Episode 1520 Scott Adams: We Are Going to Have Some Fun Today. Get In Here.
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
More divided under President Biden, say 64%
Facebook outage costs Zuckerberg $7B?
Required, forced vaccinations for teachers
China's aggressive defense actions
Mass transit COVID spread?
Sexually transmitted COVID?
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The part that makes everybody happier, everybody richer, everybody a little better looking.
Yeah, have you noticed that people who watch Coffee with Scott Adams, they're a little bit sexier than other people, aren't they?
Yeah, they are. You know they are.
You know it. You can see them on the streets.
You'd be walking down the street and there'd be a whole crowd of people.
You look at the crowd of people and you say, ordinary, ordinary, ordinary.
And then you'll see somebody who watches the simultaneous sip.
You won't even know it. They'll be complete strangers.
But they're almost glowing.
Almost like you could see their aura.
Yeah, no, it's true.
You just look for it.
You'll start to see it. Yeah, those who come here early and enjoy the simultaneous sip, you have a big advantage in life over those who don't.
And if you'd like to take it up to another level, almost to the level of unfair, all you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or chelsea, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of what kind?
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 makes everything better.
Yeah. It's called the simultaneous sip.
And watch it do its thing.
Go! Now some of you can drink tea and pretend it's coffee.
That's fine too. Yeah, let's go, Brandon.
Let's go, Brandon.
Well, Rasmussen did a poll, asked people if people are more divided after Biden or less divided.
Now, thank goodness, thank goodness we got President Biden to bring the country together.
Dare I say, unite us.
Yes. And how's he doing?
First year on the job, Joe Biden has...
Well, according to the Rasmussen poll, 64% of people polled said we're more divided.
Hmm. That's not good.
But 11% said we're more united.
So 11%.
Working out great.
43% said Trump would make it even worse.
So, according to this poll...
I may be reading too much into it.
But I believe that we've shown that every president, no matter who they are, makes everything worse.
Sort of a Zeno's paradox kind of a situation.
Every president, no matter who it is, just makes things 50% worse.
Forever. Wherever you are, and whoever the next president is, I'm sorry, it's going to be 50% worse than it was.
So I'm not sure that this is the kind of poll that's telling us much more than how people want You to know the answer to the question, basically.
Because I don't know that you can measure how divided we are.
Is that even a thing?
Can you even measure that?
How divided we are?
Kind of subjective. Well, you all know Facebook had a major outage yesterday that reportedly cost Mark Zuckerberg $7 billion.
$7 billion.
5% of his wealth.
And do you think he noticed?
He probably had to borrow money for lunch.
But did he really lose $7 billion?
No, no. No.
On paper, something went down.
It'll go back up next week.
So he didn't lose anything. There's something in this story that is hilarious.
How many of you know the hilarious part of the Facebook outage story?
So they were out for hours, and it cost them...
They lost $160 million of revenue, and it was a pretty big deal.
But how many of you know the funny part of it?
Well, okay, you're close.
Somebody say it's an upgrade.
No, there's something funnier.
There's something funnier about this story, and we don't know the details yet, but there's something very funny about it.
You ready? Let me just read this sentence.
I think this came from CNN. The exact cause of the outage has not been confirmed by Facebook, but one expert said the problem may have been caused by an internal error made by staff.
That effectively erased the site from the internet.
How do you erase the site from the internet?
You do it this way.
John Graham Cunningham, the CTO of web security firm Cloudflare, said Facebook made a series of updates to its border gateway protocol, which caused it to, quote, disappear from the internet.
Okay, now maybe it's because I'm the Dilbert cartoonist and I can see a whole month of material coming, but here's the funny part.
In all likelihood, there's one employee somewhere who knows they did this.
Somewhere, somewhere in the 700-some billion people, there's one poor bastard who knows he pushed the wrong button and made...
Made Facebook disappear from the Internet.
I'm trying to think of this poor guy's performance review.
in a few months.
He's going to be sitting down with his boss.
He's going to be sitting down with his boss. - How'd your quarter go?
So, what did you accomplish this quarter?
laughter *laughter* Well, we've been seeing a lot of bad publicity about how Facebook is destroying youth and Hurting people and hurting people's self-esteem.
It's causing a lot of damage.
But I stopped that shit.
So here's the irony.
Whoever it is who pushed the wrong button and erased Facebook from the Internet...
Whoever did that did more good for the world than any politician except maybe Rand Paul for the last year.
It's the only good thing that anybody's ever done at Facebook.
And he's going to get fired for it.
Well, if you couldn't tell, I finally got enough good sleep last night.
