Episode 1693 Scott Adams: How The War in Ukraine Ends and Lots of Fake News Per Usual
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
President Trump sues Hillary Clinton
Putin paused aggression with Trump?
Biden's gas plan without numbers?
No free speech for Ginni Thomas?
Biden pushes Fine People HOAX...again
Seizing Putin's yacht
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the high energy excitement that is Coffee with Scott Adams.
Some of you, you might want to check your blood pressure because the excitement is just beginning.
And if you'd like to take it up a notch, if your heart can handle it, talk to your doctor first.
All you need is, I almost read this upside down.
That would have been weird.
It would have gone like this.
Kind any vessel, flask or jug, canteen.
Stein or cellist, tankard.
Glass or mug or cup.
Now, if I did that, you would try to sip, but your coffee mug would be upside down.
The coffee would end up under your lap.
No good.
Let's do it the right way, shall we?
You do not have a sound problem, shall I?
All right.
All you need is to cover my glass up there.
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Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
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Oh, YouTube audio.
How can you?
Am I really going to have to check this again?
All right, hold on.
Hold on YouTube.
It's not on my end, is it?
No, it's not on my end.
So, you're out of luck.
Now the mic is on.
It's all good. It's all plugged in.
Let us continue, and I'll turn off YouTube in a moment, if you can complain.
Wait, did we do the cytoplating zip?
We didn't even do the zip.
Hold on. Get ready.
Get ready, go.
Ah, yeah, YouTube's working fine.
Are there you trolls?
Go away trolls.
So Elon Musk had a cryptic tweet today, or yesterday.
He asked this question with a little Twitter poll.
He said, free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
He said, "Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle, meaning free speech?" But here's the cryptic part.
Are you ready?
Remember it's Elon Musk asking the question, If it were not Elon Musk, this would not be interesting.
And he says, the consequences of this poll will be important.
Please vote carefully.
Now when Elon Musk says the consequences of your Twitter poll will be important, what is he talking about?
Is he going to buy Twitter?
Because maybe.
Maybe.
Does anybody know how much Twitter would sell for?
I'll bet there's somebody here who has an estimate.
Give me an estimate of the value of Twitter.
If you were going to buy it, I don't know if it's for sale, but if you were going to buy it, well, it's more than a billion.
It's way more than a billion.
No, it's way more than 5 billion, isn't it?
Market cap is 30 billion, thank you.
Whoever uses the phrase market cap, I'm going to assume that you know what you're talking about because regular people don't say market cap.
So let's say it's $30 billion.
Could Elon Musk buy a $30 billion company?
Pretty sure he could.
Pretty sure he could. I mean, he wouldn't have to buy the whole thing.
He could go in with other investors and just have a controlling share or something.
But yeah, you can do it.
Now I think the bad play is creating your own Twitter.
But is there anybody who could create their own Twitter better than Elon Musk?
Because he's weirdly neither right nor left, is he?
I mean, he seems to take positions that just sort of make sense.
He's not right or left. So if he made a Twitter knockoff, oh, somebody's saying maybe he would buy one of the competing, like Getter or something.
Well, there you go. Yeah, interesting.
Let's keep an eye on that.
It does look like a shot across the bow of Twitter.
Maybe he's just trying to scare them into free speech.
Speaking of social media platforms, Facebook, now called Meta, is taking remote work to the extreme.
Extreme remote work.
Well, I don't know how extreme it is that you're just working at home, but apparently the extreme part is that people are not just working from home.
But they're moving to other states, and that's their new home sometimes, and then they work from there.
I don't know how extreme that is, but I think I'm gonna put tape over the comments.
Let me see.
I thought I had a little sticky.
It's on here.
I just put a little yellow sticky over the comments on YouTube for a minute, 'cause I keep hearing all the trolls.
So they'll go away in a minute, and I'll take that off.
So Facebook is doing this remote work thing, and it's kind of genius that they're priming the pump this way.
I guess I can't put the sticky note there, that's where the camera is.
They're priming the pump because when everything is...
In the virtual world, it seems to me that it's inevitable that you're going to go to work in a virtual world.
Does anybody disagree?
That it's inevitable that you will someday go to work without leaving your chair, right?
Now you might say to me, well, that's not going to work if you have a physical job.
If you're physically moving things, you're going to have to go to work.
I'm not so sure.
Because if you have a robot, That you can control by inhabiting it so that the robot moves the way you want it to move.
And maybe even the robot moves with your body.
You know, its arms might move like your arms.
You actually were very close to being able to go to work and have arms and legs at work and even a body that can move around.
That already exists. They already have telepresence robots that can go to work for you and move from room to room and talk to people.
So, doesn't it make sense that everything is going to be in the metaverse eventually?
