Episode 1428 Scott Adams: Fake News About Fake Science and Delicious Coffee Too
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Not treating terrorist hacking seriously
Risk: Short-term versus long-term
Billionaires in space
Sha'Carri Richardson displacing relay runner?
The "Wokies" in Dilbert, The Dilbert Effect
Britney Spears conservatorship
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So I learned something yesterday about the sound quality on YouTube.
It turns out that no matter what equipment you use or how you broadcast, YouTube has some kind of a weird bug That makes some people's audio low on some videos and not on others.
And apparently it doesn't matter how you make the video.
The problem happens within YouTube.
So, for all of those saying, I can't hear you, your sound is too low, that's your problem with YouTube and not a problem necessarily with the content.
Although I might do this without a microphone one of these days.
All right. So you know about that big hacking attack?
Another $70 million ransom being asked for presumably Russian hackers who hacked into a whole bunch of companies.
And I would like to say again that we're not treating this hacking stuff seriously.
This should be a death sentence.
Because the level of destruction that comes from these hacks...
It needs to be discouraged at the risk of death.
And at the very least, we should consider it a terrorist attack.
And at the very least, we should be able to take action in any country we want.
So if these guys live in Russia, whether or not Putin is controlling them, we can take them out.
We could just drop a drone right on some Russian territory and just take him out.
Because we're not even serious about this right now.
And I don't see why the hackers would stop.
The business model seems pretty good.
It's working pretty well.
So I would say we need to get serious about this, and we're not even close.
Once again, this is probably something Trump would do better.
Because you need to ratchet up the threat.
You know, the response has to be much bigger than it is.
This whole, oh, Putin, there will be consequences.
Will there? Will there be any consequences for Russia because of these hacks?
No. Putin will just say, I don't know where they're coming from, and we won't have proof, and we won't be able to go that hard at Russia.
So that's where President Trump could be a lot better in this situation.
On Twitter yesterday, I asked people in a little Twitter poll, very unscientific, if I had ever changed anybody's opinion on any social or political topic.
And the last I checked, there were about 14,000-15,000 people that answered the poll, and of my 630,000 followers.
And over half of them who answered, which would be about 8,000 people, said yes.
So apparently I've changed...
Just on the people who answered the poll, more than half of them have changed an opinion on something based on watching this content.
Now, I'm wondering if that's normal, because I don't know how to judge that.
Would you say that Ben Shapiro, if you watch his show, and he did the same poll, Would he find that people had changed their minds because of watching his content?
Because his content is terrific.
Lots of reasons and facts and good context and background.
So intellectually, Ben Shapiro would be superior to mine, I would say.
Certainly on the factual and context kind of a basis, he's good at that.
But does he change minds?
Let me ask in the comments.
Has Ben Shapiro ever changed your mind on a topic, or do you find you agree with him and all you're doing is just agreeing?
So I'm going to look at your comments as they go by.
I see a yes.
I see a bunch of no's.
Oh, I see a bunch of yes's.
Okay. Lots of yes's coming in.
Some no's. Interesting.
Okay. So I don't know how to evaluate whether I'm being persuasive or it's just a function of talking in public.
So maybe if you talk in public and you say a lot of things, you're going to change somebody's mind.
All right. Rasmussen has some poll results.
They asked, how likely is it that the U.S. government spies on critical journalists and political opponents?
Now, that's a pretty loaded question, isn't it?
Do you believe that the U.S. government is spying on critical journalists?
No. Well, 36% of the people who responded in this Rasmussen poll, very likely, 36% said, very likely, 36% of the public, the voting public, likely voters, think that the government is spying on journalists.
What do you think? Yeah, of course they are.
Yeah, one way or another.
I mean, they might be spying on them, they might be monitoring them, they might be You know, caught in the indirect monitoring because they may have communicated with somebody who they do monitor, a foreign agent.
Now, have I ever talked to somebody from a foreign country that our NSA might want to be tracking?
And the answer is, yes, I have.
I have. Now, I haven't had any deep secrets or anything, But I have had conversations in digital means with people that, in retrospect, I could imagine would be tracked by the NSA for legitimate reasons.