*laughter* I just love this story.
All right. Let's move on.
So the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, how do you think that's doing?
How's that doing? Everybody think that's going to slide right through?
Yeah. You know, it's free.
It's $3.5 trillion, but that sounds like a lot.
But you've got to spread it over 10 years.
And then you have to appreciate that not only is it spread over 10 years, not nearly as bad, but it's free.
According to Biden, it pays for itself.
So... If it's free, why can't you get that approved?
But Manchin and Sinema, the two senators, are holding tight.
And who besides me predicted that this would never get signed?
Do you remember? Give me a fact check in case anybody wonders if I'm just making this up.
So in the comments, can you verify that I've been saying for a long time that this thing isn't going to get signed?
You can verify that.
Has anybody else said that?
Has anybody else who's, let's say, a prominent pundit just said, this isn't going to get signed.
This is never going to happen. Now, I don't know if it'll get negotiated down to a trillion or something.
So, Democrats, would you like some advice?
This is free advice for Democrats.
You ready? Here's how to get their infrastructure bill passed.
Not the full 3.5 trillion.
All right, they're not going to get that passed.
But how to get something, something passed.
Let me ask you this question, and maybe you know the answer.
Of the 3.5 trillion in infrastructure, how much of the 3.5 trillion goes toward fixing our election systems such that they could be audited instantly and we wouldn't have any questions about whether it was a fair election?
How much of the $3.5 trillion goes to our most important infrastructure?
Oh yeah, I said it.
Our most important infrastructure.
What's more important?
Your potholes?
Or your republic?
Which is the higher priority infrastructure?
It's not even close, right?
It's not even close.
So here's what the Democrats could do to make their infrastructure bill a little more palatable.
A little more palatable.
Put in a big part that fixes the most important infrastructure.
How about that?
Let's put some money in there to fix the most important infrastructure, the elections.
Because everything else is subsidiary to that.
Thank you.
Now, that's not going to get you all $3.5 trillion.
The Republicans aren't going to go for that.
But do you think you could get some Republicans on board for a trillion plus election reform?
One trillion plus election reform.
Who's against election improvements?
Well, I mean, in public, you can't say you're against it, even if you are.
All right, that's my suggestion.
Fix that thing by putting the election stuff in there and hold tight.
I wouldn't sign anything. Let me say this again.
To Republicans, don't sign anything that doesn't have election reform in it as part of the infrastructure.
Don't sign anything. Don't fix a road.
Don't give anybody Wi-Fi.
Don't do anything. Election reform.
Number one priority. Get that in there and then you can negotiate.
But if that's not in there, don't even negotiate it.
There's nothing to talk about. You can't have an infrastructure bill that ignores the most important infrastructure, right?
I mean, that's just stupid. There are some things you could say are, well, I'm philosophically opposed, or I don't like this much socialism, and those are sort of, you know, fair kinds of arguments.
But it's not a philosophical debate to say that we have skepticism in this country about the election integrity.
Nobody would argue that there is skepticism.
And that that needs to get fixed to have a healthy republic.
Those are not really arguable points.
So I would say that an infrastructure bill that doesn't have fixing the most important infrastructure in it is just stupid.
So stop calling it, you know, whatever it is, different priorities.
It's just stupid. Put the infrastructure in the infrastructure bill, then maybe you've got a chance.
All right. There was a black ex-Tesla worker who won a court case.
He claimed he was racially abused every day at a California plant, including being called the N-word, and he was awarded $137 million.
Now, when you read that headline, if you did, or maybe you're hearing it for the first time, did you not say to yourself, this looks a little exaggerated, meaning that the size of the award seems crazy?
You know, out of size with the crime.
But also, I mean, really, really, this guy was abused every day.
Every day. Really, every day he got racially abused.
And then, so, you know, I'm totally skeptical.
Read the headline. I'm like, oh, God, it's one of these stories of, you know, somebody couldn't take a joke or something like that.
And then I read the actual claims.
Are you ready for this? These are the things that apparently the court found credible.
So a court found these claims credible.
Here's what he claimed.
I think this was from...
Was it from Fox News?
I forget. The 52-year-old...
He was a contracted elevator operator.
He claimed that fellow employees drew swastikas and left racist graffiti around the plant...
Well, he said one of his supervisors drew a person with a black face and a bone in his hair and wrote Boo, short for Jigaboo.
The supervisor then allegedly told him he, quote, couldn't take a joke.
When Diaz confronted him, Diaz contended that none of his supervisors stepped in to stop the abuse.
Is any of that true? No.
