Episode 1545 Scott Adams: Let's Talk About AT&T Going Full Racist, Facebook Name Change, Lots More
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
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Content:
Facebook, Meta and the Metaverse
Ryan Peterson made a difference, supply chain
Vitamin D levels and COVID
COVID comorbidities, all involve inflammation
Inflammation crisis mistaken for COVID crisis
AT&T goes full racist, should go out of business
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Well, well, well, look at all you lucky, beautiful, smart people.
Except for you. Except for you.
No, the rest of you are fine, but you?
No, I'm just kidding.
You're all beautiful. You're sexy in your own way.
And some of the smartest people on the entire planet.
But not only are you smart, You are powerful.
You don't know how yet, but wait until you hear.
It's pretty cool. There's a good story coming.
You don't want to miss that. And I don't think I have to tell you that this is the best thing that's ever happened anywhere on this earth, this universe, or the metaverse.
Yes, thank you, Zuckerberg.
But the only way to make it better, the one way to make it better, is with a simultaneous sip.
And all you need for that is a cup or mug or a glass, a tinker, chels, a stein, a canteen jug, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And just because we're special, I'm going to do the simultaneous sip as cornholio.
Yes. I'd like you all to join me.
If you're doing this at home, this is a must.
Pull your shirt up over your head.
It's time for, I know, I know, you've been asking for this, the Cornholio Simultaneous Sip.
Get ready, get ready for the Cornholio Simultaneous Sip.
Go! Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
That is some good Cornholio sippin'.
Well, if that doesn't tell you how this live stream is going to go, nothing will.
I think that covers it.
Let's talk about some things.
Well, Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced that Facebook will be changing its name to Meta.
Meta. Because it's going to be building on a metaverse.
I don't know if they thought this through completely, but the memes have already started.
They're calling it Metamucil.
I think that one's going to stick.
I've got a feeling that Metamucil is going to stick.
But Brian of London retweeted a tweet from Irene Rabinowitz, who mentions that meta is, in the Hebrew language, it means she is dead.
She is dead. Which is not terribly off point if you're building the biggest nerd environment in the world.
Might not be too many women there.
I don't know. So here's what's a big deal about this Facebook change.
If you think the only thing that Facebook is doing is rebranding because, you know, they don't like whatever stain is on their old brand, or if you think it's not a big deal, I think you're wrong.
I think this is one of the biggest bets or one of the biggest plays in the history of civilization.
And I think it's the right play.
I think Zuckerberg's ability to spot, you know, a good opportunity and make a bold move may be better than anybody.
May be better than anybody.
Whatever you think about Mark Zuckerberg, there's one thing that you don't ever hear about him, or you don't hear it much, anyway, lately.
What's the one thing you don't hear about Mark Zuckerberg as a criticism?
He's not good at his job.
Nobody says that, right?
He gets criticized for, you know, like some of the communication stuff.
And, you know, of course, Facebook is criticized for everything from privacy to manipulation to censoring and all that.
But that's sort of built into the model.
You can't really have a Facebook without those criticisms because it's hard to balance that stuff.
But I don't think anyone ever says Zuckerberg is anything less than spectacular.
As a leader.
Yeah, I mean, you have many different complaints, and I think they're all relatively credible complaints, but he's really, really, really good at his job.
Even if you don't like him, even if you don't like Facebook, I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but dear God, he's good at his job.
Let's give him that. Okay?
Can we give him that? And you can still be fully critical, but I think you have to give him that.
Now, when Zuckerberg says, the metaverse is such a big deal, I'm going to change the company's name, he really means that.
Think how big the metaverse could get compared to even social media.
When you think of social media, you say to yourself, my God, you've got 7.8 billion people, and maybe half of them could use social media, so you've got billions of potential customers.
True. The metaverse?
Way bigger. So if this metaverse thing works, the amount of money each user will spend is going to go through the roof.
Because you're going to be buying things like digital art to put on your wall.
Yes, I will be producing more NFTs of Dilbert art so that they're available for the Metaverse.
Now, I don't know if you can directly put an NFT on your wall in the Metaverse, but if they miss that, that would be a big mistake.
Because they could make a lot of money selling furniture for your online room and your decorations and stuff.
And I plan to be there selling some digital art for your digital space.
Now... So I would say that the monetary potential of the metaverse is probably 10 to 100 times bigger than Facebook's current market.
Would anybody disagree with that?
So my take is that Facebook is entering a market that could be 10 to 100 times bigger than their current market.
Who wants to disagree with that?
Anybody? Anybody?
Now, if you haven't used VR, you don't know what's ahead.
I have used virtual reality with the goggles and stuff, and I used it a few years ago.