This play by Facebook is really interesting, in part because, well, maybe largely because it's Zuckerberg's play.
When was the last time Zuckerberg was wrong on a big move?
Now, you don't like some of the things he's done privacy-wise, etc.
But in terms of business moves, like big business moves such as buying WhatsApp or buying Instagram, Zuckerberg has Done quite a good job, hasn't he?
Of predicting the future and adapting to it.
So I would say that when Zuckerberg says the future is this virtual world, I really believe it.
Partly because I believed it anyway, so anybody who agrees with me sounds extra smart.
But yeah, I think, but it is possible that Facebook is going to go through some really tough times Because I think their legacy model is sort of a dead man walking.
I can't believe that Facebook, the old Facebook, it doesn't seem survivable to me because kids don't use it.
Isn't that the end of the story?
Or do kids grow up and start using it because I'm an adult, I gotta use Facebook?
Facebook has like no impact on my personal life at all.
It's just irrelevant.
So they do need a different business model.
I think their meta play could be maybe one of the greatest.
It could end up being one of the greatest business moves of all time.
Anyway.
So what else have we got here?
Trump is suing Hillary Clinton and others because of their claims in 2016 about Russia collusion.
Now, What do you think about that?
Number one, is this case likely to get to trial?
What do you think? Is it going to make it to trial or will it get thrown out long before that?
It's very difficult to prove that somebody knew something, right?
But what's weird about this case is that there's so much actual discovery already Because the special prosecutor has produced lots of reliable information, or it would look reliable in some other court case.
So, I feel like, without knowing anything about the law, of course, I feel like you might have a chance.
My instinct is that these things always get thrown out, especially if it's in a political realm, because it's really hard to say that a politician lied about you in a way that hurts you, since that's all they do, basically, is lie about each other.
So it seems like a very hard case.
I'm watching, there's a whole fight going on in YouTube.
So some people have been complaining about the sound and other people are saying it's fine.
Let me just take a second.
All right, YouTubers, is there anybody who has good sound?
Anybody at all who has good sound?
Just even one person.
Is there anybody who has good sound in there?
It looks like no. Nobody?
There's not one person who has adequate sound on YouTube?
Sound is bad. Okay.
Well, there's nothing I can do about it.
There must be a YouTube problem.
Everything's good on mine. All right.
Here's what I think is interesting.
It could be, and maybe I need a lawyer to help me sort this out.
There are lots of lawyers watching this always.
So, do you think that Trump's real play is discovery?
Do you think that the real thing is either political, to put something in the news that people have to talk about that makes it sound like he was right?
Or is it because the process will allow more discovery and that process will just be infinitely good for Trump if he's running for a re-election?
Because the process would take a long time, wouldn't be completed probably before the election in 2024.
So the optics are good, aren't they?
This looks like a great persuasion play, but legally, I don't know, it doesn't seem like he could win.
And it's not because he's not right, by the way.
I think you could say with certainty that he can make a case that he was damaged, he can make a case that it was intentional, and he could probably connect the dots to Hillary Clinton.
It's not enough. I don't know what it would take to convict Hillary Clinton in a world where there are so many Democrats who don't want that to happen, but yeah.
All right, let us do this.
There must be a way for me to mute.
I'll chat messages.
There we go. So I can't see your messages on YouTube because all you want to talk about is the sound.
If it doesn't work for you, you could try going to Locals.
Just search for Coffee with Scott Adams at Locals.
Locals.com.
And I believe I kept that unprotected this morning.
All right, so I'll be watching that.
That'll be fun. Here's what Reuters said in this story about Trump suing Clinton.
And I want to see if you've noticed this little subtle but not subtle shift.
And it goes like this.
Reuters actually writes matter-of-factly that Trump's claims about the 2020 election are, quote, false claims, or they say he falsely claims.
Now, are they sound as good on YouTube?
All right. I'll turn their jet back on.
And does it make sense to you that a news organization can call Trump's claims or his allegations false?
How do you know they're false?
Did somebody audit the election that I don't know about?
How would you possibly know if it were false?
Just, you know, very minor parts of what it did.
You don't know about the 99% of it, do you?
So somehow the fake news has allowed you to accept uncritically that Trump's allegations about the election went from unproven to proven false.
When did that happen?
That never happened, but it's reported as a fact.
Bill Maher says they're false.
Yeah, everybody says they're false.
But I'm not sure if they're playing sort of a trick here.
Because I also agree that the election happened and that Biden was elected.
Do you know I allow that the...
I don't think I've ever said this before.
The reason that I'm perfectly comfortable with the election outcome Even though I accept that Trump's allegations could be true.
There's no way to prove them false at the moment, and there's no way to prove them true.
But no matter whether the election was completely fair or not, I accept the outcome.