I mean, it sounds like it passed the test for the jury.
But have any of you ever been in any kind of environment like this?
Because I've never been anywhere near anything like this.
I live in California.
This factory is just down the road.
And why could I live here all my adult life?
I've never been anywhere near, never anywhere near any kind of behavior like this.
Have you? I'm just looking at your comments to see if any of you have ever been near this kind of behavior.
I'm not seeing any yeses.
Oh, I saw yes.
Saw some more yeses.
Saw another yes.
I'm seeing some yeses.
Somebody said no, and I've worked in lots of blue collar.
That's sort of what I was looking for.
Somebody says no, and they've been to the Deep South.
I don't know. This is shocking.
And I'm saying yeses.
So all of you who said no, you had the same experience I have, apparently.
Just be aware. There are people who are probably credible who are saying yes.
That this is real. It's a little wake-up call, isn't it?
That, you know, you think things are good, but you're thinking in terms of the average, right?
On average, things are pretty good relative to where they used to be, right?
Lots of improvement needed.
But, man, you see something like this, and you say, if any of this is even close to true, it does kind of shock me.
I am a little bit shocked.
So, in that case, the $137 million is fine.
If the claims are true, suddenly the amount of money doesn't look so high anymore, does it?
Because the reason is punitive.
It's not about rewarding this guy.
It's just punitive. All right.
CNN has turned on Facebook, which is interesting in itself, because you would imagine them both being left-leaning organizations.
But in an opinion piece by Kara Alemo, I wish people had some way for me to pronounce their names correctly.
So here's what she said in an opinion piece on CNN. And the fact that it's on CNN seems important, right?
She said, thus the debate we should be having isn't about whether Facebook knows its product is harmful.
These facts were established by independent researchers long ago.
So a CNN opinion piece is offering as an established fact that even Facebook would agree to, that independent researchers say that Facebook is harmful.
Just a statement, it's just harmful.
And so she says, rather the question we should be asking ourselves is why Americans are still spending so much time of their lives on it when it's making them unhappy and divided.
So we know that Facebook is harmful.
Why are people spending so much time on it?
Now again, the big story here is just that Facebook is reporting it, or not reporting it, but putting this opinion piece on their site.
So... The left is fractured.
Not only the progressives versus the Pelosi types, but even the Facebooks versus the CNNs now.
Not really on the same side anymore.
So when Rasmussen did that poll, are we more or less divided?
Interestingly, we're more fractured.
I don't know that we're more divided, but we're more fractured.
Does that make sense? Instead of two teams, it's more like four or six teams or something different.
So I don't know if that's more divided or more fractured, or is that the same thing?
But, of course, the real reason that we use Facebook so much is that many of us can't avoid it.
You know, you need it for business.
And it's addictive.
It's designed to be addictive.
So, of course, it's harmful.
And, of course, we do it.
Same as cigarettes. Same as any other addiction.
Why do we treat Internet addiction different than...
Say, heroin addiction.
Why do we treat them differently?
You know, they're not the same, of course, but it feels like the concept is similar.
You know, I'm not entirely sure that Instagram in particular will survive, at least in its current form.
I think Instagram in particular seems like the more dangerous one, frankly.
So we'll see... New York teachers protested, many of them, and they were shouting F. Joe Biden and F. Bill de Blasio.
So thousands of teachers lost their job because of the vaccine mandate.
But let's put some context on this.
Does everybody like context?
I had some people arguing against context today.
My argument was that if I asked for context, I was trying to brainwash them or try to convince them of something bad, to which I say, hmm, I don't know a situation in which context makes things worse.
Is there one? If you're trying to accurately understand the situation, is there a situation where context makes it worse?
There were actually people pushing back because I asked for context.
I'll tell you why in a second.
So the context I asked for is, are there any other mandatory vaccinations that teachers also need to have?
Was that a fair question?
Is it a fair question for context to know if there are other vaccinations that are required of the teachers?
Now, the critics said...
Scott, Scott, Scott.
This is so unfair, you're just trying to get people vaccinated.
That's your real agenda, is to embarrass these people and get people vaccinated.
No. No.
You can't read my mind, and that's not my secret agenda.
I really don't care if people get vaccinated.
As long as I am, right?
I care about myself.
But here's what the context told me.
First of all, do you know the answer to the question?
In the comments, give me your answer because I don't think anybody has really looked into it too deeply.
But are there other vaccinations that teachers in the United States that might differ by state that are required to have?
I'm seeing some people say plenty.
I'm seeing yeses.
The answer is sort of no.
The answer is sort of no, meaning there's nothing that's enforced.
