I don't see that as a risk.
Then there's also a risk that it will extend to, let's say, Hezbollah in Lebanon getting more involved.
Now, my understanding is that Hezbollah has a lot of rockets, as in Hezbollah might have somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 rockets.
Some rockets have been coming out of that area toward Israel, but the reporting on that seems to be that that's not Hezbollah.
It's rather people who are just Palestinian supporters and With what is called artisanal rockets.
Hey Scott, I'm reading this comment.
Just lost my job and my apartment.
Got any reasons to live?
Because this golden age hasn't gotten to me yet.
Well, you may have overpaid for that comment.
I don't think you're in a bad situation.
I don't know what state you're in if you lost your job and your apartment.
But everywhere that I see, there's help wanted...
I mean, hiring is great.
So good luck for you.
But there's a lot of jobs to be had.
I think you'll be in good shape.
Jobs are not a problem right now, amazingly.
All right, so Hamas, let's say if Hezbollah gets involved in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, it doesn't feel like they're itching to do that, does it?
Because if Hezbollah wanted to get involved in a big way, I feel like it would happen already, right?
Like, why would they wait much longer before they did it?
I feel like they would have been in there kind of early, and it seems they obviously don't want that.
Because Hezbollah would be quite degraded by Israel if they tried, and it doesn't look like it's going to happen, frankly.
And I would also think that that would put more pressure on Iran.
It would kill any kind of a nuclear deal Iran wants.
So I don't see Hezbollah being a problem, at least without lots of warning.
I don't see the other Arab countries pulling out of the Abraham Accords, again, unless there's lots of warning, and then Israel could just stop if the warnings were greater than the benefit they were getting.
So to me, it doesn't make any sense that Israel would stop Which, of course, has nothing to do with anybody's empathy about innocent people and children dying.
Nobody wants that. We're all on the same side.
Nobody wants kids to die.
But I think you just have to look at this as a strategic decision by Israel and clearly the right one, clearly the right decision.
I think Hamas is killing their own children for political gain.
And if you're dealing with a regime that will kill its own children, effectively, by drawing fire in the place their children are, I don't know how much empathy you can give them.
Because certainly you can have full empathy for the children.
But in terms of the country, they're allowing this situation to exist, and the people there do have the power.
I mean, if enough people there wanted this to change, they could.
So, this is not to say that the Palestinians have no legitimate beef.
I think they do. Let me say that clearly.
The Palestinians, they've got plenty to complain about.
It's not like they have nothing to complain about.
But I would personally feel quite willing to listen to all of their complaints if they weren't doing it this way.
You know, if If the complaints were just brought up as a good argument and they made the case for it being some kind of apartheid-like situation, it's not apartheid, but if it has any elements that you could say look like that, I'd like to know about that.
I'd like to know more about that.
I'd like to hear their argument.
But as long as they're essentially putting their own children into a death zone, I just don't feel like I have to listen to them.
So that's bad persuasion on Hamas' part, good persuasion so far on Israel's part, and the best thing that Israel has going for it is that the visuals work best for Israel.
So I think we've all seen at this point some photos of casualties.
Let me ask this question.
How many of you have seen in the comments, how many of you have watched Either video or seen photos of horrible casualties in Gaza.
How many of you have seen those photos?
Sean says none yet.
Lookie, yes. No.
Nope. I'll just read down some.
Nope. Yup.
Nope. Nope. Not lately.
Yes. Seen and staged.
Somebody thinks they're staged.
There might be some of them. I have.
Nope. Nope. Yes, no, no, no, no, no.
Wow. Seriously.
That many of you who are watching this podcast live have not seen any photo or video of casualties in Gaza.
Wow. And it's not that they don't exist.
I literally was just looking at some, you know, right before I got on.
So there are a couple things going on here.
One is that the media doesn't seem to be focusing on it.
But I've noticed that the media doesn't focus on death and destruction and victims nearly as much as it used to.
Can anybody confirm that from your own experience?
Does it seem to you that the media doesn't show bloody bodies nearly as much as they used to when I was a kid?
Is that true? And maybe that's just a decision they don't want to turn off their customers or something?
But compare the lack of attention to the victims to how many videos...
Now let me ask this. How many of you in the comments, how many of you saw videos or pictures of the missiles coming into Israel?
Now watch this.
How many of you saw at least some video or pictures of the rocket attacks on Israel?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I'm just reading the comments.