Why? Why do I accept the outcome of the election completely, completely without reservation?
So he says, the reason is I'm a coward.
Well, good guess.
Good guess, it wasn't that.
Here's why. Do you fucking think the other elections weren't rigged?
Come on. Why would you pick one election now and say, oh, this is the one where there was some irregularity?
They were either always rigged or they probably haven't been recently.
If you don't accept an election in the United States because you think there are irregularities, you would never accept any election.
We wouldn't be able to run the system.
The system requires you to accept a rigged election in order for the system to work the best it can.
I mean, it's a bumpy system.
We don't have a perfect system.
Nobody says it. The only way we work is by accepting sketchy results.
It's the only thing that keeps the system working.
The moment I said I don't believe the result, therefore I won't act like a citizen, the whole thing falls apart.
So I think you could completely separate was it a fair election from the question of whether as a citizen you should treat it as fair for all practical purposes.
So I can't quite get with you in the overthrow the past election stuff.
I don't think I'll ever be on that train.
I think you just need to fix it in the next election if you can.
Or maybe you cheat better than the other side next time.
It's part of the process in a way.
Yeah, who cheats better is not irrelevant.
Am I right? There's some part of us that says, well, if everybody's cheating and everybody's lying, don't you want the one who does it better?
I mean, it's not crazy.
It's not crazy to want the one who does it better.
Right? As long as there's some transparency so they don't do it to you.
All right. There's some reporting now, and there's an opinion by a A gentleman by the name of Carifano.
He's the VP of the Catherine and Shelby Cullen Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Now, let me give you a little advice.
Should you ever be offered a job, and they say the position is you could be the Vice President of the Catherine and Shelby Cullen Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation, you should say, Can you change the name of my job?
Because I don't think I can have that job name.
Every time somebody asks me, where do you work?
I said, I'm unemployed.
I think I would just lie and say, I'm retired.
I'm unemployed. What is the acronym?
That would be VPKSC. No, there's nothing there.
I'm sorry. Anyway, this gentleman who has some, I guess, some background to say stuff like this, he argues that Putin's decision to invade Ukraine was actually made in 2014, sort of when, I guess, Crimea was invaded, and that he was going to do the rest of Ukraine, but the reason he paused, according to Kirifano's opinion, Is that Putin didn't know how the Trump administration would react.
So apparently Putin had decided that Obama was going to be hands-off, and that Putin could get away with whatever he could get away with, and there were enough anecdotal evidences of that, that Putin probably felt emboldened, and that his emboldened feeling ended abruptly when Trump came into office, because Putin couldn't tell what Trump would do.
Exactly what Trump promised he would bring to the office.
One of his greatest benefits.
He said he would bring it, he brought it, and then there's at least this, you know, a well-founded opinion, we don't know if it's true, but a good opinion that says it might have made the difference for at least four years.
So, and it's pointed out that Trump was nicer publicly to Putin, but tougher in terms of policy and stuff.
And part of Kirifano's argument is that the Obama foreign relations people and advisors were the same ones from Obama.
So from Putin's perspective, it looks like just Obama too, because it's the same staff, and Biden is basically Obama too.
So from Putin's perspective, the election of Biden was a green light.
And then Biden goes ahead and says, you know, we're never going to commit ground troops, which of course is a smart idea.
But then Putin says, well, okay, if you're Obama-like and you always cave and you're not too concerned about us, and if you said you're not going to send in ground troops, I feel like you just said go ahead.
So there's one argument that Biden himself caused the war.
You know, just by the low quality of his leadership, I guess.
Now, here's what I would caution you.
You have to be careful when one political side says the other is incompetent.
Because they all do.
All the time. There's no time that the Democrats said, you know, we don't like those Republicans, but you know, when it comes to the economy, they're killing it.
You know, they do a good job there.
That never happens.
You know, both sides criticize everything from the other side.
So if you see any argument that even looks solid, this does look like a solid, a fairly solid hypothesis anyway.
Just remember it comes from somebody you don't know.
So don't put too much, don't put too much trust in any opinion like that one.
Well, there's a report, I guess Erdogan of Turkey.
I want to pronounce his name Erdogan, Erdogan, but I believe it's Erdogan, is that correct?
And I strongly oppose people who spell things with letters that don't belong.
If you spell your name E-R-D-O-G-A-N, you should be called Erdogan.
And if you say people know, the pronunciation is Erdogan.
I've been thinking about doing the same thing, to spell my name A-D-A-M-S, just the way it is, but to pronounce it Ardendapa.
And when people say, what's your name?
I'll say, it's Scott A-D-A-M-S. And they'll say, wait, how did you pronounce it?
And they'll say, A-D-A-M-S. And they'll say, that sounded a little different than the first time you said it.