Right? So based on the answers that I got, my current understanding, which I might revise if I get some new information, but it looks like there's some mild preferences in some places, but nobody's really checking.
I don't think any teacher ever lost a job before now for a lack of vaccination.
Is that true? Is there any teacher who ever couldn't get hired or lost a job for a different kind of vaccination recently?
Yes. I don't think that's a thing, right?
So here's your context.
Required forced vaccinations of teachers, it's not a thing.
So if it's a thing now, it's a thing for the first time, right?
And I think there's still a little bit of disagreement on fact.
So I think you'll find that in some places it looks like it's a requirement, but it's not enforced.
So in effect, it's not.
This is enforced.
Yeah. So, when I asked for context, this is what people said.
Scott, you bastard.
You're trying to make this vaccination like the others.
And you know they're not the same.
Damn it. You know they're not the same.
Because this one was, you know, a faster pace and it didn't have as much time, so we don't know the safety.
It's a different technology.
Scott, you bastard.
Stop saying that this vaccination is in any way, in any way, Equivalent, similar to, or we should make any decisions based on what the other vaccinations did.
They're just different. True.
Can I agree with you?
Am I allowed to agree with my critics?
Of course they're different. This is why I say don't use analogies to make decisions.
Because it's just a different thing.
But can context ever be useful?
What did the context tell me once people said, no, there's no other example where it's been, old fool, you old fool?
There's no other example where we've required vaccinations.
So, did my context support the idea you should get vaccinated, or the teacher should, or did the context support the idea that they shouldn't?
It supports the idea that they shouldn't.
Because it's a new precedent.
So if you look at the old precedent, it's like we were pretty laissez-faire, sort of let it go.
So this is different.
And I think that's worth noting.
Because if this was in any way similar to the past, you'd feel different about it, right?
Than if you knew, well, this is brand new.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, this is brand new.
So when I asked for the context, I didn't ask for the context because it would help my argument, which I don't have, because I don't have an argument.
You're imagining that I'm trying to persuade you, and I'm not.
I'm just trying to understand it.
So the context went exactly the opposite of the way that my critics thought it would.
You thought that when I asked for the context, it was going to support the idea that they should get vaccinated.
It didn't. It was the opposite.
That's why you asked for context.
You asked for context because you don't know which way it's going to point.
And by the way, context doesn't answer the story because, again, they're different vaccinations.
So you can't take the context and just say, okay, now we know the context.
We're all done. It doesn't work like that.
But it's part of the larger story, right?
It's part of how we feel about it.
It's part of what we've accepted in the past.
It's part of the story. So let's know about it.
So I would say that the context does support...
The teacher's not getting vaccinated.
Doesn't mean that's the right answer.
Doesn't mean it's the right answer, but the context would support that.
All right. Let's see, what else do we got going?
Playboy made some news by putting a man on the cover.
A male cover star dressed as a bunny.
I'm not sure what the guy's deal was, if he was...
I don't know what his sexual identification was, but it was a male dressed in a bunny outfit.
Now, what do you think of that as a strategy?
Is that a good strategy for Playboy?
Most of you say it's stupid, right?
I think almost every person here is going to say that's dumb, they've destroyed their brand.
Let me give you the counter-argument, okay?
Because you think there's no counter-argument.
You probably think there's no way this is smart for Playboy, right?
All right, here's the counterargument.
It's pretty good. I think you'll be surprised how good the counterargument is.
Number one, could Playboy stay in business by continuing to print nude pictures of women?
No. So can we all agree with this?
That the Internet...
Makes it ridiculous to imagine that Playboy could exist as a magazine that's primary purpose is to show naked women.
We all agree that Playboy could not exist the way it was, right?
So that's the starting point.
They had to change.
Now, how could they change?
One way they could change is by trying to be more provocative than the Internet.
Is that possible? Could Playboy be more sexy than the Internet?
Can they get some attention by being as sexy as the Internet, meaning as much X-rated stuff, etc.?
No. No, there's no niche there.
There's no place to go.
So agree with me first that Playboy as a vehicle for showing pictures of naked women was dead.
It might have had a few months left, but it was dead.
So take for the assumption that they were dead.
So they had to do something.
Here's my argument. Playboy has always been at least three magazines in one.
People don't realize it because you think about the nudity.
But the other parts of Playboy was it was a lifestyle magazine.
And it was a lifestyle of people very open-minded.
You know, the people who had just extreme open-mindedness about...
So Playboy was always the ultimate left-leaning, socially progressive vehicle in addition to having naked pictures.
The third thing they were was fairly serious.