I did. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
All yeses. So here's my point.
If I've told you a million times, visual persuasion is the one that matters.
After fear. Fear is always your top persuasion.
But if you're thousands of miles away in another country, you don't have an immediate fear, You might be afraid for friends or whatever in Israel, but it's not an immediate personal fear.
Then the visual element is going to be the most persuasive.
And Israel, either by luck or design, I'm guessing design, but it could be luck, has the visual advantage.
Tons of pictures of rockets being launched, which scares you.
If you look at that many rockets being launched into a different city, do you have any way of not putting yourself in the picture and imagining living in a city where you look up and there are thousands of rockets?
Maybe not at your city, but at your country.
Thousands of rockets coming your way as civilian sites?
Thousands. This isn't even close.
The visual advantage is Israel's.
Now, of course, they also took out the AP building, right, in Gaza.
Did taking out the AP building reduce the number of photos of casualties?
I don't know, but I'll bet it did.
I'll bet there are fewer photos of casualties because the AP building got bombed, you know, either directly or indirectly.
Maybe somebody doesn't want to take that picture anymore.
So, don't poke the eagle.
That's funny. That was a comment somebody said.
All right, let's look at AOC. So, AOC apparently owns its reported.
How likely is this true?
So, let's see if this is true, because I got a feeling this one feels a little bit too on the nose, too, right?
But it could be true.
And it's the report that AOC owns a Tesla and parked it illegally in front of the Whole Foods that's connected to her luxury apartment building.
Now, that's a little too on the nose, isn't it?
But at least it's a Tesla, right?
Maybe too on the nose would have been a gas-guzzling SUV. If she had an SUV gas power, that would have been worse, I suppose.
But let's say it's true.
Let's just work through this at the moment.
Do we all remember that when she got elected, she complained that she didn't even have enough money to get to Washington and get an apartment?
That the amount that they pay them to be a representative really isn't enough to own a Tesla and have a luxury apartment, is it?
If your only finances are coming from being in Congress as a representative, can you afford a Tesla and to live in a good neighborhood with a Whole Foods attached to it?
Because my sense of economics is no.
Yeah, my sense of economics is no that you can't.
So, at what point do we ask where her money comes from?
It's a fair question, isn't it?
If you have an elected representative who you knew was dirt poor two years ago, but today she's living in a luxury apartment.
I don't know how luxury it is, really.
It's probably not that luxury.
And she has, I think, a low-end, you know, the low-end Tesla.
Is there a question?
Somebody says she makes 200k a year, and I don't know that that's enough.
Is it? But it's a question.
So she may be living a little bit above her means and have a loan on the car and making it work.
But I don't know if she gets paid for speeches.
If she got paid for speeches, she'd be fine.
Because, you know, two speeches and she's doubled her income.
Yes, that's what I thought.
200,000 a year is very small amounts in some cities.
Alright, let's talk about systemic racism for a minute.
So, did you know, I only know this because I saw a tweet from Denisha Merriweather, who is an organizer of Black Minds Matter.
Hashtag Black Minds Matter.
Here's a statistic that just blew me away.
Just listen to this.
Only 15 out of 100 black students read on grade level.
15 out of 100 can read at grade level.
Only 13 out of 100 black students do math on grade level.
Thirteen. Only 9 out of 100 black students performed on grade level in civics.
Now this comes from the National Assessment of Education Progress.
So apparently there's sort of a dashboard of education statistics.
So this is a credible statistic by the people who do these statistics.
Now, I knew it was bad.
We all knew it was bad, right?
Did you know it was this bad?
Because I didn't. I mean, I already thought it was the biggest problem in the country.
And I didn't know it was this bad.
I mean, I've been talking about this and writing about it and tweeting about it and, you know, being active and trying to figure out how to get more school choice, primarily, to help poor people and, in particular, black and brown people who don't have the same advantages.
And I had no idea it was this bad.
And somebody's saying it's worse in some places.
Yeah, I mean, this is the average.
Imagine how bad it is in a bad place.
This is the average.
The average.
My God. And the fact that this is, I guess, a credible set of statistics, and this isn't our biggest issue in the country, How is this not the biggest thing we're talking about?
So, you know, you wonder why I identify as black and why I talk about the school system and the teachers' unions in particular being the source of systemic racism.
Thank you, Jeff. How is this not our biggest problem?
