Episode 1397 Scott Adams: To Avoid Cancellation, Imagine My Topics Today Will Be About Kittens and Unicorns
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Meta-Analysis of Ivermectin
President Trump vs Dr. Fauci
President Trump's 2 year Facebook ban
SF teachers unions back BDS
Yemen whale vomit goldmine
Putin and his alleged hackers
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You're here on time, you've got a routine, you've got a system.
It appears to be working really well.
And let me tell you a little bit about about the good news before we do the simultaneous step.
We'll wait for people to come in here a little bit.
But I gotta tell you, I had an experience last night that made me feel great.
No, not that.
Get your minds out of the gutter.
I went to dinner. Last night in town, my local town, with Christina.
And as you know, a lot of the restaurants have gone to outdoor seating.
Well, in my town, they went to outdoor seating, but they also started closing the street to traffic on the weekends.
So for three nights, you can just walk the streets.
And I was there last night, and I've lived here, I guess, all of my adult life.
I have never...
Never seen my town that happy.
Full of people.
All the restaurants packed.
Could barely get a reservation anywhere in town, and there are a lot of restaurants.
The place was a circus.
Everybody had a smile on their face.
People were just walking down the streets, masks off.
People were eating.
Masks off.
And everybody was just looking at everybody's faces.
We were looking at each other's faces.
And it was amazing.
It was amazing.
It was the best time I've ever seen my town have.
And it was just a Friday night.
It wasn't like a celebration.
There's something happening, people.
Now, if it hasn't happened in your town yet, Maybe it will.
Remember I told you before the pandemic that I felt we were on the cusp of a golden age?
And then the pandemic hit.
And people said, well, that's a pretty bad golden age you've got going there.
But it seems, I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the pandemic was necessary.
Unfortunately, it was necessary.
And Look at all the things that are emerging right after or during the pandemic.
Number one, our nuclear energy program looks better than ever.
Not just in the world, but the United States has got some good stuff going.
That speaks to climate change.
It speaks to space exploration.
It speaks to clean energy.
It speaks to electric cars.
It speaks to everything. It's a big deal, and it's happening.
We're going to Mars, maybe?
Thank you, Elon and NASA. We've got this mRNA platform that was sort of tested out now during the pandemic.
Might cure a whole bunch of other diseases from HIV to malaria, possibly.
That's in the pipeline. We've got remote work has gone from something you could do sometimes to a standard.
Food delivery, a standard.
We have more jobs than we have workers.
We'd like lower unemployment, but at the moment, we have more jobs than we have employees.
So I think we're really on the verge of something pretty great.
Pretty great. I hate to jinx it, but it looks like the golden age is here.
Do you think we should drink to that?
Who's with me? Do we have any optimists here today?
In the comments, I'll get ready for the simultaneous sip.
Tell me, do you feel optimistic?
Because, man, I really feel it.
I'm just looking at your comments now.
I'm seeing some no's.
So some of you haven't turned the corner yet, and I understand that completely.
I'm seeing some yes's.
More no's than yes's.
Okay. I'm seeing big time.
Yes. Let's effing go.
Feels great. None.
Let's go. Yes. Okay.
It's a little bit mixed. Catherine is pregnant.
Good for you, Katherine. You found something to do during the pandemic.
Sounds like it was good.
Alright, well, the Golden Age, of course, won't bring everybody along at the same rate, but we'll see what we can do.
But until then, all you need is a cup or mug or glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that'll kick off the Golden Age, It's called the Simultaneous Zip.
It's better than anything.
And it's going to happen now, all over the world, kicking off the Golden Age.
Go. All right.
Fake news alert. Fake news alert.
I'm guilty of retweeting some fake news, which I have now deleted.
The fake news was that On June 15th, California, some people interpreted the government's statement incorrectly to say that things would not be opening up on June 15th when they planned.
But rather, he was only talking about the state of emergency.
So the state of emergency will stay in play, which is fine.
I mean, we may need it.
But it looks like even California might open on the 15th.
So... Big, big deal.
Alright, the topic that I wanted to talk about today, I didn't mention in the title because we discovered that YouTube demonetizes these live streams as soon as they start.
Now, how could they demonetize them as soon as they start?