You know, I didn't have any, like, secret, you know, nothing that I would worry about anybody knowing about.
But doesn't that put me on the list?
If I have a conversation in any way with anybody who is on the monitoring list, don't I get monitored automatically?
So I don't know how anybody could disagree with the idea that the government is spying on journalists.
I guess you could question the intent, but not the fact that it's happening.
It's simply a fact that it's happening, isn't it?
Would anybody disagree with that statement?
That because we know the NSA checks anybody who's, let's say, a foreign person who might have some importance to us, intelligence-wise, don't you think many of them have contacts with journalists?
Probably, right?
So, yeah. The NSA is probably looking at all of them.
And then the 23% said it's somewhat likely that the government is spying on journalists.
So you add them together...
And you get 59% think it's either very likely or somewhat likely that the government is spying on journalists.
It's not even a story, is it?
How in the world is that not one of the biggest stories in the country?
But it's not. I mean, it's a story, but it just kind of comes and goes.
I like your idea, Ken.
All right. I am fascinated with the topic of how people assess risk.
Now, I know you don't like it when I talk about any COVID stuff, because it seems like it's over for most of you.
And I agree with that, by the way.
Personally, I feel like the pandemic is over for me.
Because I'm not going to take a long plane trip and a mask ever again.
I just won't do it.
And I don't need to wear a mask locally for anything because I'm vaccinated.
You know, I suppose if I visited an old folks home, I'd put one on.
So I'm not too interested in the pandemic stuff, but I'm very interested in how minds work.
And so that's the element I'm going at here.
And I'm really fascinated with this specific question.
Where people are trying to decide whether to get vaccinated or not, you've got two unknown risks that people have to balance to make their decision.
And they're both completely unknown.
One is, what is the long-term risk of getting a vaccination, especially an mRNA vaccination, the type of which is sort of new to the human experience?
We have a pretty good idea what the short-term risks are because of the trials and also because of the feedback.
But how would you know if there's any risk five years from now from the vaccines?
And the answer is you wouldn't, right?
So if you're trying to say what is the long-term unknown risk of a vaccination, the answer is who knows?
Nobody. There's nobody who can even estimate it.
Not with any data, right?
But also, what is the long-term risk of getting this particular virus?
Now, if it were a normal flu virus, you'd say to yourself, well, five years from now, it's very unlikely I'm still going to have a problem from a normal flu virus I got five years ago.
Very unlikely. But this is not like a normal virus, right?
It's engineered.
Or it looks like it.
You know, we don't have full confirmation of that, but it appears to be weaponized.
Can you tell me that the risk five years from now from a weaponized virus is zero?
I have no idea what the risk is.
So you've got a risk from an unknown virus that's novel and weaponized in all likelihood.
We don't know for sure, but it looks like it.
And we've got a vaccine of the type we've never seen before, pumped into millions of people.
Which one is the bigger risk?
Now, here's what fascinates me.
Most of you can make this decision.
I don't know how.
Right? Because it's two complete unknowns.
Complete. Complete.
Now, if you were to look at the short-term risk, let's separate them, the short-term risk of, let's say, dying within two weeks of getting a vaccination, or the short-term risk of getting COVID and dying in the hospital, how big are those risks?
Could you compare them?
Well, let me tell you how I do it.
I round them both to zero, and then I ignore them.
Right? Because the risk of me dying from coronavirus...
It's so close to zero that I would treat it the same way I treat driving to the store to buy a loaf of bread.
I could die in the car driving to the store to get a loaf of bread, but it's not part of my decision making because it's so close to zero.
So while I think the vaccination is really so close to zero, I can ignore that risk in the short term.
And the risk of dying from the coronavirus in the short term, so close to zero that I make both of them non-existent.
So, if the risk from both of them rounds to zero, get a vaccination or don't get a vaccination, both zero risk, effectively, you know, because it's so small, what do you do?
Well, I'll tell you what I do. I defaulted toward the decision that also had about zero risk, because both of them do.
But I picked the one that gave me more freedom.
So I feel, and of course freedom is largely a sensation as much as a fact, my sensation is that I'm more free.