I said, yes, it is one of those names that can be pronounced invariably based on how I feel at any moment.
And I would ask you to use the same name that I'm using, and you'll have to get an update every few hours because I don't say it the same.
And if you believe that I cannot tell you how to pronounce my name, well, then I would like you to talk to my friend Erdogan.
As you would call them, or as we call them, Erdogan.
Have I made my point?
I think I have. Gesundheit, exactly.
My bagels are coming.
Anyway, Erdogan says that Ukraine and Russia reached an understanding on four of the six topics of agreement, or disagreement.
So according to Erdogan, Who you call Erdogan because you fall for his technique.
Here are some of the things that they'll probably agree on rather close.
That Ukraine would not be part of NATO, there would be partial disarmament, there would be a collective security agreement, and that the Russian language would become an official language where there's lots of Russian anyway.
Apparently those are no big deal.
That even Zelensky would say, okay, I can live with that.
Then there are two things that are more consequential.
The remaining topics are Crimea and Donbass, to which I say, is there any question about how that's going to go?
We're down to two points of disagreement, but we all know which way those go.
Is Russia gonna say, you know, I've had second thoughts about this Crimea situation.
I think I should just give it back.
I'll just give it back.
That's not gonna happen.
So am I wrong that there's no reason to fight anymore and they're just fighting for no reason at all?
I think Russia is fighting because they need to show they're not losing.
And Zelensky is fighting probably because the United States wants him to.
In other words, does the United States want Zelensky to make a deal?
What do you think? Are you seeing the President of the United States like really pushing Zelensky to make some compromises?
There are people who speculate that Biden wants the war more than he wants the peace.
It looks like it. I mean, we can't read his mind, so you can only, you know, judge from the actions.
But if you judge from the actions, it doesn't look exactly like Biden wants the war to stop.
It looks like what he wants is to degrade Russia, because he's full of anti-Russia people, and permanently degrade them, and then take their business.
So Biden is putting together this alternate energy system, Channel, I guess, with Western interests that will provide, you know, more energy to Germany and Europe.
And Here's what's missing from the story.
How many of you have seen the story that says Biden is putting together some kind of a workaround so that the United States and other producers can produce gas and deliver it to Europe, and that Russia will be cut out of that gas deal?
Do you know what's missing in the story?
So far. Maybe you've seen it, but I haven't seen it yet.
Numbers. This is a story that depends entirely on numbers, as in what percentage of the oil is coming from Russia and what percentage of that percentage can be backfilled by other sources.
Because I have a bad feeling That for every 100 cubic whatever of gas that's coming out of Russia, then maybe the total availability of alternate sources might be 10 to 20% of that?
Don't we need to know that?
Your opinion of whether we should push Zelensky to work out a deal and stop the war, and Russia too, would depend a lot on whether you think you can get alternate sources of energy to Europe in short order.
I don't think that the Biden administration, and maybe the news, won't tell us if we're even close to being able to do that.
Isn't that a gigantic question?
And isn't it fairly easy to figure it out if you were a journalist trying to figure it out?
Could you not produce numbers of how much Russia is producing and then ask the Americans who are working on this process, how much of that do you think you could replace?
What are they going to say?
10%? Or 90%?
Or 50%?
The story, the entire story of the war Hinges on those numbers that are not in the news.
And they could be. They could be, right?
It doesn't seem hard to produce at least estimates, even if the estimates are wrong.
So when you see something like this that's not in the news, and nobody except me apparently has noticed it's missing, that tells you something.
I mean, that tells you that the propaganda doesn't want you to know that.
And it probably means that we can't produce it.
Am I right? If we could find a way, even if it were hard, if we could find a short-term-ish way to replace all that Russian energy, you don't think that number would be in the press?
Oh, it would. It would.
And the story would look like this.
Russia produces X amount of energy, but if you add up these five sources, they come almost to that same amount.
You tell me you wouldn't see that story if we could do it?
You know I'm right.
If we could do it, you'd see the story.
Because it's easy. It's an easy story.
The fact that it's not there says this is propaganda and we can't help Europe.
I believe that this has nothing to do with producing energy.
And everything to do with keeping Europe in the war.
Right? Because Biden, if you take the hypothesis that Biden likes the war more than the peace, at least in the short run, he wants to degrade Russia and really ostracize them and make them basically permanently unable to build a powerful military.
It looks like all he's doing is making Europe happy that they won't starve to death and run out of energy.
But they might.
So somebody asked on Twitter, describing how could this end?
Here's how I see it ending.
They see there'll be a negotiated settlement, much along the lines of what Erdogan, or as you call him, Erdogan said.
That seems like roughly what it's gotta look like.
I mean, somewhere in that range.