Because you don't know what the content is.
I haven't done anything.
I haven't done anything good or bad.
It just started. And we're making the assumption that they're looking at the title.
Because they must be picking up some keywords in the title.
So this is an experiment to see if I get demonetized upon the beginning if I don't have anything in the title that's bad.
The topic today is...
Ivermectin.
Have you heard of it?
So the question is this.
There is this widely available existing drug called Ivermectin.
It's kind of a miracle drug for other stuff, and I think the guy who came up with it won a Nobel Prize.
It's a really big deal.
But it has not been used in this specific context, and there are lots of trials of it that individually are not the highest of the gold standard type.
So you've got a whole bunch of trials about this drug that's widely available, and the claim, I'm going to speak of it this way, the claim, made by a number of people, is that if you look at these many different trials and tests, that if you looked at any one of them, it's not quite that Really large-scale, randomized, gold-standard trial.
So there does not exist the one good, reliable trial that you want.
What does exist is lots of little ones that have issues.
Sometimes it's because the trial size isn't that big.
Sometimes maybe there's some imperfection.
Maybe it's not that kind of a trial.
Maybe they're just looking at results, which is different than the randomized control trial.
But the claim is this, that no matter what you look at, it works so well that you can see it easily.
That you don't have to be some kind of virologist to see that where it's used, the effect is so big, again, allegedly, this is not my claim, but allegedly the effect is so big That you don't really need to be an expert to see that it works.
And you don't really need to be much of an expert to know that the drug is harmless because it's been in the market for other purposes for so long.
Now the mystery is this.
If there are so many smart and qualified people saying that this drug works, why is it not being used everywhere?
What's going on? And I was just watching Brett Weinstein interview Dr.
Pierre Corey, who's an MD, but also, you know, highly experienced in the researchy parts of being a doctor.
And thank you for that.
And... So it's a real...
By the way, if you're interested in the topic, I would recommend it.
So just... If you just Google Ivermectin and Brett Weinstein, I think it'll pop right up on YouTube.
And I don't know what the story was.
Was it banned for a while, but now it's back?
Is there some story about YouTube treating it differently?
Oh, Elizabeth, you're getting ahead of me.
I thought I was going to be so clever.
I was going to make this clever point, and Elizabeth already beat me to it, but I'll get to it.
How do you explain the mystery that so many smart people say it works and definitely works?
This is what the smart people say.
Not only that it works, it clearly, definitely, absolutely works.
It's not even close. What's up with that?
Let's dig in. Here's my hypothesis, which I would bet a lot of money being right.
I can't guarantee this is right, but if I had to bet a lot of my own money on it, I would.
And it goes like this.
It's a fake news problem.
And it's a fake news slash intersection with Trump problem slash, you're ahead of me, hydroxychloroquine.
What does the ivermectin story remind you of?
Hydroxychloroquine. It was an existing drug, very safe in its other uses, suggested that it might also work for COVID. Many, many trials, but none of them seemed to be the right kind, but yet there were so many anecdotal and other reports that it seemed Clearly, obviously, unambiguously, like hydroxychloroquine must work according to lots of smart people.
Really highly qualified virologists, etc.
But they would admit they didn't have the randomized, controlled, gold standard thing.
Now, as time went by...
Of course, President Trump was demonized for that, and it became one of the several most often noted examples of how President Trump was anti-science or denied science or didn't understand science or promoted junk science,
whatever they wanted to say. Now, after watching Trump get annihilated for claiming there might be an existing drug That shows lots of promise and that the risk-reward of using it might make sense.
He was completely demonized.
Now Ivermectin comes along.
The story is exactly the same.
It's just a different drug.
But the story looks pretty similar.
Now, I'm not going to claim that the trials or the tests of those two drugs were similar, because they might not be.
But if you're listening to the story, and let's say you're...
You're a top virologist.
And somebody says to you, hey, can you look at these studies, and if you think it's telling us something, can you say it in public?
So people will know it's got some credibility.
Would you do that? If your life and your career and your reputation depended on it being right, would you go in public, if you were an expert, and say, you know, I think this ivermectin looks like the thing.
Well, a few experts have.
The guest that Brett Weinstein had, Dr.