A few years ago, and imagine how much better it is in two years, but just two years ago, it was so powerful that I couldn't step off a cliff in virtual reality.
My brain and my body simply wouldn't let me take a step into what the virtual goggles said was a cliff that I would go over, even though I could take the goggles off and see my own floor.
And then I could put them back on and say, take the step, and I couldn't do it.
I just couldn't do it.
And it wasn't that I was afraid, exactly.
It's like my brain and my body just wouldn't cooperate.
I couldn't kill myself in VR. Now, the power of it is way beyond what you imagine.
It's a real world. You will internalize the virtual reality as if real.
Suddenly, your looks are going to matter a lot less.
People are going to get married and have entire lifetimes in the virtual reality.
People will be married and have sex in virtual worlds.
People will be married for years without ever meeting their corporeal entities.
They will simply live in the virtual world.
Because, you know, a lot of people have physical problems.
They can't compete in the swipe left, swipe right universe.
Only the top 5% of men or whatever it is get all the women in the real world.
But in the virtual world, everybody's going to look like whatever they want to look like.
I think people are going to have full relationships in the virtual world and essentially just try to make money in the real world to pay for it.
But here's the weird thing.
You will be able to make a lot of money in the virtual world.
So you could live in the virtual world with a spouse and even kids.
You could take your 23andMe data...
And compare it to the 23andMe data of your virtual spouse and have the algorithm create a virtual baby that's based on your DNA. Yes, really.
Really. You could actually have the data to create a virtual digital baby for your digital marriage in the metaverse.
Are you starting to get an idea of how big this is?
Whatever you think the size of this is, it's 100 times bigger than that.
Because your imagination can't capture its size.
In the same way we can't understand what a trillion is, you know, it's a word, it's big, but you can't really conceive of a trillion of anything.
You can't conceive of the metaverse.
The metaverse is functionally infinite.
It's just going to be crazy.
It's going to be crazy.
So, I think Zuckerberg is right on...
on the money on this call.
It's a really big, bold call, and I just think he's brilliant to do this.
Wendy's, the fast food company Wendy's, had a good PR campaign today, and they said they're going to change their name from Wendy's to Meat, M-E-A-T. So it's like meta for dyslexics.
Now, I think that was a good idea, but if I were Wendy's, I would have changed it to probably FaceMeat.
Because if you get some Wendy's food, you can put it in your face.
So I like face meat.
Now, I jokingly said on Twitter that I wonder if Zuckerberg considered, instead of calling it meta, had he considered calling it the meta?
Now, 5% of you just chuckled to yourself because you get that reference.
Anybody get it? How about calling it the meta?
Anybody? Anybody?
Some of you are laughing. It comes from the movie The Social Network.
And there was a scene there where, remind me, the real-world person who was associated with...
I think Justin Timberlake played the character, Sean Parker.
Sean Parker in the movie, which is based loosely on real life, not terribly closely, but allegedly he's the one who told Zuckerberg that his original name was The Facebook, and apparently Parker said, yeah, it's better just to Facebook.
Anyway, that's a big deal.
Here's a...
Oh, and let me give you the biggest deal.
There's something really big ahead with this metaverse that you don't see coming until you see it.
And when you see it, it's going to change everything.
And it goes like this.
Once you live in the metaverse, in the virtual world, where most of your life, you know, your social life and maybe even your business life, once those are ported into the virtual world, the simulated world, what are you going to believe about the world you just left behind?
You're going to wonder if that was simulated too.
But you won't be really worried about it until within the simulation...
You create another metaverse.
So if the metaverse creates a sub-metaverse so that the people in the metaverse can get on their computers in the metaverse and put on their goggles in the metaverse and go into a sub-metaverse, everything you know about reality will change.
Because you're going to realize the true nature of reality is that we were always in a simulation.
Always. And one way to know is when your simulation creates a new simulation, a sub-simulation.
That's the point, when you know the nature of reality.
So that's ahead. I give that less than 10 years.
All right. Jeff Pilkington had an interesting tweet today.
Do you know what the screenplay for Rust was about?
This is, of course, the movie that had the Alec Baldwin tragic accidental shooting.
Apparently, the screenplay for the movie that had the accidental shooting was meant to tell the story of an accidental shooting and its consequences.
There was an accidental shooting on a movie about an accidental shooting.
Simulation? I don't even know how to explain a lot of this stuff.
It does seem like a pretty big coincidence.
Here's another one. Now, this is just weird.
By strange coincidence, you know, my wife, Christina, is flying aerobatic airplanes.
So there's an airport nearby.
She can get an aerobatic, rent one for an hour, and go up and do loop-de-loops and stuff, which she does fairly often.