The Playboy interview was usually a big thing.
Jimmy Carter was in the Playboy interview.
A lot of...
News was broken with the Playboy interviews.
So the Playboy interview was almost its own magazine.
It was within this Naked People magazine, but it was like its own entity.
By the way, I was once the subject of the Playboy interview years ago when Dilbert was a bigger deal.
And I have to tell you that the Playboy journalist and the way they handled it and the fact-checking was one of the finest journalistic experiences I've had.
Like legitimately, journalistically high quality was Playboy.
Now, most people, you don't think of that.
You don't think of Playboy as being a high-level journalistic entity, but it is.
It always has been. Well, I'm not sure about currently, but it always has been.
So they had to change, and they couldn't give more nudity.
But it was always a magazine about progressive stuff and about pushing the boundaries and about political stuff.
I think this was a Hail Mary pass.
Meaning that Playboy has to turn into something else to survive.
There's no question about that.
And the only thing they could turn into was something closer to the other two things that they did besides nudity.
And the other two things they did was get your attention and be relevant about socially provocative things that are on the edge.
Will it work?
I wouldn't bet on it.
But did they have a better play?
Right? Did Playboy have a better play?
I don't think so.
I think this was the best of their bad options, and they executed it really well.
They executed this really well.
Why? Because we're talking about it.
We're talking about it.
Suddenly, Playboy became relevant the moment it pissed you off.
As soon as you were mad about that cover, what's happening with all of my traditions and all that?
As soon as you got mad about it and thought they were killing themselves and you get all whatever you thought about it, it worked.
So Playboy succeeded.
They succeeded in pushing themselves right into the front of a very...
Let's say, energy-filled discussion about gender and sexuality and stuff, and they became relevant by making you a little bit angry or disturbed or whatever it did to you.
So that's my argument.
My argument is not that it will work, but it was their best play, and they executed it well.
Disagreements in the comments.
Disagree? I think I sold you on that.
It looks like I sold you on that.
Okay. Let's talk about China.
Remember I gave Trump credit, as many did, for negotiating a trade deal with China and pushing hard and, you know, there was all that trade war and stuff, but at least he got a good deal out of it and China was going to buy a bunch of our farm goods, etc.
And then they just didn't.
That's what happens when you make a deal with China.
You make a deal, and then they just don't do their part.
Why? I don't know.
It doesn't matter. I'm sure they would have found some reason to not do it.
They just didn't do it.
So now Biden's going to push back.
So, do we give Trump a win for negotiating a trade deal?
Well, maybe only in the sense that it exposed China for what it is.
So you had to at least make them agree to a deal...
And then whether they lived up to the deal is a second question.
But I think Trump's instinct to get them to agree to a deal was right, and now we can observe that we can't deal with them because they just didn't keep their deal.
Now, I'm sure if we talked to China, they'd have a different opinion of what's going on here.
Probably would say we didn't do our part of the deal, so maybe part of this story is missing, if we're being fair.
There's probably something missing in this story.
But we certainly didn't get a good outcome.
Now, this again plays into the notion here that China is very unsafe for business, not just commercial business, but also political deals.
They won't keep a deal.
If China won't keep a deal, you just can't deal with them.
You can't deal with them politically.
You can't deal with them commercially.
They are unsafe for business.
We also have some reports, also on CNN, about some whistleblowers, or I guess some people who came out of the Chinese system.
One Uyghur and one police officer who apparently was ordered to torture them.
And I guess the way that the Uyghurs are picked up is that they literally put a black hood over their heads, and they take them away, and they beat them until they...
Confess to things that they're not guilty of.
And this is men and women.
And all of the suspects apparently get raped.
Men and women. Let me say that again.
There's some suggestion.
Now, of course, we don't know if the reporting is correct, right?
I mean, this is the sort of thing you would expect people to lie about.
So let me say this.
The reason that we attacked Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction we thought were there is that somebody had a reason to lie to get us to attack Iraq.
So when you see a story like this, you've got to say, historically, these whistleblowers of this type are lying.
Historically, this kind of story would not be true.
Anybody disagree with that?
Would you say that historically, the whistleblower who says, you know, we get tortured every day, is usually not true?
Now, that doesn't mean there's no torture.
I'm sure there is. But don't you think it's a little bit of hyperbole?
A little bit? Because this person has a great incentive to make it sound worse than it is.
Now, however bad it is, it's a 10 out of 10.
But the whistleblower is going to make it sound like a 15, right?
So let me not minimize it.
On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 10.
It's a 10. But the whistleblower is going to make it look like a 15.