Because apparently I survived the first few weeks of getting the vaccination.
So the early risk is behind me.
But I can go places without a mask.
And that means a lot to me.
So that's how my decision was made.
Short term, both risks are zero.
Effectively. Both are just zero.
But one gives me more rights.
So I took that one.
Now the long term risk, still separate.
But can't calculate it.
Nobody can.
Nobody can calculate that risk.
I do, however, know from personal anecdotes several people who have had long-haul risk with the virus.
Now, I don't know if those long-haul risks are really permanent, or if they could be, but I've heard of them, right?
I've heard real people say, it's been months, and I had the virus, and I still get problems.
I've never personally heard of anybody who had a problem with the vaccination.
Now, that's not science, right?
Because the people I've personally heard of has no statistical value.
But still, it's hard to avoid the fact that I've heard of several people with virus long-haul problems.
And I've heard of nobody that I know personally, and it's the personal part, not news stories, but nobody personally who's had a problem with vaccination.
That doesn't mean it's not happening.
I'm just saying I'm influenced by my immediate information.
So, I don't know how you make your decisions, but I round the vaccination and the virus down to zero risk each, and then I take the path that gives me more options.
So that's where I'm at.
Now, I stress again that if this sounds like I'm trying to talk you into getting vaccinated, no, no, no, no.
Don't take that away from this.
Because do you see me with my doctor degree?
No. No.
Cartoonist. Do you take medical advice from cartoonists?
No. No, don't do that.
Don't do that.
I'm only interested in the decision-making process.
That's it. Do your own medical decisions.
Let's talk about billionaires in space.
So I love the fact that Jeff Bezos plans to take his rocket company into space, and he plans to be one of the first, or the first, I guess, first crew, among the first in the crew on Blue Origins.
So that's the name of Bezos' company.
And by the way, I think he's stepping down from running Amazon full-time.
Meanwhile, Virgin Galactic, run by Richard Branson, He's decided that he's going to get into space a little bit earlier.
But apparently there's a dispute about whether that's really in space.
Because there's sort of a dividing line between space and not in space.
And I guess the Virgin Galactic flight will just be below that line, whereas the Amazon one will be above that line.
So technically, Bezos will be in space.
Technically, Branson will be almost in space, but not quite, so maybe that matters if you're keeping score.
But both of these trips are deadly, meaning that Bezos could die.
He could die.
And it's not the same risk as driving to the store for a loaf of bread.
I don't know. If I put odds on it, it's like 10%, isn't it?
Maybe a 10% chance he'll die?
Would you take a rocket ship if you had a 10% chance of dying?
He's a lot braver than I am.
Maybe that's why he has more money than anybody in the world.
And it also makes sense for Richard Branson to do this.
Because Branson's brand is adventurism and taking risks and doing sketchy things.
Not sketchy things, but dangerous things.
And so it makes sense for Branson.
He's always been this person.
But does it make sense for Bezos to risk his death?
Going up in space.
I mean, I do like the fact that he's putting his skin in the game.
That's not nothing. I mean, that's a lot.
But I just don't know if it's the right play if you're a billionaire.
Because I have to think his life is going pretty well so far.
Why would he take a risk of dying in a preventable accident?
Preventable in the sense he doesn't need to be on it.
But I guess you'd feel pretty bad if you send somebody else up there and they died.
So maybe you just can't live with the guilt of that if somebody else died and he wasn't on the ship.
But we wish him luck.
And what would happen if all of our billionaires just died in space?
Because you know Elon Musk is going to be on one of those rocket ships eventually, right?
We could wipe out the entire billionaire class in this country just having them try to fly into space and not make it.
And I hope that doesn't happen.
Of course, I wish them all well.
But it's fun to watch.
And it's really fun.
And I feel as though we're going to look back on these days and realize that because these billionaires were competitive with each other, because you had an Elon Musk at the same time as a Jeff Bezos, at the same time as a Sir Richard Branson...
The fact that they all existed in the same time and space is probably really important.
Because don't you think that the competitive element of that and what they're learning from each other and probably at some point some employees might be cross-pollinating and stuff...