And she's preparing for a competition.
One of the planes at the hangar that she goes to is Tom Cruise's old plane.
So Tom Cruise is a pilot.
And he's flown a PITS. It's a type of an airplane that they use for aerobatics.
And his old airplane just ended up at this hangar because airplanes get bought and sold quite a bit.
So Christina sometimes flies Tom Cruise's old airplane.
And she also has just finished up her studying for IFR, which is the ability to fly in non-visible conditions, such as through clouds.
So she hasn't got her IFR yet.
She has to actually get the check right, it's called.
But she's completed the study for it.
She just has to do one detail to get it.
So as I'm thinking about Christina...
And Tom Cruise's airplane and getting her IFR. I turned on this movie called Oblivion.
Didn't know anything about it.
There's Tom Cruise flying a futuristic plane into a cloud of dust where he doesn't have visibility.
So effectively, he's trying to fly IFR without the right instruments.
Now, what are the odds that all of that would be happening?
Like Tom Cruise's airplane's IFR all at the same time.
It's just weird.
It's just weird. Coincidence, sure, but it's weird.
There's a new poll out of Virginia.
Corey DeAngelis tweeted this, that Terry McAuliffe, running for governor, is polling at 45%.
This is a Fox News poll.
And his competition, Glenn Youngkin, is at 53%.
Until a few days ago, this was a dead heat.
And now Youngkin is up 53% to 45%.
Now, of course, polling can be all over the place, and this looks like a Fox News poll that goes in the direction Fox News wants it.
You have to ask yourself some questions there.
But this is immediately after Biden campaigned for him.
Did Biden's campaigning for Terry McAuliffe hurt his chances?
I mean, I don't think you did, but maybe.
But here's what I think.
I think this is another example of...
I keep having to remind you that the public runs the country.
The government doesn't run this country.
The public does.
The public does and always will, with our current system.
But you don't see it...
Because the public isn't that energized over topics that could kind of go either way.
If the public is sort of 50-50 on something, then we do delegate it to the government.
It's just a way to solve a stalemate.
And even if things are close...
Not tie, but close.
We still like to delegate that to the government because it's just easier.
It's something we can all agree on.
It's like, oh, I hate that decision, but at least the system worked and the majority got its way.
At least that's good. But I want to remind you that these numbers probably changed because the public has an opinion about school that...
It's different from maybe one of these candidates.
And I think the public is essentially taking control of the issue.
That's what it looks like.
It looks like the public has decided to take the decision about how schools are run in terms of how your kids are taught.
I think the public just decided to take back the power.
You know, Corey D'Angelis was also tweeting some stuff about some school districts, you know, getting out of the national organizations, etc.
You're seeing a pretty big trend taking power away from the government, and you can see a lot more of that.
Rasmus and Nezbollah says 57% of the respondents said the economy is worse since Biden started.
57% say it's worse since Biden started.
That's not re-election numbers.
No matter who you blame.
But 38% blame Biden.
22% said it was the Dems in Congress.
And 31% said it was the Republicans in Congress.
But those are some bad, bad numbers.
Now, I wonder if Trump had been in charge...
Would things be different?
I don't know. It's hard to say, isn't it?
But I think we'll find out what happens when Republicans are in charge of Congress.
That's going to happen pretty soon, I think.
Are you ready for a cool story that involves you?
You all ready? Here is something that you did that's really cool.
And you should be very proud of this, and I'm not kidding.
Literally you...
Did something really cool, and I want to congratulate you and thank you, and here's the story.
Many of you remember I was talking about a tweet storm from Ryan Peterson.
He's the CEO of Flexport.
He did a tweet thread about some logical solutions to the supply chain problem.
How many of you remember that?
I talked about that.
Some of it had to do with getting rid of regulations so you could stack the empty storage containers.
I think there was something else about where you could put the empties, etc.
Now, Ryan has about 76,000 followers and probably he gained a number this week because it was a big viral tweet.
But I think I was the first big account to retweet it.
Now, fact-check me on this, but there's a story in the LA Times today that is crediting three people for sort of boosting his signal, and I'll tell you what happened when the signal got boosted.
This is the fun part.
I'm holding off on the fun part, okay?
It's coming. So, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times today, it's behind a paywall, but I signed up just to see it.
The following morning...
After the tweet thread, Peterson tweeted this all out, and his thread became a rare viral sensation about logistics.
It's hard to have a viral tweet about logistics, but he did it.
And here's what the LA Times said about it.
They said, big thinkers from the worlds of business, politics, and media shared his tweets.
And here are the examples they gave.
Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong...
Shared it with the comments, bureaucracy and red tape abounds.
And then he said, Charmaine Yost, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, tweeted about it.