And I think that means that Russia will continue to be, at least in the short term, the supplier of energy to Europe.
So I think energy won't run out in Europe because Russia will sell it.
we will let them because it will come after a negotiated deal.
Shipping fentanyl.
All right. All right.
Let's see. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginny Thomas, apparently a conservative activist, We know now that she was emailing a number of times White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the last days of the Trump administration, and with her, quote, unrelenting efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election result.
Now, the scandal here Is that while she was an activist working to have the result overturned, there was talk about the Supreme Court having to make decisions related to the same topic.
So how awful would it be to have one of the Supreme Court justices' wife active in a thing that he might have to rule of?
There's nothing here.
There's nothing in this story.
Let me just propose a question to the Supreme Court.
Dear Supreme Court, I like your ruling on this.
Can the spouse of a Supreme Court justice Fucking yes.
Yes. I'm pretty sure I would say this if this had been a Democrat leading judge and a, you know, Democrat activist.
I don't think you can make an exception for free fucking speech.
Does anybody disagree with that?
Why is this even the story?
We already knew she was a conservative activist.
We already knew that basically everybody who was pro-Trump was questioning the election result.
She was just one of the people who was talking about it and doing something.
She made some phone calls.
That's it. She had an opinion.
She had access. She made some phone calls.
Or sent some emails, I guess.
So there's nothing to this story.
Unless you're actually going to actively entertain The idea that the wife or the spouse of a justice doesn't have free speech, and we're not.
We're not going to entertain that, ever.
That will never be something we entertain as a possibility.
So why are we even talking about it?
She had an opinion. She did something about it, like a free citizen.
Somebody saw it. Let's move on.
It meant nothing. Now, did it have an impact?
I doubt it. Do you think Justice Thomas was almost going to vote for whatever the Democrat view on something was going to be?
I doubt it. See, the problem with the Supreme Court is that you already know how they're going to vote almost all the time.
If you didn't know how they were going to vote, then you might worry about them being influenced.
But if you already know how they're going to vote on all the big stuff, meh, meh.
A horrible thing that happened.
Biden talking, not even in the United States, on a foreign trip, mentioned again the fine people hoax as if it were real.
You know, the idea that Trump actually praised neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
By the way, if there's anybody who's watching this livestream and still believes that Trump literally praised neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, do a little homework.
Because I think by now you should know that edited videos can reverse their meaning.
That's all that was.
So if you're new to this, that's the most debunked story that the mainstream press has said has been true for years.
But Biden again, you know, uses this hoax like is real, It's way worse when you do it overseas.
Everybody agree? That the way a president acts domestically is different, or should be, than the way they act when they're on foreign soil.
Well, they don't have to.
I mean, it's not the law.
But it's sort of tradition, and it's a reasonable tradition.
But I think he threw the United States under the bus on foreign soil.
That's what I saw. Is that interpretation no good?
Because if he's throwing half of the country under the bus overseas, that's no bueno.
No, that's no good. You should be fired for that.
I mean, that's pretty bad.
I'm looking at my mixer and my sound volume on my end is perfect.
All right. Here's a question that I saw on a tweet from Machiavelli's Underbelly.
Keeping in mind that the Ukraine forces have verified actual Nazis, small number I think, but there are actual Nazis fighting on the side of the Ukrainians.
And Machiavelli's Underbelly said, someone should ask Biden if there are fine people on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Pleased? Please?
Could somebody ask that?
Because what's he going to say?
Is he going to say that everybody in the Ukrainian military is a fine person?
I mean, it's going to kind of put him in a little trap, isn't it?
Now, let me ask you this.
What are the odds that Biden would make his signature move to become president Making fun of Trump for allegedly saying that neo-Nazis were fine people and that Biden would find himself in the exact situation as president.
Of having to explain why he has any support for a group that has Nazis verified, Nazis within them.
What are the odds that the simulation served that up to us just by coincidence?
Let me ask you, have you ever in your life been in a situation where somebody accused you of backing Nazis because there were some in some groups that you liked?
It's a weird, weird situation.
And it looks like code reuse.
Now, one of the weirdest prediction methods that I use, and it's maddening when it works because it shouldn't.
There's no reason that any logic would connect this.
But when you predict that the reality will take the same path that a well-written movie would take, or even a poorly written movie, when you predict that reality will follow the format of a movie, and then it does, is that a coincidence?
Might be confirmation bias, most likely.
But it's a weird little technique, and I want to show you how well it worked recently.
Do you remember that I somewhat whimsically and jokingly tweeted that wouldn't it be sort of perfect if the simulation gave us the following?
Finding out that Hunter Biden funded the bio lab, the bio labs in Ukraine.
Now, I'm not saying that that happened.