That would be normal to what you expect.
So just keep that in mind, that there's an incentive to at least shade things a little bit.
But the story so far is that the police use electric batons on the Uyghurs.
They put a black hood on them when they pick them up in the street.
They take them back. They beat them badly and often.
And often. And then one of the men reported that the guards forced the other prisoners to rape them.
Gang rape them, apparently.
And that that was normal.
Now, I don't know about that last part.
I'm going to say that the last part...
The guy saying it sounded credible, and if it did happen, it's horrible, etc.
I don't know if I could go that far.
But whatever it is, it's a 10 out of 10.
So bad stuff's happening there.
And again, China is unsafe for business.
Now, I did get a lengthy message from one of my contacts on LinkedIn.
And if you're watching right now, I won't mention your name.
But that my context is lacking on China.
For example, here's the counterargument.
That China's aggressiveness in the South China Sea is actually mostly defensive.
Because they're putting up a defense against the, you know, I don't know, the U.S. Fifth Fleet or something.
Because they don't want to be...
They don't ever want to be locked into their own territory where they can't do trade.
And indeed, having the Belt and Road Initiative would give them, you know, some diversification of commercial outlets so they wouldn't need exclusively the ocean and they'd have an option, etc.
Do you believe any of that?
To me, I'm not sure there's such a difference between a defensive act and an offensive act.
I feel like that distinction is a little bit artificial.
Don't you? There we go.
Aggressive defense. Yeah.
Being aggressively defensive looks a lot like offensiveness.
And we certainly know that the Chinese government has some ambitions about controlling as much of the world as they can.
Same as we do, right?
Every superpower wants to control as much as they can.
Why wouldn't you? I mean, so do you.
Don't you want to control as much of your life as you can?
So it's pretty natural that China would be trying to control as much as they can.
But do they have a defensive incentive, too?
Sure. Now, apparently, also, the flyovers over Taiwan were, I think, key to some holiday or something.
But that doesn't really make it better.
So just be aware that there is...
There's one point in view that China's actions are a little bit more defensive than they look.
But I'm not buying it.
I definitely think that they have a defensive motivation, as everyone does.
But I feel like all of their defense has an offensive, secondary purpose.
So that's what it looks like.
And it should. I mean, that would be the rational thing to do.
Why would you have something that's purely defensive when it could be both?
Here's a question for you that's kind of weird.
So on Twitter, Twitter user Christopher Hill noticed this, and I guess others noticed it too.
But did you know that Biden's Build Back Better slogan is being used in Canada and Great Britain?
Did you know that?
That I guess Boris Johnson uses it and Trudeau uses it in Canada?
They all use Build Back Better?
That's... What's that telling you?
I've never seen that happen before.
Have you? Because it feels like it would be so obvious that you're cribbing somebody's slogan that you wouldn't do it.
Yeah. Pelosi called it Obama's Build Back Better.
Yeah, it's a New World Order slogan.
So, yeah, I'm not so much into the New World Order conspiracy stuff, but it is a weird coincidence that it doesn't have an explanation that I can think of, because it isn't so clever, is it?
Now, I will give it one benefit.
And I don't think it's like...
Does it feel like the public is saying build back better the same way they were saying MAGA and make America great again?
The genius of Trump's slogan-making is that people would repeat it because they liked it.
Have you ever heard a Democrat who proudly says build back better?
I mean, except for the professional politicians.
Do you see it on Twitter?
No. Do you see a lot of just Biden supporters saying, build back better?
Not really, right?
I don't know how that slogan became so popular when the public doesn't care about it at all.
It's only the politicians.
So there's something weird going on there.
We just don't know what it is. Adam Dopamine, that's not his real name, on Twitter...
Asked, why are passenger planes not spreading COVID? So you pack all these people in the passenger plane, and we know, of course, now that just being vaccinated isn't enough to prevent COVID spread.
Why are airplanes not being grounded?
Why are we not hearing stories about, well, yeah, we've got to fly, but yeah, I have to admit, getting a lot of infections.
You know, we don't want to close the airlines, even though we're getting a lot of infections.
I think it's not happening, right?
It's just not happening.
So the first question is, is it because of the filters, the airflow?
Airplanes are sensationally well-designed in terms of airflow.
They have to be. But here's my counterpoint.
I tweeted it and then I untweeted it after I thought for a second.
Here's why I untweeted it.
How many infections are we getting from buses?
Right? How many infections do we get from subways?
How about cars?
I feel like it's sort of none, right?
Ubers? Yeah, Ubers.
How many Ubers are giving people COVID? What is going on in elevators?