And then they mentioned me.
Dilbert cartoonist, who they call a right-wing political commentator.
So the LA Times has branded me a right-wing political commentator.
What do you think? Am I a right-wing political commentator?
Kind of yes. Kind of yes.
In the sense that a lot of my audience leans right.
So if I'm a commentator and I'm commentating to people who lean right, am I a far-right?
What am I called? Oh, right-wing.
Yeah, not far-right, but right-wing.
I think that's fair. Now...
On social stuff, I'm left to Bernie, but I'm better at math, so I know his plans don't work.
But I like his philosophy.
I just don't think his plans are practical.
Anyway, so here's what happened.
So this thread, and I think I was the first of the people mentioned who tweeted it, and I imagine some of them probably saw it from my tweet.
Now, what do you think happened when this tweet went viral?
Here's the fun part. Within hours, Governor Newsom was getting just pecked to death, apparently, by all the people saying, have you seen this tweet?
What the hell are you doing about it?
Why aren't you implementing these ideas?
So within hours, hours, of promoting this tweet, within hours the government was activated.
Gavin Newsom picked up the phone and called Ryan Peterson.
He called them personally and said, I saw everybody sending me your tweet thread.
What do I need to know?
What do we need to do differently?
Now, I don't know the details, but apparently something happened pretty quickly.
So quickly, in fact...
That by the time I tweeted it, I was hearing stories already about Long Beach changing some regulations.
And I think I told you at the time, they must have been contemplating those changes already, because it couldn't happen so fast.
Because it happened right after the tweeting.
But now I think it might have.
It might have just happened really fast.
I think the government just said, wait a minute, wait a minute.
We didn't quite know that if we make these small changes, it could have a sizable impact.
And so it looks like Governor Newsom did what you'd want a government to do.
Called the person who was the expert, took it seriously, listened to him, and then immediately acted, it looks like.
Now, I need some fact checks on this and some confirmation, but that's what it looks like.
Now, how would this happen without you?
Right? How would that have happened without you?
I don't think it would have.
Because if I don't have a big enough platform, I can't retweet things with any effect at all.
So because I follow Ryan Peterson and because I've got a lot of followers, I don't know if the other people who tweeted it saw it first on my tweet, but there's a good chance of that.
And whether or not that happened or things were going to happen on their own anyway, it does show the model, doesn't it?
Because this isn't the first time...
There's somebody who's presented an idea to me, or I've had an idea, and we've used the power of the social media to insert it into the government's thinking fairly immediately, and then actually getting action fairly immediately.
It's actually kind of amazing, isn't it?
Now, before you get too excited, this doesn't really solve the supply chain problem.
Turns out you need some special equipment to put and specially train people to put the cartons on top of each other.
Turns out that even if you stack them, you still have your tens of thousands short of what you need to get things going.
But it looks like a step in the right direction.
And it looks like they're opening up storage places, you know, nearby to move the empties.
That was always part of the solution.
But here's the amazing part.
I don't think the government was talking to the right people before.
Is that what it feels like?
Like, who was the government talking to that they didn't already know to do these things?
Because even though Ryan Peterson seems to be more informed than most people, I mean, this is his business, he works in this area, The governor didn't talk to somebody who was as equally well-informed and could have said, hey, let me take a look at it.
I'll get back to you in 24 hours.
Goes down, looks at it, says, yeah, it looks like the problem is X and Y. I don't know.
But it does look like one citizen with an opinion and taking some action made a difference.
I did have the feeling...
Remember I've been complaining for a while that it looked like there was no leadership on the supply chain thing?
And I think we confirmed it.
It looks like the public had to take control.
In this case, Ryan had to take control because the government wasn't doing it, and it looked like they weren't doing anything.
And he actually even offered to be in charge of it for the country.
So if Biden wanted to, he won't.
But he could appoint Ryan Peterson as the supply chain czar, And just empower him with emergency powers.
You know, of course, everything gets approved through the president, probably.
And just say, can you just go fix this?
Now, there may be a limit to what we can do, but don't you want somebody who's this effective at least being the one making the call?
I think so. So he says, please no czars.
Well, maybe I wouldn't call him a czar, and it would have to be a short-term assignment.
Um... All right.
There's a new study looking at the association between vitamin D and COVID outcomes.
And the new study was trying to untangle whether it's just a coincidence that people who are most likely to die from COVID have low vitamin D or there's a causation.
And they seem to have ruled out The fact that people who are already in bad shape have low vitamin D, and that's the problem.
It seems to be...
Well, maybe I'm saying that wrong, but the point of it is that vitamin D, it's another study that suggests...
doesn't prove...
doesn't prove...
but again, strongly suggests that you could get deaths down to near zero if you had enough vitamin D in everybody.