Pierre Corey, so he did exactly that.
But where were the other people?
Like all the other industries and all the other people, where were they?
Are they jumping in and saying, oh yeah, same, same, I'm with you?
Nope. Because it would be career, not necessarily suicide, But it would be a bad risk-reward for you personally.
It might be the best risk-reward ever for the public.
It might be the best risk-reward we've ever seen for the world.
Maybe. I mean, I'm not making that claim.
But it's bad for the person.
So you've got a whole bunch of people who don't want to be the next Trump, right?
Because the fake news so demonized Trump...
That you just couldn't do anything that even sounded like it.
Anything that felt like that hydroxychloroquine story.
It just made it impossible for this other drug to get a good hearing.
Am I wrong? Now, of course, it also didn't have the backing of major pharmaceuticals who could make lots of money on it because it's an existing drug.
And so it didn't have a...
Didn't have anybody promoting it who has, let's say, tons of money and influence and can really make something happen.
So nobody like that existed.
And no individual wanted to walk in front of a firing squad.
It would be suicide.
Or... Or...
Maybe it doesn't work.
Alright? Thanks, Greg.
Here's the counterpoint.
So you know I have my go-tos when I have one of these questions where there's some data, there's some interpretation.
So I look to Andres Backhouse.
I mention him often.
You should follow him on Twitter.
And he's really good at looking at data and picking it out.
This morning, for example, he looked at one of the studies and said, well, the one I'm looking at is garbage.
I'm paraphrasing.
He didn't use that word. But one of the ones looks like you could have sort of selected what worked and what didn't, and maybe it didn't even show anything worked, and it was a mess.
So I'm doing a bad job of explaining why it's suboptimal, but let's just say he looked at one and it was a mess.
Now the argument is, yes we know that some of these individual trials are weak, either because there weren't enough people, or how they did it, or whatever.
But if you do a meta-analysis in which you take all of the weak studies and sort of find a way to rationally sum them together, which I'm doing a bad job of explaining, then the theory is that any individual mistakes that one or two of them make will sort of get averaged away by the other ones that didn't make that mistake, but maybe the other one made a different mistake But their mistake would get also averaged away by the other stuff.
Did that make sense? Did I do a good job of explaining that?
So the meta-analysis Thanks, Seth.
The meta-analysis is supposed to correct for the smaller problems that any individual study had by looking at the big picture.
When you do that, claims Dr.
Pierre Corey, and Brad Weinstein seems to have looked at it as well, when you do that, it looks like it's amazing.
It looks like it's really amazing.
So, meta-analysis is a solid method.
There's lots of material for it to look at, and we have a perfectly strong hypothesis of why other experts are not jumping all over it.
Are you sold? Have I sold you yet?
That the analysis is good, the data is solid, there must be some kind of mystery about why people are not promoting it when it's so clear that it works.
Are you all sold?
No other questions?
I'm not. I'm not.
I'm going to be honest with you.
I'm not convinced.
Now, part of it is Andres Bacchus is too persuasive about this stuff, and he's not convinced.
I need to see him convinced, to be honest with you, because I don't have the skills to look at the data myself.
But I've seen him be right enough that I don't want to be on the other side.
See where I'm going with this?
Now, part of his explanation is that in economics, apparently, people don't like to use meta-analysis because, and I'm doing a bad job of explaining this, I know, but when you do the meta-analysis, apparently there's some subjectivity about how you deal with the individual trials.
In other words, you could choose what data to emphasize or not within an individual trial, what results to show or not show, and by the time you've summed it up, You've included a bunch of subjectivity in it.
This would be the counterpoint to why a meta-analysis is good is that there might be a little subjectivity into it.
What do you say? Would you say that the case is made or would you say, wait a minute, are you telling me that a meta-analysis Is not a standard that everybody would say works all the time?
And that is what I'm telling you.
It's not a standard that smart people say works all the time.
It's still a really good thing to do, apparently.
And it probably works a lot of the time.
Maybe even most of the time.
I don't know. But it doesn't mean it's true.
Because there's just enough subjectivity in here that you can kind of get what you want.
Now, or there's a potential that you can get what you want.
I wouldn't make that claim here because the claim with ivermectin is that the signal is so strong, you could do a lot of stuff wrong and it would just still be obvious.