I feel like it's a little bit like the founding...
I don't want to say founding fathers.
It's too sexist. It's a little like the founders of the United States.
What were the odds that at the same time in history you'd have, you know, Monroe and Jefferson and Washington and, you know, John Adams and Ben Franklin, you know, forgetting a few names, Hamilton.
What are the odds...
That all of those people would be alive at the same time and sort of in the same time in space, and they created the United States.
I don't know that any other group of people could have pulled that off.
There was something about that group of geniuses being in the same place that made it all happen.
And I think we're going to look back on this space stuff and say how lucky we were that three of our most important entrepreneurs were alive at the same time.
And could see each other's work.
I mean, it's going to be a big deal, I think.
So CNN is reporting that it's quite obvious now that climate change is what's causing our heat patterns.
Is that true? How many of you would say that is a fact that science agrees with?
Is it a fact that the heat wave we're seeing now is unprecedented and also clearly because of climate change?
I'm seeing a lot of no's go by in the comments.
I think the answer is no, right?
I believe that the high temperatures have not been much higher than they have been historically, but here's the catch.
I think the winter temperatures are more mild.
So there's a book and an argument that I can't remember right now.
Let me tell you the name of the book because it would be deeply unfair to refer to this and not mention the actual book that I haven't read yet, but...
So let me see it.
This is a book recommendation.
This came through Joel Pollack, who just read this book by Stephen Koonin, K-O-O-N-I-N. It's called Unsettled, What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters.
So he's trying to use the existing data.
My understanding is that he uses the existing databases.
He's not making up his own data and just coming at it at a different angle.
And apparently part of the argument is that the winters are getting more mild, but the summers are not getting hotter.
If that were true, climate change would be more good than bad, right?
I don't know if it's true, but that's the claim.
So I haven't read that book, but I hear it's good.
But more to the point...
Isn't it just fake news when CNN reports, well, clearly here's climate change?
That's fake news, right?
Because the data doesn't indicate it?
Or doesn't? Because what I don't see is a bunch of climate scientists coming on TV and, okay, you can stop mentioning Tony Heller.
I've spent a lot of time interacting with Tony Heller, and he is not credible.
Now, that doesn't mean he's wrong about everything he says, but in general, he is not credible, and if you're following him and buying everything he says, you're in deep trouble.
Don't go down that path.
I went down that path pretty far myself, and once I saw the critics weigh in about his analyses, it kind of falls apart.
So, don't go down that path.
So I guess I'm waiting to see some scientists come on CNN and tell us that the data shows that something different is happening now.
Maybe they can.
By the way, just an update, I'm not a climate change doubter.
I am a doubter about how bad it will be because I say humans are good at adjusting and correcting and even the projections are not that bad.
If you really look at the projections of how much bad is going to happen in the future, it's actually not that bad.
It's like a 10% hit on GDP over 80 years, which you literally wouldn't even notice.
Why don't you be specific about Heller?
Well, I'm not going to be.
Because he doesn't rise to the level of conversation.
Meaning there are some things that maybe yes, maybe no, Take the issue of ivermectin.
Ivermectin is one of those things that's worth discussing.
Whichever way you go on it, worth discussing.
The Tony Heller analysis has been debunked to the point where it's not worthy of discussion.
Now, if you're not there, maybe you need to do your own research, but don't ask me to go there, because it didn't rise to the level of being worthy of discussion.
It did at one point until I discussed it to death and couldn't find a value in it.
All right. So here's a terrible thing that's about to happen that nobody's talking about.
So you're following the story of Shakari Richardson, the female sprinter who got tested positive for marijuana and is going to be kicked off the 100-meter sprint, which is her best event.
Now the talk is that because there's a one-month suspension and there's a difference in timing for the different events, that it is possible for her to be on the relay team.
So I guess the relay race happens later and her suspension would be done by then.
So the thinking is that although she was not going to be on the relay team originally, maybe she could be on the relay team, help them win, because she's the fastest woman in the world, apparently.
And that would all be good.
Do you see any problem with that theory?
Does anybody have a concern about her being on the relay team?
Exactly. Somebody would get booted from the relay team.