Now, it's hypothetical, because you can't get enough vitamin D in everybody.
But if you could... I saw another study that showed there was a specific kind of pill That might be a new way to get enough vitamin D into somebody quickly.
So it's not the kind of vitamin D you buy over the counter.
Those are relatively weak compared to what you need.
But apparently there's a new pill that could boost your vitamin D more effectively.
So I don't have details on that.
I don't know if it works exactly or if it's just hype.
And I'm not totally convinced that vitamin D is the answer, but there's more indication of it.
But are you ready for the most mind-blowing thing you've heard all day?
Are you ready? This will be the most mind-blowing thing you've heard all day.
I promise you.
I promise you this will blow your mind.
I'm going to give you a number of facts, and then watch them all come together.
Are you ready? No, your mind.
I'm only going to blow your mind.
Did all of you see the Kamala Harris meme that's going around?
There's a doctored video of Kamala Harris.
She looks like she's apparently at a CNN town hall, except let's just say that the topic of the town hall has been altered.
I won't mention it on this live stream, but it's pretty funny.
And I was actually asked if it was real.
And I knew when I saw it, somebody's going to think this was real.
And sure enough, I was asked if it was real.
Which is the hilarious part.
Knowing that some people thought it's real, go look at it.
It's in my Twitter feed this morning.
Just knowing that some people think it's real, that's the joke.
The joke is not really the meme.
It's knowing that people think it's real.
That's the joke. Here's the mind-blowing part.
Here are some things that are associated with inflammation.
People who have more inflammation than the average would fall into these categories.
African-American, let's say black because we're talking about the whole world, black people have apparently more inflammation.
Did you know that?
If you're black, you either respond to inflammation more or you have more inflammation.
I think it ends up being about the same.
So being black is actually a risk factor for inflammation in general.
I didn't know that. Here's another one.
Being old almost guarantees you have more inflammation.
Being old. Right?
So being black or being old gives you inflammation.
Here's another one. Obesity.
Did you know that obesity is strongly correlated with inflammation?
It is. Is anybody getting ahead of me yet?
You see where it's going, right?
Diabetic. Did you know that diabetes is associated with inflammation?
It is. It is.
How about smoking?
Smoking cigarettes. Did you know that smoking cigarettes is associated with inflammation?
It is. How about a lack of vitamin D? It's associated with inflammation.
It is. Now, get ahead of me a little bit.
What do all these things have in common?
Being black, being old, obese, diabetic, smoker, and lacking vitamin D. What do all those things have in common besides inflammation?
Those are the comorbidities.
All of the COVID comorbidities are inflammation-related.
And vitamin D is an anti-inflammatory.
And we know that if you take vitamin D, an anti-inflammatory, it's other things.
It's not just an anti-inflammatory, but it's also that.
Do you know what else is considered an anti-inflammatory besides vitamin D? Aspirin.
Recent studies indicate, again, not proven, I suppose, that aspirin might be good help against COVID. It's also an anti-inflammatory.
How about fluvoxamine?
We just heard that there's an antidepressant that's good against COVID. Coincidentally, it's also an anti-inflammatory in addition to being an antidepressant.
How about, have you heard of a drug called ivermectin?
Ivermectin. Anybody ever hear of that?
In addition to its antibacterial properties, do you know what else it is?
It's an anti-inflammatory.
It's an anti-inflammatory.
And do you know what prednisone is?
People get prednisone when they have COVID. It works really well.
Do you know what prednisone is?
Aside from other things.
It's an anti-inflammatory.
Anti-inflammatory.
So all of the things that are comorbidities are associated with inflammation.
And most of the things, except for the vaccinations, I suppose, most of the things that we find that work against COVID to protect you are also anti-inflammatories.
Is that a coincidence?
Is any of this a coincidence? Are you ready for the mind-blowing part?
You ready? Hold on.
I'm going to tell you one other anti-inflammatory.
Apparently it's pretty powerful.
There's one other thing that you don't need a prescription for, but we don't do a lot of it in this country.
It's something you'd see more in another country.
Possibly a country that's not having as much trouble with COVID as we are, and inexplicably so.
It's called green tea.
Have you heard of it? Very popular in China.
If you drink a lot of green tea...
Apparently it's really good for your inflammation.
It reduces it.
Yeah. So, I'm not claiming this as a fact.
I'm just saying that coincidentally, and I'm going to say coincidentally, the country that's blamed for maybe releasing the coronavirus accidentally, or we don't know, but probably accidentally, is also the one country...
That by lifestyle choice already had low inflammation because of the green tea.