I mean, seriously. All of our other problems...
Are big, but they seem to have enough energy that people are working on them, right?
So you could argue, okay, but climate change is a bigger problem.
But I would argue that there's so much energy working on it, we'll figure that out.
But where is the energy working on this?
On this biggest problem?
This is like low-hanging fruit.
It's the most, let's say, solvable problem that I've ever heard of.
Because it's not as if we don't know how to make a good school, right?
We know how to make a good school.
I'm pretty sure we know how a parent can figure out how to send their kid to that good school.
The fact that we're failing on something we know how to do and is devastating the black community for generations to come is completely unconscionable.
And as offended as I have been by this inequity for a long time, I've never been quite as offended as I am this morning because I've never seen the statistics this stark.
I mean, it's crazy.
This should be our top thing.
You know, if we ever had a Republican who just gave these statistics and said, look, here's the deal.
I know you think I'm Hitler.
I'm just going to fix this.
President. President.
Let me say it again.
A Republican candidate for president who just says, you know, we've got lots of talk about racism, systemic racism.
It's all important. But I'll tell you what.
I'm just going to fix this.
Here are the statistics.
15 out of 100 black students can't read on grade level.
I'm going to fix that.
You can argue all day long that I'm Hitler.
You can argue all day long what's unfair, what's fair, who has too many or not enough people of what kind of color and what kind of jobs.
You can argue that all day long.
I don't give a fuck.
I'm only going to fix one thing.
Just one thing. It just happens to be the most important thing by 10 to 1.
And all the rest of you, you can argue about critical race theory and systemic racism and how many people work in everything.
That's all you. I'm just going to fix one thing.
President. You couldn't lose with that message.
I don't think. I mean, you would have to be completely defective in every other way to lose with this message.
Here's a fun thing.
So I heard this from Twitter user Greg Sully, who tweeted a whole bunch of interesting things about energy that I had never heard before.
Now, some of them may not come to fruition, but here's the one that's the most fun.
Greg pointed to an article about an experiment conducted by this scientist, Robert Murray Smith.
Who took the waste from cannabis, the part you don't smoke, you know, the stalks and the stems and the stuff you don't want to put in your pipe, and he did some kind of science on it to determine that it could be a more efficient battery, if you do the right processing with the hemp, that the hemp cells are significantly better than lithium, like way better, like not even close.
Now, It would take a long time to, you know, engineer it so you could actually be sure that you could make a battery and it would last and didn't have some problems you didn't anticipate and all that.
So it's nowhere near commercial, but it's out there.
Is there anything marijuana can't do?
I'm starting to wonder.
So imagine, if you will, and I think he only used hemp as an example.
It has more to do with the fact that there are some plants that In general, that you could do this with.
But what if this is true?
What if it's true that you could make hemp batteries that would be way better than normal batteries?
It would change everything.
Now, the thing with batteries...
Oh, I'm seeing Brian says that the statistics on black...
Education seems to be, damn it, seems to be a misinterpretation.
But I don't quite understand the point of that.
But just take that as a comment.
There might be some misinterpretation of what that data means.
But I still think it's in the range, right?
I mean, directionally, I don't think it's that far off.
But it's a good point.
What happens if battery storage keeps getting better?
Now, one of the things that sneaks up on you is that if something is just sort of improving every year, your brain says, oh, that's good.
It'll be just like last year, but a little bit better.
So you'll think, oh, my cell phone and my cell phone battery will last 20 hours instead of 18.
That's good. And next year, maybe 25 hours.
Yeah, batteries are getting better.
But here's the thing that sneaks up on you.
At some point, batteries are good enough that everything changes.
And we're creeping up to the everything changes point.
And by everything changes, I mean you just won't have gasoline-powered cars.
It just won't make sense.
But when I say everything, I'm talking also about electric bikes.
I know I talk too much about my electric bike, but if you have not ridden an electric bike, you've got to ride one at least around the parking lot.
Because I told you that the sales job when I bought my electric bike, I said, hey, I'm interested in an electric bike.
Can I take a test ride?
And the guy says, yeah, you can just ride around in the parking lot.
It was a big parking lot. So I take the bike, ride around the parking lot for 40 seconds.
I come back and I say, I'll take it.
And the guy laughs and he goes, you have the e-bike smile.
And apparently everybody who takes the e-bike into the parking lot and tests it comes back with a smile on their face that they can't get off and says, I'll take it.