And here's the important part.
The person who will get booted from the relay race team didn't break any fucking rules.
Now, I'm very solidly on the side that says that she should be allowed to compete, and they should immediately change the rule and wipe away this marijuana thing, etc.
So I think she should be allowed to compete, period.
But whatever mistake was made was hers.
Whoever this other person is, presumably some woman who had a good chance of being on the team, is going to get bumped off because somebody else fucked up.
Come on. If you're talking about an injustice, it is an injustice, in my opinion, that somebody who trained all their life for the 100 years Meter sprint or whatever gets bumped for marijuana.
That's a deep injustice.
But you're just screwing some other athlete if you put her on the relay team when she wasn't supposed to be there.
So... This looks worse to me.
Much worse. I mean, not even close.
This is deeply unfair.
Because you would literally be punishing somebody who didn't do anything wrong so that the person who did something wrong could compete.
There is no way in hell this is okay.
Am I the only one who has mentioned this so far?
I haven't heard anybody mention it in public.
But I imagine somebody's going to mention it.
All right. Um...
Have you seen today's Dilbert comics that I just tweeted out?
So the latest two Dilbert comics are on the subject of the boss, and the Dilbert comic hired a racist just so they'd have somebody to fire in case the woke crowds came after them.
And then today in the comic, the woke gangs came after them.
I call them the Wokies, which I think you should adopt.
The Wokies.
The people who are woke. So they come after Dilbert's company, and then here's the text of this one, in case you missed it.
And there's a point why I'm going to be talking about this comic.
I'll get to it. And it goes like this.
Dilbert says to his boss, there's a mob of woke people surrounding our building.
They demand a human sacrifice.
And then the boss says, fetch the spare racist I hired for that purpose.
And then in the last panel you see they're dangling the racist out the window on a pole, and the alleged racist is saying, I'm not a racist, really, I'm not.
And then from inside the building you can hear, he can't prove that.
Now, regardless of whether you think that's funny, not very funny when they're just spoken and not read, there is a Dilber effect...
Which might be important.
And it goes like this.
In the 90s, the early 90s, those of you who were around, remember that business books were huge.
It seemed like every day there was a new business book with a new great theory about excellence and passion and re-engineering and all these things.
And the thought was in the early 90s that if only you read the right book and used the right systems, Your company would be taken off and very successful.
Now, almost none of that was true.
But it was generally believed to be true in the early 90s that if you just stopped people from moving your cheese and used your excellence and all that stuff, everything would be great.
Do you know what happened to that market for business books?
Well, that market happened to coincide with the rise of Dilbert.
So Dilbert as a comic hit its most famous stride, I would say, in the mid to late 90s.
And it destroyed the business book business.
Because Dilbert was the first sort of high visibility mocking of things that people sort of suspected should be mocked, But they didn't want to be the ones to do it, right?
You don't want to go first in case you get caught looking foolish.
But I never mind going first and looking foolish, so I went first.
The entire market for business books was destroyed.
I think largely because of Dilbert.
Because you know, for example, that Elon Musk has a rule for Tesla.
The rule at Tesla is, and this is Elon Musk's published rule for Tesla, That if there's any kind of a policy at Tesla that they can imagine would end up in a Dilbert comic, don't do it.
It's a very useful rule.
If you think it would end up in a Dilbert comic, don't do it.
Because that's a pretty good indicator that this should be mocked and not taken seriously.
So we do know that, and I've received lots of information, that companies have altered their practices because they either something appeared in a Dilbert comic or they didn't want it to because it would be too embarrassing.
And when you see wokeness and corporate wokeness become a recurring theme in the Dilbert comic, it's probably an indicator of a turning point.
Now, not necessarily because I'm causing it, although that's not impossible, but more because it's more of a canary in the coal mine, sort of an early indication of a transition.
And I feel as if wokeness may be peaking.
Does it feel like that to you?
Everything good and everything bad seems to peak at some point and then decrease.
I feel like once it's in a Dilbert comic and people just laugh and there's nobody reading the comic and saying, well, you know, but really, the wokeness is good.