And Japan also didn't have much trouble.
In fact, the Asian countries didn't have much trouble.
Somebody says, mind not blown.
Oh, Andrew, I'm not done with you.
I'm not done with you.
Your mind will be blown.
It's coming up. Are you ready?
Here's the next twist.
And by the way, I'm not suggesting...
That China had a master plan to infect everybody except China because they drink green tea.
It could be a coincidence.
But if I were designing a weapon that would affect other people and not affect my countrymen, I would invent one that was deactivated by green tea.
Because by the time anybody found out, they'd already be dead.
All right, here's my next mind-blowing change.
In the beginning of a pandemic, what is your best strategy?
You don't know anything because it's the beginning of the pandemic.
It's the fog of war. You don't know what you're doing.
What do you do? You do everything.
You do everything because you don't know how bad this is going to get and you don't know what works.
So you just do everything.
Masks? Yes.
Social distancing? Yes.
Close down businesses? Yes.
Stop travel? Yes.
Just do everything. But that's like the first week or two, right?
As information comes in, you learn, oh, wait a minute, we didn't have to wash everything.
We didn't need to wear gloves.
So you start with everything, because you're just guessing.
And then as you get data, you back off.
Now, nobody's really...
Has anybody checked your temperature recently going into a building?
Because I think that just stopped, right?
We realized that wasn't helping.
And we stopped washing our food because it didn't make any difference.
You know, your packages don't have it, etc.
So as a pandemic progresses and you get smarter, you manage it differently.
So that's the only thing I'm trying to say, is that you don't manage things at the beginning of the pandemic the way you would manage it in the middle of the pandemic.
And here's the next part.
You don't manage it the same at the end of the pandemic either, and we're kind of doing that.
That's our problem. What if?
What if we treated this as an inflammation crisis and not a virus crisis per se?
Because it's the inflammation that's killing people and not just from COVID. Right?
The inflammation is killing people a whole bunch of different ways.
We have this gigantic inflammation crisis that we have mistakenly imagined is a COVID crisis.
It's also a COVID crisis.
But here's what I'm suggesting.
If the government told you, all right, we did a pretty good job getting the virus down to a manageable level, it's probably not going to ever get lower, But let's work really hard on lowering our inflammation.
What happened when we did the lockdown?
The lockdown made everybody fat and increased their inflammation.
The lockdown apparently caused cigarette smoking to go way up.
Like 25%, I heard.
Inflammation. Probably everything that people were doing was causing more inflammation.
Stress? Inflammation.
So imagine if your government said, look, we're toward the end of the pandemic and we're going to change the frame.
The way we frame the problem is no longer just trying to get the virus.
We'll do that, too. You know, vaccinations won't stop, for example.
But everybody, go lose weight and Stop drinking.
Stop smoking. And just get rid of your inflammation.
Make sure you've got vitamin D. Just imagine a leader coming out and saying, it's inflammation, people.
And it's your lifestyle.
And if you change your lifestyle, you'll be far safer from, yeah, cortisol, from stress, exactly.
So our government should be telling us to meditate, exercise, eat right, quit drinking, and quit smoking.
Am I right? If your government was telling you those things and really serious about it, I mean, not a mandate, of course, but really serious about it, I would feel completely different.
And I would also think that that would be a reason a government could reopen everything and make the masks go away.
Say, look, we now have a different strategy for the end of the pandemic.
And it's managing inflammation, which is really a lifestyle question.
Let's stop the masks.
Let's stop the mandates.
Let's stop the social distancing and limits on businesses.
Let's go back to normal with the businesses, but let's not go back to normal with how you live your life because you're causing too much inflammation.
And then just start informing people where the inflammation is coming from.
I like governments as a source of information when they do it right, like the APR for lending.
That's a government invention, and that's done right.
It's really useful. The nutrition guidelines, maybe not so useful.
So the government is wonderful when they give you the right information.
And it's useful. They're terrible when they give you the wrong information.
But I think that they could give the right information.
They could just say, here's a list of things that cause inflammation and therefore make you weak when you get the coronavirus.
Don't do these things.
Please don't do these things.
You can. It's legal. Nobody's going to stop you.
But please don't. Hit the gym.
Does anyone still trust the government?
Well, I would trust them if they say the same thing I say.
I would trust the government if they say you should exercise more and meditate and do some things that are just common sense good for you.
All right. AT&T has decided to go full racist.
You may know my story as background, which I'll retell you.
Basically, I worked for Pacific Bell, which was sort of a sister company to AT&T, or a cousin company, maybe.
And... I lost two careers at the phone company because they told me I was white and male.
I already knew that. But they told me that they couldn't promote me because they needed more diversity.