Now, elevators, you're not in there for very long, so maybe that makes more sense.
But I feel as if we really don't know how this stuff spreads still.
Am I wrong? Because we should know exactly where people are getting it by now.
Because people can kind of...
They can put together where they were and who got it.
In enough cases, not every case.
But in enough cases, you know where you got it.
That we should know by now where people are getting it.
Why do you think you don't know that?
Why do you think you, as a member of the public, who is really paying attention?
Because it matters to your daily life.
You're really paying attention.
You don't know...
As of right now, given the vaccination status of the country, you don't know where people are getting it, do you?
Why not? It's got to be available, right?
Somehow somebody's studying this.
Somebody is studying people with COVID and saying, okay, if you know where you were infected, what's your best guess?
We kind of know that by now, don't we?
And whatever it was before vaccinations, it might be different now.
It could be that the place we get it now is a different way, a different place.
Let me give you a provocative thought.
Is it a sexually transmitted disease now?
Think about it. If you're not getting it on the plane, and you're not getting it in the classroom, you're not getting it at work, and I don't know if that's true, because we have a lack of data, right?
Where are people getting it?
Sex? Because I feel like if you're vaccinated, you've got to slobber all over somebody to give it to them, don't you?
I'm just speculating.
Nothing I say now should be taken as any kind of a fact, right?
But I wonder if we get to the point, let's say just about everybody gets vaccinated.
Let's say we get to 90%.
And let's say that the vaccination reduces the amount of viral load so that you don't give it to people so much just by talking or just by being in the room.
How would you give it to people if it's a lower viral load?
And they're vaccinated too.
You pretty much have to stick your tongue down their throat.
Am I wrong? Now, I'm exaggerating, right?
I'm exaggerating for effect.
But are we reaching a point where the only way this thing is going to spread in any meaningful way is you've got to climb on top of another human and breathe in their mouth?
Again, exaggerating a little bit.
But I feel like it's becoming a sexually transmitted disease, and it might be mostly transmitted by people having affairs.
Yeah? See where I went there?
It might be mostly...
At some point, and maybe we're approaching it, at some point if you get enough people vaccinated, it's mostly going to come from sex because that's the only time you're getting that close for that long.
Right? Am I wrong?
Am I wrong that this could morph into a sexually transmitted disease because it's just the only way you can get enough virus into another vaccinated person?
I'll just put that out there.
All right, I saw Rasmussen tweeting something from the Gateway Pundit.
And there's a claim here that I will give low credibility so I don't get banned from social media.
And that's my actual opinion.
I think there's low credibility to this claim that there are 393 illegal registered voters in Arizona...
Meaning that there's two databases that didn't match.
There's social security numbers that didn't match the voting polls or something like that.
And there's some discrepancy of 393 people who maybe shouldn't have voted that maybe did.
Is that real? Is that being reported on CNN? I don't think so.
Is it being reported on Fox News?
Is Fox News reporting this as true?
Here's the way I approach this.
The Gateway Pundit doesn't have a 100% accurate record.
I don't know what their record is.
But like most entities, it's not 100%.
That's all I can say for sure.
I don't know how it compares to the New York Times, for example.
But here's a good standard.
If it's not being reported by both entities, it's probably not true.
If you don't see CNN saying it and also Fox News saying, yeah, we do have this discrepancy, maybe one would say why and the other wouldn't.
But probably not something to worry about.
Probably just a database problem.
So I'll say that's not confirmed.
I mean, it's certainly a red flag and certainly we should know why there's a difference.
But probably just a database difference.
Probably not any bad thing found.
A vaccinated person who develops symptoms is just as contagious as a non-vax.
True? For a shorter amount of time.
So once you add on top of that, that true statement that a vaccinated person who just got the vaccination can give off a lot of virus, but not for long.
So they're contagious.
They're that contagious for a short time, I think.
Check on that. Do a fact check on that, okay?
Not positive. I was asked if I'm getting the booster.
My answer to that is the same as my answer to the original vaccination question.
Since I got the regular vaccination as late as possible so that I could have the benefit of as many months of other people getting it as possible, I'm also going to wait as long as possible for the booster so that I have as much information about other people's experiences as possible.
So the answer is I haven't decided, and I shouldn't.
Until the last minute.
The only time to decide this is the last minute.
Deciding ahead of time is dumb.
Now, I suppose if you had some profession that required it, you might decide ahead of time.
But if you have the luxury of being able to self-quarantine and still work, as I do, I'll wait until the last minute.
All right. The French Catholic Church discovered that there were at least 3,000 pedophiles who had been working within the ranks of the French Catholic Church since the 50s.