It's just so big. Let me give you an example.
In the real world, let's say every time you walk out your back door, a pile of money falls from the sky in front of you.
You look up and you're thinking, did that come out of an airplane or a drone?
It's just a bag of money.
And you pick it up and you put it in your bank and everything's fine.
Nobody asks for the money back.
Next day you walk out, another bag of money.
But if you walk out your front door, no bag of money.
So, if you walked out your back door ten times in a row, and nine of those times a bag of money fell from the sky and you got to keep it and nobody complained, would you refuse to walk out your back door Because there is no randomized controlled trial to prove that it will happen again.
Or do you say, I think I live in the real world, and one of these doors is working a lot better than the other door?
In the real world, you're going to do what works based on your observation.
So you have to be careful about being over-reliant on the science that you don't know is right, and being...
Maybe dismissing your observations that are really obvious.
So, do I need a randomized controlled study to know I should go out my back door?
No. No.
It'd be great if I had one.
But if I get a bag of money ten times in a row, I'm going to go out there an eleventh time.
You know that. Speaking of hydroxychloroquine, I feel that at this point, if it worked as well as people hoped, I feel like we'd know it.
And a lot of the reason that we think it works is that doctors say, I give it to all my patients when they have their first symptoms, and they recover quickly.
Just like almost everybody, whether they get it or not.
Don't most people recover quickly?
I was listening to Dr.
Pierre Corey talk about, I think it was maybe one study or his own observation, I forget which it was, but he mentioned the fact that When people take the ivermectin, that at least one of their symptoms, because there's usually a constellation of symptoms if you have COVID, he says that at least one of your symptoms seems to go away really quickly.
So therefore, strong indication, anecdotally, strong indication that the ivermectin works.
To which I say, anytime I've had a constellation of symptoms...
One of them goes away sometimes before the other ones.
I don't know that all my symptoms always go away at the same time, do they?
So I feel like that standard of one of your symptoms goes away quickly, I feel like that just might have happened on its own, as long as the other symptoms are still there.
So I'm not so sure that...
I'm sold on meta-analysis.
I would like to know more about the reliability of such things in general in the medical field.
Now, if we accept that a meta-analysis is not often used in economics, what's the difference?
Is it because economists have greater insight?
Is it because an economics question Maybe has less at stake than a medical question?
I don't know. Why would it be that a meta-analysis, which effectively is just a way of looking at data, right?
Why would it be that in economics they shy away from them, but we're talking about it being a near proof in the medical field?
Don't you need to know that?
Wouldn't you like to know why is it one field says it's no big deal and the other says, yeah, this is pretty good?
Is it because economics and And science and health are just different enough?
I don't know. So here's one way that I look at trying to figure out what is true.
Number one, do we have a theory, a hypothesis that makes good sense for why experts would ignore this if it worked?
And the answer is yes.
We have a really, really good hypothesis, which is it just sounds too much like hydroxychloroquine, and that is exactly how people are wired.
So everything you know about how people are wired, how the world works, how personal incentive works, how people protect their own ass, every part of this story is consistent with the possibility that it's a really effective drug that works and hasn't been promoted the way it should be.
But it's also in the category of things that later turn out bullshit to be bullshit Really, really often.
Let me tell you what turns out to be bullshit really, really often.
Things that don't have a randomized, controlled study.
There's a reason. There's a reason that people require that stuff.
Because there are so many examples where if you don't have the randomized, controlled trial, you don't know what's going on, even though you're positive.
So while I get...
I certainly understand the argument that, very much like my example of walking outdoors and getting a bag of money every time, if your real-world experience is that something is working, I guess you wouldn't do more of it.
But it's in the category of things you can be fooled by really easily.
So I'm on the fence on this one.
So here's my bottom line.
50-50. If you said, Scott, you don't know if the ivermectin works, you're not a medical guy, you can't even look at the studies, the people who do might have different opinions, what are you going to do?
I'm about 50-50.
Meaning, if I had to bet on it, I don't know, it's a coin flip.
Let's see in your comments, and by the way, the only reason that I doubt the argument...
Number one, I haven't heard enough of the counter-arguments.