Now, that hasn't changed.
I'll tell you another story.
This is something that happened when I was working for Pacific Bell.
They brought a document to each of the employees that you had to sign.
And you had to sign a document that said you understood that diversity made the company stronger.
I think they used other words, but the essence of it was that diversity was an advantage.
And you had to sign it to say you agree, you understand that.
And I was handed it to you and I said, I understand what you're saying, but is there some study that proves that diversity is an advantage?
Now, in my opinion, diversity is unavoidable.
Why are we even having the conversation?
If you live in a super-diverse place, you kind of have to have diverse employees or, you know, there's going to be trouble.
So diversity is a requirement, I think, of living in a diverse civilization.
But where's the study?
But where's the study that says it is an advantage?
Certainly it's a requirement, in my opinion.
But an advantage?
Who did the controlled study where you had no diversity and then you compared it to the group with diversity?
I don't think it's been done.
So I said, I'm not opposed to the concept but I'm not going to sign something that clearly I don't think is proven in any way.
So I refused to sign it.
I'm the only one.
I think I was the only one in the company.
I think a company of, I don't know, however many...
Tens of thousands of employees.
I'll bet you I was the only one who didn't sign it.
There was no pushback.
Because I just gave my reasons.
I just said, I'm open to the concept, but do you have any evidence for this claim?
Why am I signing on to something that doesn't have evidence?
If you're telling me it's common sense, then I say, I don't know.
I can see your argument.
That part is common sense.
But I don't think that common sense is how we make decisions.
Is it? I mean, not when data is available.
If you have data, I will use the data in case my common sense has some bias in it.
So I refused to sign it, and there was no pushback.
I don't know if you know this about me, but you don't want to give me attention.
I think that was my magic power when I worked for the phone company.
Because I also got them to change the smoking in the office policy by going home and telling them that I declared the office an unsafe workplace.
Because that was company policy.
You were allowed to declare your own workplace an unsafe, physically unsafe.
So I just declared it unsafe.
I said, there's all this tobacco smoke in here.
It could hurt me. And the company just caved.
They changed the whole policy of the building, and pretty soon everything was non-smoking.
Now, I think my superpower is that people know I'm not going to go away, and I cause a lot of trouble.
So I think if it's a smallish problem, they're going to just let us live.
What is red herring persuasion?
I've been asked 500 fucking times.
But thank you for continuing to ask that question.
I don't know. What is it?
Is there a reason you're asking?
Or is that somebody's other show or something?
I don't understand the question.
So you can ask it 500 more times and I'll ignore it.
All right. Here's what AT&T is doing today.
Now, I worked for Pac Bell.
So not AT&T exactly.
But it came from AT&T originally.
So this is a report about ATT. ATT has created a racial re-education program that promotes the idea that American racism is a uniquely white trait.
And they're boosting reparations, defunding the police, and trans-activism.
Now, I don't care about the trans-activism.
Because I'm pro-trans, you know, which is different than saying you agree with everything, right?
But I'm pro-trans.
So I don't think that's really the topic.
So let's forget about that for now.
It's a separate topic.
I'm not saying it's unimportant.
It's just a separate topic.
And on some of their internal documents to re-educate their employees includes a resource called White America.
If you want to know who is responsible for racism, look in the mirror.
The article claims that the United States is a racist society and lays down its thesis plainly, quote, White people, you are the problem.
Regardless of how much you say you detest racism, you are the sole reason that has flourished for centuries.
That's true, by the way.
Does anybody disagree with that?
That white people are the source of historical racism?
I mean, nothing's an absolute, right?
But as a general true statement, yeah.
Yeah, historically, that's absolutely true.
The author, Darlene Glanton, writes,"...the American racism is a uniquely white trait, and that black people cannot be racist." White women, she claims, have been telling lies on black men since they were first brought to America in chains.
Well, that's true. That is true.
And along with their white male counterpoints, quote, There's going to be some cursing coming up.
Can't help it. I'm sorry.
I waited until the end so those of you who don't like the cursing can bail out.
But I would like to point out that there is a company that a white person doesn't have a good employment opportunity with.
It's called AT&T. If you're white, especially if you're male, and you go to work for AT&T, you're a fucking idiot.
Can I say that more clearly?
If you're white...
Especially male, mostly male, and you work for AT&T and you apply for a job there, you're a fucking idiot because they're going to discriminate the fuck out of you.
They don't want you at that company.
They need diversity. And actually, I support that.
I do think the company needs diversity.
Because in a diverse civilization, you just have to.
I'm not even going to give reasons for it.
I think it's that obvious. It's a diverse civilization.
You're a giant company.
You've got to be diverse. That's not optional.