The things sell themselves.
You could not try less to sell this bike and still succeed.
Does that make sense? They just sell themselves.
Where I live, there's an explosion of them.
You see them everywhere. The change is how far you can go on a bicycle completely.
You know, you would not reasonably expect somebody who doesn't want to be sweaty to ride a bike to work, right?
Because you ride a bike to work, you're all sweaty.
Maybe you're wearing your work clothes.
But you could ride an e-bike 10 miles to work, and you wouldn't be sweating.
It'd be easy. But also, airplanes were right at the edge of...
We're getting there, I think just a few more years, maybe less than three, at which point you can have an electric battery-powered aircraft.
And then it really gets fun, because then you've got self-powered, or self-navigating, electric-powered, personal aircraft.
Guaranteed. If electric batteries just keep improving, and we expect they will, you will have flying cars.
And it's not very far away.
Now, the problem is the social part of keeping them from crashing and you put a parachute on them and testing them and all that.
But technology-wise, we're right there.
We're right at the point of flying cars.
And that is really cool.
All right. I think I had a few more things that I want to talk about here, but apparently I don't.
That looks like everything I wanted to say.
And what would happen also if you could store electricity at your house and it was cheap?
Because right now you have the solar batteries like the Tesla battery and other companies too.
Where you can put the battery on your house, charge it up with your wind and your solar power, and then you've got enough electricity for the evening.
So, could it be that the improvement in battery storage will make nuclear energy less essential?
Because the big problem with solar and wind is that they're not all the time.
But if you put a battery at your house where you can suck up all the green energy during the day and then just unleash it at night, maybe, maybe your need for nuclear power goes way down.
How big a deal would that be?
Now, I think we still need a robust nuclear energy program, both domestic and military, Because we're going to need it to occupy space.
I don't think you're going to do space travel with a battery, but maybe you can do space travel with a battery.
What do I know? Yes, it will be a long time before nuclear could ever become unnecessary.
But you can see how that crossover point could happen, and it could happen easily.
In, I don't know, 20 years, maybe?
Maybe 20 years.
How much power in an F-150?
Good point. So Ford is making their F-150, the most popular truck, I believe, electric.
And that's quite a statement right there.
You want nuclear windmills, somebody says. haha Alright. Oh, let's talk about UFOs.
How did I forget that? So I was watching Tucker Carlson last night, and other people as well, and apparently the government is now saying unequivocally that there have been UFO sightings almost every day in classified territory, I guess, for the past year.
Almost every day.
Now, I'm going to stick with my prediction, because I like to do that.
My prediction is that even though there's a UFO every single day, or close to it, we're never going to confirm that they're from another planet.
So I'm going to stick with that.
Now, will we confirm that there's something happening that is an object that has an Earth origin?
It looks likely, because if you have it every day, and people are seeing it with their eyes, apparently, and they're seeing it with their instruments also, I would say...
There's a good chance there's something out there.
But I would guess drones and some combination of optical illusions and stuff, or birds or something, I believe that will effectively be everything.
What is the risk of mass-absorbing wind and solar energy?
Absorbing it. Is there a risk from absorbing too much energy from the sun?
Or from the wind? I don't know that that is a risk.
I've never heard of that. How much are e-bikes?
Somebody asks. Too much.
Like 1,500 to 4,000.
You know, all kinds of ranges. Oh, Chris, you like the new narration in How to Fail?
Thank you. Just looking at a few.
Yeah, and you have to wonder why the government was denying it for so long, as someone said in the comments.
Was the narration free?
Don't know what you mean by that.
If you're talking about my book, they do pay the person who does the voice recording.
So I got a small check for voice recording.
Motorcycle is better than an e-bike?
Depends what your application is.
I would say that the e-bike is as fun as a motorcycle and can go a lot of places.
Kevin says aliens are our future self punching through time.
What is more likely, aliens coming or some other dimension or us going through time?
I don't think it's going to be any of those.
I think it's going to be earthly descriptions, and someday we might know.
Do I use hypnotizing techniques in my book?
Yes, I do.
In the sense that good writing is also good persuasion, and persuasion being the larger topic that hypnosis is in.
Dementia is more likely. - Really?
All right. Special access programs.
I think it's a trick.
Yeah, I wouldn't believe that we're being visited by aliens, but we'll find out.