In other words, I'd like to hear a virologist say, well, I looked at all these same studies, and I didn't get that conclusion.
Does that person exist?
Here's the thing you have to worry about when you see this format of a host talking to one expert.
So that's what Brett's show was.
It was one host who was very knowledgeable about science-y stuff talking to another knowledgeable person.
How much should you trust that?
If that's your model of where you got your information, one host talking to one expert.
Forget about the topic.
All you know is that it's one host talking to one expert.
How much do you trust it?
What trust would you put on that model?
One person talking to one expert, and that's all you know.
Zero. That's right.
The correct answer is zero.
If that's all you know, is you watched one YouTube with one expert who had one opinion on one side, the credibility you should put on that is zero.
Right? Now, if you get to see the other expert who might disagree, and I don't even know if that person exists.
Literally, I don't know if such a person exists.
But you need to know that, right?
If nobody exists on the other side, well, we're done, right?
At least in terms of the odds of who's right.
But if they do exist, and I don't know if they do, what is their argument?
Right? So there's this big black hole of what's the other side of the argument, and any time you see this model of one person and one expert, you should automatically go to zero on your Your belief system.
Now, it could be important, and it could be right, and it could be the beginning of your journey of checking the other sources and coming to an opinion.
But do not give that model of information more than zero.
That's just a huge mistake.
Zero percent credibility.
Even if it's right. Remember, when I talk about credibility, I'm not talking about whether it's right, because sometimes you can't know.
The best you can do is say, well, it's credible, so I'll follow it.
Or not. All right.
So that's where I'm at at that.
I call this an open story.
And by the way, I think that people like Brett Weinstein are the essential part of the government now.
Literally. Literally. I've told you before that the model of how we run America, anyway, may be true in other countries, but the way America runs at the moment is that somebody who knows what they're talking about, a citizen, comes up with a strong point of view, and then they find influencers.
And the influencers boost the message until this one expert's message goes wider, and then the critics can weigh in and opinions are formed in social media.
And if social media, as a proxy for the public, if it has a dominant opinion that's really strong in one direction, I think the government almost always has to go that way.
Because they like to get elected.
And if something is 70-30 in the public opinion, I think you get both Democrats and Republicans looking at it pretty seriously.
So, when you look at this story, Whether it turns out that ivermectin is a miracle or not, you're seeing the model of the future.
You have the expert, Dr.
Pierre Corey, very credible person, talking to somebody who could understand enough of the argument to promote it, promote the argument.
Then you have people like me who see that and then we can decide to boost or not.
I decided to boost it in this case.
This is your government.
You're watching the actual government function.
It's just a bunch of people with an expert, an influencer, and then we mix it up and then we tell our government what to do, basically.
Now, it's not going to work every time, but that's the model we're in.
All right. The reporting is that President Trump plans to make Dr.
Fauci his main target when he...
He runs for re-election, presumably.
Now, that is a really good strategy.
I have not been the biggest critic of Dr.
Fauci, and I know that puts me at odds with most of you.
I've been the easiest grader of all of our leaders, be they experts or just elected officials.
In my opinion, from day one when we started the pandemic, I told you I'm going to be an easy grader because we're guessing.
A lot of people are going to be guessing.
They're going to be updating their opinions, new information coming.
So people being wrong is just going to happen.
And some of it's just guessing right.
And you're giving credit to people who just guess right.
I don't think you should take too much credit away from people who guess wrong if they made a credible argument for what they did.
So I'm not anti-Fauci like most of you, which is not to say he's been right, not to say that I would have done it the same way or any of that.
I just don't want him to be my personal punching bag because I just don't think it's good for the country.
But as a strategy...
President Trump's biggest problem, in my opinion, was that he was considered anti-science, right?
Wouldn't you say, well, maybe one of the three biggest problems is that Trump was considered anti-science.
If he can find a face that he can call science and experts, and it looks like that face is going to be Fauci's face, if he can put a picture to it, Like the wall?
The wall is visual, right?
You can see the wall in your head, even if it's not built.
So he loves visual persuasion with an object.
So it's either Crooked Hillary is the object.
Look at Crooked Hillary.
Or Build a Wall. Do you see the wall?
Or the dangerous criminals from MS-13 are coming across the border.