I'm just saying, wouldn't that be like the perfect movie script, right?
By the way, this is a Seinfeld writing technique.
I once worked with one of the original writers for Seinfeld.
So, Larry Charles.
Not to be confused with Larry David.
Larry David was one of the co-creators.
Larry Charles was one of the first writers when they began the show.
And I worked with Larry on a Dilbert TV show, so I got to know him pretty well.
And he told me the story And I probably have all the details wrong, but I think he was taking a walk with Larry David, and they were talking about plots and writing.
And they kind of came up with the idea of having separate plots that apparently had nothing to do with each other, and then very cleverly tying them together at the end, which became sort of a staple of Seinfeld TV. Now, that's not that innovative, because movies always have an A story and a B story, and then in writing terms, the B story will interfere with the A story toward the end of the movie.
That's the standard.
But Seinfeld took it to more of an absurd level, When you're watching a regular movie, you can almost always tell how that B story is going to interfere with the A story.
You can see it coming.
But in Seinfeld, they make the weirdest connections between the two completely different stories, and that's what's funny.
What's funny is that the connection they make is just so ridiculous, but yet, in comic terms, it works.
So, here we have this situation.
There is, I won't call it reporting, But there's a suggestion, and Tucker Carlson talked about it, that Hunter Biden was part of an investment group that invested in the bio labs in Ukraine.
And that actually, frickin' literally, maybe.
All right, this is an allegation.
I'm not sure you can say this is a fact.
But that there's a good chance That literally, Hunter Biden may have funded some bio labs.
Now again, it doesn't mean the bio labs did anything wrong.
But let me take it to the Seinfeld extreme.
What's the next thing that happens in this movie?
The next thing that happens is that we find out that the coronavirus came out of a Hunter Biden funded Ukrainian lab.
And I don't think there's any chance that that'll happen.
But that would be what the movie would be.
Am I right? Because you see these weird unrelated stories about Ukraine, and we only have two stories in the last five years.
Well, I guess we have two major stories.
There's the coronavirus, and then there's the war with Ukraine.
Do those stories come together?
Because it looks like they might.
And let me tell you, can I propose something for you as a test?
In my opinion, there isn't really any chance that the bio labs in Ukraine are the source of the coronavirus.
I don't think that's possible.
But would you agree with me that if that ever came to be a fact, that you would accept that we live in a simulation?
Go. Would you take that as your final nail that says, yep, okay, you got me.
You got me. There's no way this happened by accident.
Okay, I didn't expect you all to agree.
By the way, you shouldn't agree with that.
That's not something you should agree with.
But I just wondered if people would.
I saw a lot of yeses. Yeah, yes, if that happens, you're gonna wonder about the nature of reality.
I take you back to one of my best predictions of all time, 2015, when I said that Trump would change more than politics.
I said he would change how you saw reality itself.
In the comments, was that a correct prediction?
And remember, I said it a lot because I was quite sure of it.
I said it a lot in 2015.
By the perspective of 2022, can we say that was one of the best predictions you've ever seen?
I think so. I don't think, because it was so out of left field, wasn't it?
It wasn't even something that was on anybody's mind.
Nobody was saying, will it change reality or will it not?
Nobody was talking about that. It wasn't even a sniff of an idea in anybody's head.
And I could see it like a bright light.
I mean, to me, it was like looking at the sun.
I mean, I can see it so clearly.
I was like, oh shit, this isn't going to change politics.
This is going to change everything.
And specifically what I saw, and maybe what I understood at that point, is that reality is way more subjective than the average person understands.
We all understand that there's a subjective nature to reality, but you don't know the degree.
And what I saw was that Trump was gonna change what you thought about facts.
That he was gonna change what you thought was true.
And that you would never know what was true after that point.
And that's what happened.
That he would make you unable to know what was true because he would so deftly show things that weren't true as true.
And also, here's the trick.
He would tell you the things you believed were true forever Weren't true, and you would come to believe it.
And you did. You did.
So, that's by far my best prediction, I would say.
North Korea shot off a cool new intercontinental ballistic missile, but the best part about it is, have you seen the video that North Korea itself made?
So apparently Kim Jong-un has lost a bunch of weight, And if I could be objective about it, he looks great.
I hate to say it.
You hate to say it.
But he's developed sort of a, I guess, a style That actually works.
It totally works. But I love the fact that he seems to be picking up tips from Putin, tips from Trump, and tips from Hollywood.
So they produced this almost Top Gun-looking video where, you know, in movies where you see the cool guys, maybe there are two or three of them or more, and they're, you know, it's usually guys, and they're walking, and behind them there's something So, Kim Jong-un, he's got a flight jacket on.
He's got the aviator glasses.
Looking pretty sharp. Looking good, actually.