Nobody's going to read these comics and say, yeah, I get that you're making fun of it, but gosh, there's a lot of good stuff here too, so don't go too far with mocking it.
That's not happening.
I think people are just laughing at it.
And if you're laughing at the wokeness from the Wokies, it may be the beginning of the end.
So we'll see. Let's talk about all the fake news.
There was a story today about a man in Austria who was bitten by a five and a quarter foot python that was in his toilet.
So the story says that this man just sat on his toilet and a python that somehow reached his toilet through the pipes was in his toilet, a five and a half foot python, and it bit him in the genitals.
This story is actually in the news.
Now, put on your fake news thinking cap.
Is this true?
Do you really think...
That an escaped python climbed all through the pipes from some other place, climbed through the pipes, and came out into his toilet and waited.
And when he opened the toilet to use it, he didn't notice a five and a quarter foot python in his toilet.
Now, imagine how thick a python probably is.
Now imagine five and a quarter feet of that wrapped up in a toilet bowl.
I have to think that the head was probably already sitting up above the level of the toilet.
So here's my advice to you.
If you're approaching a toilet and you're about to sit on it, if there's a python head looking at you from the place you plan to sit, don't sit on that toilet.
That's your advice for today.
Well, I'm going to call this fake news.
I do not believe there was a python in a toilet.
No, I don't.
It's an excellent story.
But between us, there was no python in a toilet.
I feel pretty confident there was never a python in a toilet.
Or at least, if there was, it didn't get there by crawling through any pipes.
Here's some more fake news about fake news.
Did you see the story? I think it was yesterday.
There was an executive who used to work for Fox News who said some bad things about Fox News.
It was a big story.
And then Richard Grinnell points out that this executive from Fox News quit in 1997.
So the executive who was in the news for saying that Fox News had problems left in 1997.
And that fact was not in the stories.
It took Richard Grinnell's tweet to surface that.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Somebody who hasn't worked there since 1997 had a strong opinion about what it's like there now and wanted us all to know.
Is there anything that this person could add that you couldn't know yourself just by watching TV? This is the most bullshit fake news story I've seen since the python in the toilet.
How about some more...
Some more news.
So, true story.
On the 4th of July, Cristina said to me, you know, if you were going to murder somebody, a great time to do it would be the 4th of July.
Because people would think the gunshots were just fireworks.
To which I said, I'm a little bit disturbed at how much time you put into murdering people and getting away with it.
Because I feel like I might be on that list, if you know what I mean.
So aside from the fact that it's disturbing that my wife is considering murder and watches every CSI and crime movie that's ever been made, she's become quite an expert at killing people and getting away with it.
I don't know if she's ever done it, but if she does, she'll get away with it.
But here's my point.
Turns out the CNN is reporting that...
Over the 4th of July weekend, 150 people were killed by gun violence and more than 400 shootings across the country.
What? On one weekend?
On one weekend?
There were 400 shootings?
Now, I knew gun violence was a problem...
Did you know it was this bad?
Now, I don't know if anybody got shot in my town, so it feels like it didn't affect me directly.
But, really?
400 shootings?
Now, I ask you, how many of this was because the fireworks were happening?
How many of these 150 people who were killed were killed around the time the fireworks were going off?
You know, say, 9 o'clock at night and after?
I feel like there might be people who are literally taking this technique and putting it in practice and literally killing people on the 4th of July.
I'm going to hide on the 4th of July next year.
So Britney Spears looks like she's going to be retiring unless her conservatorship gets removed.
Because she doesn't want to be working and just having somebody else be able to manage the money, which makes perfect sense to me.
Now, I have a few questions.
Number one, we hear in the news today that her attorney until 2019 was named Andrew Wallet.
His last name is spelled exactly like the wallet you have in your back pocket that has money.
Here's my advice to you.
Never hire an attorney whose last name is Wallet.
I'm just saying it's sort of a red flag, right?
Just don't do it.
If the name is Wallet, walk away.
All right, so here's my questions about Britney Spears.
I like that she's starting to play hardball because a number of people only get paid if she works.
And she's going to stop working to put some pressure on the conservatorship.
Probably a good strategy.