I can see that.
I can see that criminal.
But how do you beat the charge that you're anti-science?
Science doesn't have a face.
It's a concept.
It looks like Trump has solved how to turn a concept into a face.
I'm looking at your comment, Marusha, And yes, I have looked at that, the Israel map over time.
And it is interesting.
So... Trump has figured out a way to put a face on science, and it's a face that enough people in this country have a negative opinion about, because he's been bashed for so long, and because we didn't like being in the pandemic, so we wanted somebody to blame.
It's a really good strategy.
You could argue the ethics of it.
That's a separate question.
But would it be persuasive?
Yup. It's pretty darn good.
As a strategy. Apparently the border folks, the US border officials, have started using a facial recognition app to track the asylum seekers.
Do you remember me telling you that's the way we should handle this?
Because I think we might be reaching a point, and maybe we're already there, that if you could tell who people were once they got in, If you had enough cameras and facial recognition, you could just open the border.
You could just let people in, if we knew who they were.
Now, I guess it's not a perfect system yet.
Maybe a lot of the people coming across the border don't have, let's say, a social media presence, etc.
So it's not maybe fully as realized as it could be.
But, wait, before you criticize, let me fill out the point here.
If I knew who was in the country, and every time they, say, walked in front of a public camera and said, oh, this person's here, we could pick them up and send them home if we wanted to.
If we knew that they'd committed a crime, well, their face would probably be on some other camera.
And you look for those people and you send them home.
So when the left talks about reimagining police, I'm actually very much on their side on the concept, not the details.
You know, the details might be stupid, but the idea that you could use technology and start from scratch and just reimagine what you would do is pretty strong.
And one of the assets that we have now that we never had before is smartphones.
Everybody needs one to be a functioning person in society.
You know, even the people who are illegal and come across the border, they still need a smartphone.
What if you could track everybody by their face and you could just block their cell phone or basically cripple their phone unless they turn themselves in?
Or something like that.
You know, you can imagine...
That you could control people's actions or catch people who commit crimes so easily that you could take all the incentive and a crime.
You could get to the point where they're all solved.
How much crime do you have when they're all solved?
In theory, it would only be crazy people, and you can't stop crazy people.
Everybody who is rational would know that the moment they committed the crime, they're going to jail, so they just stop doing it.
So I do think it's not crazy to reimagine police without many police, with fewer of them.
I just don't know how to do it, but you can smell it before you see it.
And you can kind of smell that there's something there, but maybe it gets you into a brave new world and too much government control to make any of that happen.
So Trump, of course, has been blocked, I guess, for Two years, he's got a two-year ban on Facebook.
So that would take it through the 2022 midterms, which is really a big deal.
Because Trump is an influential voice, and especially he would be influential in the midterms.
So he won't have Facebook to do that anymore.
And here's my question.
What happens if it turns out Trump was right?
Because mostly he's being banned, I think, because of talking about the election integrity.
We haven't heard anything that's real smoking gun, right, from the election audits.
I feel like we would know by now.
I feel as if the audits are finding nothing.
Because we would have heard something.
The same way we heard about that database that was missing.
Then it turned out it wasn't really missing.
I feel like we'd know by now if there was something there.
And I don't think you have to count every ballot to know if there's a problem.
So we should know by now.
And we don't. So I would guess if I had to put money on it today, I would say that they won't have access to what they need to check everything.
So you'll never know for sure.
For example, the audits won't have access to the software that's on the machines, probably.
It's probably a bunch of proprietary stuff that they can't get at.
So I don't think that there's any way physically or logically or operationally to know if the elections were good.
But we're probably not going to find anything.
But the question is this.
What if he's right? Remember Trump was saying about the Wuhan lab leak being a possibility?
Probability, I think he said.
And he got a lot of trouble for that.
But what if he's right?
What if he's right about hydroxychloroquine?
I'm betting against it at this point.
But what if he is?
Somebody says, that database was deleted.
Well, I don't know if it was deleted, but it was recovered.
Yeah, it was easily recovered if they knew what they were doing, I guess.
Oh, you're right. I did have chocolate in the corner of my mouth.
Thank you. I ate a chocolate protein bar before I got on here.