Lost weight. Looks healthy.
And he's got two generals.
They're looking like almost cartoon generals because, you know, the North Korean outfits are so little over the top.
And he's just, you know, walking in front of this enormous missile.
And there are lots of video cuts where you see the thumbs up.
It was actually great.
I've never been more convinced that we should continue to be, I guess, friendly with Kim Jong-un.
Because there's something very human about that guy, monster though he may be, there's something very human about him that Trump accurately knew that the human part was the way in.
And so he took the human part.
Hey, you're my friend. I love you.
We're friends. And then they worked.
Just treated them like friends. Now, have you noticed that the news is not covering this like it's a danger to the United States in any real way?
I mean, they do say missile nukes could reach the United States.
But am I wrong that Trump ended this as a problem?
I mean, maybe it's a little problem.
But it doesn't seem like we even treat it as a problem.
It's more like a story. Hey, they got a good rocket.
Why would they shoot us?
North Korea doesn't have any reason to aim a nuke at us.
What reason? So, yeah.
So that's looking interesting.
I love this story about Italy.
There's an Italian shipyard where there's a super yacht that's worth, I don't know, 700 million dollars.
It's like a city.
It's just like freaking crazy.
And the belief is it might be Putin's own yacht.
And I saw the pictures of it.
It's worth looking at the pictures. It's really quite a yacht.
Now, of course, if it's Putin's yacht, they're gonna stop it.
And I wondered, you think that the yacht stuff is sort of unimportant, don't you?
You think, well, if a billionaire loses a yacht, eh, make another one, or something like that.
But there's something in my mind that says people being people, That taking Putin's yacht, that probably has been 10 years in the making, you should probably imagine that and looking forward to being on his yacht, or taking the other oligarchs' yachts, probably makes a bigger difference than you think.
Am I right? Because it's just so personal.
And if you're an oligarch, nothing really affects you, right?
Little inflation, ah.
Nothing can affect you.
Yeah, you can take their cars, they just buy another car.
But if you take their yacht, they're a billionaire without a yacht.
That feels like that would hurt in a weird way that a billionaire could be hurt.
So you and I don't think it's a big deal because we don't care about a billionaire in his yacht, but I'll bet the billionaire cares.
So I think this will be a great underrated technique.
And if they threaten Putin's yacht, I think that does increase the chance he would make a peace deal.
Am I wrong? If you thought that this was Putin's yacht, it was 700 million, now he can afford it, so it's not really the money, but they probably have in his mind In the future on that yacht, he probably spent lots of meetings.
I'll bet he spent a lot of meetings designing it, right?
So he's probably sort of emotionally and intellectually invested in the future of him being on that yacht.
If they say, we're going to take your yacht away if you don't make peace, you don't think that would make a difference?
I mean, it's not the difference.
It would totally make a difference.
There's nobody who would not be affected by that.
Based on everything I know about persuasion, Putin would act like he wasn't caring about it.
He would act like it. He would say, I take my yacht, I don't care, I'll make another one.
But he would care. I definitely think he would care.
I think it would make a difference. All right.
Let's see if anything else is going on.
Mariupol got completely destroyed, as you know, in Ukraine.
And I heard an anecdote of that the people who were leaving, trying to escape the destruction, had to go through Russian checkpoints.
And one of the things the Russians would check is it would make you delete your photos of the city that you're leaving that had been completely destroyed.
Everybody says that Putin would be okay without a yacht.
You haven't been rich.
I'll bet. I'll bet.
Because if you're a billionaire, there probably aren't that many things that you can do that would excite you.
Am I right? Do you think a billionaire would get excited by a new car?
Well, maybe the first two.
But like, your third supercar?
Eh, not much.
But I do think a billionaire would be excited by their own yacht if it's the best yacht in the world.
Nobody would not be excited about that.
So if you think that Putin doesn't care because he can always get another yacht and he's got work to do anyway, I don't think so.
I think every human would care about that.
Just my opinion. Anyway, I wonder if we'll ever see pictures in Mary Pole if all the people have to delete their pictures before they leave.
And I'm amazed that Mary Paul didn't fall.
They destroyed the whole thing to rubble, and the Ukrainians are like, hey, barely a flesh wound.
Amazing. Here's the thing that scares me most in the world.
Fertilizer. It's the only thing I'm worried about.
I'm not worried about nuclear war, not worried about inflation, it's terrible, but I think we have a way past it.
It'll just be hard.
But the fertilizer shortage is mass starvation.
Mass starvation.
And the impact on food prices, I don't know how an economy can handle that really.
So, This is going to be another test of the Adams law of slow moving disasters.
I think I've told you maybe a few years ago that we already had a fertilizer shortage.