But let me ask you this.
I know there are always lawyers watching this.
Let's say I'm Britney Spears, and let's say I'm subject to a conservatorship.
Can I go to a promoter and say, hey promoter, I'm in a conservatorship, but if you don't mind, and I don't mind, can we sign a deal?
Can Britney Spears go sign a deal with her name on it to do a performance with somebody who says, yeah, and I'll pay you any way you want to be paid.
You just tell me where the money goes, and I'll give it to you.
And then Britney says, for example, well, I'd like it in crypto.
Can the conservatorship get at it?
Because remember, Britney did not agree to the conservatorship.
She's just a citizen.
Can that citizen make a private deal with another citizen?
I'm seeing Fred say her signature has no standing.
But does that matter if the other person respects it?
So I hear what you're saying, and I don't know if that's legally true, but let's take the assumption that she's not allowed to do business deals because she's under conservatorship, which feels like that's probably true, right?
But But that only matters if the person she makes the deal with recognizes the conservatorship and respects it.
So say she goes to somebody and says, look, I want to beat this conservatorship.
How about you and I do a deal?
My signature won't mean anything, but yours does.
So you're going to sign something that says you'll pay me if I perform.
I'll perform. You pay wherever I tell you to pay me.
In this case, I'm going to say, send crypto to my wallet.
What happens? If the conservatorship says, hey, Brittany, that crypto money belongs in the conservatorship, and Brittany says, yes, it does, it totally does, good luck with that, because you don't know my wallet, and you can't get at it, what would happen?
I don't know. All right, let me give you another one.
Let's say Brittany teams up with somebody she can trust.
I'm going to put myself in the story just because it needs a third party.
So let's say Brittany says, Scott, I trust you, but I don't trust my conservatorship.
So here's the thing.
Why don't you make a deal with the venue that I'm going to perform at, and they will pay you.
I'll perform, because nobody can stop me from driving places and performing.
So I'll perform, and I won't even sign a contract.
They'll just give the money to you.
I will trust you to give that money to me in some fashion.
Is that legal? Could she do that?
That's a straw man.
Yeah, and it would be quite explicitly to beat the conservatorship, but would it work?
How much power does the conservatorship have to claw back things that maybe get out of their bounds?
The conservatorship would sue.
Interesting. That sounds right.
I don't know if it's right. But if the conservatorship sued her, hmm, but would that work?
What if they sued her and won?
And they said, yeah, you've got to give us this crypto.
And then she just doesn't.
What would happen? Yeah, so these are the questions.
At the very least, she could push the question.
Let me tell you what I would do.
If I were Brittany, I would put every kind of pressure on the system that I could.
I would try to break it.
I would try to go around it.
I would try to get allies.
I would hire lawyers through the wazoo.
I mean, I would just attack it from every single angle in every possible way.
And I would try to beat it and challenge them to unbeat it, in other words.
In other words, I would find a way to get the money directly or indirectly, and then I would challenge them to get it away from me, make them work for it.
Because, especially if they get some kind of co-conservatorship and it's not just their dad, I don't know how hard anybody's going to work to get that money.
Would the co-conservatorship sue her?
Let's say apparently the professional conservators quit.
So I think at this point it's only her dad.
But if she had succeeded in having a co-conservatorship with professionals, do you think those professionals would have sued Brittany for making a side deal and making some money?
I don't think so.
They might quit. But I don't think they would sue her for trying to beat the conservatorship that even they don't think is valid because they quit.
I would push everything.
I would pull out all the stops.
If I were Brittany, I would...
I would just lay waste to everything and everybody.
I wouldn't take any prisoners.
I would go on full, full offense and I would not stop.
I would destroy the lives of anybody who was keeping me in the conservatorship.
Let me say that again. I would destroy the lives of anybody who kept me in the conservatorship under those conditions.
The same conditions that Brittany's under.
I would destroy anybody.
I would be hiring people to dig into their lives, whatever's legal.
I mean, I wouldn't do anything illegal.
But, oh my God, I would go hard at those people.
I would make her father live the rest of his fucking life in court.
I would just sue him for everything.