Apparently it was smeared over my mouth.
Sorry you had to look at that.
I appreciate that tip.
All right. Well, we'll find out if Trump is right.
It turns out the teachers' unions, whose reputations have fallen off a cliff since the pandemic, have found a new way to be hated.
So the San Francisco Teachers' Union...
For the first time, a teachers' union is going to back a cause.
So usually the teachers' unions are pretty much about what's good for the teachers, according to them.
But now they're going to back a cause.
So the San Francisco Teachers' Union is backing the BDS movement, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, against Israel.
So the teachers' union in San Francisco...
Decided that their one cause that they would ever join, so far, is an anti-Israel boycott.
So, is that the end of the teachers' unions?
Did they just put their foot on the third rail?
Because if I were the teachers' unions, I would not be so confident that if I went after the Jewish-American public, That that would turn down okay.
Because that's sort of what's happening here.
I don't feel like this is going to work out for them.
But wow! I mean, talk about ways to destroy your own reputation.
Well, in a weirdly related note, good news for the Locals platform.
Most of you know I have a Subscription service on the Locals platform.
You can just Google me at Locals, you'll find it.
And Joel Pollack has joined Locals.
You know Joel from Breitbart, but what you might not know is that, at least for quite a while, at least through the Trump administration, I've known Joel, and I can get usually the useful background from him, because we chat often.
And I'll hear news from him, at least context, that I never heard anywhere else.
And it's all true, right?
So if you want to know the real context of why things are going the way they are in the news, he's the guy to follow.
So if you're looking at locals and you want to pick up a few more people to follow, highly recommended.
You'll get to see behind the curtain.
There are only a few people that I recommend Can show you, pull the curtain back and show you what's back there.
And he's one of them. So follow Joel on Locals.
How many of you treat sleep as a skill?
In other words, how many of you look at your sleeping habits, and maybe you have trouble sleeping, and how many of you are saying, oh, okay, sleep is a skill.
I need to do this and this and this to get my skill working.
Oh, I see a number of you do that.
Somebody says it's a hobby, Jack.
Here's some new research which falls into the category of blindingly obvious, but it's nice to have research to back it, which is that people who exercise vigorously have way fewer problems sleeping.
Is there anybody who didn't know that?
Were you aware...
That exercise is really the very best way to make sure you get a good night's sleep.
How many of you knew that?
It feels like it's obvious, right?
But apparently it's been proven by science.
And here's what I would like to say about this.
You know, I've told you about the concept of reframing.
And reframing is one of these subtle things where you can hear a million examples and maybe still not be able to do it yourself.
Because the reframing does not require new information.
Reframing is just looking at the same information you were looking at before, but just deciding to filter it differently and to just frame it differently.
Here's how to frame sleep.
You do not have a problem sleeping.
You do not have a problem getting to sleep.
That's what you used to say.
You used to say, I have problems getting to sleep.
That's the wrong frame.
Here's the right frame.
I didn't exercise enough today.
Try that. Next time you can't get to sleep, don't say to yourself, Damn it!
I have trouble getting to sleep.
No you don't.
You don't have trouble getting to sleep.
You have too little exercise.
You have an exercise problem, and that exercise problem might be extending into other parts of your life.
You might have trouble controlling your weight.
You don't have an eating problem, or you might have an eating problem, but maybe you have an exercise problem.
Weight is mostly about what you eat, but exercise is at least 10% of it.
Yeah, you have an exercise problem.
Just tell yourself that. Now the reason that reframing works is that the message you tell yourself becomes your operating code.
You will make decisions based on the way you frame things.
So that's the connection between how you think of it and how you act.
Reframing can make you act differently.
So as soon as you say, damn it, I didn't exercise enough tonight, that'll probably give you a better chance of exercising tomorrow.
So just reframe it as not enough exercise and watch how that helps.
In Fox News, they report that a fisherman found $1.5 million worth of whale vomit in Yemen.
Now, When I've been searching for whale vomit, I usually look locally, and I find none, really.
But Yemen is a good place for it.
If you go to Yemen, find yourself a dead whale, rip its stomach open, find a big old chunk of whale vomit that's still in its stomach, and apparently it's a valuable commodity for the fragrance industry.