So running out of fertilizer is something we knew was a possibility for, I don't know, 10 or 20 years.
So does that mean that there's enough of a runway that we can do something when there's a shock to the system?
Probably not. Not quickly.
But let me give you a little idea of what's happening Did you know that if you do a vertical farm, which is an indoor farm, in which they put the plants up a wall, lots of different walls, that you would use 0.1% of the water, land, and fertilizer of an outdoor farm?
So you could reduce your fertilizer need by 99.9%.
To grow indoors. But, what is the big problem with growing indoors?
Anybody? Anybody? Don't need as much water.
Don't need as much fertilizer.
Energy. Capital. Not sun.
Interestingly not sun.
It's electricity. You know, startup costs, etc.
So, I don't know if this number holds, but one expert said that vertical farming is still four to five times more expensive And that mostly that's energy costs.
Can you imagine Elon Musk building a vertical farm prototype that not only uses, let's say, solar powers or something, but has a way to maybe be more cost-effective?
And Elon will build it in a tunnel.
Yeah. It seems to me that we may have a gigantic innovation wave coming in vertical farms, because I'm pretty sure we have to grow everything indoors eventually.
Climate change alone, variability of the weather, etc.
And let me ask you this, if you build the structure and you get the energy costs down, you're done, right?
Because the structure could probably last a long time.
And as long as you get the energy cost.
So basically, once again, climate change becomes the problem.
Because climate change keeps the price of power high.
At least the green movement has reduced fossil fuels, keeps the price high of energy.
It seems that Greta Thunberg has really found a way to destroy the entire world in every way that you possibly can.
Because even our food costs will go through the roof, we won't have an alternative.
But here's what I think will happen.
So it looks like, I would say there'll be a tremendous wave of vertical farming.
There are a number of companies in this space.
Now, I don't recommend, I do not recommend investments.
Hear this clearly.
This is not an investment recommendation.
But apparently there are funds of just vertical growing companies.
They're mostly smallish.
So you can invest in vertical farms.
At a time when, I don't know if there would be a better time to invest in a vertical farm.
This might be the best time in the world.
Oh, somebody's talking about seaweed farms.
Yeah, that's another great potential.
Apparently you can turn seaweed into all kinds of stuff.
Food, products, etc.
And that's probably the other way to go.
So here's my take on this.
The unintended consequence of this war, reduced fertilizer availability, pushes indoor vertical farming.
Long term, we're better off.
Long term. So this is one of those weird wars, and I guess a lot of them have this quality, where you don't want the war, But the war was the only thing that caused the big change that turned out to be good in the long run.
So you need a war now and then just to shake the box.
And that looks like that's what happened with fertilizer.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, that is the end of my prepared comments.
Apparently you can, I'm hearing you can make everything from seaweed from food to sexual lubricants.
And that's why fish are so happy.
All right. Oh, interesting.
There's a Star Trek about that.
CO2 is a net benefit.
Net benefit to growing, yes.
It's easier to get fertilizer than to achieve vertical farming.
That might be. But my understanding is that you need to mine one of the minerals, right?
potassium and that we don't really have the availability, at least we don't know where there's big mines full of potassium, I think.
So vertical makes its own shade, yeah. - The whole makes its own shade, yeah.
You can fix that with mirrors, can't you?
So, here's what I see coming.
There's either going to be immense starvation coming.
Well, actually, there's no way to avoid that.
If you don't have enough food, what do you do?
Have you noticed that your grocery store seems to have made some permanent changes about products that are available?
And yet, yeah, you wish you had those other products, but you got by.
I don't know. One possibility, and this gets back to the Adams law of slow-moving disasters.
I think we'll adjust.
I think we'll adjust.
Sort of like year 2000 or bug.
It seemed like there was nothing you could do, but then we figured it out.
No big deal. So I would suspect that all over the world there are alternative food sources that are trying to ramp up as quickly as possible because they know it makes sense.
Yeah, we're good problem solvers.
We'll probably get through this, but I do think there will be some starvation at risk.
What I'd like to see is a way to grow quinoa and process it in my own house, so I get that good protein.
Quinoa is great, especially if you mix it with brown rice.
All right. Yeah, there's somebody over here saying soil and green.
Whoever's saying soil and green, you might be new to this livestream.
You might be, unless you're joking.
It's the matrix with soil and green.
Wrong altitude to grow quinoa, is that true?
You need a certain altitude for quinoa?
I wouldn't be surprised.
Do you need a high altitude for quinoa?
Or a contextual joke?
Okay, Teresa is rejoicing in the Lord.
Good for you. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I have for you.
With your permission, and even without it, YouTube, I'm gonna turn you off and I'm gonna talk to the locals people a little bit more.
And sorry about the sound if you had a real problem there.