But the way they're going about it is purely racist.
It's not even a little bit non-racist.
It's not even arguable.
It is 100% anti-white racism.
And if you're a white male, you should sell your stock.
You should convince other people to sell their stock and never buy their company.
And AT&T is about to discover that their products are something called a commodity.
Now, for those of you not steeped in economic terminology, do you know what a commodity means?
Commodity means there's nothing to stop you from discontinuing their service and buying one just like it somewhere else for the same price.
It's a fucking commodity.
And they just went full racist on the plurality of the population.
I'll tell you, if you're an AT&T stockholder, I don't give financial advice, but I'd be panicked right now.
I'd be fucking panicked right now.
I'm going to make it my personal mission to put AT&T out of business.
Now, I'm very much against boycotts for political reasons.
Political boycotts are just terrible.
Let's say the CEO has an opinion.
I don't want to put that company out of business.
Let's say the company leans Democrat or Republican or something.
I don't want to put that company out of business.
That's political. This isn't political.
This is just racist.
If there's an American company that has declared publicly that they plan to be racist and then they're acting on it, fuck that company.
They have to be put out of business.
So it's not really a question of...
Let's see what trouble I got coming in.
Oh, good. So the AT&T question is not really a question of...
A difference of opinion or politics.
They have to be put out of business.
They have to be shut down.
Unless they change their policy.
But this is pure racism, and I'm going to make it a personal mission to make sure that anybody who does business with...
anybody who's white who does business with AT&T is an idiot.
You're just a fucking idiot.
You're just burying yourself.
There is a limit, and this is it.
There's a limit...
You just reached an A&T. You deserve to go out of fucking business for this.
This is a big enough mistake.
The whole business needs to be shut down for it.
That's how bad it is.
If you think it's less than that, you're missing the big story here.
They're saying in public that you don't have a fucking career if you're white, and especially male.
You okay with that?
Let me ask my black viewers...
Of which I assume I've got a few here.
I always hear from you on Twitter.
If you're black, tell me in the comments if you're okay with AT&T's view.
Because remember, if it's okay that they can do that to somebody else, do you want to live in that world?
Is that okay for you?
I mean, I realize it would be good for you, but are you okay with it?
AT&T owns CNN.
in.
Do they still?
Yeah, I hear that.
Somehow I'd forgotten that, that AT&T owns CNN. All right, well, I don't think that's relevant to this.
But AT&T, let's see how much pressure we can put on that.
They need to go out of business.
They don't need to be punished.
They need to actually just go out of business and stop existing.
Because you've got to take down one major company because there's going to be more of this, and it's intolerable.
It's 100% intolerable.
And if taking out a major company...
Is what it takes? Let's do it.
Let's drive the stock to zero and put them out of business.
It's commodities. Do you know anybody, is there anybody here who's still using AT&T products and doesn't plan to change?
Anybody here who uses AT&T now and doesn't plan to change because of this?
Yeah, I think a lot of you are on the same page here.
It looks like it's going to be trouble for AT&T. Now, if my name doesn't become associated with this story, I'll be really surprised.
Because I am, after all, the Dilbert guy.
And I am, after all, a victim of the same behavior when I worked in the corporate world.
And I just declared war.
I'm going to take down a major corporation.
And I mean it.
I want to put them out of business. I'm not looking.
I'm not looking to just hurt them or damage them or change their reputation.
Now, if they change their policy, I'm all good.
You know, I don't mind if somebody makes a mistake and then corrects it.
I'm the guy who always says, mistakes are natural.
It's how they handle their mistake that I'm going to judge people by.
So I'm going to judge them by how they handle it.
But if they don't handle it right, they have to be put out of business.
All right.
How can you help? Make sure that everybody you know knows what AT&T is doing.
I don't think anybody should be okay with it.
Don't let this distract you from taking down China.
Don't worry. China's got big trouble coming.
I promise you that.
All right. That's about all I have for today.
I think we've solved the pandemic.
Maybe racism, too.
And I think that's a pretty good day.
So let's say we made an impact on the supply chain.
We're going to maybe get rid of racism when we take AT&T down.
And the pandemic, largely under control now.
So I always call that a good day's work.
Everybody? Everybody?
Good day's work, wouldn't you say?
Now, I always talk about the combination of the audience and what I do as the filter for the audience as really a new model of something.
Whatever this is that's happening here, it's important.
I don't know how important, but it's definitely important.
And as the size of my platform increases...
So too should be the effect of this.
Now, I would point out that there are lots of people with gigantic platforms and bigger audiences, but one of the things they all have in common, the people with bigger platforms and audiences, is that they're not trying to do what I'm doing, which is try to figure out what makes sense and promote it.