I would just start making up stuff and say, okay, I'm going to sue you for this.
I'm going to sue you for this.
I'm going to sue you for this. I'm going to sue you for this.
I would just sue the fuck out of him every goddamn day.
Sorry. I know you don't like that phrase.
And she would have the whole world on her side.
I mean, the whole world is on her side.
She needs to put the pressure on.
And so we're backing her completely, I think.
Another fake news, there was a story that the U.S. women's soccer team turned their back on some veteran who was playing the harmonica for the National Anthem.
But it's fake news.
There is video of the teammates, some facing one way and some facing the other.
But some of them have turned to face a flag and some of them didn't know and it had nothing to do with the guy with the harmonica.
So that's just fake news.
Fake news. And that is your live stream for today.
Probably the best one you've ever seen in your whole life.
We do need to get back to some really good stories because it seems the summer is not when the good stuff happens.
Here's a question. Have you considered reading, listening to Norm MacDonald's wonderful novel?
Well, I've been asked that a number of times.
Now, I'm a huge Norm MacDonald fan.
I watch all of his YouTube clips probably at least once a week.
I watch a bunch of Norm MacDonald clips.
So I would imagine that his book is very good, but I haven't read it.
Dilbert illustrates the Kafka trap.
Yeah, we've been hearing a lot about that lately.
I forget what it is, though. Have Weinstein on, please.
I know why you're asking, but it wouldn't give you what you want.
And I've said this before.
The problem with the world...
Is one expert talking on TV or a podcast?
That's not the solution.
That's the problem.
So I'm not going to be part of the problem by bringing on the one expert, and then you hear what they say.
It doesn't have to be an expert.
It could be just a pundit, whatever.
And then you don't have a counterpoint.
That's useless. It would make things worse, not better.
Now, if I could host some kind of content where there were people on opposing sides, And I didn't have a time limit.
And I could interrupt them and say, hey, what about this?
And you didn't answer that question.
And, you know, how about this data?
If I could do that, then any topic where there's controversy would be great.
In fact, I'd love to do that.
I need a little better technology set up to be able to do that.
So sometime soon I think I can.
Yeah, it would be awesome And I would be... Pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.
That used to be a TV show.
Did it?
I don't remember a TV show like that.
Weinstein spent some time, I'm reading a local's comment here, on his podcast last week talking about Scott.
Oh, I didn't know that. I hope it was in a useful way.
Uh... Jerry Springer.
Why is your audio so good today?
Well, as I said earlier, the audio is random on YouTube.
So I'm using the same setup that I know works, but some people will experience low audio and some people won't, and it has nothing to do with what I'm doing.
Apparently it's a YouTube bug of some sort.
No, I threw away...
So the device that required batteries, I will never use again.
Because I was testing it, but I knew right away that if it required batteries, I was going to run into trouble.
And I did. So that technology is dead to me.
It would be good technology if you're just practicing and recording.
Because then if you have a bad battery, it's not the worst thing in the world.
But you can't do a live stream and depend on your batteries.
Alright. I love locals broadcast in the background.
Do you hold the same animosity toward police unions as you do toward teachers unions?
No. Because they're different.
So the question is, do I rail against police unions the same as I rail against teachers' unions?
Well, here's the difference.
The police unions have some issues, right?
They're protecting police and maybe overprotecting them.
But it is sort of their job.
They are a counterbalance against management abusing the employees.
So it's a productive kind of a tension, I would say.
But I don't see the police being a gigantic problem in general.
There are definitely police abuses, and maybe the police unions are making it a little easier for that to happen in a variety of ways.
That could be an argument.
But when you look at the teachers' unions, they're destroying generations of kids.
And they're the biggest form of institutional racism, period.
By far. Not even close to anything else.
So the teachers' unions are destroying civilization.
The police unions are maybe protecting some bad cops, sometimes in some situations.
Those are not comparable.
One is destroying civilization, and one gets a few people killed.
that is tragic, but it's not a civilization-ending problem.
Have I seen the John Hopkins War Game?
No, I haven't. Alright, that's it for YouTube.
I'm going to talk to the locals crowd for a little bit before I go.