They estimate that as many as 330,000 children were victims since the 50s.
But, on the optimistic view, some say only 200,000.
That's the optimistic view.
Now, How many is that?
That is 3,000 out of around 115,000 priests.
That's a lot of priests. So 3,000 is not a lot out of 115,000.
I don't even know if that's higher than the average in the public.
It feels like it is, but I don't know that it is.
I feel like somehow this needs to get fixed.
Let me give you the hypnotist's view of this situation.
The hypnotist says that over time, every shoe salesman should be a man with a shoe fetish or a foot fetish.
Let me say that again.
Over time, not on day one, but over time, every shoe salesman should be a man with a foot fetish.
Why? Because they'd work for cheaper.
A man with a foot fetish will take a job as a shoe salesman for less money.
He's like, that's a pretty good job.
I love my job.
I can't wait to go to work.
Likewise, over time, you would expect that every coach of an all-female, young female team would be sexual harassers.
Not on day one.
But over time, you'd expect all the harassers to be attracted to the place where they can do the most harassing.
So over time, you'd expect every organization that has young people as their charge, and adults in charge, you'd expect over time that they would all become pedophiles.
Sorry. Human motivation.
You can't turn off human motivation.
So if you have an organization that absolutely is going to attract pedophiles...
You need to do something about that.
I don't know what the answer is, but if you know that you're attracting the wrong people...
The Boy Scouts, perfect example.
Exactly. You would expect over time that you would have more and more of the people you don't want in those ranks because they would be attracted, and why not?
I mean, from their perspective, why not?
All right. Here's what we think we know about shots.
I'll tell you what I think I know.
So far. That two shots is better than one.
Give me a fact check as I go.
I'm going to state things we think we know are true.
Two shots is better than one.
I hear that we're assuming that one shot is not going to kill you.
And again, this is not necessarily your opinion.
This would be the consensus scientific opinion.
We now believe that three shots is better than two.
Again, I'm not saying you agree with it.
I'm saying this is the consensus.
We believe that natural immunity is better than two shots.
Not quite sure about that.
But we do know that natural immunity gives you immunity to sort of every part inside and out of the virus.
Whereas the shots give you a very specific immunity.
I'm probably doing a bad job of explaining this.
But, you know, it's that spike protein that they're targeting.
So they're looking at one element and creating a vaccine around that one element.
Whereas natural immunity gives you immunity to basically all of the parts.
Is that better? Well, at least one expert said so on a video I saw today.
But maybe that's a question.
So natural immunity seems better than two shots.
Is natural immunity better than three shots?
Probably. Again, I'm not sure we know that, but probably because of the completeness of the immunity for the natural one.
If that matters over time, I don't know.
The consensus also is that natural immunity plus shots is better than either one alone.
Yeah, how about that?
Do you agree with that?
That would be the consensus. That having the shots is good and having natural immunity is good.
And regardless of which one is better, it's better to have both.
Especially if you have the shot first, and then you get the natural immunity on top of it, because then you'll be protected from hospitalization, mostly, and then you'll get the full natural immunity.
And then I think we know that both the shot and natural immunity wane over time.
But it could be that the natural immunity doesn't wane the same way.
We don't know that yet, so that's still a little bit open.
But it could be that natural immunity morphs into something that can more quickly reconstitute itself.
Whereas we don't know if that's true of the shots.
If the shots wear off, is there any trace of them left that can quickly reconstitute what was there?
Don't know. But that's where we're at.
Andres Backhaus notes that the immunity from infections versus the two shots is still uncertain.
So we don't have data for that.
All right. And that is what I wanted to say today.
That is everything I wanted to say today.
Oh, here's a counterpoint.
I do not agree that both are better.
You'll have whatever the VAX got to give you plus...
Yeah. So you get the benefits of both the natural immunity plus the shots, but you also get whatever risks come with both getting the virus and also the risk of getting the vaccine itself.
So that's true. But I don't know if that changes your...
Mark says, from one cartoonist to another, what do you make of Ben Garrison's work as a fellow cartoonist?
Brilliant. Ben Garrison's work as a cartoonist, I say, is brilliant.
Why? Because he found a market and then he addressed his market.
Now, you know, it might not be your thing, if you're left-leaning or whatever, but in terms of a...
let's say the commercial decisions...
They're right on. So he found a market, he served his market, and he does it very well.
Very well. So you can disagree with his point of view.
That's a separate question. But as a cartoonist, yeah, very good.
Very good. All right.
That's about all I have. I've got to run and do something else.