Yeah, they use it as a scent stabilizer.
Now, how has somebody found out that whale vomit is a scent stabilizer?
I don't know. How many things did they try before they got to whale vomit?
Was it trial and error?
Well, we need a scent stabilizer for our fragrance.
What should we try? Water?
How about water?
Eh, water didn't work.
Let's try vodka.
How about milk?
About Ivermectin.
But somebody, probably a genius, in a moment of clarity unlike anything we've ever witnessed, somehow realized that if you cut a whale open and you took its solidified vomit, that would make a hell of a scent stabilizer.
So, the next time you see somebody who has a great fragrance and you say to yourself, What is that you're wearing?
Oh, I love your fragrance.
And they say, oh, it's blah, blah, blah.
You say, ah, and I love the scent stabilizer in that.
Yeah. I'm picking up a little note of whale vomit, and you know, that's the very best.
Wait. Oh, it's not just whale vomit.
It's whale vomit from Yemen.
It's the good stuff.
So, I don't know.
I have questions about this whole situation.
Let's talk about Putin and his alleged hackers.
So the thought is that these ransomware hackers reside in Russia.
Putin, of course, says, I don't know anything about that.
I don't know nothing about no...
No hackers in my country, but of course we know that Russia typically employs criminals to do things that they can say they didn't do.
So how do you handle this?
Is the way you handle it, do you say, Putin, do something about those hackers, and then Putin says, I don't know who they are, just criminals.
We don't even know where they are.
Is that good enough?
Doesn't feel like it. I feel as if the play is this.
Hey, Putin, do you know where these hackers are?
No, I don't.
Okay, but you know it's your problem, right?
And Putin says, it's not my problem.
It's your problem. They didn't hack me.
No, you say, no, I don't think you're hearing me.
We're making it your problem.
Because you have a chance of solving this, but we don't.
Now, the fact that you don't want to, It's not our problem.
The fact that you say you didn't have any involvement in it, again, that would be your problem.
That's not our problem.
Our problem is that we got hacked.
Your problem is that we're making it your problem.
Your problem is if you don't find some way to find these people, and we're not saying you know where they are, but it's your problem.
Is it hard to find them?
Well, that's too bad for you, because the consequences will be extreme.
But don't confuse your problem, Putin, with our problem.
Our problem is we got hacked.
Your problem is that we just made that your problem.
Because we can't solve it.
You can. It's your problem now.
So I don't know that there's any other way to get there from here, right?
You've got to make it his problem.
And you've got to make it stick.
Same with fentanyl, as I'm seeing in the comments, right?
You've got to go to China and say, fentanyl was our problem, but now it's yours.
And we're just going to make it a bigger and bigger problem until you figure it out.
Do what you want to do.
You could jail your dealers or not, but it's your fucking problem now, because we're making it your fucking problem.
And I think we have to keep that as standard.
Because that's, well, we're not doing it.
I don't know. It might have been a fentanyl dealer, but it's not us.
No, it's not good enough anymore.
Now it's your fucking problem.
That should be, in fact, if Trump gets re-elected in 2024, that should be the slogan instead of make America great again.
It should be, I'm going to make this your fucking problem.
And then make it their fucking problem.
That's a pretty good standard.
Have I ever told you that you should never argue by analogies?
I believe I have.
Here's an example of why you should not use analogies to make your point.
A federal judge has reversed the California ban on AR-15s.
So apparently sometime soon, maybe already, I'm not sure how fast this goes into action, you'll be able to buy an AR-15 in California.
In the federal judge's ruling, he made an analogy, and he said the AR-15 is like a Swiss army knife, in the sense that a Swiss army knife could be used for a variety of things, and an AR-15 could be used for hunting, could be used for defending the homeland, could be used for defending your house.
So the analogy is that a Swiss army knife can be used for many things, And an AR-15 can also be used for many things.
That's the analogy.
That's what the federal judge said.
How did the news interpret that?
Perfectly reasonable statement.
Hey, it's a tool that can be used for many different purposes.
How was that interpreted?
It was interpreted by the fake news as that a Swiss Army knife was compared to an AR-15 as if they are equally deadly.
Nothing like that happened.
The analogy was about multiple usefulness of its features.
